Wednesday, 31 December 2014
Planning Ancillary products: Short list of fonts, colours, layout and design ideas.
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
Planning Ancillary: Mock-up Advertisement
This is my mock up for an advertisement and I chose to use a landscape layout as I felt that this layout is the most suitable for including the album, magazine ratings, barcode and record label logo.
I began by selecting a picture in photoshop of the artist and dragged it to the left, enabling me to list all of the information on the right. I ensured that the font of the artist name and the album title is the same for this poster as it is on the actual album in order for it to look more uniform. Furthermore, I stuck to the white and gold colour scheme which again makes it look neater and more uniform.
However, I feel it could improve by including the artist website or maybe another critical review.
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
Planning Ancillary: Mock-Up Digipak
For the Front of my Mock-Up Digipak =
I believe using a close up of the upcoming artist for the front cover of the Digipak was very appropriate because the customers want to feel engaged and to visualise that this is a new artist. I have made many changes towards the mock up image above. I have planned to move the the artist's name and the album name together at the top and place the close up at the bottom of the front cover but still a fairly large close up, I will also make sure the artist's name is larger than the album's name. I will use the Vermin Vibes 2 White font for the Digipak. I have also planned on creating a black background and creating the colour of the font white with a gold trim which follows my synergy and it is also really eye catching and that is exactly what we want from an upcoming artist. I will also add the parental advisory logo because the album contains explicit language.
For the Back of my Mock-Up Digipak =
Instead of using a close up once again or a random scene image, I believe using the artist itself on the digipak will increase the chances of popularity gain for an upcoming artist. For the back I have chosen an image of ISHY slanting onto a wall which looks very professional and definitely follows the genre of rap/hip hop. I will have the track listing followed onto the left side of back cover of the digipak. This will allow space for the artist to be seen because allowing the audience to visualise the artist is exactly what an upcoming artists needs. The layout of the image and the text will also look really neat instead of lots of text over each other and random images. I will also follow the same black background with a white and gold text font. However I have gathered some techniques and ideas that may help me with the background of the digipak because I wouldn't want the black background to be too dull for the upcoming artist. I have listed the copyright information at the bottom of the back cover of the digipak, I also added the artist's website following a bar-code and the record deal company.
For the Spine of my Mock-Up Digipak =
As there wasn't much to add to the spine I have followed the basics of adding the USP number following the artist's name (ISHY) and his upcoming album (VICTORY).
Sunday, 21 December 2014
Ancillary: Production Pitch
EXCLUSIVE - TASTEFUL -GOLDEN -TRIUMPH - VIVACIOUS
My DigiPak will be 4 Panels
The magazine advertisments will be up in:
FACT MAG
PRIDE MAGAZINE
NME
FACT MAG
PRIDE MAGAZINE
NME
My ideas for the digipak and advertisement came from lots of different sources, I ensured I looked at a variety of products before I took elements and specific things I wanted for my own design.
- Google - for record label companys, copyright information, what magazine advertisments my one will be placed in and covers for my digipak and extra research
- HMV to look at more album covers and ideas that I liked
Ancillary: Advertisement Mock Up
ADVERTISEMENT
This is a rough outline of my advertisement.
I have decided to:
- stick to the colour scheme of white, black and gold
- same fonts as album cover
- inlcude social sites such as twitter, facebook and a direct web address for the artists main website
- avaliable on itunes box
- tour dates
- use the same image as the album cover, for direct link to the audience - so they know it is from that particular album (visiual elements) the picture will be enlarged to fill up the page
- the trophy sign in the corner and record label underneth
I Purposely, made the advertisment plain and simple because I believe it looks more effective and better. From the advertisements I researched they've always kept it simple, so I decided to follow the same conventions and not over do it!
Ancillary: Digi Pak Mock Up
MOCK UP DIGI PAK
(outside cover panels)
This is my idea for my Digi pal front cover. From previous blogposts I have followed the colour scheme my group and I had agreed on black,gold and white.
The background for my cover will be a faint bleeding black and white effect to blend into the background and cross both panels so that they are matching; plain and simple looks more effective than a complicated one thats doing to many things.
The artists name is going to be large and bold in the writing braggadicio and it will be in either black colour or white - depending on if it matches the background. However, for the album name it will be vermain vibes 2 white in a gold colour. I felt that these two fonts worked really well together therefore thats what I have chosen. I decided to make it smaller than the artist's name because the artist is more important especially as it is his debut album.
As for images I would like to have the artist at an side angel looking up, I also want the artist to be dressed in black clohing and a gold chain with black shades on, keeping to the colour scheme. Behind the artist I want the album names and the trophy looking image behind him, the trophy sign will be gold this suggests to the audience our artist is one of a kind, a trophy, a winner, his made it.
