1. Victoria Robinson
Question Two
-How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As part of the course we not only had to produce our own ideas from scratch, but we also had to
imagine it all as part of our own brand. This task wasn’t just about creating a music video, advert and
digipak design, we had to treat the full project as if we were the record label and in charge of
everything, therefore little details mattered, such as the record label logo on all merchandise so that
it would be recognized to the public easily. We had to create a record label which would be easily
recognized and attractive to the public after many different brain storms we came up with our final
logo which was ‘Storm Records’. This logo would have to be part of every product we created; this
would make the whole portfolio more realistic. The record label its self is quite eye-catching within
the colours it is visually effective therefore will be fresh in people’s minds, The font is very basic
following the ‘no-nonsense’ approach, this keeps the products identify simple but memorable.
The ancillary texts consisted of a digipak and advert design, which would accompany the main
product being the music video. These were just as important as these would be the pieces that
would grab the audience’s attention the most. During these tasks we had to take a lot of things into
consideration from the font to the colours to the way we edited the pictures. We wanted to follow a
simple but eye-catching theme. Our main product is featured in a forest with lots of autumn colours
this is where our ideas stemmed from. If these elements where wrong and weren’t effective the full
product could fall in the industry. The digipak and advert designs for my portfolio were made using
Photoshop software. Firstly we had to undertake a photo shoot to get the main images for our
products, we knew we wanted to follow the typical conventions of the pop genre and how our artist
as the main attraction of both the digipak and magazine advert so we decided to do head shots and
full body shots of Olivia in beautiful settings. We choose Wynyard Hall as our main setting as the
scenery is beautiful there and matched the scenery that is portrayed in the music video.
After many photos were taken we were pretty happy with our final images but we had to narrow the
images down, we had to choose which images we wanted to feature on our digipak and advert, we
knew the advert had to be portrait so we choose the best of our portrait images (Image).
We then had to choose which images would feature on the digipak. We were provided with a
template for our digipak which gave us the outline of how many images we could choose. We had to
choose a front cover, a back cover, the inside cover, where the CD will be placed and the image that
would be on the actual CD. After narrowing the images down we came to the conclusion that we
needed to edit the images to get the sepia effect in which our music video follows. After doing this
we found that one of the images did not go so we switched some images round until we were 100%
happy with our final product (image). When this was completed we had to then fit the text into the
digipak this proved to be harder than expected. We had to choose a font which we could use
throughout all products, this had to be readable, relevant but it also had to be visually affective.
When we finally found what we believed to be the perfect font we had to choose a colour scheme
again which would have to run through all the products, as our images are very busy with colours we
had to choose block colours so they are visible to our audience. We chose black and white to be our
main colours throughout the products, we choose many varying colours but black and white where
proven to be the most visible on any colour image. On our final digipak we put the name of our
album in black and Olivia’s name in white, these colours work well together and look elegant which

2. Victoria Robinson
complement the images well. That is all we included on the front of the digipak after researching
many varying styles we believed the simplistic approach was better for our styling and theme. On
the stem of the digipak we used a very basic beige colour which fits in with the scenery of the images
all that is shown on the stem is the album name and Olivia’s name, using the continuous font style.
The digipak also had to include some essential features such as a barcode, copyright information;
track listing and record label to make sure it looked professional and a part of a real brand identity.
The CD and CD tray again is pretty basic again following our simplistic theme and colours.
When creating our magazine advert we pretty much went through the same process as the digipak.
We had to follow exactly the same themes to keep our product identity flowing. We chose our
image wisely we wanted to again choose a image where our artist is highly relevant and the main
attraction to do this we chose a image where Olivia is directly in the middle of the image making her
the central point on the advert. We worked around the image, we used the same font that we have
used throughout all products, we also followed the same colour scheme of black and white varying
the colours depending on the background brightness ect for example on the right hand side of the
advert we darkened the image slightly so the white text is more readable the left of the image was
lighted to make the black stand out more. To tie the advert with the digipak we included an image of
the front of the digipak so the viewers of the advert could identify the album if they went out and
bought it. Again we included our company logo so the album could be easily linked to the brand. We
have also added a QR code onto the advert, this is a recent trend. I wanted to include this as once
scanned by a smart phone it will link you to the artists blog, website or and YouTube account so you
can watch the music video on their, again linking the products together.
On both ancillary products we have created a facebook, twitter and website for the artist this is so
the audience can easily find out all the information about the artist with a click of a button. All this
information is found either in the top or bottom corner of each product.
The styling of the artist follows a similar theme to the one featured in the music video. Olivia is
dressed in casual, warm clothing. We wanted to challenge the current stereotype of pop stars
dressing sexual and doing inappropriate things to get noticed. We want Olivia to have the perfect
star image to do this we had to create an album parents would be happy with as well as their
teenagers.
Overall the link between all our products is pretty clear. We have used similar colours throughout,
the styling and editing fit and work well together, we chose locations that follow the same themes,
to get this affect. We have used our logo on every product we have created, linking all products to
one main company. This would all be done in the real industry; we wanted to make our product as
realistic as possible so we followed all suggested criteria’s to do so.