Magazine reflection

The first draft of my magazine advert currently seems to not be conventional to our genre. The colours of the advert are black and white, which whilst it connotes a contrast in positioning suggesting a journey or a break up, they are not colours associated with the alternative music genre rather Jazz or Blues. What makes this draft conventional is that it has an image of the album front cover, so a link can be made between the advert and the artist because an image of the artist is not used. The language is simplistic and limited as I feel that people will be more inclined to look at the advert and absorb the information. The layout is simple so that we do not draw attention from the focus points of the advert, e.g. the track list or the image of the album. We also used the colour red for ‘out now’, to draw emphasis that it can be purchased, red also connotes that the artist is in love or has a passion for music.

This advert may make it hard for the target audience to build a relationship with the artist, as they cannot see who the artist is all they can see is the name of the artist. This could be beneficial as it could create a ‘buzz’ for the artist. Although more likely than not it will be detrimental to the relationship of our artist and the audience

To reiterate, we chose the black and white coloured striped pattern in the background because we thought it could be eye catching to attract the audiences attention, but simplistic enough to not draw attention from the key points of the advert. The Image of the album artwork was consolation for not having a picture of the artist; this is so that some connection between the advert and the product can be made. 

This draft has encouraged me to approach my second attempt of a magazine advert in a different manor. I will want to include an image of the artist so that a relationship will be easier to form between the target audiences, I will focus on drawing attention to the artist. I will include the image of the album artwork, as I believe this technique will be successful in attracting sales and potential sales. Unlike this draft I would want to use more naturalistic colours and lighting, to connote peace of mind representing his music will be personal, making a closer link between the artist and the audience. I think my first draft was lacking the opportunity to gain additional information about the artist, so I will want to include a website link. I will keep the list of songs similar.

Digipak reflection

I think the digipak I created was conventional and does follow codes and conventions of digipaks used within the Industry. The image used on the CD and the back slide makes it conventional to the alternative genre. The image we used was the hollow part of the guitar, in which you can see the strings and the bottom of the guitar’s bodywork. This is conventional to our Artist and to the genre as a guitar is a reoccurring instrument that appears within the song and is often one of the leading instruments that the audience can hear, thus relating the genre to this instrument.

I have a six-slide layout, which is common for Digipaks; I believe this will allow the audience to relate best to our artist ‘Justin Oakley’. Each slide of my Digipak is used for a different purpose. Slide 3 for instance is a welcome note from the artist to the audience. I believe that this will be effective in creating a relationship between the artist and the audience, as Justin will be directly interacting to the audience, giving the audience a sense of having role to play in the success of the artist.

Slide 1, my front cover, includes a picture of Justin. This image was used with the intentions to raise brand awareness for the artist, basically so that audience know whom the artist is as he is a new artist. The Front cover also has a white bar along the top and bottom of the slide to add a picturesque feel to the cover, making the artist look extraordinary. The white bars were also used to show the artist’s name; again like the image this was to raise awareness to the artist, as some of the audience may not know his name. By the audience knowing the artist’s name and what he look likes they are more likely to buy albums and make Justin more successful.

We decided to link the CD imagery with the back cover, as I noticed that some of my slides lack cohesion and didn’t look like they belonged to the same digipak. The use of a guitar was pivotal in my planning for the digipak and because of this I thought that the CD image would be a good opportunity to use it, because as the artist consume the product the CD is the last point of contact before it is inserted into the playing device and I therefore wanted the image to be representative of the artist and instantly placing the audience into the mindset that the artist will be exceptional at playing and instrument, in this case the guitar. The decision to use a guitar is conventional in the sense that our alternative genre has a fixation on showing the artist playing the instrument, thus instruments becoming iconography for the genre. Potentially, if I were to change anything I would change the font used. The reason I say this is because I wouldn’t change the image used, as I believe it links well with the back page of the album cover. The font could be changed to something less industrial that looks as if it could be found on word processing software such as Microsoft office.

