Digi Pack: Similar Texts & Album Cover Initial Ideas

Before the internet, youtube and itunes, songs by artists were showcased on the radio and music channels. Artists accumalated an income by the amount of albums and records sold. Essentially, if your song wasn't played on the radio you'd have to capture your audience by the look of your album to get people to listen to your music, in turn making some form of income.

As our artist Mariko Giselle is an R&B artist, I looked at a variety of artists with album covers for references. Some of which are:

However, when looking at these .. I instantly thought:

I asked myself why none of these images attracted my attention, then it hit me!

None, of these images had a particular artsy feel; the only one that had some form of orignality was Alessia Cara's 'Here' it embodied a 90s grunge feel that suggested her music may cover teenage issues emphasised by the polaroid and the washed tint over the image.

So I thought about the brand identity of our artist, Mariko Giselle; what is it about her that attracts her audience? Does she have particular values? Is she a role model?

I thought, that our artist is all about being true to herself, being real.

Does that mean I will objectify and sexualise the female body to sell albums?

I began looking for reference pictures that captured my attention but also images that will look reasonable for an album cover that gives our artist an identity.

I was captured by Marina and the Diamonds and Paloma Faith's album covers :

Particulary, because they embodied an edge that promoted an identity,style and genre; Marina is known for the heart placed beneath her eye, 1960s pin up style/ hair but also her makeup inspired by one of the famous models of the 1960s 'Twiggy'.

Paloma Faith also shares some similarities regarding style and identity, however their covers contrast eachother quite obviously, Marina's has a vintage style regarding quality of the images as they appear quite pixalated but also font as it uses serif to show that her brand takes the 'aged' approach, where as Paloma embodies a modern style combined with the 60s as it used sans serif to show edge but also the pinup hair to show her style.

When planning the digi pack for our atist Mariko Giselle, I first wanted an image that showed her whole body but I slowly grew a distaste to the idea, I wanted something modern but still had a slight edge to it. I ended up deciding on either a portrait of our artist or a side profile shot.

Looking at Rihanna's 'Unapologetic':

and Justin Bieber's 'Where Are U Now" MV:

I liked the idea of doodles and writing the other songs over the artists face; however as our artist is not as established its not the best idea.

After looking at a variety of fashion blogs and editorials of both male and female models using these images as references:

I plan to use a side profile close up of the artist, the background will be fill with most likely white or grey or a nude tone; I plan to add some geometrical shapes possibly just of the artists neck into the chin using dull colours that gradually gain colour, the final edit will most likely have a grey tone with around 40% opacity to remove the harshness of the shapes (to resemble the idea that she is still in the early stages of life regarding her music but she is slowly becoming my refined). The font will most likely be san serif to resemble a modern feel but also to follow the codes and conventions or an R&B album cover. Similar to Rihanna's 'R' being her brand, I hope to make Mariko Giselle's 'M' her brand.

#research