Sunday, 1 February 2026

Digipak: Research and Development

This is our research and development on our Digipak and how it will influence our artist for our music video project. I helped by doing the research as Lamiya did the development side, but since she didn't complete her part I was the one who ended up having to finish her work.

1. SZA - SOS

Camera
The album cover uses a extreme long of SZA sitting on top of a diving board where we can see a lot of the ocean around the artist. The reason behind this extreme long shot where it makes her look tiny shows how vulnerable and isolation SZA looks. The camera angle is straight and does don't have a dramatic effect which makes the image feel natural and real making it look like a moment caught on camera.

Mise-en-Scene
The only three main things in the Mise-en-Scene is SZA, the diving board and the ocean. The ocean takes up most of the space, showing deep emotions and feeling lost. SZA is sitting with her legs hanging down and her body slightly slouched making her look relaxed and comfortable. The connotation behind sitting at the edge of the board also shows riskiness like she is in between staying safe or jumping into unknown which highlights the emotional state of whats in the album.

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
The overall color shown in this album is blue. This plays a huge role in showcasing her emotions because blue represents sadness, loneliness, and calmness. The blue ocean and sky creates a quiet and emotional mood, showing how she feels emotionally and overwhelmed. Which can reflect to audiences or listener to quickly guest that the songs in album are all about deep emotions, personal struggles, heartbreak, and self-reflection.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
The imagery shows SZA as someone who is open, emotional and vulnerable. Sitting alone and looking away from the camera suggest she is thinking deeply and lost in her thoughts, making the moment feel personal. This matches her music, which often talks about love, heartbreak, and self-reflection. She is not trying to look perfect, which shows she is not focused on frame or image but instead, comes across as honest and relatable.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
SZA does not really use a logo. Instead she mainly uses her name in simple and clean text. The bold "SOS" test on the album cover stands our and feels strong and serious, which links to the albums theme of emotional struggles. This style is consistent with her other albums and media, where she often uses minimal visuals and lets emotion and storytelling be the main focus.

How has the album cover influence you?
The album cover influences me because it strongly focuses on the color blue, which we also want to use since our color palette is blue. The use of blue to represent sadness and calm emotions inspired us, as it clearly shows emotional depth. We also like how the meaning of the album focuses on grief and emotional struggles, because our music video is about toxic relationships and the struggles of dealing with them. The calm but heavy mood of the album cover helped inspire us to show emotions in a simple but powerful way.

2. Gracie Abrams - The Secret Of Us


Camera
The album uses a lot of close-up shot of the artist's face. This makes the images feel personal and emotional, as we are very close to her expressions. The close-up framing allows the audience to focus on her emotions and thoughts, making the album feel intimate and honest. Her facial expressions range from neutral and serious to soft and thoughtful which suggest calmness, vulnerability, and deep emotional reflection.

Mise-en-Scene
 Here is only focused are the artist and her facial expressions. The expression look gives soft and thoughtfulness, which shows vulnerability. In the middle image, the two versions of her whispering suggest secrets and private thoughts, which links to the album title. The font used for the title album is a soft cursive yellow style, which feels gentle and personal, which is almost like a handwriting. The simplicity setting keeps the focus on emotions rather than distractions.

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
The soft lighting and neutral colors create a calm and gentle mood. The lack of bright colors or strong shadows shows emotional softness and reflection. This helps audiences quickly guess that the album focuses on personal feelings, relationships, and inner emotions. The simple visuals make the album feel private, as if the artist is sharing secrets with listeners. The technical elements also make the emotions feel more honest and real helping audiences emotionally connected to the album.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
The imagery shows the artist as emotional, honest, and relatable. She does not look glamorous which makes her feel real. Her expressions suggest deep thinking, which matches music that focuses on relationships, secrets, and emotional experiences.This matches music that focuses on relationships, secrets and emotional experiences which makes the artist seem open to share personal stories.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
The artist does not use a logo on this album. Instead, she uses the album title in simple text, which keeps the design clean and easy to read. This shows that the focus is more on emotion and meaning rather than strong branding or marketing. The simple font and layout allow the audience to pay attention to the feelings and themes of the album. 

