I wanted to focus on the emotions of the song and I felt the screen shots (anguished close ups of my artist) from my music video would convey the extremity of emotions (anger, desperation and frustration) that are synonymous with alternative rock music videos. These screen shots were originally manipulated for my music video by altering the colour of the shots, where I made them darker and more shadow infested so that they symbolically reflect the bleakness of my protagonist’s present turmoil and isolation. For my digipak, I further manipulated these screen shots by cropping these shots in order to eliminate any unnecessary mis en scene elements as well as further manipulating the colour by increasing the blacks and decreasing the saturation, thus creating my desired atmosphere.
Say It Isn't So - My front cover
My research highlighted that most alternative rock cd covers are simply designed and often allude to, or summarise the themes of the album. For example Linkin Parks 2007 album :"Minutes to Midnight" (see below) featured sillouettes of the band standing on rocks which faced the sea.
The above use of sillouettes symbolically communicates to the audience that the band are trying to re-establish themselves, as in the four years in between their last album and this release, they have developed their musical style. This album saw the band deviate from their neo-metal origins and experiment with elements of alternative rock. The vastness of the sea connotes that the bands artistic boundaries are as limitless as the sea.
I decided to design a simple album cover which captured the spectrum of emotions that the album will focus on. I purposely placed the albums title close to my artists mouth, in order create the impression that it is being spoken by him.
