Print Task Research

In order to create a realistic and proffesional digi pak design I have had to research into them and see whats generally included and what styles are used for the acousitc/folk genre.

Newton Faulkner

These are some CD designs and also a CD its self for Newton Faulkner. What I have discovered from my research is that the same style is carried out on all of the print work for the same artist. These examples are entropic and also quite quirky. They do not contain an image of the artist him self and there for go against the theory that arists are now a days only selling themselves and not focusing on their music, but in this case Newton Faulkner is not on any of his print products.

This also applies to another acoustic/folk artist I have research called Kate Rusby.

Again, her print designs take on the same idea and style for each CD. This time the style is cartoon based and again the artist her self is not present on the actual Digi Pak. Another example of artists using the same approach to print tasks is Laura Marling, also an acoustic artist.


Again her CD covers are all recognisable in the sense that they belong to the same artist. Unlike the examples above Laura Marling is actually featured in this CD cover above, but instead of have a highly edited image of herself in the centre of the cover she has used a black and white drawing of her self instead, again creating this unusual and unique desgin.

Creative Lesson

This week I have been focusing on creativity and trying to undertake a particular creative task geared around my planning for my music video.

For my print designs I wanted to achieve a photo similar to this photo which I found on google.

This photo uses a shallow depth of field photography skill. This is a skill I have never used in my photography before and one I have had to work on and learn how to achieve this week. To do so I borrowed a Digital SLR camera and practised creating a shallow depth of field around a coke bottle.

To create this effect I had to learn what setting to switch the camera to and how to change the aperture level to the widest setting it will go, to change the shutter speed and create this effect.

Once I had learnt this skill I then moved onto working on photo-shop and placing text around my 'mock-up' photo to experiment with the placing of and style of text on my print tasks.

So far I have experimented with text size, style and touched on colour. My 'mock-up' so far looks like this ...

So far I have decided that white stands out against the background of the grass and also the natural colour of white fits in with the natural style of the photo its self. I have used a style of text called 'Vani' here.

Sir Ken Robinson says that creativity is something that we are born with but as we grow older this creativity inside us becomes less and less as we are told what, when and how etc.. to do things by teachers throughout or schooling years. He thinks that we are, from a young age, encouraged not to make mistakes and do as we are told, but by making mistakes and going beyond the boundaries we are being more creative and in fact we should be encouraged that to make mistakes is OK as we are being creative in the process.

I believe that what Sir Ken Robinson says does make some sense as at school we are told how to go about tasks and told how to avoid making mistakes, but I don't believe fully that this is reducing our creativity, as creativity is there, in our dreams and thoughts, its just we aren't always encouraged to apply this to our studies.

I went through the creative process of both driving and walking around the country side and letting my mind wander and brain storm idea's. I also looked through my own folk CD collection for idea's to develop further myself for my print tasks.

Time Management

This is my calendar for November and December, including all the task's I have yet to complete and the date's I plan to complete them on. Below my Calendar is a break down of the task's for each section of the planning.

Because of changes to my casting I have had to re-write my time plan and alter when I was planning on completing certain tasks originally.

Because of my change of plans regarding my performers and casting, photography for my print tasks became delayed and was put back to two weeks before the deadline. This was not how I planned to set out my tasks when I initially planned my calendar but this has given me an insight into the real world of trying to organise the production of a music video and instead of worrying about the casting in particular and delaying everything else I found it was important to still keep the ball moving with everything else, so a not to fall completely behind.

Music Video - The Pitch & Feed back

Here is my prezi presenting my current idea's for my music video, including my target audience, mood board, concept, risk assessment and the song its self, all of which I presented to the rest of my class. I received feedback from my pitch including useful comments and factors I should take into consideration with the planning and filming of my video.

Nearly all of my audience felt that my target audience was well planned out and I had considerd factors such as the jicnars scale well. Most importantly they all felt that my video was appropriate for my target audience and that it would appeal to them well. Some key words I have pulled out for my target audience are 'expressed well, suitable and clearly presented.' A few felt that although my audience research was detailed it may be a little to wide.
My feedback showed me that my audience believed my idea to be highly original and 'quirky,' 'exciting,' 'unusual' and 'natural.' Although some issues raised were the difficulty of gaining acces to period clothing, the filming conditions and whether the video its self may look slow paced due to the lack of locations. In response to these queries I will make sure that i plan my filming according the weather in order to acheive the best out come possible. Regarding the clothes issue my couple who I am filming are quite a quirky couple any way and already have a wardrobe full of suitable clothing.

There were no concerns regarding my health and safety.

My concept of Adam and Eve and the whole idea of natural beauty twisted in with this earthy and rustic look is one which went down well with my audience and I have recieved plenty of feedback saying how original and exciting the idea sounds. One really good piece of feedback was that 'the song lyrics and the natural sound of the song its self really fits with my idea's for the music video and together they could work excellently.

Over all there were no major concers about my video and the idea itself seemed to get the thumbs up from the audience I was pitching to.