"How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As a brand we are very passionate about the classics, our work is heavily influenced by the film noir and silent film styles which feature low key black and white visuals, little or no dialogue with heavy reliance on mise-en-scene and strong characters. This image can be identified in our brand image, Top Hat Production's logo is an old fashioned, black and white top hat.
As a brand we are very passionate about the classics, our work is heavily influenced by the film noir and silent film styles which feature low key black and white visuals, little or no dialogue with heavy reliance on mise-en-scene and strong characters. This image can be identified in our brand image, Top Hat Production's logo is an old fashioned, black and white top hat.
This brand identity has a strong presence within both our main product and the ancillary texts. It is particularly prominent in the music video, which features an old movie countdown sequence, has been shot entirely in black and white, contains no dialogue, relying instead on subtitles in order to suggest conversation. Our music video heavily emulates the classic film style which is the signature style of notable directors such as Kubrick, Hitchcock and Lang.
We used the old movie countdown sequence give the audience clues about the style about the music video, the first few scenes of the video are montages of our location and shots our main protagonist sleeping on a cardboard box, essentially these scenes serve to establish where the video is set and introduce the main protagonist without revealing too much, immediately engaging audience attention.
As previously mentioned, we created a strong brand identity which we wanted to reflect in the media product and ancillary texts, in a manner which would be both visually stimulating and also recognisable, so that audiences would recognise the aesthetic link between the music video and the ancillary texts.
We had very clear ideas of the look and feel we wanted for the music video, however we didn't have such clear ideas for the magazine advert and digipak, we considered several design ideas and we presented some of these ideas to our classmates for feedback.
The first idea we considered was a visual play on the song title "Aspirin", the cover design would be a bottle of Aspirin, to represent the song title. However the audience feedback for this idea was mainly negative.
Another idea which we considered involved replacing the lettering on a London Underground sign with the song title "Aspirin". This idea received positive feedback from the audience, they felt it looked good and would be an effective cover design.
We created both digital and paper copies of this design. To create the digital version of the design, we imported a picture of the sign into Photoshop.
Using the layers and brushes, we then removed the lettering, leaving a plain blue box.
Another idea which we considered involved replacing the lettering on a London Underground sign with the song title "Aspirin". This idea received positive feedback from the audience, they felt it looked good and would be an effective cover design.
We created both digital and paper copies of this design. To create the digital version of the design, we imported a picture of the sign into Photoshop.
Using the layers and brushes, we then removed the lettering, leaving a plain blue box.
This plain sign formed the basis of many variations of this underground sign design. In one design, we completely removed the blue layer of colour, leaving it blank.
In this blank box, we pasted in graffiti style lettering with the song title and the name of the artist.
In another variation of the underground sign design, we desaturated the colour in order to fit in with our established black and white colour scheme.
We researched the exact font used on the Underground sign and discovered it was called 'Johnston Underground', when creating the digital copy of the design, we searched for this font on the free font website www.dafont.com, downloaded it and used it to replace the lettering.
However, creating the paper versions of the design was a slightly different, if not laborious process. We printed several copies of the picture of the blank Underground sign, in both colour and black and white. We also printed several pages containing sample letters of the Johnston Underground font. It was then a matter of simply cutting and glueing the desired letters onto the Underground sign.
Although we liked this design, we felt that we wanted to incorporate the Underground sign in a more subtle manner, we didn't want it to be the main visual aspect of our cover design so instead we used a picture of Woodford Station where the sign is clearly visible and this picture became part of the final Digipak.
Another cover idea which we considered used the shot of our main protagonist sleeping, we desaturated the image and added in the lettering with the song title and the artist name. We chose quite a modern, futuristic looking font in order to appeal to our desired target audience. We felt that the audience might be put off by a feminine design. The image itself is also visually attractive and will appeal to our target audience. We felt that this idea was our strongest cover design and is in fact the final design we used.
Another cover design which we considered featured an image of traffic lights which we had desaturated and edited on Photoshop, in order to lend the image a blurry, cartoon-esque appearance. After consideration, we rejected this idea as we felt that our other design ideas were stronger and more attractive, visually.
For the back cover design, we used this image of Woodford station and removed all the existing text using Photoshop. Once this was done and we were left with the blank image, we used Photoshop to add in the desired text and established features of a CD cover, namely the song title, artist, tracklisting, record label and barcode.
We used a barcode generator to create both the barcode and the QR code, which when scanned will take the user to a designated website.
We decided to use images of our location, to fill in the other panes of the Digipak. In order to tie in with our established black and white colour scheme, we desaturated these images.
In terms of intertextuality, our CD design was heavily influenced by Rihanna's "Good Girl Gone Bad" disk, we used this as a style model for our own CD disc design.
In order to create this design, we used a blank template. Using Photoshop we then added colour and text to the template, including all the established features of a CD disc.
Once we had created the Digipak, we found that it was much easier to create the Magazine advert as we could take ideas and influences from the digipak.
The main image of the magazine advert is the still image of the girl sleeping, again we chose this image as it is visually appealing to our desired target audience.
We placed this image on a black background in order to fit our established colour scheme of black and white. We then used brushes on Photoshop to blur the visible edges around the picture so that it blends in seamlessly with the dark background.
We then added in text, in the form of a star rating and reviews from music magazines.
Finally we added in the established features of a magazine advert, information about the single, the record label, a QR barcode and information about where the song is available.
There is a clear aesthetic link between the media product and the ancillary texts, the strong presence of the brand identity means that these texts will be immediately recognisable, audiences will be able to identify them.
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