Evaluation

For my evaluation this year I decided to be more creative and have decided to use a prezi to present my information. Below is the finished product.



My videos on my evalutation play on the Mac however on some computers they don't. I will add the links to my videos for the questions below...

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4


Audience Feedback
Audience Feedback 2

Below is a brief discussion myself and my partner had about our magazine advertisement designs.

Final Magazine Advertisement

Below is our Final Magazine Advertisement for our Digipack. We have taken ideas from both mine and Paiges design and below is the finished product. We have decided to pretty much use the same front cover as our actual digipack as this will allow our target audience to instantly recognise the advertisement, create a 'brand identity' and allow the link to be made from the advertisement to our Digipack.

Construction of the Magazine Advertisement

Comparing the Design that I had come up with, and the Design that Paige had come up with, we took ideas from both to construct our final Magazine Advertisement for our Digipack. Below I will take you through the construction process. 

As you can see we have decided to stick to our digipacks initial front cover and use this for our Digipacks overall theme. We positioned the Silhouettes and frames in the middle of the advertisement as this is what is going to capture our target audiences attention and draw them into our project. By sticking to our theme of the digipack we have created our own 'brand identity' so this advertisement will be instantly recognisable with our digipack. 

We then added in the title of our Digipack and the bands name. Again we have stuck to the text style we used on our digipack and positioned it at the top of the advertisement. We have done this as it is in the style of our digipack and it is basically our digipacks front cover.

From my market research, I found that when promoting a digipack, lots of advertisements included star ratings from well known magazines/newspapers ect which will give the digipack credibility and encourage people to buy the digipack if they know it will be a good listen. We decided to position the star ratings underneath the silhouettes. The stars colour is white as this is the colour scheme we used on our digipack. 

We then decided to add the names of the magazines in capital letters but a much smaller font that our previous titles. We chose a font that matched our old fashioned/antique theme and again had the text in white as this is what we used on our digipack. 

I really liked on Paige's design how she included a quote from a listener onto her advertisement. So we used this same quote and positioned it underneath the star ratings. Again the text matches our theme along with the colour scheme.

Finally, to give our magazine advertisement credibility and make it more realistic, we included a made up website for our band and three symbols in the bottom corner. We included our QR code, our production company's logo and our music logo. 

First Drafts of our Magazine Advertisement

As my post before showed, myself and my partner Paige both created plans for the magazine advertisement and below are the advertisement's we both constructed on fireworks. We will take elements from both to create our final project.

My Design...

Above is my design I created for our Magazine Advertisement. I was going for a simplistic approach by having as minimal amount of information as possible. I used the same background on our digipack as well as the text style for the bands name and the digipacks name. I included star ratings to give our digipack credibility and encourage an audience to buy it. I also included the bands website and a QR code, our company's logo and a music company's logo. 

What Worked Well...

- Sticking to the theme we have used throughout our digipack through the background, text/font style and text/font colouring.

- Included a QR code that I had generated my self.

- Included our production company logo and a credibility music industry logo.

- Included the bands website.

- The positioning of the star ratings. 

What Didn't Work Well...

- The advertisement as a whole looks to plain and an audience may become unsure or confused as to what the product being promoted actually is. 

- There is to much of a space between each element so it looks like I have spread them out to fill the whole page. 

Paiges Design...

Below is Paiges Design for our Magazine Advertisement for our Digipack. She has also stuck to the overall theme of our digipack by using the same background/text styles/ colour scheme ect. However different from mine she has included the frames onto the digipack which I really like. She has added the star ratings inside the frame and also included a quote from a listener. She too has added the same symbols as me and website and has positioned the bands name and digipack albums name at the bottom of the advertisement. 

What Worked Well...

- Sticking to the overall theme that we have used in our digipack.

- The use of the frames onto the magazine advertisement.

- The use of the star ratings to give the album credibility.

- The use of a quote from a potential listener so an audience would be more inclined to buy the album knowing that someone has listened to it and thinks its worth buying.

What Didn't Work Well...

- Upon further inspection the audience may also get confused with the product actually being promoted because it looks and feels like an advertisement for a film.

- The positioning of the text at the bottom doesn't draw in any attention and should be further up the advertisement.

- I am not keen on having the star ratings inside the frames as it looks like an advertisement for the oscars rather than  a Digipack.

Magazine Plans

As we did for our Digipack, myself and Paige have both drawn up a plan of what we think the magazine Advertisement should look like.

