Magazine Page Advert

As the additional part to the brief, I was to create a magazine advert that would publicise the single or album that was created previously; my digiPak. Magazine adverts for LPs and singles often simply just use the artwork on the cover of the album/single, yet this is not always the case. I personally decided to invent one completely from scratch as this method would require significantly more artistic creativity.  

As a starting point, I decided to use aspects of my digiPak to also relate to my magazine advert, as well as also having some relevance to the song 'Tessellate'. Still using the idea of textures, I took the design that was used for the artwork (the grey tiles) and adapt it slightly to be relevant to my advert. Here is the first draft: 

After asking for peer feedback of this advert as well as taking my own personal evaluation into consideration, I decided that this cover had the basic conventions of an advert: using outsider's reviews to positively publicise the album, individual visual artwork, release date, title of artist and album and record label/distributors. Yet this design was too 'washed out' with no logical meaning for the location of the tile texture of the placement of the tessellation line. 

Using still the basic template of this layout, I was to simply change the visuals on the center of the advert, yet still  conforming to using elements from my previous work. With this in mind, I developed this second draft:

This advert is significantly more abstract than the previous one, distorting the whole image of the model, Sam, as opposed to just altering opacity. This distorted image visually relates to the 'haunting' sound of the song. As well as simply relating to the haunting sound of the song, this follows a certain house style of textures; look at the disks of my digiPak then look at this, there is a certain resemblance in the blotted texture. With contextual understanding of the title track 'Tessellate', as well as the music video which denotes emotions of loss of identity and an emptiness of the protagonist, which me and Kate have attempted to visually capture. This distorted effect that I used Photoshop to make questions the identity of the protagonist in the music video: is he completely distorted and disfigured due to the heartbreak experiences in 'Tessellate' or will he recover himself from this slowly blurring life that he wishes to leave in the past, which is shown as if this blurring is dissapearing to the left off the page and into the past. The ghosting effect that I procuded from layering one image on top of another creates an 'ghosting' effect, again bringing about the there of haunt and mere existance emotionally.

Despite my personal preference being this advert, I still thought that it was lacking certain details and was showing too much white space. To solve this, I again adapted concepts used in the music video as well as the first draft of the magazine advert for this album release and duplicated the tesselation line numerous times to create a tiling and almost completed tesselation pattern. Even better still, the pattern uses the colours that are seen throughout the music video to represent different characters: green red & blue. Here is the final draft:

This is the image that will be used in a magazine as an advert for the release of my digiPak. As stated previously, it follows the same colour scheme and uses again this same blotted texture. There is also a significant relationship shown between the geometric shapes on the artwork of the album cover and on this.

This advert sticks to the conventions of the album release advert discussed in the previous post. I have the name of the band in bold, to make it prominent and stand out to the audiance; I have given a date of the release of the album as well as a prompt to the audiance to 'pre-order'; I have left the record label and distribuers logos at the bottom left of the page; I have displayed the artwork to the album; I have given recommendation from outside reviews.  

Magazine Advert: Existing Texts

Formulating a magazine advert requires creative innovation and originality, yet I still will use inspiration from existing media texts that I have looked at for research purposes.

I took these two pairings of adverts from The Stool Pigeon, a music newspaper that is now, unfortunately, come to close down and stop publication. These adverts are structured in this pairing, columned way due to the record label's desires to publicise two album releases rather than simply just the one. The David Byrne & St. Vincent advert + Cat Power adverts on the right hand side are signed to two record labels under the Beggars Group umbrella, being David Byrne & St. Vincent releasing theirs under 4AD and Cat Power releasing hers through Matador Records. Beggars Group would have used their funds to put money onto a full A4 sized page for this space for 2 recent album releases. Both these releases share the same revival ideal: David Byrne was the front man of Talking Heads in 1980s yet hasn't produced music in many years and similarly Cat Power hadn't properly released music in a while.

The page on the right hand side are two female artists: Zola Jesus and EMA. Both these artists are signed to Souterrain Transmissions, another independent record label. These two female acts also toured together in 2011/2012, therefore have a relationship beyond simply being signed to the same label.  

