Ancillary Production - Poster mk. ii

As I posted yesterday that I've updated the front and back covers of the digipak, I thought I'd show off how I've fixed up the poster a bit since the mockup post from a while back.

I will note that this is not the absolute final version of the poster. The font used for the text at the bottom is purely placeholder; I intend to use the same font as used on the back of the digipak for the sake of consistency; I just don't have access to it on my computer at home. Also, I feel that I could do with a bit of colour correction on my face - it looks a tad too dark on (my) right side.

So - changes? Well, I've updated to the digipak PIP to the completed version - no-one likes having an obvious beta work sticking out on a final piece, do they? Unless it's Sonic '06 where the beta versions actually look more polished than the final product, but I digress. I've also made it a bit bigger, so the thing we want people to be buying is more prominent.

The big change (that stands out to me) is the brush texture in the background. Now, I -could- have just ripped the brush layers from the digipak .psd, but instead I decided to employ a technique which is actually rarely used in the music industry these days, which is known as "putting effort in", and making new layers using different brushes. My main reasoning for this is that whilst yes, it is a good idea to have a visual link between the different promotional materials (as I've mentioned ~9001 times on this blog...) I feel that this has been achieved already by using the same photo, logo and fonts - and on top of this, the digipak itself is present, so having the exact same image twice would be incredibly redundant.

Now, onto something else - "why is it so simplistic?", you may ask. Well, I've been looking at some professional posters, and from what I've seen, using content other than the album art and logos doesn't happen much. Fear not, people with a fear of text, here's some pretty pictures for you.

A poster I actually own! Axel Rudi Pell's Circle of the Oath poster, pictured alongside the digipak for comparison. The poster is literally just the album art, with the logo and album name relocated to the top.  I would take a guess and say that this is because the poster is a gift packaged within the album as opposed to one designed to be placed in shops etc., so the primary aim is to look cool (which it does).

 

The poster for The 2nd Law, the Muse album for which I have previously analysed the album cover of. As with the ARP poster, this one too is just using the album art but moving the text to the top out of the way.

If anything, mine is actually much less simplistic than these two covers - my justification for this is that my poster is promoting a currently upcoming album as opposed to one which is already out, so it should be informative to potential consumers.

Final version to follow shortly.

-HM.