How has the album cover influence you?
This album cover influenced us because we want to use close-up shots and yellow font like this album. The close-ups help emphasis a euphoria and emotional look for our artist. We also like the yellow font, but in our meaning it symbolizes happened and hope in a world where the artist is living with toxic emotions. This contrast helps show how she is trying to find light and positivity despite the struggles she faces.

3. Sabrina Carpenter - Short N' Sweet


Camera
The album uses close-up and medium shots that focus on the artists face and body, which links to the idea of the malee gaze. The camera angles and framing highlight her appearance, skin, and poses in a way that is visually attractive, especially to male audiences. Her body is positioned to be looked at, and the direct or over the shoulder look creates a sense of invitation. This use of camera helps attract attention and makes the artist appear desirable.

Mise-en-Scene
They focuses on the artist, blue and pink color palette, and the styling. The blue background creates a clean and bold look, while the pink vinyl adds a soft and playful feel. Her outfit, hair, and makeup are very styled, showing confidence and femininity. The lipstick mark and the visible skin suggest flirtation and self-expression. The lace and soft textures on the vinyl design add a romantic delicate touch.

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
The bright colors, strong lighting, and confident poses create a bold and playful mood. The use of blue and pink suggests both confidence and softness. The lighting highlights her skin and features, making her stand our clearly from the background. These technical elements help audiences quickly guess that the album focuses on love, confidence, and emotional experiences in a fun way.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
The artist's imagery shows confident, feminine, and self-aware. She appears glamorous and in control of how she is seen. Her poses and expressions suggest confidence and flirtation, which matches a persona that is bold and expressive. At the same time, the soft colors and delicate details show a more gentle and emotional side, making her persona feel balances rather than aggressive.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
They did not use a logo, but instead uses her name in elegant cursive way. This font feels soft and classic, which matches the romantic and feminine theme of the album. This style is consistent with her other media, where branding focuses on elegance, personality, and visual identity rather than a bold image.

How has the album cover influence you?
This can influence us through the use of the blue background and the way the artist shows body confidence. The blue background creates a clean and bold look, which makes the artist stand our clearly. We also like how her confident pose and body language show self-assurance. This inspired us to use confident body language in our own project to show our artists growth and strength.

4. Addison Rae - Addison


Camera
Addison uses a mix of close-up and medium shots, mostly focusing on the artist's face and body. The close-up shots make the image feel personal and intimate, while the way she looks toward the camera creates strong eye contact. This draws the audience in and makes her the clear focus. Some angles are sightly posed, which links to the idea of being looked at and admired, helping attract attention and interest from the audience.

Mise-en-Scene
It focuses on the artist, warm colors, and soft textures. The orange and yellow tones create a dreamy and romantic mood. The feathers and sheer fabric shows softness and elegance which makes the visuals feel delicate and feminine. Her outfit and styling are glamorous but gentle, showing beauty without being harsh. 

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
These colors create a soft but intense mood. The orange and magenta tones suggest passion and emotion. The soft focuses and layered textures makes the visual feel dreamy and unreal, as if the album exists in a fantasy world. These technical elements help the audience quickly guess that the album focuses on emotions, identity, love, and self-image.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
The artist is presented as glamorous, confident, and expressive. She looks aware of being seen and comfortable with attention, which shows confidence. At the same time, the softness in her expressions and styling suggest vulnerability and sensitivity. This creates a balance persona where she is both strong and emotional, making her feel interesting and relatable.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
The artist uses her name in decorative, stylize text rather than a strong logo. This font feels elegant and playful, which matches the dreamy and feminine theme of the album. This branding style is consistent across the album artwork and vinyl designs, helping create a clear and recognizable visual identity without overpowering the imagery.

