Draft Evaluation Question 2

2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When creating my products, I decided to use the same fonts on both the magazine advert and digipack for the band name. I did this as bands usually have their own font, which helps people to distinguish different bands. I used the font both on the spine of the digipack and the front cover as well as across the middle of the advert; this gives something to easily distinguish the band by. This gives a sense of unity and helps people to recognise the band by visualising the logo as well as remembering the name. I also used the same record company and logo on both my digipack and magazine advert, as well as putting the company website on both products, giving my band an identity and a sense of belonging to a big company. This gives a sense of cohesion.

I decided to use a similar colour scheme for both the magazine advert and the digipack. The colour palette I used was red, black and white, which were all colours I had text in. I kept this colour palette the same throughout as it kept my work looking professional and uniform. I used mainly a white back ground, with black and white pictures and red or black writing, giving the magazine advert and the digipack a sharp clean look. The look was added to by keeping everything uniform and straight, again making them both look professional. My video was kept sharp with straight shots with little movement and no canted angle shots used. This was done by filming by hand as using a tripod was getting in the way of the microphone stand. I used uniform shots which were repeated throughout, with several mid-shots, close-ups etc…

As well as this I have used the same 4 band members in each of my products. Some bands use either family members, models or photographs as their album covers, but I decided for the purpose of continuity I would keep the same band members. Examples of bands who have used people other than themselves are; Bombay Bicycle Club, Vampire Weekend, Tyler the Creator and the Vaccines. This shows that my products have continuity in that they don’t differ. In addition, I used the same picture on the advert as I used for the cover of my digipack, creating continuity. I chose to do this as most bands use the same image on their adverts as they do for their album covers. This is a convention of most bands in most genres. Ideally, I would have liked the band to be wearing the same clothes in all of my products; however, this wasn’t feasible as the filming was done on separate back to back days.

My two ancillary texts are effective in working together to promote the album. They magazine advert and the music video work together to increase awareness and interest in the digipack/ album.  This shows that they work together and are an effective combination, as we can see that they are related.