Final Magazine Adverts

Magazine Advert Research and Planning

With the magazine advertisement, it was kept in mind that all the three products produced would be linked together by obvious means of media. So when my group began planning the digipak and advert we looked into current products that's within our genre.

So with the advert we looked into the album advertisements of 'Ed Sheeran', 'Goldfrapp', 'Elton John and Leon Russel' and lastly 'Bob Dylan'.

Looking at these advertisements we began to take inspiration out of the advertisements and comparing to our own images that we could use. My group member Jamie had drawn up some drafts to use in reference to photos from our recording and digipak ideas.

THe overall view on our genre's advertisements is that they are very simple and well designed to draw attention to the key features such as the albums name, the album artists, release dates and reviews such as star ratings.

It's common to feature a blown up image of the band of figurehead (normally singer) to help establish their identity and brand. When referring to other adverts to our ideas, we like the simplistic design and colour scheme of Elton john's and Leon Russel's advert; being a nice black and white theme and easy to read text.

For our advert, the original idea was to have a photo of the band in the middle with a similar layout to the advert of Elton and Leon. We decided to have the information above adn below the image with the key things written in a larger font, and maybe in different colour that runs with our theme.


Below you can see where we have circled part on the magazine advert of which we wish to carry across to our advert:

For a secondary idea to use, we looked into Bob Dylan's album advert. Our main interest was how the image was stationed on the page, using the most known musician (the lead singer) as the image. WE also liked the idea of showing the album to give recognition for the audience to be able to find and buy it at stores. the picture of the album would also help establish the band as a whole despite the lead singer being the only one to feature on the advert.

Below you can see we have circled the feature that we like on this advert and wish to carry across to our own designs:

We also noticed that the adverts that the record labels would get their icon place at the bottom of the magazine as a promotion method and recognition of their work. So to keep the aspects of our magazine real we wished to include this aswell as a website name for the band due to this also being place on previous magazines adverts. The 'HMV' logo will also we also wanted on our advert to show the consumers and fans where to buy the album from. 

The previously mentioned recording icons we planned to place on both our digipak and advert. After some research, we found that One Republic's record labels were Mosley Music Group and Interscope Records, both of which are owned by Universal Music Group.

Magazine Advert Production

Magazine Advert 1 Production on Prezi

Magazine Advert 2 Production on Prezi

Final Digipak

This is the final design of our Digipak. We stuck with our chosen theme of doves which is a reference to our album title, 'Letting Go'. We went ahead and tryed to define the pictures more, to give thema slight edge and it does improve the piece but overall wasn't really noticeable. We like our design and believe it works with our hosue theme trhoughout all products we created.

Digipak Research - Existing Products

These are some small designs that i created as a quick idea on what possible effects we can use for our digipak. In the end, we took the idea of using different colours for 'One Republic' and 'Letting Go' using the themed idea from existing One Republic digipaks and also thought the tiled effect used in the top right hand corner could be used as a pattern on the back cover and inside cover, as it resembles a stained glass window.

FInal Cut Feedback

To get feedback for our final cut, the whole year group watched our video and made notes on it. They told us what aspects they liked and also things that could have been done better.

Overall, the feedback from our final cut was very positive. People mainly commented on the range of camera angles and shots we used to portray the band. Some comments included:


* Edited well to the beat and good lip syncing
* Good close ups and shots of the instruments
* Good eye contact from lead singer
* Effective transitions
* Good use of extreme close up on the lips
* Good variety of shots of all band members
* Good camera movement

The negative comments people had were mainly about the change in lighting in some shots as a few appeared darker with a high contrast.

Final Cut

Secrets - Final Cut from Jamie WGSB on Vimeo.

This is our final cut of our music video. We used the Feedback from our rough cut to guide us for a better video. So we changed the lighting on the singer to be brighter and clearer, have the singer looking directly into the camera more, we also gained more varied shots of our instruments. Afterward me and my group came up with the idea of incorporating the 'MTV Rocks' logo into our video since this was our selected Music channel. This gave it more realism and helped it to look more like a professional music video.

Digipak Ideas

When Creating these we took the main ideas from our mind map previously made and began making these drafts for the cover.

