OUAN505 - DVD Cover Design

Near the end of the project and once the animation itself was finished it was a good time to start making the DVD cover to present our submission and final animation in. I volunteered to make the cover which meant the first thing I had to do was find the dimensions of a DVD cover, including the spine. I found a really good template online where the image itself was the correct dimensions of a DVD cover, so I saved it and imported it into Photoshop to make sure I got the correct dimensions and knew where the spine was so I could work with both the front and back of the cover. By putting the template onto the top most layer in Photoshop and changing the opacity to around 40% it meant that I could see where I was placing images and text in relation to the front cover, back cover and spine at all times.

When it came to the actual design we decided to use the image of the Earth because that was quite a general image to use for a cover and represented the documentaries content quite well because of its repeated use throughout. During the making process I thought that the image of the Earth alone may be quite vague so I took the final image of the documentary and made it into a silhouette of trees to demonstrate that the documentary was about deforestation. Creating this ring of trees around the whole cover including the spine is something I quite liked and after overlaying certain colours and adjusting the layer properties I came to a colour scheme I quite liked, a dark green. Following this came the smaller details of a DVD cover such as legal information, certifications and titles. In an effort to make the cover as professional and authentic as possible I first of all included a studio logo and the DVD logo. I went with 'Sony Entertainment' because I quite like the logo and it's a well known distributor of films. I also decided to include the title, 'Axed', on the front and back covers as well as the spine so that it can be seen from the front or if the DVD is stacked on book shelf for example. The blurb was written by Callum and I think it communicates well what the documentary is about and what an audience can expect to see and find out through watching the documentary. The type faced used here is the same as within the documentary for consistency across all of the material associated with it, and it works quite well for this because it is a relatively formal type. The last detail I added was a small bit of text at the bottom of the front cover that reads, 'Sony Entertainment Pictures Presents a Documentary by Callum Park, Gavin Rae, Joe Baker' because often the director or creators names are visible on the front of a DVD cover. Finally I added various certifications from the BBFC and the Irish film board which is common to see on DVDs that are distributed in the UK. Overall I think the cover communicates quite well the content and the themes of the documentary as well as looking seemingly authentic.