Evaluation

Video Discussion on our Magazine Advertisement

Here is a video in which me and my partner have had a discussion about our Magazine Advertisement.

Final Magazine Advertisement for the Digipak

This here is our final Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak. As you can see we have taken ideas from both mine and Georgina's design in order to make our finished product. We have used the same wallpaper background and also the same font style as this consistent theme will allow the audience to recognise our Magazine Advertisement and instantly make a link between this and our Digipak. Me and my partner will create a video about the process of creating this final advertisement and also the construction process itself.

Construction of our Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak

In order to create our final Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak, me and my partner both created our own designs/plans as we did with the Digipak. 

The image above is a screenshot of the first stage of our construction process for our Magazine Advertisement. As you can see we have once again incorporated our`frame(and silhouette style into our Magazine Advertisement. By adding features from our Digipak to our Advertisement it creates a link between the two, almost creating a brand identity and style that can be associated with the band that we have created.

The next stage of our construction process was adding our band name and album. We decided to do use the same font style as our Digipak front cover as this will again make a link between the two and strengthen our brand identity.

When I conducted research into Magazine Advertisements for Digipaks I discovered that they usually featured ratings from music magazines or even newspapers. As you can see we have added 5 ratings from different sources this increases the credibility of our advertisement and also encourages the audience to buy the album if they believe the ratings from the sources. We have mide the stars white rather than black as the white stands out and also this colour sticks to our colour scheme. We have used capitals to state where the ratings were from, we have used the same font as our Digipak to keep within a consistent theme.

In order for our Magazine Advertisement to look realistic, we have added a website for our band that we have created. We have also added a our QR code, our logo and also the universal logo. Overall all these features make the Advertisement look more credible and realistic.

First Drafts of our Magazine Advertisement

As you can see from my previous post me and my partner each created our own plans for our Magazine Advertisement. We have now created them on Fireworks in order to get a fell for each of them. We will  now evaluate both plans of the advertasementq and then take elements from both of them to create our final plan.

MY PARTNERS DESIGN

This plan above is my partners design.  It appears simplistic as there is only a minimal amount of information about the band. I like the positioning of the star ratings as they seem to fit well and draw in the viewer due to there colour. I like how my partner has used the same font style and background as our Digipak as it allows a link to be made between the two. The QR code, the logo and also the universal logo all seem to be positioned well as they appear significant but they don't draw too much attention away from other areas of the Magazine Advertisement.

Elements we will consider taking from my partners Magazine Advertisement for the Digipak:

• The position of the star ratings and also the style of font that states the sources of the ratings.
• The QR code which links to our group blog.
• The idea of having our production company logo, the QR code and the universal logo all positioned in the bottom right hand corner of the Advertisement.

Elements that I don not like from this particular plan:

• Overall the Magazine Advertisement does not include enough information about the band.
• There is also too much space on the Magazine Advertisement, maybe adding a visual link to our Digipak would benefit this Magazine Advertisement.

MY DESIGN

This plan above is my design for our Magazine Advertisement. I too have also stuck to our overall theme by using the same wallpaper background as our Digipak. I have also used the same style font so that it appears consistent with our Digipak. I have created a visual link to our Digipak by using the frames from the front cover, but to make it more creative I have added the star ratings within the frames so that it appears more unique. I have however changed the position of the font to the bottom of the Magazine Advertisement.  What I liked from my partners Digipak was the idea of  having the logos in the bottom right hand corner of the Magazine Advertisement so this s a feature that I have also incorporated into my Advertisement.

Elements that I want to incorporate into the final design:

• The visual link to the Digipak by adding the frames to the my Magazine Advertisement.
• The logo's in the bottom right hand corner.
• Also the website in the left hand corner as this works well too.
• The use of the star ratings adds credibility for the Digipak.
• The quote that I have added also adds credibility as it tells a viewer that the Digipak is worth buying and therefore listening too.

Elements that don't work well:

• The Magazine Advertisement itself looks more like a film poster rather than an Advertisement for our Digipak.
• Maybe the font would look better if it was postioined at the top of the Advertisement.
• There also appears to be too much space on the Advertisement itself.

