Digipak Front Cover

We did originally have the idea of using a motorway at night as our front cover background, however after looking at the pictures that Tom took during filming we saw that we had good enough pictures to edit them into potential front covers. Going through the pictures we saw that we had a great side angle picture and there was enough room to put in a guitar which would really help put across what genre the music on this album is from. Above was our first design of the digipak front cover which Tom created after got the pictures we wanted.

Going through the pictures we saw that we had a great side angle picture and there was enough room to put in a guitar which would really help put across what genre the music on this album is from. Above was our first design of the digipak front cover which Tom created after got the pictures we wanted.

After Tom created the digipak front cover we started to ask for some audience feedback and once again our classmates all liked the front cover but they felt the font was letting it down. This was the same problem on the magazine advert so we decided to use Foo Fighters actual font on this album as they had used this font on some of their previous album. After changing the font to what Foo Fighters have used the front cover looked more realistic and more like something you would expect to see on the shelves in HMV. However I discovered it wasn't only Foo Fighters who use the same font on more than one album, another well-known band also does this. Oasis have used the same font/emblem for no less than five albums. Below you can see that there are five albums each with the Oasis emblem on them and they can be found in the corners of the cover.

Magazine Advert Final Product

This is the final product of our Magazine Advert.

Magazine Advert Construction

When turning up to a lesson early one day I saw that group member Alex had also been practicing a magazine advert. Although he maintained it was only a practice the rest of the group encouraged him that this was perhaps our best idea of a magazine advert. All that was left to do was to get some feedback from our classmates again, who were also our target audience.

The advert above kept within the continuity we chose through all three tasks which was to add a black, white and red colours to all tasks. This advert has clearly stuck to this in a very coordinated way with black being the background at the top of the page with a red coloured font. When the background was red the font colour was white which meant all three colours would stand out and still make the advert look neat. The only problem we had from our audience feedback was that they didn't like the font for the date, the digipak name at the top of the page and the name of the band underneath the digipak. However we were all pleased that our audience liked the advert as a whole and the changing the font was going to be time consuming.

To change the font problem we would have to think of the best solution to get the highest amount of marks possible. We then had an idea of using the same font used on previous Foo Fighters album would help the advert look more like real magazine adverts. Below is the font from two previous Foo Fighters album, the one on the left is from the album Foo Fighters and the one on the right has become the Foo Fighters emblem. By using the same font associated with Foo Fighters we decided to ditch the idea of having the album name of the poster as the digipak photo would be sufficient enough. All that was left to do was change the release date, and we changed it by putting an 'out now' title at the top of the page rather than on the bottom.

Practice Magazine Advert

To make our magazine advert we would use the software called Photoshop in which to construct our magazine. I started to practice making a magazine advert on Photoshop and below shows how.

The picture above was taken to be used as the background and i feel it is a very effective background. The turned the picture black and white then changed the contrast and brightness before adding a tint of red. The black, white and red effect was used to help blend in the digipak when it is finished because across all three tasks we have added this effect.

The screenshot above shows the advert half completed with the title in position and the stores where you can purchase the album at the bottom. I have also put in a short review that you can see on many other magazine adverts. I have chosen to use Q magazine as the source of the quote as this is one of many magazines that have the audience we want to target.

This was the finished product from my practice at making an advert. I instantly feel that the digipak is what stands out most which was the idea as that is what we are advertising. I have also put in more reviews from NME and KERRANG! who, once again, both have the audience we wish to aim our product at. However after showing a few classmates we had one piece of feedback that was shared by everyone who saw it. Our audience felt that it looked more like a film advert rather than a music album advert. Although this was only a practice we now knew how to create a better advert than the one above.

Rough Cut

Rough Cut from Jake Clements on Vimeo.

Practice Digipak Cover

Here is one of my practice digipak covers that i made in photoshop a while ago. I originally thought it looked quite good, however after some audience feedback I saw that the colour's i used clashed with what else we had planned for the video. However I kept the design just incase we changed our mind and wanted to use the idea.

Current Magazine Adverts

Below are some album adverts from the magazine 'Rock Sound'. Inside the magazine was several adverts for new albums and they were all of the same genre of our band. This was a very advantageous piece of research from Jacob, who bought the magazine, as it provided us with some ideas of how to lay out our magazine in terms of fonts, layouts, advertisements, colours, etc. Here are some of the magazine adverts below.

This first magazine advert took up a whole page in Rock Sound magazine but the genre of this advert is more gothic than what our advert will be. The font at the top looks like its written in chalk. The images on the advert include a small picture of the album but the band is in the background. This advert also contains tour dates which i don't think we will be including in our magazine advert but the idea of showing where to buy it from is something i think we should consider.
The advert above only took up a small slice of the page but doesn't show the album or digipak in it at all. It contains the band posing for the picture. The feature I like about this advert is the release date is clear to see and so it should be as its the most important feature of any digipak advert as you are meant to be making sales, so to do this your target audience need to know when the release date is.

Out of the four magazine adverts i can see that this advert i aimed at a different audience compared to our digipak and the other three adverts on this blog. The font used is bold and plain which shows that their audience don't care about being different as the name of the band and the release date can be clearly seen along with a small image of the album in the bottom right corner.

Out of the four adverts this would be my favourite as it has a nice clear layout and the font used help to add mystery to this advert. The most clear and largest text on the advert is the name of the artist which is next to the picture of the album. Once again the release date is clear to see which is another piece of evidence of why we should include the release date in our advert. The background is black and the main lure of the advert comes from the name of the artist which is in large bold white letters. But once again the effect on the font helps to make this advert more effective in capturing the attention of any potential reader.

I feel that i magazine advert will have to lure the attention of the reader to turn them from a potential customer into a buying customer. From looking at these adverts I can see that we only need to put across the important facts of the digipak, like release date and artist. I would strongly put across to the group the importance of this as it would be pointless not to include this information.