Ancillary Tasks: Evaluation

How successful is the combination of our ancillary tasks?

I think that our ancillary tasks (the album covers, insides and magazine poster) work very effectively together. 

In order to created them we took shots from the performance scenes of our music video. This meant that they would all have the same levels of lighting and colour as well as all being against a black background so they didn't look to colourful, and so they seemed more like they would have been designed for an indie rock band who stereotypically use darker colours and black and white. This also meant that we would not need to reshoot to get images for our digipack, making our post-production process much quicker. We also decided to use the same image from the front cover of our album case on our magazine advert; as it was made to promote the album it made sense to link them together with the same image. This also conformed to what we found when researching album covers and adverts, as nearly all of the posters we found matched their corresponding album cover.

Where did we get our inspiration from?

When doing our research we found certain aspects of the magazine adverts which we looked at particularly important to include in our own digipack. For example, we found with all of the tour posters that the name of the band was always the biggest piece of text on the poster and it was also always at the top or in the centre of the advert, we found a similar trend on the album covers, so we made sure to include this in our digipack, using the font which The Jacques always show their band name in. 

As well as this, the inside front cover is strongly similar to the front cover of one of the Arctic Monkeys' CDs.

The inside front cover of our digipack.

One of the album covers of the Arctic Monkeys.

We particularly liked how simple the design of this album cover was and we decided to try and create something similar in our digipack. We also incorporated their use of a plain black background with white over it in all of the other parts of our digipack by using our performance shots with a black background and using white text over the top. 

How is our digipack suited to the band The Jacques?

After making our digipack, we feel that it is a good representation of our band The Jacques. It conforms to the conventions of their genre, indie rock, by using darker colours with a black background and white text. We also used a close up shot of the actress representing the lead singer of the band on both the front cover of the album and the magazine advert. This meant that we were promoting the band, by using the people who represented them as the main focus of our digipack, as well as making the album and the poster go together well. The Jacques have an existing album cover which also has a photograph of children on it, so we felt that this would make our album cover look more like it would be an actual album cover of theirs as it has a similar image.

Digipack: Magazine Advert

Digipack: Side Strip

Digipack: Back Cover

Digipack: Inside Back Cover

Digipack: Inside Front Cover

Digipack: Front Cover

Representation of The Jacques

Analysing Existing Album Covers and Posters

This is one of the album covers of our band. It is in black and white, similarly to some of their music videos, which conforms to the indie rock genre. The picture shows two young boys smoking, emphasising the reckless look they want to create about themselves. There is no writing on the album cover other than the band's logo. Overall it is a very simple design, but it conforms greatly to the indie rock genre, as well as giving us hints to what the band's style is like. 

When coming to make our digi pack, we plan to use the same level of simplicity in our design, possibly using black and white, depending on whether or not we chose to put our music video in black and white. As they have used children for their album cover, we thought that it would then work well if we used one of our concept ideas- to use children to represent the band- as they have associated themselves with children before.

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Conclusion

What we found out

After looking at three magazine adverts from three different indie rock bands, we were able to determine a rough 'template' of what we thought we need to put on our advert for The Jacques. 

The most common similarity which we found between the adverts was that they all included the bands' names at the top of the poster in the middle in a different font to that which was used on the rest of the poster. All three magazine adverts also included a small logo of the bands' record label at the bottom of the page. The backgrounds used were either identical or quite similar to the album which the advert was advertising, meaning there would be no confusion with what the poster was advertising. This meant that the band was often not shown on the tour poster. One of the posters gave a name of one of the tracks on the album (presumably one of their more well known tracks) as well as the band's website and the website of their record label. This could be because the band is less well known and they want to promote themselves more. We also noted that all of the magazine ads which we looked at were portrait as they would have been shown in a magazine. 

From this we decided that it would therefore be essential to include The Jacques name at the top in the centre of our poster as well as including relevant information about the band such as their website and their social media pages, as our band is not so well known. This would help the band to promote themselves on as many different platforms as possible. We also plan to include the logo of The Jacques' record label, Rough Trade Records. We decided that it would also be essential for our advert to be portrait so that it would fit with other ads which you would expect to find in a magazine and we also thought it would be good if we could use a similar or identical image for our background of the advert as we did for the front of our album, so that our audience could easily link the two together.  

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Arcade Fire

Analysing Magazine Adverts: Arctic Monkeys

Analysing Magazine Adverts: The Libertines

Analysing Album Covers: Conclusion

What we found out

After analysing album covers from several indie rock bands we saw that the album covers always included some sort of known logo of the band (this included specific fonts which the band always use for their band name. The fonts used varied too much to comment on, however this is because the font depended mostly on the bands personal style and fonts which they had used in their logos. If font was used, it was always clear and easy to read. 

Colour effects were sometimes added to the background. This included black and white (which is also used in many indie rock music videos) and filters which gave the album a more vintage look. The backgrounds themselves always conformed to the indie rock genre with their rough and reckless appearances, hinting to low budget, urban locations. The background also had very simple designs so as not to distract from the text or to look too complicated. In all the examples we looked at the band were not shown on the album covers.

When making our album covers, we plan to include the name of the band on the front in their chosen font. We are also planning to take stills from our footage to use for our covers, as this saves us having to reshoot to get stills. As we are not using the band themselves, we thought that it would be suitable to show some of the kids on the album cover, as the bands which we looked at did not use stills of themselves on their album covers.

Analysing Album Covers: Arcade Fire

Analysing Album Covers: Arctic Monkeys

Analysing Album Covers: The Libertines