The image on the left were the first 6 attempts at a digipak cover. The photos used of the cello and candle were taken at the church we used. we also used doves due to how our mind map came up with the idea of peace in reference to doves, so we found a custom brush that was altered to help suit our album and requirements.

The Title 'Letting Go' was inspired to us after we created the dove cover and liked how it linked in with the church and the song called secrets since the song is all about letting go of your secrets and letting people know.

The Dove cover ( middle right) was the first idea my group came up with and was experimented across to other ideas. The idea with the cello being on the front was because it was the main focus of the song along with the singer. The candle was an idea of light and represented the church. When editing those photos they were cut them from their original backgrounds and adjusted vibrance/contrast/brightness/saturation levels to optimum levels.

When combined the dove cover with the candle cover we liked the idea of the doves looking like the smoke of the flame, so with that in mind the doves were overlayed on to the top layer and we attempted to create a misty effect and see how it would look. me and my group didn't like the end result since it didn't look like how we was hoping it would look.

The cello covers were more conventional and was deiced to be left simple and easy to look at. the title was rested on top of the cellist bow as if it underlined the title. The white text easily contrast the dark gradient background which makes for a nice effect. The top right image I had made a few adjustments to lighting in order for the cello to have a greater effect and presence.

After looking at these covers we realised that we had made the covers look way to classical and not of our recognisable genre of music, therefore would not appeal to our targeted audience. We therefore chose not to use any of these as a final digipak cover.

Below here you can see the drawn ideas made up by my group after reviewing the other covers it includes a new concept of ideas of which the band are the main focus rather than imagery and instruments. this way it keeps consistency with the music video and dove theme of which we have been trying.



The last point was to choose our font for the digipak. This font would also feature in our magazine advert as this would keep the coherency. We chose the font Headline from DaFont.com, and felt this font worked well with our designs. It suggested a mix of formality and informality with its blocky text. It also fitted well with previous fonts used by One Republic.

Digipak: Alternative Rock Research

With album covers within the alternative rock genre, the common theme among them is how the cover shows the band with the lead singer in the front of the image. the rest fo the band members are usually behind the lead singer but still easily reconisable. The reason for this is because the lead singer is the msot easily reconisable to the fans so putting him forefront of the photo would make the band as a whole more recognisable.

Looking into exisiting products of the genre, such as Stereophonics album cover and the Razorlight's album cover, it's easy to see that both images are looking out at the audience with the other band members looking out of image or appearing less engaged wiht the audience. This highlights the importance of the lead singer and allows people to understand the roles of the people withing the picture without needing to know who is who.

However, with the majority of alternative rock albums/digipaks its often displayed with an artistic or computer generated image. We have found within OneRepublic's exisiting products that they use a lot of artwork rather than an image of the band and this research showed that this was common for the whole genre. The image on the right is an example of the different kinds of album art within the genre, with many posing no specific relevance the title of the album or the name of the band.

Digipak Initial Ideas and Mood Board

The song we used called 'Secrets' was filmed in a church to keep a coherence within our themes, such as secrets leading to confessions and both used within a religious environment.

When trying to keep a coherence across all our tasks, it was decided that we would keep these themes and ideas and even incorporate a newer theme of freedom - selected due to our mind map of which is below.

We wanted the album to be dark with a light source to help represent the ideals we had, we also looked into different albums, such as 'Come Closer' by Miles Kane and 'Defamation of Strickland Banks' by Plan B, to help inspire us and make sure this was a professional job.

Both of these two albums feature a dark setting and a small light source.

From the Miles Kane album, we thought that we could possibly use the silhouette idea in front of a church window. From the Plan B album, we thought that our lead singer sitting in a confession box with similar lighting would work well.We then had the idea of doves and freedom, relating to 'give all my secrets away'. We liked the idea of having white doves flying away on a dark background, and possibly changing the contrast and effects so that the doves glow on a black background. We also added to this idea by thinking of having a cloudy effect on the background, and possibly having a ray of light shining through the clouds.We then needed to decide what sort of names would be appropriate for our album. Elliot came up with these ideas:

'Letting Go'
'Breaking Free'

If we decide to make the album a single, then we would be able to name it 'Secrets' after the song.