Research into Digipacks of Similar Media

Texts

Album Covers of Similar Media Texts

KlaxonsSurfing The Void

For their second album, the band used an eye catching image of a cat in a space suit for the album cover. The Cat itself is owned by the band’s guitarist; Jamie Reynolds and the image was created via the merging of two photographs, one of the cat and another of the spacesuit with help from the usage of ‘clever software on an Apple Mac’.

Conventions of An Album Cover

The conventions that make up an front cover in a Digipacks for an album that those making one have to stick to consist of:

• Name of the artist

• Name of the album

• A dominant background image

• Simplistic colour scheme

• Simplistic design

• Writing in a different colour to rest of cover

• Bold and simple fonts for artist and album name

• Few or no characters

By sticking to these conventions, anyone with the right software can make themselves a fairly stereotypical and legitimate album cover for which ever artist they wish.

TypographyThe typography on the album artwork for ‘Surfing the Void’ is pretty much non-existent. The only text of the front cover is the name of the artist ‘KLAXONS’ which is embedded on the badge of the space suit that the cat is wearing in the picture. The font that is used for this is quite unusual to someone who does not know the band, however, those who are accustomed to them and are familiar with their previous album know that this is the font that is always used by the band when writing it’s name. The reasoning for the lack of typography on the album cover is rather counter typical, however, you could argue that the eye grabbing concept of the picture that dominates the cover is what will attract people to pick the album up in the shops, before then finding who the artist is.

PhotographyAs mentioned in an earlier slide, the photography of this album artwork is very important, the overall image was made by the combining of two photographs, one of an astronaut in his space suit after a mission and the other of the lead guitarist of KLAXONS, Jamie Reynolds’ cat. After using an Apple Mac to combine the two photographs so the cat appears to be wearing the space suit, little details such as the badges and the flag in order to make the album cover recognisable to KLAXONS fans. The photography for this album artwork is very important here as it gives the front cover a dominant and eye catching main, background image, like mentioned before, the sort of album that would catch your eye in the shops and you couldn’t help yourself but pick up.

Lighting and Mise-En-Scene

The lighting involved in the ‘Surfing The Void’ album artwork is fairly bright and coming from above (there are no shadows on show behind the cat to suggest that the light is being shone directly at it), and the cat appears to be stood in front of a photography back drop which is fairly light in colour, therefore reflects the light around its surrounding area. This makes the artwork seem both brighter and bolder, and as mentioned already many times, very eye catching to the its customers. In terms of props involved, there is obviously the cat that belongs to the guitarist, the space suit and helmet, and finally the flag. These props all help towards keeping to the conventions of an album cover, a simplistic colour scheme, consisting of mainly blues and oranges, two colours that are opposites on the spectrum, therefore work well together. The colour scheme is also very eye catching, the premise I feel, of the cover.

Magazine Adverts of Similar Media

Products

The Killers Day & Age

Magazine AdvertThis is a magazine advert promoting ‘The Killers’ third studio album ‘Day & Age’ from 2008. It features the obvious traits that you come to expect from an album advert, the name of the band, album and their website. It also is very similar to the CD cover for the album which is an advantage as it is recognisable to the bands fans, as will the album cover when released. All these factors are important to think about when making your very own article.

Conventions of a Magazine Article for

an AlbumWhen it comes to creating a magazine article for an album, like an album artwork, there are a few conventions that it helps to stick to whilst creating, they are as follows:

• Clear album and artist name

• Clear date of release

• Album artwork or some reference featured

• Minimal writing, simplicity

• Cohesive typography, same typeface on each piece of product

• Wide range of promotional platforms.

Like with album artworks, if you manage to try and stick to these conventions, or even if you deliberately and obviously break them, you can be successful in creating a magazine article that promotes your album.

TypographyOn this magazine advert, promoting The Killers’ ‘Day & Age’ album, most Killers fans would recognise the font of which ‘THE KILLERS’ is written on the advert. This is a font that is very typical to them and has stuck with them since their very first album. This is one of the conventions of a good magazine advert as straight away the fans of the band are aware it is an album by The Killers, cohesive typography. As well as the recognisable artist name, the album name is also very dominant on the page, a very positive aspect of the advert. If anything, the album name is the most important part of an album advert, as at the end of the day, the name of the album is exactly what is being promoted through the advert, therefore needs to be predominant on the page for the audience to see.

ColourCreator of artwork, Paul Normansell; “From experimenting with colour my paintings became more illusional. I tried to create the illusion of movement, stimulating the eye into seeing things which may or may not be there. This seems to be testament to the human inclination to see patterns in randomness like looking for shapes in clouds or finding images within magic-eye pictures. The more you study the image the more you find. Each painting is individual, painted in gloss paint onto aluminium or board, each dot of paint is painted freehand using a brush. I use gloss paint and aluminium because of there reflective qualities and find it helps to enhance the optical effect of my work.”

I feel that the vivid range of colours that Normansell uses in this album advert are very effective, especially in terms of making the advert stand out on a page in a magazine. The use of colours on the background image are also effective in terms of allowing for the text to stand out if written in either white or black, some images can not offer this perk and therefore, the advert suffers as the very important album and artist names cannot stand out as well as possible which you need them to, as you are meant to be advertising the two.

Layout

The layout for the album advert is fairly typical, with the large and dominant names of the band and the album name taking up most of the mid-to-upper part of the advert, whilst the rest of the information, such as release date, record label, website and other necessary information are placed at the bottom of the page in a smaller and less dominant font. This, like already mentioned, is typical of its kind, as the most important information is prioritised in both positioning and size, whereas the other information that is considered less important from an advertising point of view is technically needed on the poster, but the advertiser can not afford for these pieces of information to over-dominate the viewer away from the information that is needed to be noticed if they actually want anyone to buy the album when it comes out.