Finished Pages - Digipak

All of my digipak is now also finished:

The back cover of my digipak was influence by Taylor Swifts, as she uses an image herself that doesn't appear within the digipak and she also includes a link to her website. For an extra, I have included my QR code for the audience to get a bit more out the album. Gabrielle, however just has her website link on the back cover of her album. 

I think that each and every page within my digipak really shows how my research has influenced me and by reading all of my previous blog posts, it becomes clear how.

More Magazine Adverts - Provided Influence For My Piece

Before I produced my magazine advert to promote my artistes CD, I found some more adverts that link into my research. These adverts are from Taylor Swift and Gabrielle Aplin, who have been my two main influences, aside my KT Tunstall who has influenced my record label, the back of my album and some other sections which are explained throughout my blog.

These are the adverts that I found:

The bottom advert is advertising Taylor's tour; which isn't the kind of advert that I am creating and Gabrielle's advert, the top image is advertising a gig where she is going to be launching her album. Because of this, I have created two different posters as a result. One of the posters is an album launch advert and the other is advertising the artistes CD.

The top two images have been the biggest influences and there are many similarities between them. Both of the posters use an image of the artist as part of the background, which really adds a personal touch to the poster and the audience are immediately drawn to the image, which is promoting the artist well. It has been shown that people are more drawn towards images rather than text, which is a good marketing/advertising technique. Both images however are completely different images to what feature on their albums and digipaks. 

Gabrielle uses a large title of her name which is in the same font as her name on her album; however Taylor uses a title of her album 'Speak Now' in the same font that she uses for her album title. Due to Gabrielle's poster advertising her album launch/gig, there is more information about the gig rather than information about her album; however Taylor's poster is explicitly advertising her album and thus includes information about her new tracks etc. 

In terms of the colours, Taylor has used the same colours that feature on her album, which is also another form of marketing/branding, as the audience then associate those specific colours with that artist and are more likely to recognise her when she brings out other material. Gabrielle uses a black and white style of colour, which links in with her album great, as her album cover is black and white and her digipak only has a splash of red showing.

For my adverts, I have gone for a black and white/ greeny colour which links explicitly with my album and this links in with my research as the other two artistes, Gabrielle and Taylor have used the same idea.

This is my advert for my album launch:

This is extremely similar to Gabrielle's as I wanted my research to be shown within my poster; however I have used different colours and I have just adapted the ideas that feature on Gabrielle's poster. I have used the same idea of having the artist name in bold and in the same font as it is on the album and then I have just used a normal plain font so that it is easy for the audience to read; thus advertising the album launch quicker. I have included a similar piece of information about the album as Gabrielle does; however I have made the key points more bold to make them stand out more. I have also added in the same style of information at the bottom of the poster, which includes the details about the gig and also a logo and link to the venue page. This is extremely similar to Gabrielle's.

For my actual advert which is advertising my CD, I have gone with a mixture of both Taylor Swift and Gabrielle's ideas:

I have gone with the overall layout that links to Taylor's poster, in terms of the postition of the title and the information about the album, and I have also used the soft effect that is used on Taylor's poster to allow the text to be placed at the bottom to create a kind of 'floating' effect and it looks like it's meant to be there, but it doesn't look too harsh; however the text links to Gabrielle's poster, as I have used the same font again for the artist name and then the same font that features on the album for the album name, also on the poster. I have gone with the same idea as Taylor by saying that I have added new tracks in; however I have used my own initiative and added in quotes from other magazines explaining their thoughts on the albums which you sometimes see in some magazine adverts. I have also included an image of the album and also a QR code like Taylor does, which actually works and leads to a website, which is my blog! I have also included an image of the artistes record label, which was influenced by Taylor's poster; however the record label was influenced by KT Tunstall as it is the same record label as what she uses. 

