Examining previous ancillary work

NATHAN MILLER

 Digipak inside and out

Strengths:
Good and clear colour scheme and it's consistent
You're able to figure out the genre through the font and colour scheme and graphics
Weaknesses:
The CD is not to scale
There's a spelling mistake

Advertisement

Strengths:

Consistent colour scheme and font.
Has all the relevant information needed on an advertisement.

INDIYA

Strengths:
Consistent colour scheme
Good images
Weaknesses:
The logo's at the back are on top of each at the back. The placement of them is unconventional and doesn't look very good.

Strengths:
Good placement of digipak cover
It has the same colour scheme and font as the digipak, so it's consistent.
Weaknesses:
No record label logo/website

CHARLIE JAYNE

Strengths:

Font and colour scheme go well with the image

Good image of the artist

Weaknesses:

It's hard to see the recors label logo and the name of the artist (in the spine)

Strengths:

Cohesive with the digipak

Clear Structure

Album cover included

Weaknesses:

The original digipak should have been made larger.

Analysing Digipaks

I decided I would analyse some digipaks to get some ideas for mine.

The Sugababes

For this cd cover, the colour scheme is white, grey and black. There is a contrast with the colours here as the sugababes sit in front of a grey wall. The cd is also the colour grey and the colour white is used for the font. It is a very simple colour scheme, nothing too bold or over complicated. The name of band is huge and goes right across the group in the middle, whilst the name of the album sits underneath in much smaller font.

Girls Aloud

For this, the colour scheme is pink, white and grey. They have stuck to typical girlie colours for this. The name of the group isn't as big as the font on the sugababes cd cover. The main focus here is the group image. The font on the back of the cover is quite small too.The cd itself is pink and simple.

Stooshe

This is much more cartoon like. There are different colours used here with black being the most striking. The heart shape used on the cd goes with the name of the album. The name of the group is eye catching as it is in huge white capitals above the groups heads. The design on the cd coincides with the title of the album.

Ancillary Research - Examining Digipaks

Overall, I'm impressed with all the digipaks but I think if we were to replicated something similar to The Saturdays, it would feels better looking as well as more rewarding.

Researching Ancillary - Studying Advertisements

Before I planned my advertisement, I thought life would be easier if I looked at how the professionals do it. I studied three different adverts looking out for conventions and so fourth. Here's what I found out:

1) Jessie J – Who You Are – I really like this advertisement because it’s simple. The only picture used in the advertisement was the album cover. Not to mention that the record label incorporated the white and gold text from the album into the advertisement, I think this relates to our audience because we’re attempting to follow the monochrome colour-scheme (with Gold as our Synergy) and with the black background, the white text stands, also making it unconventional for pop music. 

2) Ellie Goulding – Lights – This advertisement is very similar to Jessie J’s, the only image used is from the album, not to mention the gold text. However, this advertisement uses reviews; I think this is good because it gives viewers an insight into how highly the critics rate it, the average rating is 4*, seeing as this is her debut album I think our group need to be modest with our reviews (providing we chose to use them). I don’t like the gold lines added on the outline of her hair, I think we should avoid using any kind of SFX.

3) Marina & The Diamonds – Shampain – I thought I’d look at an advertisement from an Indie Pop group. This vintage filter used for the advertisement gives the audience great insight into the genre. The text is eccentric, however, the audience are unfamiliar with our group, it may be better to play it safe and use a simple font. Also, I like how bold text is used to highlight singles. 

Overall, both Ellie Goulding & Jessie J’s looked held most conventions of typical advertisements as well as looking eye-catching. I think I can extrapolate these features in my own piece, however, I noticed that there were no social idents on any of the advertisements - I would assume they’re not necessary to use as social networking is now part of everyday life, but I was thinking of incorporating a hash-tag into my advertisement, this is something I’m going to have to do more research into.  

Mock up of Ancillary work

We were tasked with creating paper mock ups of our digipaks and advertisements. I had to make sure I kept the synergy in these products. Below are my hand drawn mock ups.

Advertisement

Outside of digipak

Inside of digipak

Ancillary Research - Examining Student's Work

For my research into ancillary work, I looked at 3 examples: Nathan Miller, Poppy Power, Indiya. I started off evaluating the strengths and weaknesses from both their digipaks and advertisements.

Nathan Millers - I Am Electricpop - I thought this cover was decent as it was simple, contained the typical conventions of a digipak (e.g. Artist's name is bigger than the album's, used 2 colours and fonts). However, the inside housing was poor, he could've done more research into other digipaks rather than doing another track listing, I thought it was lazy.
The advertisement for this contained good use of brands (e.g HMV). The fact he carried the colour scheme to the poster was really good, however he didn't use enough of the purple in it, rendering his colour-pallet unbalanced. Also, I saw he put links onto his advertisement, though there's nothing particularly wrong with this, I think he should've used idents.


Poppy Power - Lights Out - This digipak was the best out of the three. Aside from holding the conventions used in indie pop, I think the added sticker with reviews was good as it was rarely used by any of the other students. It followed a red/velvet colour scheme throughout all four panels. I particularly liked how they used both panels for the inside of the digipak.
As for the advertisement, the bold text looked great, however, I think they could've used colour rather than font to put emphasise the singles (e.g...)

Indiya - In My Own Words - For me, this was probably the worst out the three. Though there was good use of the artist's colour-scheme, the housing's layout was quite poor. The album's title was bigger than the artist's and I think the 'Thank You' wasn't necessary.
The advertisement was definitely the better out of the two, I liked that were two picture, one of the album and another of the artist. However, the font used for the reviews were hard to read and I think lack of idents (Social/Brand/Label) rendered it amateur.

Overall, I saw some really good work and I'm adamant I know the dos and don'ts of producing ancillary work, with that said, I'm ready for the real task!

ANCILLARY WORK: Inspiration for Front Cover

As I was researching album covers from artists of the same genre as our girl group, I saw one that really got my attention as it was different from most of the others I had seen - the Girls Aloud 'Tangled Up' album cover.

Girls Aloud - Tangled Up

The main feature that makes this cover different from other covers of girl bands is the fact that the performers are photographed separately, rather than a single photograph with the whole group together, doing different poses. However, these individual photographs are quite similar, so there is a continuity of the theme, which shows that they are still a united group.
I found this photo very interesting and I decided to make my digipak front cover in the same style, and to have three individual photos of the performers instead of one of us in a group.

I made a draft  in Photoshop of the way I will divide my photos on the front cover:

Layout: the bottom 3 black squares will contain photos of the performers and the one at the top will contain the group name and album title.