Question 2 for my evaluation

1. How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary task?
BY ABBIE KENNARD

2. OurTask
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

3. Digipak - Research
To 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.

4. 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.

5. Digipak – Main Inspiration
Once 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.

6. Digipak – My Designs
For 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.

7. 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.

8. Digipak – Synergy
Throughout 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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 artistThe
Ivth will be recognised throughout the three tasks.

13. Overall
By 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.

14. Conclusion
By 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.