How has the album cover influence you?
I like how the vinyl color is the dominant color alongside yellow. This can inspire us to use a strong main color in our own project, such as yellow or blue, to make it more visually striking. The use of the artist's logo also shows how branding can help make an artist more recognizable. This influences us to include a clear logo for our artist so audiences can easily remember and recognize her.

5. Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia


Camera
The album uses a mix of medium shots and close-up shots of the artist sitting in a car. The camera often faces her directly, which creates strong eye contact and makes her look confident and in control. Some shots focus on her body position and facial expression, which draws attention to her presence and attitude. The framing makes her the clear focus of the image, helping the audience connect with her confidence and star power.

Mise-en-Scene
The album included the artist, the car, the moon in the background, and the colour scheme. The car represents freedom, movement, and independence. The moon and dark background creates a dreamy, night-time atmosphere. Her pink outfit stands our strongly against the dark setting, making her the main focus. Her styling, includes her hair, makeup, gloves gives a retro glamorous look, linking to the albums theme of nostalgia.

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
The dark background combined with the bring pink outfit creates contrast, making the artist stand our and appear powerful. The night setting and moon give the album a futuristic and dreamy feel. The lighting highlights her face and body, showing confidence and control. These elements help audiences guess that the album focuses on confidence, love, and self empowerment.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
They presented the artist as confident and strong. She looks serious and focused, which shows control and self-assurance. Sitting in the driver's seat suggest she is in charge of her own life and direction. This matches her persona as a modern pop star who represents confidence and freedom.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
The artist uses her name as a logo in a clear, stylized font. This logo is visible on the vinyl and is easy to recognize. The font branding are consistent with her other work, helping build a strong and recognizable artist identity. This makes it easy for audiences to remember and identify her work.

How has the album cover influence you?
I think this can influence us because we like the confident expression the artist gives. It shows confidence and self-assurance which is something we want our artist to show as well. We also like the blue, midnight scenery more than the pink as it creates a cool and powerful mood. The artist gives off strong vibes, which we want to reflect in our own artist to create a similar presence and attitude.

6. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour


Camera
The album uses mostly medium and close up shots of the artist. The close up framing brings attention to her face and makeup, making the image feel personal and emotional. The camera is straight which makes her look honest and direct like she is facing the audience without hiding. This helps the audience focus on her emotions and expression.

Mise-en-Scene
Mise-en-Scene includes the artist, the purple background, the stickers, and the makeup. The purple background creates a soft but emotional mood, often linked to sadness and vulnerability. The stickers on her face look playful and childish, which contrasts with her serious expression. This shows mixed emotions, such as feeling hurt but still trying to express yourself. The simple setting keeps the focus on her and her emotions.

What meaning is being created with the different technical elements?
The simple background and soft colors create a calm and emotional mood. The lack of props and distractions makes the emotions feel more raw and honest. The contrast between the playful stickers and her serious expression suggest emotional confusion and vulnerability. These elements help the audience understand that the album focuses on emotions and personal struggles.

How does the imagery reflect the star's persona?
The imagery presents the artist as emotional and relatable. She looks natural and not overly glamorous, which makes her feel real and down to earth. The use of stickers and simple styling shows creativity and individuality. This matches her persona as someone who openly shares her feelings and personal experiences through her music.

Does the artist have a logo? Is it consistent with their other media?
The artist uses simple test for the album title and her name rather than a logo. This keeps the branding clean and minimal. The scrapbook-style visuals, stickers, and handwritten elements are consistent across the album artwork and vinyl, creating a clear and recognizable style that feels personal and expressive.

How has the album cover influence you?
We like the simplicity of this album cover, especially the makeup and the use of stickers. It inspired us to use the similar idea where our artist can express herself through her worn style of makeup. This allows emotions and personality to be shown visually without needing a complex setting, making the artist feel more authentic and relatable.


