Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

• As part of my coursework portfolio, once having completed the music video in a group, we had the opportunity to apply our extensive research and experience into creating two ancillary products, to promote our chosen band and song choice. These products include a website homepage and Digipak CD cover.

• Having worked in a group of three (including myself) for the music promotion video of ‘Five Years Time’, the transition from working as a productive team to being independent was fulfilling as I applied my own creative and background skills into designing these digital cross-media texts.

• A Digipak is a cardboard package, which houses a CD or DVD disk. The design of the package could be a simple sleeve or more complex by containing different folding panels, which reveals much more information about the music, artist history and more.

• In class, we studied the different forms, conventions and shapes that are popular amongst professional Digipaks in order to produce a fashionable, attractive, genre-related Digipak to attract my target audience. Having done case studies of associated conventions to the indie-folk genre, I also compared this to a different music genre in order to compare and contrast the separate messages conveyed to my potential audience.

• Looking at Brandon&Leah, Florence + the Machine and Iron and Wine, they all gave me further ideas and inclinations of how this house style should be maintained via my own Digipak and webpage.

• The main product: the music video successfully encompasses indie elements that have been proved through our intensive questionnaires and audience surveys that have shown an appreciation for the effective and professional-like video.

• Gaining more experience in the computer suite which balancing tone, brightness and replacement of colours assisted me to apply my new technological skills into producing the best possible ancillary products.

Drafting process…

• The size to my Digipak is 125mm square all around, and the resolution is 150 horizontally measured.

• This is a suitable frame size for the images to be presented in, as it is the most professional and eye-grabbing medium that I chose to use to achieve this specific effect. Using software skills through the photo-editing programme: Corel Photo-Paint, I produced my Digipak gradually, once having done sufficient research after culminating my ideas into a final and ready product for show.

• Having experimented and drafted ideas using prep images on the editing software, I managed to gain more confidence when transforming, adjusting and contrasting images in order to make subtle yet better changes. I used three out of four copied images from the video sequence in my final Digipak, which I constantly edited and adjusted to suit the form of the product.

• I also added text on the inside sleeve to narrate the lyrics of the song. The remaining image, (the front image of the CD cover) is my own photography from filming which gives an extra, exclusive touch to the promotion of the song: Five Years Time. I chose not to provide all the songs of their album, as I wanted to pinpoint the song as a one-hit wonder.

• The website homepage contains a variety of links to other pages and has an interactive relationship with the users and target audience. Having considered the initial ways how my website will successfully interact with the user, I had to brainstorm ideas visually and dynamically.

• Firstly, having examined how other well-known indie-artists/groups portray themselves in order to advertise their music and credibility is much more humble than mainstream pop artists such as Fergie, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

• I noticed a real authenticity factor throughout my researched webpages as they lack vain photography of the artist, and instead supplement this for concert photos, cinematic references, nature photography and more. I wanted to have my webpage seem user-friendly and not as though my artist is on a pedestal and there is a feeling of hierarchy where the artist is better than the audience.

• I wanted to create a relationship where the relationship is circular. I also wanted to provide five pages including the homepage as well as extra social media links such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in order to launch the band further.

• Mainstream artists generally have an online shop, tour dates, events and video diary archive. For my own design, I selected to incorporate: music, photos, biography and community. I wanted to create a ‘less is more’ effect which the original Noah and the Whale site has.

• Their site is monochrome and has a country/rural feel. I wanted to illuminate and brighten the atmosphere of the page in order to attract and broaden the audience and boost the social media pattern further.

The original website versus my own website.

• For instance I intended to have a blue and yellow predominant colour scheme, both connote nature, positivity and summer.

• The chosen hues of the colours were selected via the wide range of editing tools that I used whilst creating the webpage. I feel that the use of two main primary colours is visually attractive and enforces the personality of the focused artist and creates a particular ambience for the online users when visiting the site.

• The soft yellow for: ‘Noah and the Whale’ is trademarked in both the music video and webpage.

• I chose to experiment with the presentation of the band’s name to achieve a more informal effect as though it has been made effortlessly. For example, in the music video there is coda as we introduced the song with the pale yellow text, which also appeared at the end in the bottom right hand corner of the frame.

• This neutral colour is memorable and suits the style of the band, whilst also emphasizing the other images and information provided.

• In my webpage, I used a similar font and yellow colour of the band’s name that is positioned in the centre of the homepage. I liked how the set colour palette compliments the selected blue background, which subtly trademarks the band’s associated colour scheme.

• However, for my Digipak cover, the front has a pale white/yellow font that is graffiti on the brick wall, yet also positioned on the right part of the frame. I chose to create this street-urban yet artistic image to prevent the same, expected logo. I feel that this shows a range of artistic expression and promotes Noah and the Whale successfully.

• I feel that overall; I managed to make coherent links between all three products. Having studied the key concept of synergy and cross-media convergence has to objective to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

• I feel that my use of syncronisation of these three different products of entertainment has helped exploit various platforms in order to sell and market the band and their music.

• I don’t feel like this concept of synergy has provided any specific problems, yet it has taught me the ideal relationship of my main product and ancillary texts and how they all link together as ways of promotion.