My Design

Above is the design that I have came up with. I was going for a more simplistic approach while sticking to the theme that we had running throughout our digipack. 

Paige Design

Above is the design that Paige has come up with.

Design we have done together

Above is a design that we have created together using elements from each of our single designs. We have decided that we will create all three of the designs and then choose a final one.

QR Generator

When we did research for our Digipack, we noticed that the more modern albums had QR codes on the back. We included this aspect onto our own Digipack using one we found off google images. However, we then decided that we wanted to include a QR code onto our magazine advertisement to make it fit the modern audience and allow our target audience to get further updates on the band we created. To do this I found a website through google that allowed me to generate our own QR. 

Above is a screen shot showing the process which was actually very simple. I just typed in a website that we wanted the code to scan to and we decided to link it up to mine and Paiges group blog.

Below is our very own QR code.

Magazine Advertisement For our Digipack: Research

The second ancillary task that myself and Paige have decided upon is to create a Magazine Advertisement for the release of our digipack. So, as I did before I began creating my digipack, I will begin by researching existing advertisements and their codes and conventions.

The first existing product I have chosen to research is the magazine advertisment for Ellie Gouldings Digipack 'Lights'. The whole advert appears to incorporate much of the same elements that can be seen on the actual digipack which enables an audience to relate this advert with her actual digipack. This is a good example of cross media marketing styles where the album can be displayed in shops and the advert in magazines creating a link between the two for the intended audience. This will be a feature that I should consider using in my own magazine advertisement.

Ellie Goulding: Lights The whole advert seems to successfully incorporate the name of the digipack which I find particularly clever. For example, the name of the digipack is 'Lights' and the colour gold has been used to reflect the glow of an actual light. The artist herself, the main feature of the advertisement has a golden glow about her skin and her hair is also golden with the added effect of the glitter golden lightening given the advertisement its own identity.
The artists is the main focus point of this advertisement allowing her product to become instantly recognisable and allows for her own identity to be shown. People will recognise this advertisement to be connected to her album. The artists names appears in capital letters as does the digipack name so it is the first thing you notice. Underneath in a much smaller texts are quotes from well known music magazines and newspapers with star ratings giving the album credibility and would encourage an audience to buy the product. I will have to use this feature for my own advertisement.
Also included is the artists website and other features, so not only does the advertisement promote the album, but also the artist herself possibly widening her fan base.

The second product I will be looking at is the magazine advertisement for The Drums digipack. As with the previous advertisement I have researched, this one to incorporates elements from the actual digipack allowing the two products to form a connection and a familiarity with its target audience. So, I think its a must that I use this feature when creating my own magazine advertisement. However what I particularly like about this advertisement is its simplicity. How the artist themselves aren't featured on the actual advertisement as they allow their music and their digipack to do all of the talking. The simple background of a curtain on the stage suggests the bands love of performing and sharing their music.

The Drums: The DrumsThe name of the band and the digipack again are written in bold capital letters as this is the first thing an audience will notice and it is what will capture someones attention and draw them in to actual focusing on the product being offered. Again a feature that has been used is the use of star ratings from top newspapers and magazines allowing the digipack to have a sense of credibility which could possibly help with sales of the product as it will encourage an audience to buy it. They have seemed to use quite a lot of star ratings suggesting that their album is definitely worth buying.
Another feature included is the bands website address again promoting the band allowing them to possibly widen their fan base. In the corner as well are also their music company's and producers logos which also adds a credibility to the advertisement.

Discussion on our Digipack...

Below is a brief discussion myself and my partner had about our digipack.

Final Digipack

Below is the final Draft of our Digipack. Due to a few timing issues we decided the best way possible to create our product was on the macs rather than creating a physical digipack. 

Track Listing: Back Cover

Myself and Paige spent a great deal of time making sure the back cover of our digipack was suitable, looked professional, matched the theme we were establishing and looked like an actual back cover of a digipack. The image below is us starting to form the track listing for our digipack however it is only half finished and the reason is as follows. We thought that it looked like to much of a cliche having the track listing with numbers. We also tried to experiment by having the text positioning to the left however this didn't work out, the text was to large and also there wasn't room for any other details. So we stopped this draft and came up with our 2nd and final draft.

