Question 2-Jack Simpson

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?

I think my promotional package makes clear visual links between the digipak and the video.I think our video contains very strong imagery and the dancers and location are the key artistic features of our video.Because of this I drew heavily from the video when making my digipak and they both fed into each other.I chose to keep a certain air of intrigue with my digipak,yes I did include alot of the main subjects in our video,but at the same time I kept a feeling of mystery about them.I did this by choosing to obscure images on the album cover, making a photo-montage by cutting up screenshots from our video.The graffiti is perhaps the strongest visual link which is why I chose to include this on my cover.I looked at other covers that featured graffiti on the front cover in the process of making my digipak:

The Hardway-Frantic Frank

Think Tank-Blur

Up Rock-Rock Steady Crew

One part of our video that stood out for me was the sequence in black and white.This was only featured once throughout the video unlike the shots of the graffiti and dancer.Because of this it has a bold and unique feeling to it and that's why it is on the front cover.All of the pictures on the front establish visual links to the music video and I think our target audience will identify this link.Because of this, my digipak and and main product are an effective combination.

For the back of my album and advertisement I chose to be a bit more abstract and used an image that isn't featured in the video.I took photos of one of the entrances to the waterloo tunnel,which was where we filmed the graffiti and dance sequences. I chose to use this photo as I believe it symbolises an entrance to the urban world that 'Galvanize' represents.It also relates back to our urban target audience as this sort of scenery is something that is familiar to them.

In terms of our music video, the imagery we portray isn't very edgy or 'controversial' but I do feel as though it has a stylised edge to it. This is something I tried to get across in my digipak.I went for a simple look, drawing themes from our music video creating a cut-up, photo-montage for the front cover.

One of the digipaks I looked at was the one above.Of course my digipak is different in design, but I was still influenced by some of the design features in the Calvin Harris album cover.For example it is clear that colour was very important when making this digipak.Keeping a consistency and making sure the colours work with the typography and text is something I kept in mind when making my own digipak.Something I think that is common within electronic music are the way digipaks are designed.I think they are more often than not conceptual as you can see in the above digipak. I think this relates back to the style of genre as electronic music in itself has heavy themes of escapism in it. I dont think I tried to challenge the conventions of a digipak, I preferred a more solid style that combined imagery from the video with colours and composition that worked together.In my opinion trying to be 'unconventional' intentionally has become a cliche of the industry and often has the opposite effect which is why I chose to keep it simple.