There will be 10 song tracks which will be on the back panel of the digi pak along with a barcode, price, record label company and copyright information at the bottom.
For track 5 on the list, the song title will be larger than the rest, this is because this is the main song we are trying to promote and the one we made a music video too, so i would want it to stand out.
I asked a friend who does media from another class on her opinion of my digipak so far. She thought it was very well though out however she only had concern on how I was going to add this trophy element, hence i told her if I could not do it; it wouldn' be much of an issue as I can still work without it making my digipak still effective as I do not want to over do it. She also said she likes how the two fonts works well together and is excited to see what I produce in the end.
(inside cover panels)
For the inside of my DigiPak, I want a black and white image close up of the artists face with shades on, facing the camera this time, as previously I chose a sideshot. As for the CD, I have decided to take the trophy elemet idea and incorporate it into the background of the cd using the same fonts as the front panels, however in the artists name of 'ishy' I wanted to put a black and white image of the artist inside the writing and make the whole CD black.
HOW EFFECTIVE IS YOUR ANCILLARY PRODUCTS AS PART OF PROMOTIONAL PACKAGE FOR YOUR RELEASE VIDEO?
- follows the do's and don'ts to make a succesful digipak
- the song list makes the song title of our release video big - so audience are aware of the main track the artist is trying to sell
- black, white and gold colour scheme came from the artists clothing in the music video
Saturday, 20 December 2014
Planning Ancillary: Mock-Up Digipak
THE FRONT:
For the front I went for a minimal feel with a close up of the artist with his head tilted up, looking into a line of flashing lights. The lights represent success which is emphasised by having them reflect in his sunglasses. The purpose of using a close up was because it's a new artist that not many people will be familiar with so I had to ensure I used a close up as this is his debut release which will help him gain recognition. The photo is slightly faded against a grey background which makes it more visually appealing as the light shining on his face is enhanced, whilst still linking to the conventions of the hiphop/rap genre due to the use of key accessories i.e sunglasses. The font I used was slant which is a unique, bold font that clearly emphasises the artists' name. Furthermore, the fact that it isn't the same colour as the album title makes the image more exciting rather than just having one solid colour throughout. I also included parental advisory logo, which is included on many albums of this genre, due to the explicit lyrics that may be on the album.
THE BACK:
I stuck with the same font as the front cover so that I don't confuse the audience making it simpler to read as it is more presentable. I also stuck to the white and gold colour scheme which I feel is a good idea as we don't want to overcomplicate the album. I ensured that the barcode is at the bottom as well as the record label logo which is important for digipak's so that the album can be scanned in stores and also giving credit to the copyright holders. In addition to this, I wrote some copyright information at the bottom which is vital as it includes the year it was copyrighted and released. The artist website is also included at the bottom.
SPINE:
For the spine I included the artist name and the album title as well as the USP number.
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Planning Ancillary Work - Mock Up for Advertisement
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| This is what I want my poster to look like. (The scribbles are there to indicate where I want the black background). I would like a different picture of my artist (preferably facing up) to show that the advertisement is separate to the album and is promoting it. This then leads to an actual picture of the album to show the audience what it looks like. I did some research on advertisements by rap artists and majority of them are portrait with just the image of the album at the top. I thought it would be easier make my poster landscape with a picture of the album as it allows me more room to promote the album as much as I can without it looking too cramped. I believe with this idea, I will still be showing a clear visual link between the album and the advertisement as I will be using the colour scheme of black, white and gold and font style wherever there is writing. I do think that this is still effective and would appeal to my target audience more. I have also decided to include quotes from other sources about the album. (I will need to do some research on that first!), web address, record label, featuring artists in the album to also help promote the album as their fans will encourage them to buy it, and finally small information at the bottom about the copyright, year of production, logo and distributor. |
Planning Ancillary Work - Mock up for DigiPak
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FRONT COVER These are my ideas so far for my DigiPak front cover. As mentioned in previous blogposts, the colour scheme my group and I have agreed on is Black, White and Gold. Therefore, for the background colour, I have decided to go for a plain black background. For my artist's name, I wanted it to be bigger than the album name and in the colour gold. I chose the colour gold because it suits my colour scheme and it also gives the artist a classier and wealthy appearance. I will choose the font style later on. For the album name, I decided to make it smaller than the artist's name because the artist is more important especially as it is his DEBUT album. I want to make this font white as again it fits our chosen colour scheme. For the artist, although I liked shot angles of the artist looking away from the camera, I decided to choose a close up of the artist facing directly towards the camera so that the audience