CD Case; front covers

I decided before I went into making the whole digipak I was best to settle on a front cover, as this would be the basis for the rest of the pack as I want the theme to be consistent. I used the inkwell background and also the noise distorted one to allow me to get completely different ideas.

I like the simplicity of this one, however I am unsure about the layering of the band and album name as it takes away from the 'simple' idea. I think it would be more effective with only the band name shown.

Again I like the simplicity but again I think the album name doesn't look quite right. It would perhaps look better if I moved it's size/position/font. I really like the faded out effect I have used on the band name and I also think the font choice here (star avenue) is particularly effective.

Here I have taken inspiration directly from 'Pala' by Friendly Fires (shown above) in that the album name is shown bigger faded out and the band name is shown on top. This is my favourite idea for this particular background.

Here is another idea I have which was to repeatably copy the band name and album name over the background. I think it does look effective however I think if I was to pursue this idea I would need to play around a bit more with the font use.

The background (the bottom layer) proved to be an issue with these next few ideas as the inkwell effect, although looking effective, was too busy to put writing (band name / album name) on top of it easily. Therefore I have came up with some other innovate ideas to be able to work around this issue yet still use the pattern. Above is my first one which is to have a black background and have the font coloured with the pattern. I think it works well and does have a professional look however like most things like this, it will need a bit more playing around with to finalize.

This idea was taken from inspiration from the Hotchip album 'Made in the Dark'. I think it works well and the font compliments the cover effectively rather than taking away from the theme. With this idea I played around a lot with the background colour and also tried out black and pale blue- both which also look effective, however this one was my favourite.

This idea is displays the issue I talked about previously about the writing on top of this pattern being hard to do. It looks too 'over the top' and busy. However, I think the font matches the pattern well and perhaps with further experimentation there could be a way around it. 

Here is a further experimentation. I used the writing twice and layered one behind the other in a pale colour which matches the background. This was to make the writing stand out more but without being obvious that there was a shadow on the original text. It does help to an extent but I still think it needs further work.

The idea behind me completing several covers is so that I can firstly come to terms with what works well and what doesn't and also so I don't waste time creating whole digipaks which I then don't use because of having better options/ being unsuccessful etc. The case gives a taster of what the whole digipak would be like so until I have decided how I want the front to look I won't think too much about the rest. The only thing I would say is that I want it to be relatively simplistic and to have a running style throughout.