Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and

ancillary texts?

EVALUATION

House Style: The house style is an important component and media

convention in ensuring that the final promotional package is successful. The house style consists of a certain level of continuity – this can include: the colours, fonts, layout and images. It also makes the product identifiable to the creator.

I believe that I have created a successful house style because the colour scheme is consistent. I decided to use earthy colours, such as: blue, white and green in order to reflect my chosen genre. I also only used around 3 fonts throughout my print work. This ensures that I have a continuous house style yet it still creates some diversity within my work. Also the images are all taken outside in a naturalistic element.

My aim was to create a coherent package that has a successful house style that my audience will be able to identify. The house style is fairly redundant as it reflects my chosen genre (indie/folk). Simplicity is often the key in my genre; therefore, I attempted to reflect that.

COLOURS For the images I wanted to use natural colours,

such as blue, brown and green. I found that my genre of music was quite simplistic but also incorporated a lot of natural colours. In my research, I found that the album artwork for Ben Howard’s Kingdom album was blue.

The colours I used for my fonts were black and white. The CMYK codes for these are: #00000

0#ffffff

When researching other artist’s albums of my genre, I found that their fonts usually consisted of the colours black and white. For example, Ben Howard’s and Ed Sheeran’s both feature black and white fonts.

By using these two colours, it enabled the font to be read more clearly and it also created a contrast.

FONTS I decided that in order to create an effective and coherent

promotional package, I would have to choose fonts that could be clearly read by my audience and ones that would stand out. I downloaded the majority of my fonts from da font as they had a broad range to choose from.

Some of the fonts I originally looked at did not fit in with my genre. For example, ‘Birth of a hero’ looked like a font that could have been used for a heavy metal or rock band, rather than an indie genre. In the end I chose relatively simple fonts that could be clearly read yet were effective in promoting my package.

When I asked my target audience which font they preferred, they all said they preferred the ‘Edmundsbury’ font and ‘Impact Label’. They felt that they would have both reflected my genre well.

From the previous images on the other slide, it was clear that the artist’s in my chosen genre also used simple and clearly read fonts.

IMAGES Arguably the images are the most important

factor in the promotional package. The images will determine the brand identity of the artist and will help determine whether or not the artist will be a success.

On my digipak I only chose to use two images of my artist, and I purposely chose not to use close ups. This is because, in my research I found that this was common feature within my genre. Ben Howard’s face isn’t even featured on the ‘Kingdom’ album and Ed Sheeran’s isn’t particularly very clear. I chose to use images of the artist looking natural rather than too posed or eye level with the camera. This is to reflect the redundancy element of my genre.

LIGHTING The lighting in our video is very high key.

We only used natural light – the sun as we only filmed outside. The use of high key lighting reflects Andrew Goodwin’s theory of promoting the artist and giving them a star identity.

We did some test shots of indoor lighting in our research and planning stage; however, we found that the lamps were not very successful as the face of the artist could not be seen clearly. Marketing our artist successfully was very important to us in filming the video, therefore, we chose to use high key lighting throughout. We also found that our genre of music tends to film outside, for example: James Blunt’s 1973 video featured him walking outside.

PROPS AND COSTUME Often artist’s in the indie/folk genre play

instruments, for example: The Lumineers in their Hey Ho video. Therefore, we opted for our artist to play a guitar in our music video. The fact he is playing a guitar makes the video seem more authentic.

Although our artist features in both the narrative and performance section of our music video, we chose for him to wear the same clothing in order to create a continuity. The fact he is wearing the same clothing also establishes that he is the same person. We chose to dress him in casual clothes, as the more outlandish and quirky styles are found in the pop genre.

VISUAL THEME When it came to creating my digipak I had a

clear idea that I wanted it to resemble nature as our music video was filmed outside.

I used images of trees and the sun light peering through the trees. I then used images of the artist holding his guitar and leaning up against a tree. I also wanted the artist to look deep in thought so that he would resemble the narrative in our music video.

When I received audience feedback, they all said that my print work looked effective, but they did say that a couple of the images could have been brighter. I corrected this on photoshop, which made the images look a lot better as the artist’s face looked clearer and it also made him contrast better with the background.

THEORY Eye-on design on state-of-the-art Mac computers with latest

professional Adobe, Mac and MacroMedia software. The studio is temperature controlled, the ambient light is colour temperature controlled and the computer screens are also colour-calibrated. They also create house styles from sketches or from scratch.

As a result, they believe that the house style must emphasise the quality of your offering, otherwise it won’t be successful at all.

Proxemics can be defined as "the interrelated observations and theories of man's use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture”

Edward T.Hall emphasised the use of proxemic behaviour and the use of space in communication. He believed that the value in studying proxemics comes from its “applicability in evaluating not only the way people interact with others in daily life, but also "the organization of space in their houses and buildings, and ultimately the layout of their towns”.

This links to my package, as my print work gives space in communication as it links to the redundancy of my chosen genre.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK Once I had created my print work, I created a group

on Facebook which enabled me to get positive and constructive feedback on my work.

Overall the comments were positive as they all said that my print work resembled the genre, they also said that the fonts could be read clearly and that the images were strong.

Someone did say that I could have included a close up of my artist – but I chose not to do that as I wanted to reflect my genre.

Also someone noted that I had forgotten to add the copyright for the label, I had already done so for Erik Baker, but I then added in the record label.