We feel that this track listing and back cover design looks more professional and appealing as apposed to our first draft. We took inspiration from our research into digipack to come up with our creative track listing. We decided not to include the numbers and instead have theme separated by a single line which adds to our digipacks overall theme. We then underneath in smaller text, while following the same format we including all the bonus features that you would expect to see on a digipack. We then in smaller text included 2 smaller lines of text. While we have just wrote random sentences the intent is clear in that it would include a production company, dates of creation ect..

Finally along the bottom we included 3 symbols. The first a QR sign which we have created ourselves using a generator (clearer image seen on the magazine advertisement) which links to our group blog. The second is the logo for mine and Paige's production company G&P and then Universal records is the 3rd logo just to add a bit of realism and make it look professional. 

Poll Results

After leaving my poll open for 3 days, I checked the results and found that Design 3 had proven to be the most popular. In second place was Design 1 and in third was Design 2. As the poll was only open for a couple of days I didn't receive many votes but there was a clear overall winner from the votes I did receive. Paige has also created a survey and her results had shown that Design 3 was the most popular so this is the design that we will be using for our Digipack. 

Further Construction of the Digipack

The images below will show the final steps of our Digipack construction. As we have previously mentioned, we will be using the Digipack template that I had found and the program we will be constructing it in will be Fireworks. 

This first screenshot shows us officially putting our Digipack together. As you can see, from my market research and my online poll, Design 3 proved to be the most popular so this is the one we will be continuing with and using. This was also the design that I also preferred out of the 3. We started by adding in the front cover as this is the slide we had worked on first.

The second screenshot shows us adding in the background to the other panels. As I have previously mentioned this is an image of some wallpaper that we had taken on our trip to the art gallery and just changed the colouring and contrasting of the picture to come up with a colour scheme that matched our old fashioned theme.

This screenshot above shows how I edited the frames in fireworks. Paige edited a few of them and then I did a couple myself. We just used the wand tool to delete the backgrounds and then the eraser tool to get rid of any extra parts. We will add these frames to our digipack and then add the pictures inside of them. 

This screenshot shows us adding in the frames to our Digipack. However, upon adding in the frames we realised that we had adding them onto the wrong slide. So we will just drag them onto the slides that they need to be on. 

As you can see, changed the frames onto the correct slide and then added two more onto the previous space. Above you can see that we have added in the CD, the track listing and the slide including our lyric books. Instead of creating an actual lyric book, as you actually wouldn't be able to see all of it anyway, I decided to just add some lines showing you where it would be included.

 The next screen shot shows us including a message from the band. However rather than just include the message, to match the overall theme I suggested adding a frame around the text. This added to the theme and matched the old fashioned/antique effect we were going for. 

The above screen shot is our completed Digipack. The finishing touches that we added were the titles on a few of the sides. We had already decided on the text we we're going to use for the front cover and decided to include this text on a few other sides for example, 'A Little Note...' is added onto the message from the band and 'Lyrics...' is added onto the side including the lyric book. 

Text Colouring

When considering the colour of our font we originally chose the colour gold to match that of the style of frames we were going to be using. Below is an image of how it would have looked with the text filled in gold. When looking closely at this text, I decided that I didn't really like this gold and also when we add it onto our background you wouldn't be able to see the text as it would blend in to much with the background. We decided not to use this colour in the end and instead the text on the digipack will be white.

Frames

As we had mentioned in our previous discussions of our digipack we are going for an antique/old fashioned theme. Taking a trip to the art gallery we also had the inspiration of having frames put on our digipack and the images be of the production of our actual music video. This adds a much more personal touch to our digipack allowing the audience to feel connected to the artists. 

Below I will show a few of the examples of the frames and images we will be using. The sort of images that we have taken are shots from the rough cut/final music video, creating of the audio track and general shots of filming.

Construction of the CD

 To create the CD that would go inside our digipack, I cropped out the CD frame from the digipack template we found so I could get the right measurements of what my actual CD needed to be. Below is the frame I would be using. 

For the digipack, we originally we're going to keep the CD design the same as the background of the rest of the digipack. However, the CD would not stand out overall and would blend to much into the background. To solve this problem we decided that while we would keep the same background design, we would, using IPhoto change the colour of the background and came up with the design below. We also decided to include the band name and the digipack name of the CD in the same format as the front cover. 

Possible Front Cover Designs...

