How effective is the combination of your main product and an

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

A2 Media Evaluation - By Elliot Duncan

How I ensured that these products will these sell

Furthermore, my digipak designs were made with the intended aesthetics to help ‘sell’ the song/album to my target audience. Using the distinct, grunge, distorted theme in my digipak, applying the dust filters, light scatters and rough overlays I was able to create essentially a brand image that links the album/songs by the artist and the type of music it is (rap/hip-hop) to the typical key conventions we associate with the genre and lifestyle it represents. This design I have incorporated into the digipak encourages the themes and ideologies surrounding the genre, this of which would be something my target audience would relate and connect with – this making the album seem appealing to purchase.

Likewise, another aspect of digipak design that will help sell the song / album to my target audience is through the use of a bold purple strongly contrasting with the black and white backdrops in each panel. The purple would be able to catch the eye and seem intriguing to consumers viewing the digipak, particularly the contrast helps to make the colours stand out. As a result of using this colour scheme in my digipak designs it may encourage and seem more attractive as a product to buy over other more subtle colour schemes in other digipaks.

Furthermore, another element I included in my digipak to communicate the genre of the music video was the scratched, grunge and distorted effects I overlaid on images and designs on each panel to incorporate the urban, rough feel to the product. Typical rap / hip-hop conventions often include an aggressive, violent and broken society/lifestyle, thus using this design on my digipak helped to reflect these concepts into my music video.

Particularly, I have linked these two products together via the use of distorted, scratched disk effects in both the music video and digipak/advert to show correlation between these products and the genre. We can learn from this shared communication that the style of the artist portrays an unconventional, underground and aggressive theme; demonstrated and reinforced across all three products. The screen shots linking to this focus on key aspects of these products that demonstrate these aesthetics, themes and ideas across.

A house style is a set of preferred conventions, themes and styles that are carried and implemented across as a range of connected products. Similarly, a brand identity is a separate concept from a brand image. Instead it is the consistent, underlying messages a consumer receives from interacting with a product or organization.

When developing multiple media products such as a music video, digipak and poster, it is highly important that a house style / brand identity is maintained throughout all connected pieces of a portfolio for a range of key reasons.

One reason why it is vital that a ‘house style’ is kept across all linked media products to demonstrate a professional aesthetic. Showing core continuity of established themes, colours and styles across each media item will be very important in how an audience recognize the links, and thus interact with each product. Using a master set of designs and ideas is a competency to a successful media product, if each piece used completely different colour pallets, fonts, graphics and themes then there would be no link and sense of connection and stability between the media products, this of which can be both confusing and off-putting.

In addition to this, another reason for why a house style is important when creating multiple media products is because it helps develop a brand identity, this of which can be recognized across all products/services/promotions released by a business. With this said, this helps develop a platform to present the artist, product, service off of using the assigned house style.

In progression of this aspect, in both my poster advert and the digipak, I included a range of embedded elements to attempt at communicating the genre of music video and style of the band.

One of these elements I included to communicate the genre of the music video was through the use of featuring a car and money in hand as some of the clips and backdrops to scenes. We typically associate and see in many real rap / hip-hop music videos the inclusion of expensive sports cars, large portions of money (cash) in hands, and expensive looking jewellery/clothing, thus I thought it would be directly fitting if I used some of these conventions in my own music video – to fit in with the some of the well-recognized, materialistic themes, and thus allow me to communicate the genre to my audience using this specific element.

If we compare these two screen shots below of my music video against a real music video from the same genre, we can identify some visual similarities with what components are featured (the use of a sporty looking car, large quantities of cash being shown off).

Linking in with this, in my own music video, digipak and poster I tried to develop my own brand identity.

A main area in which I created brand identity across my product portfolio was through the colour palette I applied. Looking at my three media pieces, you can recognize that there is a theme of dark shades of purple, black and white existing across each as the apparent colour scheme. I included this group as my range of colours to use to establish one aspect of the brand identity, and thus help my audience make the connection between each of my products.

Similarly, another way I tried to create a brand identity across my media pieces was through the text font used in each. Using the text font “gloss & bloom”, I was able to implement a bold, urban appearance to any key words and phrases such as the title to the music video, album/digipak. With the consistent use of this text font, in a white shade, I was able to build part of the brand identity, using the text font as a trigger for my target audience to again recognize the artist and their music with these styles of font.

The next segment displays these themes and core elements I have included, consistently across all 3 products of my portfolio.