Plans for our Magazine Advertisement

Here are some images of our plans for our Magazine Advertisement. As you can see me and my partner have both created individual plans for our Magazine Advertisement, we have then created a final plan in which we have incorporated elements from both of our plans.

This is my partners plan above.

This plan here is the plan that I have created for our Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak.

This is the final plan for our Magazine Advertisement in which we have incorporated elements from both of our designs.

QR Generator

When researching our Digipaks, we realised that a lot of them usually contained a QR code, which allows them to be taken to a website. This seems a modern way to gain followers and also allows audiences to view updates and bonus information for the band that we have created. For our Digipak we included a QR code from Google images, only when we were constructing our Magazine Advertisement we decided to create our very own QR code that will link to our group blog. To do this we researched the internet and found a website which allowed us to create our very own QR code, above is the screenshot of the creation process.

Here is our very own QR code that will take you to our group blog.

Magazine Advertisement Research for the Digipak

The second ancillary task that me and my partner have to create is a 'Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak. As I previously researched into existing Digipaks before we began ours, I have followed the same process. I have researched into example Magazine Advertisements such as the Madonna and Ellie Goulding below, so that I know the conventions of an existing Magazine Advertisement for a Digipak.

 MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT 1

The magazine advertisement to the left is a magazine advertisement for a Digipak for Madonna. I chose to evaluate this particular magazine advertisement as the bold style drew me in. The central image of Madonna is the main focus of the advertisement. The colours are vibrant and I like the way her face features other images of her self. This is a sentimental way to reach out to her fans. 

The advertisement is fairly simple as it only features one main image, however it is quite effective. I like the font style and positioning, the fact that Madonnas name is in capitals makes it more prominent and therefore reiterates its significance to the advertisement.   I like how a shape has been used with a 'Washout effect' this makes the advertisement seem edgy and creative. 

This font style has been used throughout the advertisement which creates a consistent theme and makes the advertisement look professional. The text style used is easy to read and the shapes behind make it easier for the reader to see the text from afar. The use of the complete black background allows the main image to stand out, the image of Madonna almost appears like a logo as it is emphasised by its position on the advertisement. At the bottom of the  Advertisement in the grey washout box, the text promotes the name of the Digipak 'Celebration'. However the only negative aspect of this Advertisement is that it doesn't feature a link to a website or that it doesn't contain any reviews from any music magazines. As these are aspects that I have seen on other Magazine Advertisements. These are features that I will consider including when creating my Magazine Advertisement.

MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT 2

The Magazine Advertisement to the right is or the artist Ellie Goulding. This is one of her many Magazine Advertisements for her Digipaks. Again this Magazine Advertisement also only features one image which is of the artist ' Ellie Goulding'. What works well about this central image is that there is a subtle link to the quote above it, as she seems to be positioned in a way that connects with the words. The images is photographic and has been edited in a way that makes it appear more edgy, which works well as it is fairly different to her perceived genre of music. This could therefore encourage new potential fans to listen to her style of music.

The font style used is effective as it matches her Digipak therefore making another connection and emphasising her initial identity, which helps her`to be more marketable to an audience. Her name is in capital letters which agin makes it stands out and the style of the font appears to be rounded capital letters which is simple but creative and for this Magazine Advertisement works quite well. 

As you can see this Magazine Advertisement contains a lot of promotional features for Ellie Goulding. Which is an aspect that Madonna's Advertisement didn't really have. The way that each piece of text has been outlined with a simple box makes each statement stand out and therefore draws the viewer into the overall image. Also the positioning of the text without the boxes works well as it fills the bottom of the Advertisement as it is central rather than just being to the left or in a block paragraph which would make it more difficult to read from afar. The fact that this Magazine Advertisement has logo's in the corner from credible sources makes the Magazine Advertisement look professional this is also a feature that we will consider incorporating into our Magazine Advertisement for our Digipak.

Video Discussion about the Digipak

Here is a video in which me and my partner have talked about the processes and stages we went through when creating our Digipak.

Final Digipak

This here is a screenshot of our actual Digpak. Me and my partner Georgina will now create a video in which will we discuss the creation of our Digipak, and we will also evaluate what works well and what we would change if we were to re-create our Digipak.

Further Construction of the Digipak

This screenshot above show the very start of our construction process. As you can see we have decided to use the template when constructing our Digipak. From my market research the results showed that Design 3 was the most preferred design from our all our designs. So I have uploaded this front cover design into the position on the Digipak. We will now begin to add to the other panels.

