Developing Idea for Digipak and Homepage for Idea 2 ‘Are You That Somebody?’

I will be looking at visual elements and themes that match my artist’s star image and genre. Additionally, finding visual elements that are cohesive and link the music video, digipak and website homepage. I want all three aspects of the campaign to express the artists image and the meaning of the song. 

For my second idea ‘Are You That Somebody?’ by Aaliyah, I began thinking about different ways to approach the album cover artwork. I began looking at the artist that are similar to mine, and I started looking at Rihanna’s album covers. 

I found an image from the cover art of her album ‘Loud'. 

This image reminded me of the famous painting ‘Christina’s World’ by American painter Andrew Wyeth (below). 

This led me to think about paintings; so I decided to find a painting from an artist, and use that as an inspiration for my work. I thought of Caravaggio, in most of his painting the figures are lit dramatically from the side, and are pasted against an obscure, black background; the darkness accentuates the grotesque nature of the scene.  Caravaggio uses harmonious monotone colours; his use of smooth strokes for the shadows and folds of the clothes, contrast the angularity of the facial expressions. 

This reflected the style of the song and music video, because my artist is shown as mysterious, dark and manipulative. I started looking at his paintings and found that his ‘Medusa’ painting was very striking; additionally the stylistic element of the snake connotes that the artist is sly, manipulative and dangerous. 

From there I searched online for photos of women with snakes. Below I found some photos that are very similar to what I would like on the cover of the album.

  
I like the close up shots of her face, where the snake is really close like the one on her lips. However, because she is a synthetic artist, I think that she should be featured on the album artwork. Therefore, the cover could include her face, with the snake around her arm like this one.

Then on the rest of the digipak (on the other sides) their could be the close up shots of her body with snake like these ones. 

This could balance her role as a synthetic artist but maintain the mysterious and dark tone of the album. 

For the homepage, I decided to keep it clean and sharp, because my artist, has a ‘bad girl’ / rebel star image; and I want to reflect that in the sharp, clean and sleek design of the homepage. Due to the snake element in the music video and on the cover, I thoughts about the jewellery company ‘BVLGARI’ who are known for their snake inspired jewellery. 

I looked at images for their website and found some home-pages which I really liked. The ones I selected had a dark mysterious nature to them, and the design was very sleek, which is what I was looking for. 

I would want my homepage to include a photo of the artist with elements from the cover and music video (like the snake).

Another website I really liked was Rihanna’s website, I really like that the tabs and buttons ran along the side of the website, which is different, emphasising the ‘rebellious’ attitude of my artist’s image. I also like how the images where cut diagonally at the bottom before the content.

Overall, I would like to incorporate the sleek lines/cuts and design used on Rihanna’s website with the dark tones and dramatic photography and style on the ‘BVLGARI’ website.