In terms of question 4 of the evaluation, new media technologies, I had some issues when I was designing my advert using photoshop. As I wanted to create a similar look to Taylor Swifts poster, I used an iris blur around the background image which made the face stand out in focus, yet the rest of the image was slightly blurred around the edges, creating a soft look, much like Taylor's. For the bottom of the poster, this is where the main problem occured. I tried to just feather the background image to create gradual transition from the image to blurred-like bubble at the bottom of it so that my text could be placed in there to make it stand out; however this didn't work. As this didn't work, I created a rectangle and I then feathered the shape to create a soft, blurred look to the shape. I then dropped it into a new layer by duplicating the rectangle layer and I then changed the opacity of the different layers, creating a smooth transition between the box at the bottom and the image, making it look how I wanted it to in the begginging - as if there wasn't a box there.
 Here are the tools that I used on photoshop:  
























I have also stuck to my research throughout this advert in terms of having the naturistic cream tone in the background and then having the black writing and the transparent dark box, which adds to the black and white feature within my project. Taylor uses red throughout her 'Red' CD and advert, so I decided to use the same idea and stick to my project colours.

Overall, the research that I have done links explicitly with my final products and you can clearly see the way I have applied different ideas that I have taken from my research and added them into my final pieces.

Magazine Advert Dimentions

Before I started my magazine advert, I wanted to conduct some research into magazine dimensions, so that my advert looked realistic and would fit into a magazine fine. I came across this extremely helpful website and it helped me set my dimensions correctly: Momentum Press. This allowed me to the produce my magazine advert.

My Advert

KT Tunstall Music Reviews

I was recently conducting some research into magazine adverts and unfortunately, I didn't come across any more KT; however I did find some reviews of her music which were interesting:

Review 1

Review 2

Review 3

Review 4

Although they don't specifically fit into my research, these are interesting reads and gave me a better insight into how audience's view an artistes music. 

Finished Front and Back Cover

After receiving my audience feedback on my text comparisons, I have produced my final version of my album cover, front and back. I have also added to the back of my album cover since I showed it in my previous blog post, Influences, as I have added more to it. In my influences blog post you can see that Gabrielle has her record companies logo on the back of her album and I have taken both ideas from Gabrielle and KT about copyright information on the back of their albums. This is what I have produced and this is my final album cover:

I have also included a website for Relentless Records too, for my target audience to then find out information about the artist. 

More Audience Feedback on Rough Cut

Aside from the other feedback that I have already posted for my most recent rough cut, I have also received the above piece of feedback. I am pleased to hear that the narrative sections that I added into the video have worked well and have met the expectations of my audience, which I predicted that they would; however it is nice to hear it from my target audience. 

This shows that I my research has influenced my final piece well and that I have met the needs of my target which I intended to do from the outset. 

Feedback on Text Comparisons

After I sent out the email below, I received a large number of comments very quickly, which was fantastic. A lot of the comments have offered a range of improvements to make and also what they like about the album cover, which is great as there is a mixture of positive and negative criticism mixed together:

This is the different feedback that I have received as a result of sending this email:

This comment above was made by a music professional and his suggestions/feedback is for if I was going to produce this album for sales, which is great; however cannot be applied to this project. Although I can't apply it to this project, this feedback is fantastic for me to take on board and apply to my personal music/albums. I understand that the text on the album cover is hard to see, so I will have a bit more of an experiment with it and see what I can do. 

This comment above is from a lecturer at Teesside University where I am wanting to go to study media, so it is a real honour to receive feedback from Mick. He has offered some very high level feedback and for the feedback to use dodge and burn just wouldn't be possible for the software that I am using. Also, I need to be able to show comparisons between my research and my piece. The comments below, however explain his feedback and overall he thinks that what I have done is "fantastic".

The feedback that I have received has suggested that I should go for the effects that I have added on to the text to make it stand out more, so this is what I will do. I will also try and experiment with some of the suggestions that I have received and see what happens when I do. I will post my experimentation on here when I have done it.