Out of the 3 ancillary tasks; the website, the digipack and the magasine advert, we chose to do the digipack and the magasine advert.
The digipack measurements will need to be 57cm by 12.5cm, and we have to create a brand identity within our promotional package
We are going to create a flat plan of our magasine advert and post it on here so that we are clear on what we are doing and the ideas that we have.
Brand Identity: We want to be very clear on our artist and who she is appealing to, as finding a target audience is vital for our artist to sell enough records to be able to make another one. As our genre is electropop, and after looking at other artists of the same genre, we know that we must sell our music through the artists image. To do this effectively, I feel we should have the artist looking directly into the camera so as the target audience feels a connection with her. We also want to link our artists look to how she appears in our video, as we will feature this as the main song of the album. Other artists have acheived this by either naming the album after their main song; we could do this because 'Dollhouse' is the song which is the turning point in our artists abusive relationship and the point where she stands up to her boyfriend. We could make up an award for that single so we could feature the song more obviously on the album, or put something such as 'Featuring the hit single Dollhouse'. Other ideas are using our track as a bonus track, however I don't think would work as well as some other ideas mentioned.
Typeface: We have already thought of our typography; we want to only use 3 different fonts as we feel any more would make the page look busy and distract the reader from the actual information. We want to use a bold, simple font for the artists name so that is the first thing readers notice, and then a more colourful, eye catching font for the name of her album. Any other details we feel should be similar or the same to that of the additional font in our digi-pack so we are keeping these fonts associated with our artist. We were thinking of a curled, perhaps hand-written style to imply the artists young age and her innocence. We want to incorporate the name of the artist, her album, and any additional information such as awards she has won, tour dates, where to buy the album, her website etc.
Selling music through the artists image: We want to use only one image of the artist which we feel is the most eye catching and unusual but that also links to her genre and music video. I think eye contact is important because our artist needs to establish who she is and her brand identity, and we use a lot of voyeurism in our video so this needs to link with the magasine advert. By doing this the reader feels like they have a connection with our artist which is important for selling her album. We feel if we use a shot where the artist looks most 'doll-like' would be a good idea as this is implies the name of the track on the album and keeps her brand identity constant. We want to use mise en scene that links to the idea of the artist being like a 'doll', and also intertextuality from the story of 'Alice in Wonderland' via the looking glass scene and the tea party scene. We are unsure of whether we want to use this on the magasine advert however; this may be better suited to using only on the digipack as it may be too confusing/busy for readers- however it may prove eye catching if we used it effectively.
Artists image: The artist should look very feminine as this is typical of the genre of elctropop, and either go in the innocent femininity such as Lily Allen, or more provocative femininity such as Katy Perry. We intend to make our artist to encorparate features of both of these, but perhaps not particularly fit into a category as this gives as more scope and creativity for photos. Given the artists age, innocence should play a part in our artists look; wide eyes and bare feet suggest this, whilst the issues the artist is going through are more mature and therefore she should also have an element of naughtiness/playfulness. We plan to acheieve this doll-like look by having heavy blusher, bright pink lipstick, and big black lashes to look extremely artificial but also innocent. The artists clothing should also incorporate this innocent but fake and dollike look.
House Colours: We want to use a variety of colours to represent the variety of emotions our artist is feeling, but we are also aware these colours cannot be too apparant or obvious in the magazine advert, as again, this would be too much for a small magasine advert that is desgined only for the purpose of getting information across whilst catching the readers eye. However, we could use a few of these colours to begin with just for the advert, then continue to develop these colours through the digipack. Colours we are thinking of include pastels but mixed with bright colours, as this will be eyecatching and represents the artists personality; the pastels represent her innocence, naivety and childlike features and her subdued emotions whilst her boyfriend was controlling her. The bright colours, such as bright pinks and greens, represent her more vibrant personality when she stands up to her boyfriend and lets her emotions show.
The camera angle of the photo should not be too complicated; it is more important the amount of lighting on the artists face so people recognise her easily. The colour scheme should also not be too varied as this can make the advert look too messy and may put readers off looking at it. Similar colours should be used from the video and the album, and we should use the most eye catching colour so as to make readers notice the page immeadiatly.
Some important ideas to think about are:
The font should be kept the same, or only use 3 different fonts.
Use de-saturated or saturated colours to catch the readers eye.
Overexposed is another effect that could prove interesting.
Using a lot of white space could be thought provoking and keeps things to the bare minimum so people are more likely to notice, whereas visual clutter often creates the opposite effect as readers are more likely to skim over the page. More cluttered scenes are sometimes useful inside the digipack, but not on the front cover, and cluttered music video scenes sometimes also catch the viewers eye as long as its not too heavy and used on all scenes, as this would mean viewers will lose interest trying to catch up.
There are two main types of font we could use; Serif, which is a handwriting style, more feminine, softer and more personal, whereas sans-serif is more blocked, manly, and bolder. I think we will use both of these, as Serif suits our artists style more, but Sans-Serif is more obvious and would stand out more; the boldness could also represent the artists new found confidence.
The best way to make something stand out is either Black On White or White On Black. We might use this, but I don't think this would suit our genre or artist very well, as we don't feature these colours very much in our music video. Although these colours might be very heavily featured in other videos on the album, this would be very unusual as most artists stick to one theme for each album so as the target audience are buying into a collective idea rather than a random mix of various ideas
Our advert would appear in a magasine that is aimed at the same target audience as ours; fashion/ celebrity magasines such as 'more!' and 'OK!' would be ideal magasines for this. I will link my advert to my main task of creating a video and a digipack by using the same images, clothing, hair, make-up and setting that are in the music video. Many artists of our genre only take links from one song into their magasine advert; often the most recent release. This will not only help the promotion of the artist but also their song. The digipack will also mainly use images from the video we are making, as many artists name and base their album on their most successful song to entice their target audience with something they are similar with.