MY EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT FOR THIS DIGIPAK

    first I sketched out my vision of how I wanted the digipak to look like. I envisioned a couch and our artist Kika to be laying on the couch. 


In the first sketch, I drew the pose I wanted in the beginning which is her sitting upright. after careful consideration and advice from my peers, I decided that I wanted her to lay down to give it a more relaxed vibe which relates to our artists growth on how she is now able to be comfortable with herself again. 

In most of these sketches I wanted to put decorations (artworks) on the wall behind Kika but I decided not too because we couldnt figure out a way to hang them up without damaging the wall of my house.

In all of these sketches I envisioned Kika Laene's logo to be at the top left corner in a handwritten cursive to add personalization. the font we used is called "beauty" from "dafont.com" which is a website we used to research fonts for her logo and the album title.

I wanted the outift to be a simple plain satin dress to keep the focus on the visuals and make up look. I knew I wanted her hair to be slicked back because I wanted to put emphasis onto her face because we wanted to do a "euphoria" make up look on her face. 

here are some examples of the make up look we talked about:

We decided on these make-up looks inspired by the TV show "euphoria" because in the music video her past self wears very minimal make up to show case her depression and how lost she was and how unconfident and insecure she was. she has not truly found her identity while being in that toxic relationship. it reflects how she did not feel connected to herself. however, now we wanted to show the artist wearing bold euphoria make-up as her identity now. we show this from her album covers, social media and the way she represents herself to the world. this represents her gaining her confidence and identity. the bright colours and dramatic looks show that she is now no longer afraid to be seen. this shift/change in makeup shows her growth and how she's moved from feeling small and invisible to being confident and expressive with her identity. 

here's the make-up looks we did for the digipak:




In these two pictures, we put a lot of purple eye shadow onto her face, and body to symbolize mental bruises and scars that the toxic relationship had an affect on her. 






In this make-up look we did a crying themed look. we created colourfull and sparkly tears on her face using eyeshadow and glitter. this symbolizes all the tears she cried and the hardships she went through but it made her even stronger and bold now. she shows her trauma through her makeup for self expression. 


Photoshoots:


These are the main photos that were pretty hard to choose from because i saw potential in all of them but I ended up choosing the second one because I felt that the rest looked too much like magazine covers instead of an album covers

The next following steps was continued by me (Kristine).

After deciding on the perfect picture, we finally started the editing process. However, before that, we made sure to look at our sketches to find the ideal editing style and think about how we can bring the sketch to life. We then focused on using colour and editing techniques and enhance the overall meaning we wanted to convey in our project and for the digipak.

We concluded that we would use sketch number #4 because we felt it was the most suitable to use as an album cover. Out of all the sketches that Lamiya created, it had the most meaning and conveyed stronger messages that we could apply to the audience. It also helped us clearly expressed who our artist really is.

Using our Pinterest board to look for album inspiration Lamiya discovered a few images she liked in the board I created so we could share ideas together. She found one picture that we could use as inspiration because it clearly defined the overall meaning of the album.

Since the song is about "Shapeshifter" and transforming into a new person, the image strongly demonstrates the illusion of shapeshifting. Applying this concept to our album would enhance both the title and the message she wants to convey to the audience. It symbolises her personal growth and shows how she has transformed into a new version of herself through her rebranding.

We then started using the selected picture that we had picked using FaceApp and an editing tool on Lamiya's phone to help apply filters and enhance the transition from the sketch to real life. Before she did this, I used my video star skills to help Lamiya edit the shifting effect using tracking blur and multi layer technique to recreate the effect and replicate the image she chose from Pinterest. She also made sure to adjust the lighting effect in the app and used the colouring tool to make the tones more blue, just like in her original sketch. These are the pictures she used to showcase her editing process and how she created the effect using the editing tools available on the web.
The next thing we did was at the font type and the title of the song, since this picture will become the front cover album for the digipak. I used my editing app, VideoStar, to help add the text into the final decision-making for the front cover of the digipak.

