Current Ideas for Digipak and Magazine Cover

My current plan for both my digipak and magazine cover (my print productions) have some from the two digipak design I have constructed.

The first, which I have previously uploaded onto my blog, uses the walking idea that is heavily implemented into our music video as a basis for the panels. Each panel shows a different part of his journey, and when you open the digipak up, you see the different panels connect and make on larger picture of him walking through the music video. This would work well as a digipak design - my tutor, Ms. Barton, approved of the idea - , and so I will use this as my digipak design.

The second digipak design (below) uses the lyric cards from our music video as inspiration. For example, one of the logos I made for my print productions that was liked by the rest of the class was the one using lyric cards, where one lyric card shows one word of Tonight I Let You Go (by The Colours), the name of the song used for my music video. I used this logo as the main focus of the front panel of this design, and also used lyric cards as inspiration for the back panel of the digipak, where each track name is placed onto a lyric card. This idea for the track list was the favourite bit of this design for both my tutor and the rest of the class. However, the rest of the design was not liked as much as the first design (above). Therefore, I have decided to use the walking idea for the digipak, but also utilise the idea of using lyric cards for the track list. The rest of the lyric card-focused second digipak design will be used for the magazine cover part of my print productions, where the image of the boy going through the lyric cards against the red postbox (a cultural signifier), another boy with a phone (another cultural signifier), and a backdrop of both nature (the grass, trees, bushes, etc.) and an urban environment (the cars, the road, the fence, etc.) could be very successful.

Top Panel: Panel 4
Bottom Panel: Panel 1

Top Panel: Panel 2
Bottom Panel: Panel 3

Storyboards for My Music Video

Below are the initial storyboards for our music video for The Colours' single Tonight I Let You Go. There are a few differences between the initial storyboards and the finished music video - the flashback sections were heavily modified - , but they show the concept of our music video and the main shots well.

Subterranean Homesick Blues and its References to the Beat Generation and 1960s Politics and Culture

Subterranean Homesick Blues, by Bob Dylan, is a music video that started out as an opening clip to D. A. Pennebaker's documentary on Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, named Dont Look Back. In this film, Bob Dylan holds up lyric cards containing a certain word or phrase form the line of the song that accompanies the action.

The lyric, or cue, cards themselves were written by Bob Dylan, Donovan, Bob Neuwirth, and Allen Ginsberg - intentional misspellings and puns were inserted into the clip, such as "20 dollar bills" being shown on a lyric card when the lyrics played in the background say "eleven dollar bills". The clip was shot in London, in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel. Both Bob Neuwirth and Allen Ginsberg make cameos in the clip; you can see Neuwirth and Ginsberg in the background.

Three screenshots from the
documentary Dont Look Back

The lyrics of the song are heavily influenced by 1960's culture. The first line(s) of the song,

"Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement thinkin' about the Government"

is/are a reference to the codeine distillation and politics of that period, with the first part of the above lyrics connoting codeine distillation and the second part connoting the politics of the time (e.g. the impact created by Martin Luther King and the assassination of J. F. Kennedy).

The lyrics of Subterranean Homesick Blues were packed full of up-to-date references to important emerging elements of 1960s youth culture. Rock journalist Andy Gill said: "an entire generation recognised the zeitgeist in the verbal whirlwind of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'."

In addition, the lyrics

"Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose"

reference the struggles surrounding the American civil rights movement at the time, as during the civil rights movement, peaceful protesters were beaten and sprayed with high pressure fire hoses. Despite all of these controversial political references, the track managed to become Bob Dylan's first USA Top 40 hit.

The Beat Generation

Subterranean Homesick Blues has many links and origins within the Beat Generation that preceded it - for starters, its name was possibly inspired by Jack Kerouac's novel The Subterraneans, published in 1958 (this novel was actually about the Beats).

