CD Digipak Progression

1 - 3: I decided to research existing emo album covers since our fictitious band, Sadgasm, are in the emo genre. I felt that this would help to make me aware of the current conventions of album covers in my band's genre: most feature a single image that appears to be shot on film, and text with the album title/band name. They also have a very nostalgic feel to them. 

4: Since the majority of emo albums I researched involved film photograph (or certainly appeared to) I decided to use my own film camera and black and white film. I think that this would increase the nostalgic feel of the album cover and link it more to the emo genre. 

5-6: Since I used black and white film, I felt that it was important to research album covers with a black and white aesthetic/colour scheme. I chose Slint's 'Spiderland' album as an inspiration since it features a black and white image, with a cool black border. I think that this creates a simplistic appearance which is what I am drawn to. 

7: I found an image that I took (on film) of some camels in the Arabian desert. Not only was the composure appropriate for my initial design, but it also holds nice memories which links to the nostalgia theme of the album. 

8: I managed to recreate the style of 'Spiderland' fairly well! However, upon completion I thought that it was too boring and unoriginal: Slint had already created a better version and so it seemed appropriate to take a different approach. 

9: Since my draft design was somewhat boring, I decided to take inspiration from an experimental artist Grimes and her album cover 'Visions'. I really like how a segment of the cover (the purple strip) was made out of a "collage" of her name layered repeatedly. I felt that I could incorporate this design feature into my own in order to make it more visually appealing. 

10: I decided to retain the black and white theme since the contrasts work well. 

11: I had recently taken a photo of a local church: the image was originally in colour and was really grainy due to noise from low light levels. I thought that changing this to black and white would make it appear like the photo was taken on film - due to the grain. 

12: My final front cover uses the text design inspired by Grimes, and I cropped and rotated the image.  I felt that this helped it conform to the alternative genre since it looks somewhat "edgy".