How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary task?BY ABBIE KENNARD

Our Task As part of our A2 coursework, we had to create a music video as well as two ancillary tasks which included creating a Digipak and a magazine advert for our chosen artist. These would support the music video for marketing purposes

Digipak - ResearchTo begin with, I started to look multiple existing digipaks to gain inspiration on the designing stage, but also to find out the general conventions of a digipak across all genres, which is why I looked at artists from all over. From this I gained a lot of general conventions of a digipak, such as, parental advisory stickers, the band logo, track list, copy right, album name, website, produced by and a range more. By doing this I was able to design around specific requirements such as where to put the barcode and produced by. Going further into it, I analysed a range of different digipaks which all convey different conventions to get a wide range.

Digipak - Research

After realising what need to be included on the digipak, I started to look at a range of different ideas as our album is called ‘Animal’. Knowing the name of the album meant I was able to start gathering imagery and art work and piecing it together to create an image in my mind. The word animal, I found that I would tend to think of animalistic traits from majestic animals, such as a tiger, lion or wolf. And with these animals I tend to think along the lines of scratch marks and claw marks which gave me a rough idea of what I could produce. By doing this, I was able to sketch some rough ideas that I could possibly use for my digipak.

Digipak – Main InspirationOnce having a rough idea of what I wanted to produce, I started to look at real media

texts to get more inspiration from. I looked at 3 main digipaks for the styles, these digipaks were, Cheryl Cole ‘Only Human’, My chemical Romance ‘The Black Parade’ and Rihanna ‘rated R’. The reason for choosing 3 artists from completely different genres is that they all had an element that intrigued me. Cheryl Cole’s album is from the Pop genre, yet I love the simplicity of the animal merging with the protagonists face, one single line to show that she is an animal as part of her, which is what I want to portray within the design. My Chemical Romance has a very interesting font for their band name, that It is very recognisable from the fan base and is very artistic in my opinion as well as messy, which links to an animal. And finally Rihanna’s pose and positioning on her album inspired me greatly due to the mystery involved and animalistic characteristics with the eye contact to the viewer.

Digipak – My DesignsFor My digipak, I decided to use a mix between edited images and a more artistic style of work. For the front cover I decided to use an image of the protagonist to create some recognition for her audience as for an indie artist she is not very well known and therefore, the best result to gain publicity is to get your face and name out there, thus the reason for having all the details in bold and big with the front cover being very minimalistic to draw the attention to the relevant information about the artists. For the inner panels I decided to put the fonts I downloaded from ‘dafont.com’ to good use by creating a montage of the album name, by doing this it meant the name of the album would stick in the audiences head and would be unlikely forgotten. For the CD itself, I decided to go with an animal that looks aggressive to contrast how the protagonist looks on the front of the cover. And finally for the back cover, I went for a simplistic pose with no elements of the album name except the same font is used. The reason behind this is that it makes the important information stand out, such as track list and websites which are at the bottom but it also portrays star image. For the side panel I went extremely simplistic so it would be easy to stand out the artists name, having a very high contrasting colours.

Digipak – My prototype

After designing the digipak, I wanted to experiment with a physical copy which I was able to get feedback on asking peers whether they felt it suited our artist and the music video. Also by having a physical copy I was able to imagine what it would look like if it was in a shop and would it stand out. I used photo paper doubled up for thickness but also to enhance the quality of the images. I did not make the CD separately so I put it on the design to show what it was like as I did not have the equipment to make it stay in place and therefore I would end up loosing it.

Digipak – SynergyThroughout the whole process I was making sure that the digipak matched the music video well, and because I used images rather than a screenshot, I had to find a different way to link the two together. The reason for not using a screenshot is that this isn’t just one track, it is a whole album and I felt personally that having a screenshot to represent a whole album would not work out well. In order to have synergy between both the music video and Digipak I made sure that the artist was in a similar style to what she was like in the video, and by this I mean the make up and type of clothing. Although this Is very subtle, the main way they link is the very recognisable font used for my digipak and that is shown in our music video. Although the song title is different, it shows that the song is from this album and means the font stands out. Below are the fonts that we used in the video and them used in the video.

Magazine – Research Again, before creating the magazine advert I researched into artists magazine adverts to gather what was commonly used within the design process, and how it was portrayed. Unlike the digipak Magazine adverts have a big range of styles as their generally isn’t that many conventions that have to be includes, as some simply state the band name and date, where as some create adverts with a lot of information. The main conventions were Logo, Band Name, Album, Release date, Website and Record Company. I also began researching it the magazines that would be promoting our artist to see their style and gather similar ideas.

Magazine – Research To continue on with my research, I analysed a range of different magazine adverts to get a real feel of what to include in mine. By doing this I decided to promote the album over promoting a tour.

Magazine – My Magazine For my magazine, I had already

designed the digipak so I had a rough idea of how the layout and style would look. I decided to go for very dark and neutral colours, so that I could use a bright colour to make the date/out now stand out to the eye straight away. I had the album cover included in the bottom right hand to gain recognition that people know what to look for when they go in a shop to look for the album. I kept the positioning of the band name and logo in the same place on both the poster and digipak to keep the recognition again and to separate the information. By having the band website at the bottom by the band name catches peoples eye and due to it being in a smaller font, they will tend to look closer to see what it says and making people know that the artist has a website.

Magazine – Synergy My main idea was to create a lot of synergy between the two ancillary tasks to keep a close correlation that instantly you can see the resemblance. I have done this by including the digipak on the magazine, that straight away you know that they are from the same artist, I used a very similar colour scheme with images that match up well with the make up and style as well with the pose the artist is doing. The way that all three link again is the font style, the same font that is used for the digipak is used for the magazine and for the music video. Another way that all three link is simply the artist appearing on all three, being the main focus with the star image. Overall having the three link well means the artist The Ivth will be recognised throughout the three tasks.

OverallBy creating a music video with a magazine advert and digipak creates a whole persona for our artist. By this I mean, combining all three, I have created an image in my head of what this artist would be like and how they would want their products to work. Creating a real life situation of working with a client. By doing so I found it to be easier to create the products as I knew their personality and what they would like. For instance, I imagined what type of songs would be on their album, making it easier to create an album based of more than one song, because like most artists they have a range of songs with different beats and tempos so to have a whole album focused on one song would not work out well in the industry. This also helped me create a link between all three, instead of doing what I think looks best, I used the mind set that this artist would want and worked around that.

ConclusionBy creating a link between all three, my digipak, magazine advert and music video has insured the benefit for marketing and promoting our artist and also create a foundation for her fans as they now have something to look out for and spot to recognise her. Overall I feel I managed to create a clear link between all three but made enough differences that it wasn’t just a design that was copied contiuously.