By Kristian Coomber

Throughout my research of magazine adverts and digipaks I realised that there were many artists/band that took the same approach as me such as Vampire Weekend and The Verve (whereby their music video, album and magazine advert all shared elements) and that there were many who took exactly the same aspects of each of their products just put onto different forms, such as The Killers. But I still stuck to my primary idea, and I produced two products that collaborated really well with my music video without compromising on producing pieces that in their own right were visually impacting and that was the secondary objective for me for this project.

Collectively I believe that all of my products created within this project worked very well together to show a sense of

recognisable branding, and for me that was the main objective. For my Digipak and Magazine advert I wanted to create two pieces of work that expressed the same themes that my music video expressed but in a form that was static compared

to great motion of my music video. However although they had elements of them within that showed many similarities to my music video, I didn’t want them to be all that similar that it would be interpreted that a lack of imagination and creation went into the construction of them.

Before I even started to plan for how my Magazine advert and my Digipak were going to look and work I decided that the most important thing to do was to focus on certain aspects from my music video that would be incorporated into the two other products. So for this I focused on four different aspects: • Cartoon/Animation/Drawing • Dream World • Journey • Optimism

!As the top two are actual, physical aspects of my music video I focused on them the most - but the two after are still significant as they’re the main emotions expressed throughout the video. !The ‘Dream World’ played a huge role in my music video as it represented most of the journey of my character from the busy city, 9-5 life to the quiet, peaceful country life. It was the factor to my music video that took the most research and the most technology in order to create it and although it was quite unusual compared to the other parts I still believer it expressed the same emotions and presented the same meanings I wanted it to mean. The cartoon, animation and drawing style of the dream world was key also as it links very well to the ‘Indie’ genre and therefore my target audience too and it also shows another artistic side to the music video. Taking these four aspects into consideration I then researched into existing magazine adverts and digipaks of my chosen genre (indie) and then came up with the following list of elements for both (for which both the products had to include). ! DIGIPAK MAGAZINE ADVERT

• Band Name • Album Name • Record Company • Barcode • Song List • Album Spine

• Band Name • Album Name • Record Company • QR Code • Contact Info - Website • Reviews and star rating • Date album’s coming out

Using the researched conventions of the Magazine advert and the four aspects of my music video that were key to both my ancillary tasks construction I firstly created the drafts (on the left). The first draft (left) I loved because the simple, centred structure of it worked really well and this was representative on the audience feedback too. However it didn’t incorporate enough of the same colour scheme or similar aspects of my music video compared to the one on the (right). The one on the (right) includes a lot from the music video but wasn’t well received because of the busy-ness of the image. I merged the two together and the one below is my final magazine advert.

For this final advert I decided to include a simple colour scheme by only using four main colours - Orange, Black, Turquoise and White - as these were very heavily present in my music video. It includes all the elements you would find in a typical advert (e.g. website, rating/reviews), but more importantly it includes direct images from the music video. I wanted to create a product that was recognisable to the video so images such as the horse, clouds and part of the landscape from the dream world have been placed. !The vibrancy as well as images such as the horse express the emotion of optimism also within this magazine and that is another aspect similar to the music video.

This is the final Digipak design I created for this project and I believe it encompasses every aspect that I wanted it to. It has the band name, track list etc. but it is also very recognisable to both the magazine advert and the music video too. The intention for this digipak was to create something

that looked visually pleasing but also flowed through every panel continuously. I decided the best thing to have for my album cover was a main image of the dream world landscape and this also proved very well in the reception of the audience. This was yet another link to my music video, but as the vibrancy in the advert showed optimism and positive feelings to

the song the extensive continuity of the images within this digipak I believe show the journey. The band logo and the record company

logo also feature in this digipak and the music video as well as the picture of the eagle. I created a further panel for a ‘booklet’ that include information on the band, album, recording etc. as previously I had found that the genre Indie have many bands’ albums that include these types of things which will

be good for my target audience, plus in the age of iTunes I believe that adding these extra bits to a physical album help

entice purchase.

When collectively looking at all three of my products it is clear for me to see that there are a lot of elements to them that are similar. Of course I took in to account all of the aspects of the ancillary tasks that needed to be vital to them uniquely, such as the QR code and contact details for the magazine advert and the barcode for the Digipak, but I still wanted to embed visual elements that were related to every product throughout this project. Within these products I repeated these aspects: 1. Company record logo (Coomber Records). 2. Dream World Landscape. 3. Hand-drawn clouds. 4. Animated Animals - Horse, Eagle, Dragon However, I decided to add unique qualities to each product also. The magazine advert has a different title to the band than the others, and the Digipak and Advert have a different background to the video. Although these are significantly different to each

other it was still intentional for me because I thought it would add a bit more creativity to the products. The other background, the background being green, is based on the tint I gave to the band performance and this was because I wanted to incorporate the performance into the other products as it was so important to the video.The reason for the difference in

titles is simply because I felt the big and bold title would work better for the magazine and the length of it also accentuates the portrait style to the advert too.