Evaluation Question 2 (Final) // Nathan Beard

Evaluation Question 2

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

Firstly, my ancillary tasks, the digipak and advert, I made a  purposeful effort to consider both when planning for the design of my digipak, this allowed me to create a brand image that would be present across all of the elements of the band. The idea for the branding of the band came form the brief I initially set of 'simple but memorable'.

I believe that the designs with true coherence, are created with the development of the materials, shapes, colour caried out simultaneously, as this allows each element to accent and complement each other, this allows for a meaningful design that allows for a level of consistency through the elements and infact the products themselves. This aided me in creating a consistent brand that makes the band recognizable. 

My digiapk is a 6 panel design, with the main part being the three circles on the cover, this sets the tone for the design of both the digipak and the advert, with the circles design caring on to the inside panels with a circle for each member, which clarifies the branding of the three circles each representing a band member. The circles theme is further applied to the back cover where they are used a s bullet points to list the songs.

The magazine advert also embraces this theme in order to maintain the brand image and make it easily recognizable, consisting of the cover image from my digipak and some text to let the audience know what they are looking at.

When we where creating our video it was important to take into account the genre of the music, in this case indie. As this ultimately impacts on the viewers and therefore it is extremely important to conform to a style they like. The style of this video is very much influenced by the style of my digipak with blurs being used to link to semi transparent glass like elements of my digipak and advert. 

A further consideration throughout the process were the fonts as these would be used in every product, therefore they had to be flexible and fit not only in a logo but also a digipka, advert and music video. However given that the fonts work, they successful link the elements together.

Overall I believe that a successful and purposeful link has been created between all of the products, and that the brand image that has resulted portrays the band well.

Inspiration For New Digipak

Evaluation Question 3

Music Video Analysis - Shake It Off

Artist: Taylor Swift
Song name: Shake it off


Genre Characteristics: As this is a pop song the audience automatically expect to see things they associate with pop songs. E.g. Bright colors, fast tempo video. The video features various dance routines for different genres of dance. In each routine we see the dancers wearing the appropriate costume for each genre. For example, 'Snapback' hats and gold chains in the hip-hop element.

Relationship Between Lyrics and Visuals: All the dancers start dancing and 'shaking' to match the lyrics in the chorus 'shake shake shake'.

Relationship Between Music and Visuals: The upbeat nature we expect to see in a pop video is matched with the dancers moving in time with the beat and helps to amplify the fast nature of the video.

Demands of the Record label: The frequent close-up shots we see of Taylor Swift are needed to present her as the main star of the video. Her image as one of the biggest music stars in the world has to be reinforced in her music and is done so by using the camera shots to show her off.

Frequent Reference to Notion of Looking: Due to the audience of this music video it isn't sexualised very much, yet we still see examples of the 'male gaze' for example when the dancers are twerking. Taylor also makes direct eye contact with the camera and also to the other dancers. This gives the impression that she is addressing the viewer directly with the video and lyrics.

Artist Developing Motifs: This pop style is not Taylor Swifts usual style of music as she first burst onto the scene as a country music singer.

Intertextual References: The main reference that I noticed was that of 'High school music'. This is seen when they all jump into the air in unison whilst dressed as cheerleaders. The varous dances routines can also be seen to make reference to the dance films 'Step-Up'.