CD Evaluation

Evaluation

When creating my album cover, I looked at a few different cover before I decided on what genre and artist to base mine on. After looking through I decided to focus on the pop genre and album cover of Olly Murs’ self titled album. From looking at those I discovered the codes and conventions of what a pop genre CD cover included and what appeals to the audience. From looking at pop genre CD covers, I discovered that most background were very plain and that they cover showed the artist either just there face or there whole body. When making my CD covers I took all of this into consideration.

When I started my first version of the CD cover on Photoshop, I started by getting a readymade template of a CD front and back cover and the insides. After the layout was ready, I went on the Internet to find the images of Olly Murs, that I could use for the main image on the front of the CD that I wanted to produce. The first image that I found and that I wanted on my front cover was of Olly Murs, where you could see the whole of this body. In this image he is wearing a Navy jacket. From this I felt that this colour should be the colour of all the writing that I was using. On Photoshop I got the Ink tool and took the colour of the jacket and used it for the writing. I did this as I knew I would be the same colour. I liked this but then I found out that CD itself was red and I felt that these didn’t look right together, so I decided to change the colour to the red that was on the CD. From looking at CD covers I have seen that they need a Barcode and the music companies labels, I got these from the internet and pasted them on to the covers on Photoshop.
On the back cover I decided to stick with the same colours that I had used for the Title on the front cover. I decided to keep this colour throughout the CD as I felt that it flowed and looked good. For the background on the front and back I didn’t have a coloured background. I did this as I felt that if it was coloured it wouldn’t of stand out and I couldn’t find any colours that would have fitted with the image on the front. By having the white background the image and the writing stands out. It is important that things like this stand out on CD covers, as they need to catch the public’s eye.
Inside the front cover I decided to have a montage of images of Olly Murs. I thought by having this it would show the artist in different ways and it would show his personality. By doing it’s something that a lot of pop genre artist do, as their fans like to see lots of images of them. I wanted to try and get images that used the same sort of colours but I was unable to find any. So I decided that I would just get the images and see what they looked like Altogether. Once I had put them all in place I decided that I wasn’t happy with this as I felt it looked cheap and not professional. As this was my first attempt I decided to keep it but change it in the next version.

For my second version I decided to try a coloured image on the front cover. I got this image from the internet and I felt that it would work as it’s a close up image of his face and many pop CD covers have this. As the colours on the image were quiet dark, I thought that I would stick with the same colour of the first version of red as I felt that it stood out from the image.
For the back cover I rearranged the way the track list was. I moved it so that it was in the corner. I did this as I felt that when I had it in the middle on my first version everything seem quiet squashed, where as now it doesn’t. I also kept the Red colour font throughout as I felt it fitted with the CD its self.
As I didn’t like the image layout of my inside page for my first idea. I decided that I would just have one set of image that’s all linked. I got these images off the internet. I changed them into black and white as I felt the colours of the images didn’t fit in with the other colours as they were dark Reds and blues. Although I liked this I still felt that something was needed as I felt that it looked a bit bare.

For my final CD I found an image on the internet that I felt worked well with the colours and layout that I wanted. This image has been used on one of the single before but I wanted to make it different. I took the image and cut the part of Olly out so that I could paste it onto the cover. Once I had placed the image where I wanted, I put the writing next to the image. As for my other two covers I have had the colour red for the writing as I felt that this wouldn’t work for this one as the colour on his top was red and I felt it would of been too much. So I decided to have it Black. Although I changed the colours to black I still thought that the writing stood out because of the white background.
As I liked the back cover in my second version but I felt that it looked a bit plain. I decided to repeat the image so that it didn’t have the white parts on it. I felt that this worked well and it was similar to something I had seen in another pop album booklet.

Overall I am please with my 3^rd and final version of the CD cover. I felt that it included everything that a pop CD cover should have and that it looks good and am a similar style to his album which I have based this on.

This is my first attempt 

My second attempt

My final design.