As you can see here we have duplicated our edited image of our wallpaper background. As we have mentioned this is an image we took from the Art Gallery of some patterned wallpaper. We decided that because it fits well with our old fashioned theme we are going to use this throughout our Digipak which will create a consistent professional theme.

This screenshot above just shows how I edited the images of our frames to go onto our Digipak. I uploaded the image to Fireworks and then used the eraser tool to delete the art inside and the background around the frame. We will now add this frame to our Digipak, and then choose an image to add into the frame.

This screenshot shows how we have added a production photo into the frames that we have added to our Digipak.  However when adding the frames we realised the layout of our Digipak was incorrect and that the features we had added were in the wrong place. So I shall re-order and rearrange the layout of our frames and add them to the correct panel.

 TRACK LISTING PANEL

When me and my partner Georgina were creating our Digipak, we had several discussions about the style and layout of the Track Listing Panel. This here is an example of our Track Listing Panel when we first began adding our Track names. However as you can see the size of the font appears too big and we were unable to fit all of our tracks on the panel. Therefore we decided to decrease the size of the font and consider changing the position of the font itself. We went with a more central theme as you can see below.

This image here is our actual Track Listing Panel. We have repositioned out Track Listing into the centre, as we believe it fits better and also makes it look more professional. Also rather than simply using numbers we have used a simple line to separate the track lists this appears classic and creative. We have also added  some bonus features using the same font as the track listing this allows our panel to have a consistent theme and add to the overall identity of our Digipak. We have also added a barcode, a QR code, a logo and our own production logo.

This screenshot above shows how we have changed the layout of the frames and added them to the correct panel. We have also added some more frames with production photos in them to stay within our consistent frame theme. As you can see from the lines on the top right hand panel that we were unable to create a lyric book, so we just added some lines to show where the lyric would be placed if we had created one.

This shot shows how we have added 'our message from the band' in the middle top panel. Originally we just had the message from a band by itself on the panel, only we realised that it looked a little too plain. To solve this we added a frame around the 'message from the band' so it looked more creative and also reiterated our frame style theme.

This shot here shows our Final Digipak. We added titles in the correct place such as 'A Little Note' which acts a message from the band and also' Lyrics' which we added to the lyric book panel. We shall upload a video of me and my partner talking about our Digipak and why we made the decisions that we did.

Text Style Change

When we were discussing the colour of our font we originally decided to go with the colour gold so that it would match our old fashioned vintage theme. However when looking closer we thought that maybe the gold would blend too much into the background and wouldn't contrast the other areas of the Digipak as we wanted it too. So we experimented with the colour of the font in order to find the right colour that would contrast the gold colour scheme. In the end we discovered that white would be best to use as it would be easily readable and also wouldn't blend into the gold areas of the Digipak.

Frames with Production Images

As we have mentioned we visited the Art Gallery and took images of the frames. We wanted to add a personal touch to our Digipak, so we have decided to add some production photos into the frames so that we can add them to our overall Digipak design. here are some examples below:

CD Creation

CD DESIGN

The image above is another template that I found from the website that we used our main template from. It is the template for the Cd which again is going to help us with the measurements when we create our CD to go on our Digipak.

This here is an example of our created CD. As you can see their is a link between our CD design and our overall Digipak theme. We have decided to use our wallpaper background, only at first we created the Cd using the same gold colour as the front cover. When adding this to our Digipak we didn't like the way that it seemed to just blend in with the rest of the Digipak. To solve this problem we decided to experiment with the colour of our background. The best colour that we have decided to use is a light greyish silver as it contrasts the remaining areas of our Digipak.  We also chose to use the same font style on our CD as we used on the front cover. The font colour was originally black but we decided to change it to white, so that it stands out more and is easily readable.

Results of Market Research

Results of my Market Research from Paige Woods

I have created a presentation to show the results of my Market Research survey. I have used a graph to visualise the results and I have also included some images of my filled out survey.

Market Research Document

I have created a simple word document, which features our 3 Digipack designs. I will hand this out to members of our target audience in order to gain some feedback of which design our audience prefers the most.