know what the artist looks like. I also want 'Ishy' to wear a plain black top, sunglasses and a gold chain like he did in the music video. In the reflection of the sunglasses, I want just the outline of the london eye silhouette in gold and the rest of the glasses black. I think that this would show synergy with our music video as it has the silhouette of the london eye against the sunset. It is not the same but will be manipulated. I have used the london eye silhouette because it is a landmark of London and the record label for the original artist is 'Disturbing London'. In the song he mentions his record label which is why I wanted to show London in this way. I asked a friend who does media whether she liked my idea of the digipak till this point. She said it is nice but it is a little plain and copies most of the rap digipaks out there. She thought that I needed to add in something else to make it stand out since it is a debut album and the artist needs to stand out. I came up with the idea of using sun rays pointing towards the artist in gold to make the artist stand out even more. I thought sun rays would also relate to our music video as the main focus is the sun. I am still unsure about this idea and would have to see if it actually works in PhotoShop. I may also put a sticker on the front saying explicit lyrics.  BACK COVER For the back cover, I have decided that I wanted to use the same plain black background and a different picture of the artist from a different angle using the sun rays pointing towards him. I wanted this on the side and him looking up as if he was looking at the song list. I wanted the song list to follow the same font as the album name and be numbered. The numbers I wanted white, and the song names in gold. The featuring artists I also wanted white because I want the song name to be the main focus of the back cover as it is easier to understand what the song is actually called. I will also add in copyright, year of production, web address, record label, logo, distributor, producer, barcode and price |
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INSIDE OF DIGIPAK For the inside of my DigiPak, I wanted the a black background but the same skyline effect as the sunglasses on the front cover. I thought this idea would show a sense of continuity in the album linking it all together and still being effective. For the CD cover, I was thinking of using sun rays coming out the middle hole of the cd but I am unsure as I feel like it would ruin the class of the album. I will need to ask for feedback on this idea. However, I did want the artist and album name to be the same as the front cover using exactly the same fonts on the album front cover. I also wanted the background to be plain black without the silhouette effect. For the inside, I wanted the song list to be repeated again with additional information about who produced and directed each song and also the audio length. I think this would provide extra information for the audience like a DigiPak is suppose to. |
 EXTRA FLIER |
| Because DigiPaks are all about adding value, I wanted to include a mini flier to fit inside a slot in the digipak. I would like to include information about the artist since it is his DEBUT album. I thought that the audience would like to know more about the artist, where he came from and how he made it to become a rap artist. I would also include quotes from the artist himself so that the audience feel as though they are getting exclusive information and the album is more than worth the money they spent on it. I would also like to follow the same theme for this mini flier using a black background, gold writing with white writing on quotes. I also want to use the sun rays to show continuity with the rest of the album. |
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Ancillary: Choosing Font Styles
Using 'FONTBOOK' I was looking at some fonts which I may use on my
digipak and advertisment - the ones below are the ones I liked quite most, I typed in the album cover name as well as the artist name to see which 2 main fonts would go together nicely and how it may look.
NAME OF FONTS:
- Kino MT
- Vermain vibes 2 white
- Most Wanted
- Respire
- Slant
- Braggadicio
Sunday, 14 December 2014
Research on Ancillary Products - Photoshop Practice
I have only ever used PhotoShop once before so this lesson was just there for me to get used to it all over again and play around with the different tools. Our task was to create a DigiPak using a really bad image and trying to make it look like an album.
In the lesson, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what each tool does but in the end, I managed to parts of the digipak:
I tried to make it look girly by matching the colour of her lips to the back cover background. I also cropped just her face out so her picture stands out more.
I think with a few more tutorials, I will improve my skills in using PhotoShop
Planning on Ancillary Products - Individual Ideas and Influences From Similar Artists
From this mood board, I have analysed the work of artists similar to my genre, (except for the previous student's work). I think that the real rap artists out there have very similar colour schemes, all mainly using black and white. The overall front cover of most of their albums are dark with pops of colour. I believe this is a convention of the rap genre and I am thinking of incorporating the same ideas into my own DigiPak and advertisement. A lot of rap artists also use chains in their ancillary products which is also something I must remember to do when I am taking pictures of my artist.
Planning on Ancillary Products - Group Decisions
As a group, we decided that the only things we wanted to keep the same is the colour scheme. The only reason we decided this was because we all have individual ideas on how we want to create our ancillary products and colour scheme was the only thing we agreed on. We all will also use pictures of Ismail in our Ancillary work because he is the artist we are promoting. However, we will use different pictures so our products look different.
