Ancillary Tasks

Planning and Production of the Digipak and Magazine Advert for Coldplay and their release of ParachutesAncillary Tasks

Digipak Template (To work from)A wallet/pocket will be used to store the lyric book, which is a conventional feature seen in Alt-Js An Awesome Wave, and Arcade Fires The Funeral, as their digipaks received high appraisal from their audience.

We have chosen to work with a 6 gatefold digipak because our research shows that this is the most popular style for Alternative genre digipaks. Choosing to comply with expectations may allow for mass audience appeal.

Research for Digipakhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgSGcgaFXm0

Our audience research shows us what styles of digipak are most appealing to an audience, with Alt-Js An Awesome Wave receiving the highest appraisal due to its contemporary look and bright colour scheme. The use of original abstract art seemed to catch the attention of the interviewees. We hope to recreate this positive effect by creating a digipak using a similar abstract art style, and we will keep the digipak cohesive by using a set of house colours and fonts to make it look as professional as possible.

Digipak Mock Planning

The digipak will be 6 gate fold to allow for a pocket. The pocket will be used for purpose as it will hold the lyric book, which conforms to audience expectation.The theme of painting and abstracted art will be continued throughout the digipak (and magazine) for recognisability and memorable purposes. This has been chosen because art work is an appreciated aspect of an album for our target audience.The CD will be in the centre, with the wallet on the left of the digipak, and a blank fold on the right.The spine of the digipak will clearly state the album title and band name for easy consumer browsing.

Photos to use for digipak

We achieved these images by using watered-down acrylic and gold liquid paint. The paper curled and warped with the amount of water, giving a unique artistic appearance to the images. We were inspired by Alt-Js An Awesome Wave when creating our album art work. We kept hte colours similar wiht blues and golds to make the album cohesive.

Spine ConventionsThe artists name or band name is highlighted in red, and usually is situated after a serial number, but before the album name.The serial number is a short code or line of digits to refer to the copy of CD or digipak, and is highlighted in green. It is optional on the CDs below.The Distributor of the album is highlighted in yellow, and is only found on one of the CDs, which means it is not conventional to have the logo.Lastly, the record label is highlighted in blue, and is found of every case, most commonly at the end of the spine because it is possibly the least important to a buyer.

Spine of Digipak

55831ColdplayPARACHUTES

Front Cover

Back Cover

Inside Left Panel

CD Tray (Centre Panel Inside)

Inside Right Panel (Wallet)

Mock Net of Digipak

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Digipak Lyric BookWe decided to make a lyric book on Publisher. This was to portray the conventional elements of our researched digipaks of the genre, as Arcade Fire and Alt-J both had lyric books for their products. We kept the book looking cohesive and maintained the quirky original art-style with images of paint splashes and a dirty paint palette.

CLOSE-UP OF LYRICS

Magazine Mock PlanningThe magazine advert will feature white space around the central focus of abstracted art, as this will be the main image which makes up the background. Sans serif and slab serif fonts will be made transparent or plain white to make the text stand out from the page, as an audiences eyes are immediately drawn to white space on a page.A simplistic layout seems to be most successful and is used conventionally, as it has been profound in my research of Lana Del Ray, The Horrors and The Wombats adverts. A conventional band picture will be used to attract a loyal fan to the advert. Clear text stating the release date and institutional information will be seen at the bottom of the page, in the white space. It will state where the album will be downloadable from. A picture of the product itself (the digipak) will be found on the bottom right third of the advert.

Drafting Original PlanThis first draft is eye catching and proves our planning to be successful. However, in my next attempt, I would like to change the image layout, so each band member has a close-up of their face. I want the images laid out in a grid formation. The image I have used for the time being is temporary, and illustrated our original image intentions.

Technology

I used Serif Craft Artist 2 as my image manipulating and layout software for the creation of both ancillary products (magazine advert and digipak). Kelsey took photos of the art pieces she had created using a range of paints and metallic colours layered in an abstract way. She kept the colours similar throughout her experimenting, so we have a digipak that will look cohesive throughout its design. I used fontspace.com to find professional looking serif and sans serif style fonts for the front cover of the digipak, here is a screenshot of me testing one font.(Below) I utilised the cut-out studio function on this software by cutting out logos from the internet, so they had no background colour. This removal of white outlines makes the magazine look professional. You simply click and drag your mouse around any areas you want removed, then save the new image ready to be applied to the design being created. This is a screenshot from when I was in the process of choosing which font I preferred, and typing access information (the band website) to the magazine advert. Overall, this software was very easy to work with, and created a good result for my final edits of ancillary products.

Headshots of the BandFor the headshots, I wanted to capture the characters of the band, so I had some members smiling and some posing. I chose to have a mixed group of members, with one mixed race male amongst white males. This diversity in the band is not only more appealing to a mass audience, but it also is conventional for alternative bands such as The Heavy and Alabama Shakes which are both contemporary.I chose four band members which is typical for most bands and an all male cast is equally conventional, as the single Parachutes includes a lead male vocalist. I will edit these photos to black and white to make this digipak and advert cohesive and conventional. As there will be a lot of colours in the backdrop, the black and white will help the images stand out.

Testing Grid Styles with ImagesThis grid style is unique because it has a hand-drawn effect, with rough edges and imprecise square shape. This not only adds character to this grid, but keeps the images seemingly cohesive with the rest of the magazine. This is because of the use of artistic features such as the paint in the background and dripping paint. For this grid style, the outline is not thick, and the black helps it to stand out against the darker background colours. I think the contemporary use of sans serif font in white contrasts the black nicely, but the sophisticated look of the minimal lines contrasts the arty background so much that it begins to look un-cohesive.

Making changesI chose to include all four members facing forward, so I could use the side on shots and the back of head shots for the lyric book included with the digipak. I feel the portrait shots look more eye-catching because all bad members are breaking the fourth wall with direct address, and the black and white effect helps them stand out against the bright background.

Final Magazine Advertisement For my final magazine I have tried to keep the same theme of colours, font styles and simplistic layout to the digipak. The colour scheme of blues and gold has been carried over into the magazine background to make it easily recognisable to an audience.