Touch ups for album front cover

Final album cover

Magazine advert

Final magazine advert

We used the feedback we got from our peers to adjust our magazine advert. they said to keep it simple with minimal writing and to keep the album image for the advert rather than different pictures. This works well because Blue Lucifer are not established artists yet and they need there album image to promote their album, rather than other established artists which can sell without having any relevance in there adverts.

Feedback:

-Simple yet effective I love the use of the colours and how they amplify the image (17 year old female)

-It looks so realistic with the reviews from recognised rock magazines (18 year old male)

-I think you've really captured the conventions of the genre, through the use of the 'pentagrams' and the text. The faded image on the red to black background is a simple yet effective and in my opinion looks very professional ( 26 year old male) 

Back of the album

 Feedback:

- The red and black used ties in with the colour theme of the front cover, I think it looks really good (18 year old female)

- I love the way the titles of each individual song are placed around the 'pentagram', it's a really unique way of having them instead of the traditional 1. 2. 3. etc (17 year old female)

- This is really realistic, the use of the Warner Bros logo and the websites makes it look like a genuine album. The text, colour and use of the pentagram really help the audience to clearly identify the genre that is rock/metal. The lead singer in the middle of the album is a really good effect, I like how he is faded and you can just about make out his eyes this adds a mysterious effect to the cover which again ties in with the genre. (18 year old male)

Digipack inside image

Original image of my eye

 This was an image of my eye wearing a contact lens giving a mysterious scary rock look.

Final image of the inside digipack

I cropped the eye and put it onto a black background, after which I added several layer masks but individually each so that I could use the gradient tool to fade out the eye. After fading it, I realised it didn't quite go as the normal eye photo bled into a black background, and so to have the image look complete I added the effect of 'rough pastels' which partially cartoonised the eye which enhanced the whole images look.

Digipack (inside)

Construction of the inside digipack

DigiPack (inside final)

Final digipack inside image

Feedback:

- I think the image goes really well with the genre of rock and metal, it's so easily identifiable with it as it seems to be a demonic image. (18 year old female)

- I like the use of the demonic image, especially on the red background as this ties in with the colour theme throughout the front and back covers. (17 year old male)

- The goat type image has been associated with rock and demonic images a lot, I think this was a clever choice to use it as it makes the genre easily identifiable. (16 year old male)

Back of the album (construction)

This is a few screengrabs of my work in progress for the back of my album. It shows the steps that I took to fade my picture in the middle. I did this by firstly bringing in my photo then rescaling it to the size I desired. After this I added a layer mask, I did this so I could use the gradient tool which I knew would fade the photo out, then it was just a case of getting it right. After getting the effect I wanted, I added in a barcode and began to start on the titles of the songs on the album. I firstly put the songs all around the pentagram but then decided to have them rotated accordingly so that they ran along the lines of the pentagram so that the audience would have to rotate the album to read all the titles.

Inspiration of our music advert

Comparison of our magazine adverts

Me and david (my partner) looked at a couple magazine adverts and chose this one as an inspiration for our own magazine advert as it is simple yet effective. It has an image which is the same as the album cover even though this is there fifth studio album and they are n established band they have chosen to use the same image. The reason we have chosen the same image as our album cover is to get known and establish our band throught our advert and gain recognition, hence marketing both the band and album at the same time. We have placed the quotes in a similar place as elbow as it looks professional but changed the quotes to suit our band. Also we have changed the music magazines as elbow are a indie rock band, whereas we are rock/metal band, therefore we have magazine references such as kerrang. As we are an upcoming band and this is our first album, we thought costs of distribution would be a problem in online stores such as amazon, so it would be more cheaper and sensible to be marketed through apple itunes rather than amazon or HMV. Elbow have two lines on either side of the bands name, we have took this idea and developed it, as without the two tribal designs the magazine will look plain and bare. It was a font called windings 2.

Album front cover (construction)

This is the work in progress of my front cover. Firstly we took individual pictures with a similar pose, then after uploading them I came across my first difficulty which was that the pictures were the exact same stance. So to overcome this I vertically flipped the photo of myself (in red) so that we appeared back to back.

On the photo on the left I made it black and white before bringing it into the main image, I then aded a filter (posterization) to the image to give us the hazed look you can see. Then I simply used a gradient for the background which was simple but effective.

The text was 'Bleeding Cowboys' which I downloaded online from a free font website called 1001freefonts.com I found this font to be very fitting to my chosen genre. I then added a wind filter onto it and put an inner shadow through it to give it the two coloured effect.