Our colour scheme that we have agreed on is:
BLACK WHITE GOLD
The reason why we chose this colour scheme is because:
- -Our artist wears these colours in the music video we created
- -Black and White are very dominant colours in rap music - From research, I have found rap artists use these two colours a lot with a touch of another colour. This makes it conventional for us to use darker colours
- -We only need to use 3 colours for our ancillary products
Research on Ancillary Products - Analysing 3 Real Artist's Digipaks and Advertisements
In this glogster, I will be analysing 3 real artist's ancillary products. I will be looking at:
- Choice of font
- Range of colours
- Synergy Links
- layout
- Use of Image
- Choice of font
- Range of colours
- Synergy Links
- layout
- Use of Image
I will be choosing some of the artists from this link to analyse their products.
Thursday, 11 December 2014
Planning Ancillary: Design Activity
In today's session we had an attempt at individually creating a digipak for an artist in photoshop from using the photos given to us by the teacher. I decided to use the image of a man working on the computer. I began by cropping the image to get rid of the unwanted space and then enlarged it to cover one side of the digipak.
Ancillary: Photoshop practice on Digi Pak
In today's lesson I attempted to create my very own digipak for a upcoming artist who is about to release their debut album. We were handed several pictures of people who we had to create as an artist. As you can see through the images I have posted, I used many layers in allowed me to create my digipak much better. I used an independent company to support this upcoming artist. I also created the spine for the digipak, I didn't finish my practice digipak.
Ancillary: Design Activity
In today's lesson...
I attempted to design and create an album cover for practise.
We was introduced to a software called 'Photoshop'
Below is what I came up with within 45minutes
I had a clear vision of what I wanted my album cover to include and stuck to a black and white theme as I thought this would look really effective with the album name and artist name I have chosen
I picked out an image that I liked from Google which then I imported onto Photoshop,using a album cover template I resized the image to fit the square, I also played around with the text and chose two main fonts which will bea consistency throughout the album cover
- these are called 'layers' it is really useful as the designer can see the order in which they have done things amd control what is going on
I found it quite easy to use photoshop as I am familiar with it from another subject, below is a unfinished copy of what my practise album cover looks like, it is unfinished. So far I would rate it roughly 6/10 as something's are still missing such as copyright information and company logos
Ancillary: What is a Digipak and Advertisement
WHAT IS A DIGIPAK?
Digipaks typically consist of a paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.
Since Digipaks were among the first alternatives to jewel case to be used by major record companies, and because there is no other common name for Digipak-style packaging made by other companies
WHAT IS A ADVERTISEMENT?
is mass media content intended to persuade audiences of readers, viewers or listeners to take action on products, services and ideas.
The idea is to drive consumer behavior in a particular way in regard to a product, service or concept.
Ancillary: What is a DigiPak and Advertisement
What is a DigiPak?
A Digi Pak is a type of packaging for CDs or DVDs, typically made from cardboard with an internal plastic holder for one or more disc.
What is a Advertisement?
An advertisement is a mass media content intended to persuade audiences of readers, viewers or listeners to take action on products, services and ideas.
Ancillary: Reflecting on previous student's DigiPaks
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There are many positives about video 10's DigiPak.
The font for the DigiPak is very clear and suits with the genre of the music. You are able to see who the band is and when there debut album will be released. They have used diamonds for their background which makes the album cover look very professional and makes a lot of sense towards their group name
'The Jewellers'.
Also the image of the band are on the cover of the album which allows the audience to know that they're a band and not a feature or solo artists.
WEAKNESSES:
The only thing id change towards this DigiPak would be the groups picture. I would you a larger image of the band as it is a new up coming group who have just released their debut album.
STRENGTHS: There are many strengths towards this DigiPak. The colour scheme which this group have chosen are very suitable towards the artist because you are able to understand that this is a young female artist and the colours pink and other soft colours will instantly catch a young audience of females. The font suits the advertisement and the DigiPak because it doesn't have a boring look towards it which allows the font to stand out very well.
WEAKNESSES:
The only weakness I would state for the advertisement would be to lay out the image in a different position because it feels to repetitive.
Researchin Ancillary products: Reflecting on previous students work
Group 21 -
Artist name: Romy
Video:
Digipak/Advertisements:
From watching their video and looking at their digipak/advert, I feel that group 21 carefully presented their new artist as well as showing a link through synergy. Firstly, they chose close ups of the artist for the front of the digipak which is important as Romy a new up and coming artist so she won't have a large fan base. The font for the name is very effective as it is large and simple to read. The title of the album is in a scripted type font whihc some may argue isn't clear enough however I feel that this was chosen as a way of mirroring the artist's personal style of writing which links to the video where there is a narrative based on her personal life. The advertisement is also clear as the release date is large notifying her new audience when they can purchase the album. Furthermore, the picture of the album is on the advertisement which is good as it's promoting the album. The record label logo is also on both the digipak/advertisement.
Artist name: Romy
Video:
Digipak/Advertisements:
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Monday, 8 December 2014
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