The welcome note slide has the background of a guitar, with a low opacity image of Justin in the right corner and the message to the left of the picture. We decided to use the guitar again for the same reason as we did in the back slide and CD slide-to create fluidity between slides for the audience to look through, this is far the ease of the consumer so that they do not think it is a hassle to read it and take in the messages of our slides and hopefully develop a stronger likening for Justin. The image of Justin was again so that the audience can develop a connection to him. The choice of language of our message as well is humble to the fans. We did this so that the artist isn’t perceived to be egotistical, but genuine. The main colour used is orange. This connotes warmth and a feeling of summer. This was used for two reason; one, independent research shows that, 17/21 people more likely to consume music from the alternative genre in the summer and therefore the warmth of the colour can remind the audience of the summer tie when they appreciate the music most.

The back page follows the same thought pattern as the other slides; the guitar was used as an anchor to ground the audience into a familiar background. At the bottom of the slide is the songs list and the barcode, we put these there as this is key information and before buying our product I expect the consumer to skim read the front and back and therefore it is vital for the back slide to be appealing. If I was to change anything about this slide I would change the theme of the page so that it suites the front slide rather than being different as it may weaken the bond between the artist and audience. 

If I were to complete this task again I would change some ideas I used, for instance some of my slides lack cohesion in the sense that they do not follow the same theme as the rest, e.g. my front cover looks contrapunctual to the CD slide and the Back slide as the front cover looks modern where as the other two slides look more traditional. I would also change the locations we used as imagery. The locations we used to acquire our pictures we limited due to weather conditions and lighting and we therefore used a local field because we believe it can fit in with some of the expectations of the audience for the artist, perhaps we could have used a broken building to connote the emotional suffering of the artist which is present in some of his songs. Finally I would perhaps change the images we used as they appear at the moment to be distant to the audience, which could be detrimental to the relationship formed between the two, instead we should utilise this space to really draw the audience into a sense of familiarity with the artist.

Planning lighting and colour

Subculture theories, CCCS, Hebdige and McCraken.

The three main Sub-culture theories are CCCS, Hebdige and McCracken.

CCCS suggests that all subcultures are a reaction towards the mainstream, and are created through the suggestion of ideas to the audience-Hegemony, this theory also states that all subcultures start from one culture similar to Theodor Adorno’s theory that music genres have become standardised. 

McCraken disagrees with CCCS stating that there is a vast array of values and ideals and therefore we cannot say that all subcultures come from one culture. McCraken also says that subcultures should be called little cultures and each one is different to the next.

Hebdige concludes that all subcultures only appear to be different, but are fundamentally the same suggesting that genres can easily target a wide range of audience, as tastes in music can be similar.

Copyright

Copyright in Britain is part of the copyright, designs and patents act 1988. It restricts anybody using somebody else’s product without their permission-usually an agreement can be made for a sum of money. Copyright is a method that protects an artist’s brand image as the song and videos can be kept the way the artist intended for them to be-Copyright lasts for 60 years from the release date but can also be renewed by the artist at any stage, it also keeps the song exclusive for the artist as the audience will only know the song in the original version, unless the artist says otherwise. For instance in the 00’s a song ‘Eternal Flame’ was released by Atomic Kitten but it was originally a Bangles song and those not old enough to remember or know the Bangles would believe the song is an Atomic Kitten song.

We are using a song from Jason Mraz -‘I won’t give up’ for our coursework   and therefore we are tasked with gaining the copyright permission from Mraz’s record label-Atlanta records. Getting the copyright for this song is vital as failing to produce such permission in the light of using the product to earn money is an illegal offence as well as suggesting that the product is your own, both offences can result in a large fine,  in which is not optimum for us as the fine would be far more than what we can pay.

The research into copyright not only has highlighted the implications of not providing copyright and the punishments for violating the law, but it also has shown us how to gain copyright. In response to this research the group and I have requested to use the song from Atlanta Records on the terms that we do not try to make money from it, we do not change the sound of the song and we keep some of the original messages within the song. As we are using the song for a school project we are more likely to be able to use this song, whereas a large company like BBC would almost always need to pay a large sum of money for the usage.