Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?



Deadmau5 - I Remember Music Video


Deadmau5 & Kaskade - I Remember (Edit)


Deadmau5 - I Remember ( Full Length) Music Video


Deadmau5 & Kaskade - I Remember (Full Length)


Queen - Another One Bites The Dust Music Video

Queen - Another One Bites The Dust



Queen vs. The Miami Project - Another One Bites The Dust Music Video


Queen vs The Miami Project - Another One Bites The Dust



How does my Digipak use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

The common conventions of a digipak, similar to an album, will include

• Artist/band name, on the front cover and spine
• Photography or graphic imagery, of the band or design - visually attract their audience.
• Recurring theme of colours and imagery throughout the digipak.
• Track listing on the back panel.
• Disc in tray, or a slot between panels.
• Barcode and logos on the back cover.
• Possibly a 'Special Edition' sticker.

Our design, in comparison to real media digipaks, follows the conventions through:

• Digitally designed imagery - Sticking with the cartoon style of Gorillaz, we chose a graphic design as opposed to photographic. 
• Using imagery separate to the music video. - By not using imagery of our central protagonist, or including similar themes, it is clear that it is an album release not just a single.
• Including the band name and album title on the front cover and spine, in a font that links to the theme. - We also chose to have it across the inside panel in which the CD and DVD will slot into.
• Back panel includes the track listing, bonus DVD listing, logos, copyright, and barcode.
• 'Special Edition' sticker

How does my Magazine Advert use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Common conventions of magazine adverts include matching imagery to the band/artists digipak. A reason for this could be so that it is easy for consumers to see the advert and then find the album by the matching covers. The adverts will also, obviously, include

•  the band/artist name
• album title
• release date
• available formats
• where the album can be bought
• website address
• songs - usually high chart toppers or special editions.

We aimed to cover the majority of conventions of magazine adverts, to create an effective and realistic magazine advert, which we thought would be published in magazines like Q and NME, to reach the target audience for the band.

The main way which we have contrasted against the conventions, is by using different imagery for the advert and digipak. This was to create a bold image that stands out of a magazine advert, and be able to incorporate different ideas that we had for our ancillary texts. Although in doing this, we developed on the convention by including imagery of the digipak design in the bottom right corner, so that fans would be able to know what the album imagery looked like.

Recently, there has been an increased popularity of vinyl, which has been covered in our format of release. 

'Featuring 19/2000 soulchild remix' was advertised as we believe this is one of the most well known songs on the album, and is also the track that has a music video for. 

Evaluation Question 2

How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?




Evaluation Question 2 from Beth Cooper on Vimeo.





Modestep - Feel Good [band-made music video]

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


Evaluation Question 3 from Beth Cooper on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final Rough Cut

Final rough cut, with annotations about what we still need to improve for our final cut, and trying to prompt audience feedback.

Digipak Design

Our first draft of our digipak:

After audience feedback, giving areas to improve on, such as more colour themes to link it with our magazine advert, we have produced our final digipak.

There are some obvious changes we have made, such as flipping the bottom half design, as the previous had the speaker as the back cover, and the track listing was on the inside. We have also added more of the colour theme and shading on the lettering to be  more similar to the magazine advert and continue the theme. The text has changed on the back of the digipak, making it easier to read, 'stencil' font, to link in with the graffiti style. The conventional details are also added to the back of the digipak, such as record company logos, copyright information and barcode, to create verisimilitude of it being a real digipak.
The addition of the spray cans was an idea from audience feedback, and was place on the side which would be the spread in the middle of the digipak where the CD and DVDs will be, to include some imagery on that side aswell.
Overall I am happy with this design, as I think it is suitable for our brand image, and is eye catching and different to the common digipak design.

We have designed a sticker to go on the digipak, promoting the special edition and 'featuring 19/2000 soulchild remix music video'.
The design background was taken from the original digipak design, from the speaker, and text added. This creates a sticker that matches with the theme of the digipak, but also stands out with the text, which also links in with the colour theme of the digipak and magazine advert.

Here is our final digipak design.

EG - Our Magazine Advert & Audience Feedback

Our Magazine Advert

We decided to stick with the theme of using cartoons which beth and I drew ourselves, for the album advert and the digipak cover. This means that our digipak and magazine advert tie together as a package.
As the album is for a compilation of Gorillaz remixes, we chose to draw a picture of a DJ at a mixing table, which ties the theme of remixes and the imagery of the advert together.

After researching the existing examples of magazine adverts from Q magazine, we narrowed down what need to be on the adverts. This included:

• The band or artists name  
• The album title
• A release date
• Available formats
• A web address
• Advertises songs it includes
• Advertises where to buy album

Here is our first draft of the magazine advert:



The audience feedback we gained from this was that the theme of remixes and the DJ imagery works well, but it was also suggested that we definately need to add some colour.

Also that the date shouldn't be larger than the album title.

An advert or link to a place where you can purchase this album such as iTunes, Amazon, HMV etc.

It was suggested we could add some information on what the special edition digipak includes.

It was also suggested that festival season would be a better date to advertise the release date.

And due to the increase in popularity recently of vinyl, we could add that as another available format of the album.

Here is our second draft:

I have added to this, colour which matches the digipak, as it is a common convention of magazine album adverts for the imagery to match the album artwork, although we have challenged this convention as our album artwork doesn't match the advert I have also added an image of the album, so that an audience would know what to look for when purchasing the digipak.

I added the small image link to iTunes, beacause after a quick survey of asking people if they owned an iPod, most of which did and also wether they use iTunes to download music or listen to their music files on their computers, again most said that they had and did. Therefore iTunes seemed like the most popular choice. It also adds some authenticity to the advert.

Finally i added the small section on what the digipak contains, for which I took inspiration from existing examples of bonus features.

I hope to upload this and our digipak to facebook in order to get some audience feedback from a variety of age ranges but mostly our target audience, and find out whether they think our digipak and magazine advert work well and are effective in drawing in the target audience.

The feedback we gained on this 2nd draft was that the colour of pink/purple on the text is "perfect".
The combination of only 3 colours are "simple yet effective".
It looks professional
They like the graffitti style of writing on the Gorillaz
The advert is in keeping with the 'youthful' style of the digipak
They also suggested that we should:

• Use the same pink text on more of the white text
• Make the text on the digipak features stand out more, for example: in shape of a record.
• Re-order the writing as it is a little squished up
• Compress 'THE REMIXES' so that the edges of the letters arent lost

Here is our third draft:

Here we have edited the sections which we were told needed some work from our audience feedback.

However Beth and I have decided we dislike the text in the shape of a record, we don't think this works well so with our next draft we will straighten that back out again. Other than that we are happy with this design.

Here is our final design:

The audience feedback we gained from this deisgn helped us decide that this was the one we would use as it wasn't suggested anything needed changing and also that it looks proffesional.