Looking at these dual formation magazine adverts, it is evident that record labels play a large part in the placement of advertisements and importance of tactical placement within a magazine. Additionally, the type of magazine will be important. The Stool Pigeon is a news paper that explores a wide variety of musical acts, yet tends to stray from the popular artists, with more of an artistic edge: with the addition of literature and artistic content also appearing in the newspaper. When the newspaper was published, it was free. This again points towards the exploration of integrity and artistic value rather than the mainstream, popular music magazines that are profitable. With this in mind, we can rely on The Stool Pigeon to be dense with musicians album release adverts of a very niche type for the income to fund (when The Stool Pigeon still existed).

Another alternative advertisement style is a full page advert for a magazine rather than a collage of certain artists works from one record label or label group, such as the Beggars Group.  Full page adverts are to draw more attention to, possibly for purposes of higher potential as an artist. Here are a variety of full page adverts I took from other magazines, as well as some from The Stool Pigeon:

All of these magazine adverts display some of the conventions of an album release advert that I am required to conform to as part of my ancillary texts. A minor details of these conventions include the title or logo of the record label that will produce and release the album. As I have already decided upon Subpop Records to be the record label that release my album, therefore Warner will be distributing the album as Warner are the distributors for Subpop. Another convention of little detail is the release date or 'out now' seen on the advert to prompt the readers when they will be able to purchase the album.

A larger detail and conventional point of these adverts is the visual aspect of the advert. These are often (not always) simply just the artwork of the release. However, I do not want to be this basic; a recreation of a complete new advert requires significantly more creative innovation. Visuals need to be aesthetically appealling with some sort of relevance to the themes or purpose embedded throughout the album.

In terms of graphology of these texts, it is obvious that the most prominent feature of the advert simply at a glance is the artists name. The purpose of making the name of the artist the largest relates again to audience preference, if someone is simply flicking through the magazine and the name of an artist they like or were recommended is seen, then they are more likely to take notice of it and stop. Even more so, another convention is to show recommendations by other reviews, seen in the '2:54' advert and 'Polica' advert. Alternatively, tour dates of an up-coming tour could be put onto the advert. This would condense the purpsoe of having two adverts in one magazine (tour and album release) and put them on to one page.

Filming with MORE Problems

We are fast approaching the completion of our music video, with only a little footage left to film and to edit into the music video. However, with our typical lack of luck we did encounter some problems with the filming process. 

Sunday 17th February 2012 
The organisation for filming occurred on the day before. I received every member of cast's mobile number for convenience of contacting. I successfully contacted Sam and Sami, who said that they were available for filming. Yet, Fran had some typical bad news to deliver; she had stood on a wine glass on Friday (the 15th) and was unable to walk. This was a slight glitch in our plan, yet accidents happen such as this and filmed regardless of her absence. 

We went to a local decrepit and closed down building for location for these shots. Kate had accidently broken her tripod, only telling me an hour before the meeting to film, therefore still shots may be an issue. We agreed that if it proved too problematic, it would be easy enough to re-film. Filming proved some difficulties as we were unable to get any paint for a shot of a paint explosion against a wall. I salvaged some old paint from a dusty shed at my house to avert this slight prop issue. Also, the wet clay underfoot due to the destruction of this building proved a certain annoyance, sticking to shoes, therefore had to give Sam some of my old boots to wear. This did not disrupt the continuity of the footage as none of the shots visibly showed feet in the frame.

The following day - on the Monday - editing had to be done. A split screen sequence that was to be made unfortunately didn't work as well as planned to. This was mainly due to the inability to take a still shot. We improvised by using an upturned industrial bin to rest the camera, but some movement still occurred. Editing sequentially had its major perks, meaning it would be easy to move shot sequences into suitable parts within the music video. 

DigiPak & Booklet

After creating 3 potential DigiPak using the same basic geometric template, I gave the option of the three to my audience. Giving the vote to the audience is a rare yet sometimes used by musicians to give a choice of the artwork to fans which will ensure that the fan base actually find the artwork aesthetically appealing. The artwork featured on the booklet in the middle slot of the DigiPak is the artwork that I was to use on the cover of the album.

This is the chosen artwork with a majority vote of 5 out of 8 of the votes of the 3 album artwork choices:

The cover artwork uses the basic triangular tessellation pattern. Using the name of the chosen song for this album ('Tessellate') is a convention of some albums, where the self titled album usually has the title track first on the album's set list of songs. As discussed, I was to use textures on my album. At the location of one of the parts shown in the music video, in a dilapidated old building I found some tiles on the wall with the grey pattern seen edited on to the triangles which I believe looks almost like veins and arteries personifying the artwork, which relates to some of the symbolism and signs embedded in the music video for the track Tessellate.  