We chose to use yellow specifically to enhance the yellow sunset that is also reflecting onto our artist's face. This shows that her new shift is happier and that the shape shift represents growth and a more positive change, instead of being negative. In the past she was surrounded by negativity which is why we enhanced the blue colouring in the album. Using yellow as the font title colour makes it feel more positive and brings a happy energy.

We also needed to add an artist logo so we chose a calligraphy style font which was mentioned earlier by Lamiya. This made it feel more authentic and realistic as if it were a real artist rather than something fully computer generated. Overall this choice helps reinforce the positive energy of the artist with the colour yellow supporting the intended emotion.

Now that we have finalise the front cover, the next steps were to create the other parts of the digipak. This included the back cover, inside panels, and the disc design. From our research, we decided to maintain a consistent colour palette and simple font choices throughout the digipak. This was important because we wanted to avoid over expression since the more we exaggerated the design the more it can feel performative and less authentic to the audiences, which could weaken the representation of our artist.
The first part we focused on was the back cover. We designed it to reflect our artists identity by continuing the same blue and bright orange colour scheme used on the front cover. We selected a close-up image from our photo shoot to strengthen the personnel representation of the artist. Her logo was placed as the main title to clearly establish her identity as Kika Laene, ensuring audiences recognition. In addition, we included the album title "Shapeshifter" in the bottom corner to clearly indicate that this is part of the same project to maintain consistent branding across the digipak.

The next step was creating the inside panel of the digipak. This section is used to introduce the overall album, including the track list, and allows audiences to open the digipak and access the disc. However, the only panel behind the front cover is clearly visible, as the other side is mostly covered by the disc.

For this reason we carefully selected the most suitable image to use as the background for the track list. Lamiya shortlisted three options and she ultimately chose the first image as it appeared the most authentic and visually effective. It stood out compared to the other two because it best represents the overall aesthetic we were aiming for and worked more successfully as a background for this song titles.

The track is originally from Lorde's album Virgin but for our project we rebranded it under the title Shapeshifter to align with our concept. We use the same song list from the original album to maintain accuracy while adapting it to our digipak design. In addition we applied the same editing techniques and colour grading used in the other panels to ensure visual consistency across the entire product to strengthen the overall branding and colour scheme. Using the same phone as Shapeshifter, "LEMON MILK" from dafont.com, we listed the album tracks and added the artists logo hidden in the bottom right corner of the design.
Lastly, we designed the disc and the inside panel behind it. To keep the overall design simple and not overly expressive, we chose a plain colour for the disc. Lamiya selected pink, as it compliments the existing blue and yellow tones while also linking to her pinkish purple make-up, helping to maintain a cohesive colour palette.
For the inside panel behind the disc, we used a simple background in the same blue toes as the other inside panel. This helped maintain consistency through the inside while also creating a subtle contrast with the pink disc. Overall, what I have done so far is help me explain the works she has produced that she wasn't able to fully complete in writing. Based on what she delivered to me, I quickly analysed her work and interpreted the overall meaning by considering how she expressed her editing choices and design designed the digipak as a whole.

Reflection: This task was completed by my teammate and was an important part of our project. The issue with my teammate was that there was a lot of things to do since it had to be detailed and enough to support our creation. For my teammate it was quite long and took a lot of effort to complete since she also had a lot of other things going on which really slowed down her process. As a solution, I then suggest to help her with her research and making it easier for her to finish her task by finishing up the digipak development. I also then helped her start her vision making it easier for her to show more side of teamwork and so that there will be no disagreements regarding the process. In the future, this task shows that important it is to be independent and loyal to each other because not only I helped her to her work, I also showed my teammate how important it is to help one another. I would do this task on my own, but since I was bad at arts, and since my teammate was better at it, it was good that we counted on her to do this part of the project. Overall, I was quite disappointed that I had to finish her part and do the work, hoping she was able to complete it for me to show her side of loyalties. 

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