Allen Ginsberg, at the Miami Book
Fair International of 1985

Bob Dylan fell into part of the group of American post-World War II writers that led the Beat Generation - Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg - when he met them at the University of Minnesota in New York in 1959. From here the Beat scene influenced Dylan; this is at least part of the reason why Ginsberg makes a cameo in the music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues. Another reason why is that Dylan and Ginsberg were close friends - Ginsberg toured with Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975. As aforementioned, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Bob Neuwirth, and Allen Ginsberg were the writers of the lyric/cue cards - this is related to the facts that they were friends and Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth make cameos in the music video. Bob Dylan names Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac as major influences on his work. I will go into more detail on the Beat Generation itself in another, upcoming post.

Similar Artists' Digipak Front Panel Designs

For my digipak design, I have observed the designs of digipak designs for several similar artists, such as Coldplay and Maroon 5 - some other boy band, pop genre artists.

Coldplay

Mylo Xyloto

Maroon 5

Overexposed

The Script

#3

Initial Digipak Design

The images below show my first idea for my digipak. The four panels show the main character from my music video walking through four locations that he walks through in the music video. These are:

• Bus stop
• Estate garages
• By train tracks in the city
• The girl's house

These four locations show the progression of the story - in this initial design, I have shown the character as being further along the page in each panel, depicting the progression that is a central theme to the song Tonight I Let You Go and my music video. The final panel of this digipak design show the boy at the girl's door - the same place at which my music video ends. This shows the ending of the journey to go with the journey itself. If this idea was used, the final digipak could open up to show the four panels connecting to make one large image of the boy walking through all of the different environments to get to the girl's door.

The words Tonight, I Let, You, and Go are shown on the first, second, third and fourth panels respectively, making up the name Tonight I Let You Go. This emphasises the aforementioned progression.

This design has potential - my tutor, Ms. Barton, also suggested using a six-panel digipak in a case that folds out. This would be a more intuitive way of showing the journey of the character, music video and digipak. I could even put details from each stage of the track and/or music video's birth and production along the journey, showing the progression of both the theoretical narrative and the real life creation of the track/music video.

Initial Designs for Digipak/Magazine Logos

These are some initial designs for the two logos that will be needed for my digipak and/or magazine: The Colours (the artists name) and Tonight [I Let You Go]. I have shown the designs without colour and with colour.

These are all quick designs that could be used as inspiration for the actual logos I use for my digipak and/or magazine. The Colours logos primarily play on the word "Colours"; one of my favourite designs, personally, is the one on the bottom-right that uses coloured squares to create a simple, yet stylish, image. The design on the top left could be used in a design similar to Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto (a similar band to The Colours) cover (shown right). The mix of colours in the background of my design is also similar to the mix of colours in the M and X on this design.

For the Tonight [I Let You Go] design, I also tried this kind of design. The T design on the right is similar to Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto digipak front panel design, except that instead of a mix of vibrant colours in the background it uses "onigh" as the word Tonight begins and ends with T. If you apply the large T to the "onigh", you intuitively arrive at the word Tonight - this makes the consumer think about the product and, crucially, remember it.

My favourite design on the Tonight [I Let You Go] design page is the lyric card design. We have researched and used these a lot in our music video, so this logo links into that. Different colours can be used to link to the band, The Colours (as with most/all of my designs), and the different parts of the name Tonight I Let You Go are used on each lyric card - just as one word is used on each lyric card in our music video and in Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan, the song that heavily influenced the lyric card section of our music video - to create both an innovative, intuitive design and an intertextual reference to Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Only the word Tonight is used in some of the designs as I think that this could be better as the albums name - it is much easier to say and remember than Tonight I Let You go and would help the marketing of the album - people would be able to remember the word Tonight easily, causing them to be more interested in the album.

The two designs I have picked as my favourites - the colour squares and lyric cards designs - also have potential as digipak designs, in different iterations. For example, the panels of our digipak could consist of different lyric cards making up the name Tonight I Let You Go.