Using an existing booklet for the template of the format for the booklet, then edited the artwork on and used the 'distort' transformation on Photoshop to fit in onto the booklet template. In this photo, the booklet is open on a surface with the spine facing upwards and the artwork on the surface. The left page of the booklet in this shot shows the conventional 'all tracks written and performed by...' Additionally  I used an existing record label, Subpop Records, as the label that would hypothetically release this album. Subpop are an indie label. Also, Subpop have acts such as Mogwai in their artist rooster, who can be compared to sounding similarly to Alt-J. 

This is the artwork that I created for the insert of my booklet, using another template of an existing album booklet. On the right page are the lyrics to 'Tessellate' featuring artwork relative to the music video. The colour blue is thematic throughout the album, similarly to that discussed on Foals' Total Life Forever. Blue represents a melancholy emotion of loneliness or sadness. Additionally the colour blue is used in the music video where Sam wears this colour throughout, representing the emotional state discussed. Here, on the lyrical artwork page, we can see a blue door with bars across it, which I shot at one of the locations used for the music video, which is seen on the long shot of the decrepit building seen on the left page of this booklet. 

My reason for using this shot on the right hand side page of the blue door with bars is to visually represent the theme of the music video, where the blue door represents Sam, the protagonist in the video. Further more, the bars show how he is suppressed by his emotional attachment. My reasoning for positioning the door on the right of the frame to transfer onto the right of the page was to reinforce this idea that Sam has something missing - an emptiness which is seen also in the music video. 

DIGIPAKS FOR QUESTIONNAIRE

#1

 #2

 #3

Artwork for DigiPak: Inspiration & Convention

This is the cover artwork for Everything Everything's single Kemosabe. I will be using a similar photographic editing style, however continuing the motif of triangle shapes and having one on the cover also. It is a simplistic edit, taking two images in centre frame of the same composition (CU, MCU, etc) and layering one on top of another. This is done professionally by an actual photographer or graphic designer so do not expect mine to be exceptionally comparable in quality. The use of blocked editing rather than subtle touches to the images endorses a more striking effect, visually, on the audience. An additional reason for using the Kemosabe artwork as artistic influence is that Everything Everything and Alt-J fall into the same genre.

Alternatively, this is St. Vincent & David Byrne's collaboration album titled 'Love This Giant'. The  artwork for this album is unique, showing peculiar alterations to the facial features of the musicians.This was not done with photo editing software, but with prosthetic materials that were attached to their faces. The obscurity of the image gives a dramatic and surreal effect to the audience.  Despite not being in the same genre as Alt-J, this duet have revolutionized modern music, reinventing brass bands in music, alongside contemporary rock, similarly to the way that Alt-J have shown innovation in their sound and hybrid of genres.  The artwork portrays a domestic-like simple portrait, with very minor details obscured (the cleft of Bryne's chin and the potrusion on St. Vincent's face). This then causes a double take of the audience, making them look again in case their eyes have tricked them to see that this is in fact work of prosthetics, not a trick of the eye. This is similar to the content of the album: incorporating brass into a rock duet causes the same 'double-take' effect of shock.
To conform to similar techniques that these two examples show, I need to produce artwork with obvious points of image manipulation, yet with the title and name of the record as well as the name of the artist to be accentuated so that audiences are able to see the name of the album. The obscure nature of the artwork will parallel with the abstract technique used in the music video which is a convention of the indie , looking at creative methods rather than pop culture in music which would focus on advertising the consumerism and wealth of the artist. Another convention of artwork for albums is that they tend to also feature on the cover of the booklet that comes with the digipak, therefore will feature the cover art on the front cover of the booklet. 


This is the cover of Toro Y Moi's debut album 'Causers Of This' released in 2010. Toro Y Moi is contained in the synth/chillwave genre similarly to that of Alt-J, therefore can use this cover art as another example of conventional to my genre. This cover art again has a surreal visual element of what seems as random layering of images of water and other textures. However, this layering of these water images denote the depth and timbre of the sound of the music. 