When creating the front cover for our digipack, myself and Paige came up with 3 possible colour schemes to choose from. We had previously taken a picture of a design we encountered at the art gallery and Design 1 is the actual wallpaper. Design 2, we have changed the colour to gold and Design 3 is a more Ivory colour. As we are unable to pick which one we liked best, I have thought it best to leave it to the audience to decided. I have added a voting poll below these pictures to see which design appeals to the audience more. 

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Which front cover design do you prefer?
	Design 1
	Design 2
	Design 3
pollcode.com free polls

Construction of the Digipack: Front Cover

We decided as a group to start work first on the front cover of our digipack as ultimately this is whats going to grab the attention of our target audience and draw them in to buying our product.





As we have previously mentioned, our front cover idea consists of the two artist silhouettesAs we have previously mentioned, our front cover idea consists of the two artist silhouettes

The programs we have on the macs at our school are for the moment limited, so the program we have chosen to create our digipack on is fireworks.

We started by taking a photograph of the two artists standing back to back. We realised we could have took the two pictures separately however we felt that we would get a more realistic image if they were in the same photo. The sizing of each silhouette would also be more realistic.










We then opened the picture in the program fireworks and using the wand tool, we were able to erase the background.













The next step was to crop the two images and split them so the silhouettes were seperate. Then using the paint brush, we filled in the images so they were all black. We also liked the idea of leaving Joe's shirt white, so then to compromise with the image of Louise, we created her a pearly necklace. This goes with the black and white theme of our music video and also compliments the antique/old fashioned theme we are going for.








After looking closely at the images, we realised that the white of the shirt and pearl necklace didn't quite stand out, so we made them whiter using the paintbrush tool.

















The next stage on the front cover, after the completion of the silhouettes was to create our frames. Using images we had taken from our trip to the art gallery we found the frame to use and using the eraser tool got rid of all of the image except the frame.

After editing the one frame I just duplicated the image so then I had two images appear onto the screen. All that I then needed to do was add in the silhouettes I had previously created and the main image for the digipack was complete. My next post will show the 3 possible designs we have created.

Research into Font Styles for our Digipack

When creating a digipack, it is important that we think of every element that is to be included so we have a consistent theme running throughout. Choosing a font style is particular important as it could potentially set the tone and mood for the rest of the digipack. We had to take into careful consideration the genre of music being portrayed to allow the text to suit. We have decided to experiment with different fonts for the titles on our digipack and below are a few designs of the ones that we have considered using.

Style 1

 


Here is the first style of text that we looked at. I like how this text is a 'Calligraphy' style as it suits the 'antique' theme myself and Paige have decided upon for our digipack. I particular like how all the letters are joined and how the writing flows. I really like the style of the capital F as it draws in your attention.


Style 2

 Here is the second style of text that we considered. This one is also of a 'Calligraphy' style however upon further inspection we decided that this text may be difficult to read when put on our digipack.




Style 3: the text we have chosen...

Here is the third and final text we considered for our digipack and this will be the one that will be used on our digipack. We decided on this text as we believe it incorporates elements of both style 1 and style 2 and will be easy to read and suit the style that we are going for.

Digipack Templates...

Myself and Paige have already decided that we would like our Digipack to have 6 panels. At first we were unsure of how we wanted to create this, whether it be a physical creation or to just design it on the Macs. I then went onto google and managed to find a site that had digipack templates and we decided to use one of this templates for the creation of our own digipack.

Here is the link to the website I stumbled across: http://www.duplication.ca/printspecs/digipack.htm

Below is a screen grab of the website where we found our template. 

Digipack Discussion of ideas

Rather than type all of the discussion myself and Paige had, we decided to record a video outlining our initial ideas. Below is the video of our discussion.

In case the pictures weren't clear on the video, I have uploaded them below so you are able to see our plans in more detail. We both decided to create our own plan for a digi pack and then we will incorporate the ideas to come up with one final plan.

Below is the plan I created for our digipack...

Below is the plan my partner Paige created for our digipack...

Merging our two ideas together, below is the finalised plan for our digipack...

Audience Feedback

As a way of gaining audience feedback, I had to come up with creative ways to broadcast our music video. So, using the resources around me, I uploaded the links using my social networking sites.


On the left is my twitter account where I tweeted the link to my followers and on the right is my facebook account where I wrote a status adding in the link.















Louise and Joe (the artists in the music video) also uploaded the link to their facebook accounts which helped broadcast the video even more.On the left is Joe's facebook status and on the right is Louise's.



Here so to speak is the results because within days of uploading the links into to my social networking site, our music video gained over 100 views.