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.

Ancillary Production - Revised front/back covers

So, here are the revised versions of the front and back digipak covers. I've made the changes I said I would in the previous version's post, but the more observant folks may have noticed some more updates.

Firstly, the institution information is now present - it references "Metallic Records"; get it, because metal? I am so funny. But in seriousness, it seems appropriate because it describes the kind of music they sell. There is also an anti-piracy warning. No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!

The more obvious of the changes? I've used some royalty free Photoshop brushes to add a bit of texture to both panels. Why?

Well, I was looking at the album chart earlier, and I noticed a bit of a trend:

Whilst following conventions can be useful to a degree, it dawned on me that an album isn't going to stand out on a shop shelf if there are two other albums which look the same. Because of this, it seemed appropriate to add a bit of uniqueness to the front cover. I then decided to add similar brushwork to the back cover to keep it consistant with the front.

Now left to go are the inside panels. I thought I'd initially prioritise perfecting the front and back covers as they are the parts which need to sell the album, but the inside panels are coming soon. Be excited; one of them has a closeup of my beautiful Black Knight.

-HM.

Artist Branding - Hear the Sonic Youth

Hey all, welcome to the greatest storm... 

In this post I'm going to be looking at the way in which artists present their brand image through various promotional materials. Here, I'm going to analyse the best band ever of all time, Crush 40. This is not just my opinion, this is fact.

Album Covers

This is the part which needs to stand out either in a shop, or more commonly in recent times, a digital download service like iTunes. Many artists choose to use recurring imagery/themes on their album covers; this will make the presentation feel familiar to existing fans, so they are more likely to pick up the album on the basis that it appears to be similar to something they know they enjoy.

This is the first full album the band released; a self-titled album. The band's logo is featured prominently in the upper-region of the cover, with the "40" repeated on the front of the car.

As this is the first album the band has put out, it's in their interest for the individuals in the band to be acknowledged; in this case their names are printed in the red banner at the top of the cover. At this point, Johnny Gioeli had already become reasonably well known for his work in the band Hardline, and Jun Senoue had done some compositions for various SEGA videogames, such as Daytona USA and Sonic Adventure. Because of this, publishing their names on the front cover will attract existing fans of both of them to the album.

This is amplified on the back cover and the included booklet of the physical CD release, as they feature photographs of Jun and Johnny: (meh webcam quality because no-one on the internet seems to have uploaded photos of those...)

The photograph shows cars, which seems logical as some of the songs on the album are either about racing or reference it (e.g. all of Revvin' Up; the "turn the car into the wind" lines of Into the Wind etc.). But I digress.

This is the cover from the Super Sonic Songs compilation, released in 2009. By this point, the band's logo had been revised slightly to include the distorted circle around the 40 part of the logo. The font used is the same, however, so it is still recognisable.

The cover is quite simplistic, which is quite common in the rock genre:

This could be seen as representing the way in which rock music focuses more on the music and its meanings as opposed to being focused on image.

This is the cover for the 2012 EP Rise Again, for which they have again used a simple cover; from this we can see that part of Crush 40's brand is the use of very simplistic imagery, with some kind of relation to the music's lyrics (in this case, the title track Rise Again features lyrics about being optimistic about the future when going through a tough period in life; shown in the bright colour on the cover). 

This is the artwork for their most recent release, a live album titled "Live!". The cover uses quite a radically different style from the other covers, which is likely to be to create an intentional distinction - highlighting that it is a different kind of album (a live album as opposed to a studio one - this is further emphasised by the photograph on the front showing them in a concert environment). They have, however, maintained the band's logo so it is still instantly recognisable to existing fans. It's also worth noting that this logo shows up again in a preview video Jun uploaded to YouTube to show off the live versions of songs.

Band's Image

The next thing to look at is how the band members present themselves in the public eye.

Jun is known for using ESP guitars with Sonic the Hedgehog's face on them. He uses a close-up of one of these guitars as his Twitter photo, so it becomes more a part of his image.

Online Presence

On the topic of Twitter, Jun routinely answers questions his fans ask him about his various works; which shows him connecting to fans - thus allowing them to feel closer to him and feel more likely to buy the music he puts out.

Crush 40 YouTube Channel

As I mentioned earlier, Jun manages a YouTube channel on behalf of the band. Earlier this featured some camera footage of concerts which they'd had some friends film, however as they've obviously had a bit more funding available to them recently they've now uploaded some higher quality concert footage. It's also used to tease new releases, to create hype amongst the fanbase. An example of one such video is this, which contains samples of the songs from Rise Again:

-HM.

Functions of music videos

This post will cover why music videos are a thing. I -had- started a slideshow on this, but my computer which has PowerPoint on it isn't being too friendly, which is an incredibly convenient excuse for me to communicate this information in a practical manner which allows me to clearly lay out my work in a way that lets the reader easily refer back to previous parts, as opposed to an impractical "look mum, I can use interactive media!" manner. But I digress.

So, what is the purpose of music videos?

In short, to acquire this:

This is the incentive behind music video production in general: for major institutions to acquire lots and lots of money from people who have far less money than they do.

This can be broken further:

• To promote the individual product - producing a video for a song means you have a chance to get your song featured on one of the few remaining music programmes on television, and to get your video a positive presence on video sharing websites such as YouTube (yes, I know someone's likely to upload it anyway, but your song is more likely to be taken seriously if you have a professionally produced video than if you have a terrible Windows Movie Maker lyrics video uploaded by some illiterate kid who attributes the song to the wrong artist... -_-). 
• To promote the artist's star image - as per Dyer's theory, the record institution can develop a 'star image' for the artist, which essentially functions as the artist's brand. This can be done by implementing some of the conventions Goodwin mentioned, such as lots of close-up shots of the artist, and recurring motifs between videos. 
• To monetise directly from the video (YouTube) - if the label sets up a YouTube account on behalf of the artist, they can partner the account, upload some entertaining music videos people will want to watch multiple times, and generate revenue from the advertisements on that page (which is amplified if the video receives a lot of hits). (At over 880,000,000 hits right now, I would take a guess and say that PSY's Gangnam Style video is pulling in some money...).
• To mask the bland nature of the music - this allows the institution to get away with publishing boring tripe that no-one would care for otherwise. It doesn't matter that the track consists of a recycled electronic stock beat, a mediocre synth loop which isn't anything special and auto tuned vocals which makes the vocalist sound like every other performer in the charts at the moment; this will sell because the music video gives us some memorable imagery, which people will remember over all the other music out there which doesn't have this kind of imagery. 
• To create entertaining content - this on its own is more common among lesser-known independent artists who haven't been swallowed by major institutions and milked for everything they're worth. 

-HM.