UPDATE (1th February 2013):
The common element two of the three of these album covers is that they include geometric shapes and obscurities. Considering this, I decided to continue research in geometric art used in album covers, as well as looking at some existing artwork, such as Leif Podjasky used in previous posts, and found that geometry is common and very basic. Additionally, the whole concept of the title of my song 'Tessellate' is based around triangles and shapes, therefore giving my album a self title from the name of that song, then I could used geometry on the cover of the album. This would consequently going against the convention of including a picture of the artist on the cover, yet this was no matter as many musicians have done this - it isn't necessarily a convention of my genre, for example the current artwork for Alt-J's album An Awesome Wave is a texture with numerous colours, including no shot of the artist. 

This brought me to the problem of considering a name for the artist. After much consideration of titles with connotations of shapes, originality and sounds, I came to the conclusion that the name 'Navajo' complies. Navajo insinuates originality as the Navajo people are considered as a tribe from the descendants of Native Americans.  This originality accompanies the idea of the innovation of the music. Navajo artwork is also famous for using geometric shapes in sequences, complying with the idea of tessellation. Finally, I like the abstract nature of the word and the pronunciation that is indefinite - everyone pronounces the word differently. 

Here is some album artwork that follows the concept of geometrics as album art from The Strokes, Hot Chip, Radiohead, Caribou, Animal Collective and STRFKR :

Artwork for DigiPak + Insert Artwork: Textures

Artwork is an essential part of selling albums due to human nature of visual judgement and first impressions. The genre of music that I have selected has an artistic approach to cover art and inserts, where certain photographers and illustrators in the industry will be extremely valued for artistic companionship to work on an album.

The photographer/graphic designer that I have chosen for inspiration for my album's visual artwork is Leif Podhajsky, who has a long list of bands in his network, including Tame Impala, Foals, The Vines, Lykke Li, Gypsy & The Cat, Shabazz Palaces, Young Magic, Toy and The Horrors. Podhajsky's style is unique looking at mirrored images, cosmic landscapes, rippling and waving effects. This abstract style will work well with the nature of my video and conform to the conventions of the genre. Podhajsky often considers textures in his work, where we can see and almost feel the image.

These images come from Podhajsky's 
artwork on two Tame Impala singles taken from their latest album Lonerism, the one pictured right is the artwork for the single 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' and the one on bottom left of this paragraph is the single 'Elephant'. Both images are similar in sense that they have a visual similarity. The image for 'Elephant' looks like an emulsion of colour, similar to that of The XX's Coexist artwork (pictured left) where it shows the coloured emulsion of two liquids, however the image for Elephant has had significantly more manipulation with a more vivid colouring.  These bright colours conform to the genre of Tame Impala which is Neo-Psychedelic Rock; a niche genre that is growing significantly with Tame Impala's success. The artwork for 'Feels Like...' takes another approach of texture with a more look of tree roots yet still being ambiguous and subtle with the actual definitive structure of what it is.

Another band that Podhajsky works with is The Horrors, recently collaborating to create this limited edition box set titled 'Higher' for some singles from their latest album Skying (As pictured right). Podhajsky also uses a prominent texture on each of these singles, simply only a picture of this individual texture on a single one of the vinyl sleeves.

Looking back at the Foals digiPak, we can see how their discs have used a unique texture of the constant colour blue as a motif discussed throughout the album, not only in the artwork of the album but the visuals of the music video and lyrics of their songs on the album, e.g 'Blue Blood' is the title of one of the tracks on the album. Use of vivid imagery and colours is a convention of artwork.


The mutual corresponding element between all these discs is the use of vivid colours and finishes to its manipulation to which I believe I would be able to achieve without the use of image manipulation software, yet using the vibrant colouring of food colours. I wish to use this unique emulsion texture as a part of my digiPak, possibly as an effect used on the background of the cover image or as part of an insert, however I have other ideas for inserts to my booklet.

This is the image I took of the food colours as described above. As we can see, I used the three main colours constant throughout the music video: blue, red and green - each representing a character within the video. This colouring would be perfect to be the pattern printed on the disc in the digiPak. I will also edit the same image some how and make my digiPak a double disc digiPak with one of the discs having content such as the music video we are making on it and exclusive live footage. 

UPDATE (29th January 2013):
I used Photoshop to manipulate the above image in to two disc shapes that will include the album features as well as an additional disc for bonus features, as discussed. Here are the two discs: