DigiPak - First Stages

As part of my A2 coursework, I have been tasked with creating a DigiPak for my chosen artist.
To do this, I'm using the programme Adobe Illustrator CS6.
I started by downloading a DigiPak template (I chose the "4 Panel 1 Tray (4PAN1T)") and opening it Illustrator. This template comes 'locked' (meaning it cannot be changed), so I first went to the layers feature, unlocked it, deleted the unwanted information (such as writing) from the template and then locked it again (to avoid accidentally reformatting it).

Once I had a clear template, I placed a square shape (using the shape tool) and matched it to the bleed line; I then set the colour of the shape to a black fill, and removed its border lines, giving me a black background base to work with.
To make sure I could still see the remaining template lines over the black, I went into the layers feature and dragged the template layer to the top, as this makes it visible over the other layers.

As this is only a practice DigiPak I didn't worry too much about finding the perfect font, and chose to use the Lucida Blackletter font for the title and American Typewriter in white for the track listings on the back (as these are fairly similar to fonts used for Briggs' actual album covers.)

I chose to number my track listings and to place them to the left side on the back cover of the DigiPak, as this is a common decision for DigiPak layouts and as I wanted to keep this design fairly simple. To the bottom left I placed the copyright jargon (which I typed out myself, copying an example found online), and to the bottom right corner I placed the barcode (which I downloaded as a vector), with the Island Records' logo positioned above it.
To place the logo, I had to download it as a vector, then opened it in Illustrator. Following this, I ungrouped the image, deleting its background and regrouping it. I then changed its colour to white so that it would be visible against my chosen black background. I then resized it (while holding down 'shift' so that I could resize it without reshaping it), and dragged it to where I wanted it to be positioned.

For the inside of this trial DigiPak, I decided to place a still from the opening shot of my music video (an extreme long shot where the subject stands by the river) over both the panels. As the shot has the subject on the right hand side of the frame, I reflected the image so that the subject would instead be on the left (so she wouldn't be covered by the CD on the left panel.) 

I used a clipping mask to get the correct shape picture for the cover, by first drawing the shape of the bleed lines, and then placing the shape over the image to clip it, before putting the image in place.

It was at this point that I realised I was unhappy with the appearance of my DigiPak's front cover, so I decided to try out an idea; I went online and searched for vector's of the Capricorn sign, and then downloaded my favourite one so that I could use it as an image on the front cover. When I placed it on the front cover, I liked it so much that I decided to forgo having an album title, and to just let the image of the capricorn do the talking. 

This is the final edit of my trial DigiPak. I'm a big fan of the simplicity of the image of the Capricorn, but I do plan on changing the fonts, and I'll definitely play more with the image on the inside.

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As a first attempt at using the Adobe Illustrator programme I am glad to say I'm pleased with the results, and that I found this programme fun and relatively user-friendly (even for me and my generally poor luck when it comes to tech stuff!) 

I look forward to exploring more, and I'm excited to see what other available features there are and how I can use these in the development of my DigiPak.