Blog Post 16 - Stage 1 - Completed Design: Front Cover - Tag Line

My finished design for Stage One: DVD Amaray Case Wrap

As mentioned in Blog Post 11, the first element of the DVD Case Wrap that I will be explaining and evaluating is that of the front cover. The front cover will consist of a large range of elements which when brought together form the front cover. For reference, my finished design is posted here. In regards to the different elements of the front cover, these include the following which will be discussed and explained: Background, Trio of Cars, Gene Hunt Portrait, Title, Tag Line, Miscellaneous Icons/Logos. The next element that will be explained and discussed is that of the Tag Line...

Tag Line

The Tag Line for the DVD case was something that I had sort of considered in my design ideas in Blog Post 10, however at that early stage my idea was to have an area of brief information about the DVD. In hindsight, though, in production I felt that it was best to keep the information regarding the DVD to that of the back cover and the blurb. With this in mind I really wanted to think of an effective tag line however I kept coming back to one that I had really like and seen before on an Ashes to Ashes DVD Cover. Therefore, I decided to take inspiration from this and utilise the tag line of "The 80s are back and it's criminal" for my DVD too. I couldn't resist taking inspiration from this and therefore decided to go ahead with using it again.

DaFont and the Alien Encounters Font used

Putting this tag line into action was something that was going to take a bit more imagination, though, as I once again had to consider which font was going to be the most effective as portraying this tag line and keep up to the professional appearance that I was keen to keep going for the entire DVD Case. With this in mind, in a similar vain to that of the Title in Blog Post 15, I started off by I clicking on the Horizontal Type Tool which allowed me to select and area where I would be placing the text, and also select a point size. To begin with, I simply selected the font Arialwith a Point Size of 50 and typed my text of Mirror Man. At this stage the font was black in colour, and due to the very dark background at the top this was not very effective at all. So with this in mind I changed the font colour to white which make it stand out much more and increase the contrast. The next stage was to select a font which I felt was best, however looking through the different fonts that were available as standard in Photoshop unfortunately I once again didn't feel that any were that fitting and matched the image that I was anticipating. 

Tag Line using Alien Encounters Font

Therefore I decided to once again visit the font website called DaFont (www.dafont.com) which allows you to view, search and download (mostly for free) a vast array of different fonts. Searching around on their I came across the font called Alien Encounters which when tried gave a fantastic font which I thought worked brilliantly. The reason for this was because there was a subtle strike through in the font which gave for a good effect, which was very much in keeping with the 1980s styling that I was aiming to keep to, as well as that of a professional looking overall appearance too. With this in mind, I downloaded this font package from DaFont and installed it onto my computer. Heading back to Photoshop I could then change my Mirror Man text to that of Alien Encounters, slightly decreased the size to 17.5 points and arranged in such a way that was still in the safety area whilst maintaining an attractive looking position on the front cover. With this element of the cover complete, I was now able to move onto the final feature of the front cover which was the Miscellaneous Icons/Logos.

References

DaFont - Link - Last accessed 1st March 2014.