How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?Evaluation Post 2

Why promote? When producing a debut album there comes a big promoting process in order to put the album into the audience’s line of sight. There is usually a connection between the album and all other products associated with it in order for audiences to associate the products with one another. For example Taylor Swift’s song ‘Bad Blood’ is associated with her album 1989 and that is how audiences recognise it.

The main connectionThroughout my main product (my music video) and my ancillary products (the digipak and poster) there is not a clear indication that all of them are linked. This is shown by a particular colour scheme and outfit choice for the poster and the music video whereas the digipak has a ‘sketchy’ design to it. I gained the inspiration to not have a reoccurring theme throughout all 3 platforms from artists such as Taylor Swift and Drake. The whole promotional content from Drake and Taylor Swift’s albums (Take Care and 1989) didn’t follow the same style throughout and it showed a variety of ideas that they considered whilst producing their products, Drake’s Take Care album specifically has a similar colour scheme for the poster and digipak whilst having a completely different tone and colour scheme for the video of the title track.

Differences of colour scheme and style in Drake’s Take Care music video and digpak

cover

This shows how even though the products both contain the artist, therefore showing a connection, there is a difference in how it is presented. This is so it can be presentable

for many audiences by having different styles

My Ancillary Products - Poster My ancillary products have a similar colour scheme but different overall designs. The reason being is due to the fact I wanted the poster to be linked with both the music video and the album that includes the song. The design of the poster was heavily influenced by the likes of Justin Bieber’s ‘Purpose’ Poster, with the positioning of the artist, the social medias used and including the release date. Furthermore I took the option of making the main heading of the poster ‘Mike Swanson - Debut Album’ in order for it to stand out that this is us putting our artist out into the music industry. Furthermore the picture of the artist in the poster includes the jacket that is associated with our artist in the music video. I saw this as a symbol that audiences would be able to recognise as being a ‘Mike Swanson’ image. I was able to gain this idea from artists such as Coldplay and Michael Jackson as both of them have iconic images or objects that audieces associate with them. For example the colourful piano for coldplay and the sparkling glove for michael jackson.

My Ancillary Products - DigipakMy intention for my digipak was to create a completely different image and style from the music video produced. The design was to put the artist at the centre of the digipak in order for the audience to know this album is to show them who Mike Swanson is. The sketch design of the digipak is to put my preferred reading of the artist is ‘drawing his story’ to show to audiences that the company JWK studios is still in the process of making a main name for Swanson. Moreover, the plain and simplistic design of the disc was to resemble how simple and straightforward the music on the album will be. The main inspiration for simplistic ideas for my digipak came from album designs such as Ed Sheeran’s ‘plus’. I used this idea as he produces a similar genre of music to my artist so I saw the oppurtunity to have a slight similarity.