Our digipak cover was inspired by an in-class conversation about Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator who only had a pen to defend himself against an assassination attempt. The idea of defending oneself using a pen corresponds well with the theme of self-expression in the lyrics of Write This Down, also creating a sense of defiance and rebelliousness which would contribute towards the branding of our label and artist which targets a younger demographic.

We took photos of a red, 3d-printed Caesar chest bust with holes in its back to accommodate pens. This references back to how Caesar was stabbed to death in reality, and replacing the knives with pens creates a subtle sense of comical irony which would offset the otherwise serious atmosphere created by the blood-red cover, also subtly appealing to ‘explorer’ psychographic audiences who are keen to discover intertextual Easter-eggs in artist’s works. The red colour of the statue resembles the colour of blood, which has semantic connotations of love and passion, both of which appeals to our target audience demographic. This connotation also corresponds with the love-themed lyrics in the second verse of the music video and thus contributes to create a consistent branding. Moreover, the ripples on the 3d-printed statue gives it a unique texture that can be utilised in editing to produce a futuristic-retro vibe that would strongly appeal to our young target audience.

For the back cover, we decided to incorporate the element of roses into our back cover in order to make the front and back covers on the digipak respectively correspond with the main themes in the 1st and 2nd verses in Write This Down. The Julius Caesar reference is linked to the first verse’s thematic opposition between ambition and reality, whereas the roses are drawn from the line ‘buying roses in the dozen for the lady I want’ and reflects the more emotional nature of the second verse. The romantic nature of roses is also more likely to attract a younger audience demographic, making it more convenient to market the emotional significance of purchasing the digipak as a gift.

To further increase the variety of technological solutions utilised in the creation of our digipak, we used Midjourney to create an AI-generated image of roses. We entered the prompt ‘backlit, dark red roses, impressionist, ambient aesthetic’ and selected the following result from the generated images. This image was particularly suitable due to its composition and synthetic texture with suits the mood created by the front cover. The colder blue tone of the image in combination with the painted artwork style subtly implies that the love is a memory from the distant past that has been eternally preserved in the artist’s works.

During editing, we had a discussion about anime, which led us to pursue a ‘Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’ art style which consists of highly-defined edges on the images. We also increased the grain and blur on the images to create a futuristic-inspired visual distortion filter on both covers. The horizontal 3d-print ripple effects in combination with the distortion are also reminiscent of the distortion effects employed in our music video, which is further accentuated by our use of blur effects. These elements create a retro vibe because they simulate the distortion of video artefacts caused by interlaced television technology. The overall surreal effect closely follows modern trends and further targets our young audience demographic. The tone of our digipak cover was also edited to create a thematic contrast: the front ‘Caesar’ cover had a red tone, so we adjusted the saturation of the back ‘Roses’ cover to create a blue tone with a red undertone. The red/blue contrast creates a binary opposition that is commonly associated with warmth and cold, which represents the artist’s inner struggle in the song ‘Write This Down’.

For the two inner panels in the digipak, we decided to use a smoke effect which would diffuse across the two panels, creating a connected visual effect which adds to the coherence of the inner panels. A texturizer from the filter gallery was applied to the image, and the monochrome filter directs the audience’s attention towards the text and credits inside the digipak.

The line which crosses over the song title ‘Write This Down’ refers to the line ‘don’t wanna write this down’ in the lyrics. The disc art features an alternate version of our album cover image which was taken during the photoshoot, and the two overlaid images of Caesar’s head corresponds to ‘Soulchef’ and ‘Nieve’, referencing how we have two artists collaborating on the project.