YM- Questions on Band Representation 1

How Are You Representing Your Artist Through The Printwork?

To help me design the digipak for 'Now I'm In The City' by American indie band I researched the band's previous album and single for ideas to show continuity from their version to mine. Here is the previous covers I have found for Creaky Boards:

These covers show that Creaky Boards tend to lean towards the animated covers, avoiding images of themselves.  This relates to Dyer's Paradox where the artist is both absent and present because while their image is absent the continuity in all their artwork shows them as present as they are easily recognisable.

There are several conventions evident in these covers: firstly, the name of the band and album name is always in the top right hand corner.  The font is also the same across all the covers, showing continuity across the Creaky Boards products meaning that although there is no image of the band for the audience to see, an image is constructed through this continuity as it allows the niche audience to recognise the band's products.

Using these examples, I decided to follow the theme of animated album covers to help their target audience identify with the band.  I also placed the band's name in the same corner it appears on the previous artwork for Creaky Boards.  This is a further representation of the band.

Due to the unknown status of the band, and therefore there only being a few album/singles covers to use, I had more room for creativity in the production of the digipak.

In terms of techniques used in my printwork to construct band image, I applied the 'posterised' filter to the entire digipak to give a sketchy look to it.  This helps present the fun, easy-going feel I wanted to convey.  I also layered the images slightly over one another to give a montage feel, to try and represent their day in the city- referring back to the title of the album. 

Overall, I believe that I represent the artist in my printwork through using the conventions Creaky Boards have laid out for themselves by avoiding band images and instead contructing an image of the band by showing continuity among all their artwork.