Possible Front Cover Designs

From my previous post you can see how we constructed the main areas of our Digipak. We used Fireworks to delete background areas and to also group our silhouettes with our frames. Only now me and my partner Georgina have decided to experiment with the colour of our  background. Our background was always going to be a wallpaper design, we have decided to use the wallpaper image that we took from the art gallery. As you can see from the designs below we have changed the colour to evoke different moods and to also create different contrasting effects. I will conduct some market research in order to see which design our audience prefer the most.

Design 1 

Design 2

Design 3

Constructing our Digipak

I have created a presentation of the process of creating our first draft of our front cover for our Digipak. Press the play symbol in the centre to view the presentation.

Frame Style Research

The Prezi above includes some images of the frame styles that we looked at when we visited the Art Gallery. I have also included some of the production images that we shall add into the images of the frames on our Digipak.

Frame Research for our Digipak

Me and my partner have always known that we wanted our Digipak to be similar to that of our main inspiration which is 'The Cival Wars album cover' (pictured left). This album cover features two old fashioned frames that have the artists as silhouettes in them. This is a concept that we really liked. In order to research the main aspects of our digipak, we travelled to the Wolverhampton Art Gallery ( in which I have embedded a link below), in order to look at frame styles that we could use for our digipak. We will also look for possible backgrounds such as wallpaper or famous art pieces.




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Font Style Research

Font Style Research from Paige Woods

This link will take you to the Font Style Website: http://www.dafont.com/

Beginning our Digipak - Digipak Template

After me and my partner has a discussion about the layout of our Digipak, we decided that we wanted our Digipak to have 6 panels, as we thought this would look better than just 4 panels. We were unsure whether to create a physical Digipak or just to create a computer replicated one on the Macs. We were struggling with how to present our Digpak, so in order to solve this problem, we researched the internet to see if there were any templates or online applications that would help us design our Digipak.

The best website that we found was this website below:

http://www.duplication.ca/printspecs/digipack.htm

This screenshot above shows the webpage that the link will take you too. It featured several different template designs, but because me and my partner decided on the 6 panelled template this is the template that we downloaded into a PDF.  I have highlighted the template that we are going to use. This will help us extremely in the construction of our Digipak.

Actual Image of Template

Because we decided that we are going to create our Digipak on the macs, we viewed the programs that we could use to create our Digipak. They varied from Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, and Adobe Fireworks. After viewing these programs we thought that Fireworks would be the best to use as it has more features than the other programs.

                                                                  

Digipak Discussion

Above is a video of me and my partner discussing our plans for our digipak. We each created a plan for our 6 panel Digipak, talked about our own ideas and then finally merged our plans together in order to create our final plan. We have also brainstormed ideas for our band name and album name which we have also discussed in this video.

This image above is 'Plan 1' this is the plan that my partner Georgina has created.

This image above is my plan for our digipak.

This image above is of our final plan ad final design in which we have incorporated our ideas together. 

This image shows how we have brainstormed names for our Album and also for our Band. Me and my partner have both aggreed on certain names so I have highlighted them by circling the outline.

Digipak Research

Within our A2 media brief we have been asked to create a Digipak for our music video. The Digipak will be part of the promotion package  we need to create for our music video along with a magazine advertisement. In order to make a successful Digipak, I will research into example Digipak's and pick out key features and aspects that we may try and incorporate into our Digipak.

Firstly what is a Digipak?

A Digipak is a patented style of CD, DVD packaging they usually consists of a gatefold (book-style), therefore made from paperboard or card and they always contain a plastic tray capable of holding a disc. The Digipak style of packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums. The front of the Digipak will feature 'album art' that will be responsible for advertising the band therefore the album art needs to be associated with the band. 

What are the conventions of a Digipak?

- A Digipak is a type of CD packaging that is made out of cardboard or heavy papered material.

- They can flip open to appear almost like a book and they can have 4 - 6 panels. One portion of the packaging will open to the left and the other to the right.

- The panel that holds the CD will be made out of plastic, which is usually simply attached to the cardboard background.

- It is more than just a CD and packaging. Foe example the CD will usually contain bonus features such as interviews with the band, bonus songs and video entries.

- Finally it should contain material that will attract an audience to buy the Digipak, therefore it can seem old fashioned as it promotes actually buying the album rather than downloading it.

