Evaluation Question 2

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

Research

Digipak

As many of the artists featured in my genre are bands I knew it would be difficult finding a digipak that I could take inspiration from and create my digipak based around. Instead of doing this I decided to look to some solo male artists as they are the same type of artist I would be trying to promote. The common theme I found while looking at these artists is that they feature quite plain and simple digipaks with much of their message being put through by something simple.

An example of this is Sam Smith's album cover for 'In the Lonely Hour'. As I have previously stated, I really like how this cover conveys a simple message just through how Sam Smith is posed and wanted to convey this in my digipak. I would say this is the album cover I took the most inspiration from when creating mine.

While looking at digipaks as a whole I had to look at the conventions that can be found on all digipaks and to do this I looked to three digipaks, again Sam Smith's 'In the Lonely Hour' as well as Ed Sheeran's '+' and Gavin DeGraws 'Chariot'. All three of these albums are the debut album for the artist and as my album would be my artist debut album I knew it would be good to look to debut albums as they would provide me with the best inspiration when creating my album. I noticed that all the albums feature the artist on the front cover as a way to promote the new artists so that people know who they are. I decided to follow this convention and have my artist be the main image on my front cover. They are all simple featuring only and image of the artist and the artists name and the name of the album. I also decided to follow this convention as I wanted my album cover to be simple and classy and by having as little as I could on the cover, I knew I would accomplish this.

All the albums, excluding Gavin DeGraw's, also continue the simplicity to the back of the album by having no images appear, only including the important information and no images. I decided it was a good idea for me to also do this in order continue my simple and elegant design. I created my album cover, taking main inspiration from the back of Taylor Swift's '1989' which is an album I had previously looked to during my research. I believe combining the layout of her album with the simple nature of Sam Smith's it creates the effect I was looking to create throughout my digipak.

Posters

I did some research in existing posters that advertised an artist in order to see what would need to be included on my poster. Overall I noticed a common theme of the posters helping to advertise the album by having a theme that fit with the overall theme of the album. One of the posters I looked at if Taylor Swift's poster for her '1989 Tour' and by doing this I saw that she continued the theme of 1989 she can present throughout her digipak creating a direct link between the two.

Other than this, I didn't specifically take any inspiration for my poster instead trying to focus on presenting the theme of my album and getting the message across to the audience. My poster could be seen to break the conventions presented throughout of alternative rock posters, fitting more with those in the country genre but I believe the image I have chosen works well with my genre and it helps to present the message I was hoping to get through to my audience.

One thing that could be seen as different on my digipak is that my my artist is facing away from the audience so that you can't see his face. This is unconventional of album posters which instead try to promote the artist and as such have their face present on the poster. I however believed by presenting my artist in such a way it helps to promote the message of the album through the simple pose he is doing. This creates a cohesion between my poster and digipak as they both aim to get the same message through the same means.

Did it work?

Making My Ancillary Texts

Colour Scheme

When creating my piece it was important for me to have a consistent colour scheme running through my pieces. I decided on the scheme of black, white and yellow as I believed they blended well together and allowed me to represent my theme of innocence and the stages of loss. The main part of this was the contrast between the inside and outside of my digipak which represents the immediate aftermath of loss and the stage of loss where you move on with this being represented by the black colour scheme on the outside and the white colour scheme on the inside.