How did your print productions use, develop, or challenge conventions of media language and genre?
For my digipak design, I chose a close-up image of the artist for the front cover of the CD case. She is centralised, presenting her as confident and dominant. Andrew Goodwin suggested that record labels encourage close-ups of the artist to establish and promote their brand image. This is conventional for album covers for pop artists, such as Dua Lipa’s eponymous debut album. However, I challenged the convention of direct address, instead having the artist look out of frame (like the cover for ‘My Woman’ by Angel Olsen; this make her appear to be more enigmatic and intriguing. The name of the band and their eponymous album is printed in a bold sans serif font, which connotes modernity to appeal to the teenage target audience. The text is black, matching the artist’s costume.
The back cover features a long shot of the artist, positioned on the right using the rule of thirds. Like on the design for ‘Puberty 2’ by Mitski, the back cover acts like a reverse of the front cover by presenting the artist in the same location but facing away from the camera. I followed conventions by listing the names of the album’s tracks. However, I challenged conventions by aligning this text on the left rather than the centre. This is more complementary for the image, as the text appears to be shaped around her guitar. I also followed conventions by including a barcode, a record label logo and copyright text at the bottom (like on Lorde’s album ‘Pure Heroine’).
I also designed two examples of pages within the booklet which would be contained within the CD case. I used the convention of including the songs’ lyrics, which is appealing to audiences because it encourages greater interaction and participation with the music. I continued the visual imagery of the CD front and back covers by using photographs that were shot in the same location. One of these pages includes an image of the artist, which is also conventional (for example, this can be seen in the booklet which accompanies ‘Pure Heroine’ by Lorde). I chose to use the same font for the text on these pages as on the front and back covers of the CD case to continue the aesthetic style.
For my magazine advert, I used the same image as was featured on the front cover of my digipak design. This convention can be seen in the magazine adverts for Jessie J’s album ‘Who You Are’ and Lana Del Rey’s album ‘Born To Die’. Also like the advert for ‘Who You Are’, I used a black background with contrasting white text. Another colour which I chose to use for the text on my advert was a shade of red which matches the lipstick which the artist is wearing in the image. The information that I presented on my advert is conventional and includes the name of the band/album, the release date, a review, a record label logo and a website address.