 

Digipak Analysis from Paige Woods

As you can see I have analysed 2 existing Digipak's in order to see what we need to include in our own.  Please select the full screen symbol on the presentation box to view it full screen.

Audience Feedback via Social Networking

As we have previously uploaded the video of our song to Facebook, we decided to upload our actual finished video to Facebook, in order to obtain audience feedback. Here are a few screenshots to show some of the comments we received.

Final Music Video - 'I See'

This is our final cut of our music video - 'I See'. I believe that evaluating our ' Rough Cut ' has helped us massively to improve our final piece. Watching this final version of our music video you should be able to see the progression and experimentation from our rough cut.

The Editing Process

We are now going to begin to edit our final music video. In order to help us edit our final music video to a high standard we have evaluated our rough cut, so we can see what shots worked and which didn't. Once we had reviewed our old footage we realised that we were unable to use any of it, due to subtle changes that would have affected the continutity and fluidity of our overall music video.

These changes were :

- We had changed the main location

- We had made changes to the mise en scene

- Louises make-up and clothing had changed

- The old footage was not as good of a standard to the new footage

THE EDITING PROCESS

As we recorded our footage over two days, we had a fair amount of footage to upload to the macs. When uploading it to the programme 'Imovie' it automatically splits the footage into two, below are some screenshots of our two days of footage.

This screenshot above is all of our footage from 'Day 1'

This screenshot displays all of our footage from Day 2

BLACK + WHITE/ COLOUR WITH EFFECT

Before me and my partner even began filming we knew that we wanted our music video to be in black and white. We believed that it would appear more proffessional and classic. As you can see from the screenshot below I have shown how we edited our footage into black and white. However when editing there were a few shots that we thought may look better in colour, to show this I have created a video that displays the shot I experimented with. I decided to experiment with this shot as in our video it acts as a memory/flashback.  So I thought that it would be more appropriate to change the effect in order to change the mood of the scene. I reverted the clip back to its orginal colour and then added another effect called 'Dream'. As you can see it has added a blurry effect round the edges of the shot therefore making it appear distant and almost fantasy like.

BLACK AND WHITE VS COLOUR

This screenshot above shows how we experimented with the use of colour. I chose to show this shot as I believe this shot displays the beneifts of using black and white rather than the original colour. As this shot dramatically improved when the clip was converted into black and white.

COLOUR WITH ADDED EFFECT

FOOTAGE LENGTH PROBLEM + PRECISION EDITING

As you can see from the screenshot below, me and my partner encoutered a few problems when begining to edit. One of the main problems I came across was that when you add footage to Imovie, if you have an audio track that is longer in duration than the anount of footage you have uploaded it deletes. To solve this problem I discovered that by adding a tiitle sequence and changing its duration to the length of the audio track so it doesn't delete any. This is why you can see a 'red curtain title sequence' in the space of our footage on the screenshot below. This red transition helped us to view how much of the audio track we had left, and therfore how much more footage we need to add.

The screenshot above also shows the precision editing that me and my partner experimented with in order to increase the fluidity of our music video. Beneath the main editing window, when we selected precision editing a section poppped up that showed our footage and allowed us to edit it more precisely.

This screenshot displays another problem that me and my partner aimed to solve by cropping this particular picece of footage in Imovie. When recodring this shot we didn't realise that there was a number of posters in the corner of the shot. Only when we began editing did we realise that the posters in the shot made our video appear amateur. So we attempted to crop the shot to minimise the sight of the posters. We managed to limit the amount that the viewer sees, but we were unable to completely remove them from the shot. Here is a video showing the subtle difference between the shot that we have cropped and the shot that we haven't.

MOTIF SHOT - EXPERIMENTATION

This screenshot above shows how I experimented with this dynamic stand out shot in our music video. I began to experiment with certain shots and effects that were available on Imovie.  My favourite effect which I previously used on the 'Flashback shot' is the Dream effect, I believe it adds an unusual fantasy effect which contrasts the genre of our video. However we do not want to contrast or challenge the conventions of our genre/music video, so we will not be using this shot within our final cut of our music video.

At 4 minutes and 3 seconds into the video you will see the motif shot, in which I have experimented with the effects on Imovie.