HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXT?

During the planning stage of the course, I used web 2.0 through the medium of websites such as Youtube and Google. I used these sites to watch music videos and to look at different examples of digipacks and magazine adverts to discover if there were similar features to create features. As my genre is something I know very well, I already know a lot of the bands involved within said genre. I was also able to access many digipacks and magazine adverts within the pop-rock genre as I already own both of these texts.
My foundation portfolio taught me how to easily identify conventions so I quickly found these and managed to find them within my genre, which can be seen in the first question of my evaluation.

One of the ways the three products work together is the title. As the song is called 'Black Cloud' I decided that album should be called this too. A lot of bands have started doing this such as Kids in Glass Houses - Peace, The 1975 - The 1975 and Decade - Good Luck; two of which include the album title track the first song on the album which inspired me to do the same. This would be effective when publishing the album as the audience will recognise the album due to hearing the promotional single; this is also the same for the magazine advert.

Also, within You Me At Six's 'Sinners Never Sleep' there was the use of a photo of the band. I included this as it will allow the audience, who have watched the promotional video, to recognise the band. I also used good looking actors/models as this will attract the young females within my demographic.

Another way was including the same album artwork on the promotional poster; as the artwork is quite scenic, the audience's eye will be drawn to it making the digipack work well with the poster. Although in a postmodern society, the artwork may be seen as 'style over substance' as it looks nice rather than conveying a message, thus making it empty. The artwork also works with both the mood of the song itself (isolation) and the mise-en-scene of the music video (suburban area).

I also used web 2.0 to access the website dafont.com where I could browse through different fonts. I used my pop-rock mood board to compare fonts that I though fit to the genre. After selecting the final font, I made sure I only used this font on both my digipack and magazine advert.

Between the digipack and magazine advert, I also made sure I used the same information such as the record label and the second disc (which was a DVD). This was made clear by identifying the conventions of both media products. So I made sure I included the Hopeless Records logo and made sure the poster clearly advertised the DVD that came with the album. I decided to use Hopeless Records as they are the biggest and most well known record label to have a mass amounts of pop-rock bands such as Neck Deep and The Wonder Years. This record label is also independent which may attract an audience who like to be into underground bands which not many people know. Although this would effect the promotion of the album as the label will not have enough money to create promotions such as television adverts like the labels within the 'big three' would.

I also used photoshop to see what my magazine advert would like in real life situations. I wanted to use both conventional and unconventional ways as the pop-rock genre is about breaking the rules but still appealing to a mass audience so most of the audience would not find the advert within a magazine.


To test the effectiveness of the products working together I interviewed Kiera, who featured within the video. I interviewed her as she meets my demographic and is attracted to good looking boys who are in a band.

This interview allowed my to discover that my media products work together well and that they are very effective within my demographic.