Thursday, 26 November 2015

Development of Magazine Advert Designs

Design #1

Design #2

Design #3

Final Design

The results from our 'Poll Everywhere' poll showed poster 'A' to be the preferred design for our magazine advert.

Ancillary Photos

Photos used on our digipak and magazine advert:

 
 
 
Both of the above photos were taken at our first location, the Victorian era house. We used the first photo on our magazine advert and the second photo on the front of our digipak. We made sure that the photos were all of good quality and we used a Cannon DSLR to assure this. We chose these photos because they suit the atmosphere and mood of our video because the actress is melancholy and has a wistful look. This links strongly to our influencing artist Lana Del Rey who's style is very similar and she often writes songs about lost loves and her look/style displays this. We used the same costume and makeup as in our video and decided that red lips would be a central focus throughout all the products. We will edit the photo to be black and white however keep the red colour of her lips to emphasise this theme. The black and white effect will emphasise our 50s era theme and the antiques used in the video while the pop of colour represents the more modern look of the actress at the beach.  
 
The photo below is used on the back of our digipak and nicely links the ancillary product to our music video because it uses our second location and the actress wearing the second costume:
 
The four photos below were used on the four remaining panels of our digipak. They are all extreme close ups of objects used in our music video and links with the vintage themes in the video. Using these images creates a strong link between the digipak and our video and the images were also made black and white with subtle hints of colour, linking the magazine advert.
Photos we chose not to use:
 We chose to use only one photo of our actress on the beach and this was a long shot of her looking out to sea. We felt that this represented the wistful atmosphere of the video rather than a close up of the actresses face. We also decided to only use a close up of her face on the front of the digipak which is rather conventional of indie-pop album covers. Our group decided that using many extreme close ups of antiques from the video on our digipak, was more effective than long shots of locations. This is because these were very important factors in our music video which created interesting and unique shots inbetween our shots of the actress miming or location shots. Therefore the rest of the photos taken at the beach, which are below, were rejected from our final digipak design. Although the photo of the vintage chair suited our theme, it was not an object used in our music video and also did not suit our theme of extreme close ups on the rest of the panels.


 

Saturday, 21 November 2015

Development of Digipak Designs

Design #1


This was a basic design for our digipak. The shots were varied with extreme close ups to long shots. We decided that the outside of the digipak should have shots of the beach while the inside was the shots inside the house. We will be using the same typography on our digipak and advert as the one on our music video to create synergetic links. We were unsure of the long shot of the beach on the front cover of the digipak because although our chosen artist is an indie artist, she has a style similar to Lana Del Rey who is an indie-pop artist. Lana Del Rey commonly has an image of herself on her album covers in a similar way to pop artists. 

Design #2
 
We chose to have the front of the digipak as a close up of our artists face because alhough this is not common for indie artists, it suited her style. The image is of the actress at the beach, while the back of the digipak is of the back of our actresses head. This creates an artistic image of a 360 degree movement around her head. The inside of the digipak has been changed to the beach and is one continous shot of the beach landscape. This has two sides of empty beach with our actress in the background on the third side. We also included an image of a ring which is significant in our video and the song is also called 'Gem' which provides illustrative links.

Design #3

This design progresses to make all the images have a filter of black and white and this links to our music video idea. Most of our shots are of antique items and the actress has makeup relating to the 50s era and so the black and white filter relates to the theme of an older time period. We have used mostly close ups or extreme close ups which also relate to the shots used in our video while some sections still contain beach shots to keep a link with our second location.

Final Design


This design is very similar to Design #3 however we have just perfected the images used. We chose to only include one image of the beach as this is an important location in the video because it represents the actress escaping her situation of an abusive boyfriend and all of the gifts of jewellery he gave her however the beach is not the most important image from our video. This led us to include extreme close ups of antique objects on the rest of the digipak because these items are key shots in our video while jewellery is also extremely important. We decided to keep the image of the actress on the front of the digipak to keep with the idea that although the music is indie based, she still has elements of other genres in a similar way to Lana Del Rey and this suggests that the artist would be a key focus of the products created to showcase their look and style. The typography will be kept the same throughout the digipak and is the same font used on our music video and the magazine advert to create synergy. The black and white filter is still used because as stated for design #3, it represents the antique objects and older time period look throughout our video however we will give the digipak a pop of colour by keeping the red lips on our actress on the front cover. The red lips are a common theme throughout our music video, with extreme close ups of them miming and our actress also removes the lipstick in one shot to represent her removing the things she wore for her boyfriend. We decided that they also represent how the actress escaped to the beach wearing more modern clothing and so creates a contrast between the black and white vintage side of the music video and the more modern colourful side.

Inspiring Digipaks

Arcade Fire
We chose this as an example of an indie artist digipak because it has typical illustrative artwork which is representative of the indie genre. The disjunctive art adds interest and depth to the digipak and the colours are very typical of indie-folk artist album covers.
The 1975

We chose this as an example of an indie artist digipak because the minimalist art and colours is controversial of the indie artist who commonly strip back the look the look of their merchandise and promotion in order to let the music express the band's style. Our group liked their disk design because the plain colour and synchronous typography makes it simple but memorable.
Foals

We chose this as an example of an indie artist digipak because the images are representing the artist's style and are illustrative of their music's lyrics. They also use a lot of artists close up shots of things linking to their music videos which our group liked because they add a lot of interest and synergy throughout the artist's promotional pieces.

Artists belonging to the indie genre are very varied as the indie genre is for 'independent' artists, usually because their style is so unique that they do not fit into any niche categories. With this in mind, we decided to explore some artists from other genres that had some similarities with out own chosen artist, Natalie Lungley.
Rihanna

Although Rihanna is not an indie artist, our group really liked the design of her digipak because it had a similar style to our video. Our artist Natalie Lungley, although an indie artist, has strong links to Lana Del Rey who is an indie-pop artist. This made out group want to explore some pop artists and we found Rihanna's 'Loud' album. She has red lips with matching hair, and red lips is a feature throughout our own music video. We liked the link to our strong use of make up and have decided to use close up images of our actress to create a similar style.

Gem Magazine


Gem Digipak - Version 1