Evaluation Question 2:How effective is the combination of

your main product and your ancillary texts?

Our products and inspirationThe 3 products we created were a music video, digipak and a website for a band that we had to create. The general theme we were aiming for was indie rock, not so much that it breached the boundaries of the genre but so that it fit with the repertoire whilst adding our own design and twist. We wanted to create realistic looking products that could be professional and I feel that, as a group, we did a really convincing job. The 3 main bands we took inspiration from were Catfish and the Bottlemen, Arctic Monkeys and Cage The Elephant.

Arctic Monkeys

One album we took a lot of inspiration from was their 2006 ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ Its is mainly a person’s face with a plain background which is the same as ours except we used a girl for ours. Their album is in black and white, matching their website and ours similarly has the same print on the website background as it does on the digipak. The combination of a black and white filter over their digipak as well as their website and music videos such as The View From The Afternoon creates a strong identity for the band and allows an audience to recognise them through these consistent features. Furthermore, the latest self-titled album they released relates to the black and white theme too as well as really reflecting their website design and music videos, especially Do I Wanna Know, acting as almost an exact copy of their album cover.

Cage The ElephantThis was another band we took a lot of inspiration from, mainly the album cover. The muted yellows and browns are similar to the filter that’s on the girl on the album cover ‘Tell Me I’m Pretty’ and because this album is their latest one, the entire website is the same theme as the digipak (such as muted yellow as the background, the same font etc.). One of their songs from the album is called Cry Baby and, although the link between their music videos and their other 2 products isn’t as obvious as that of Catfish and the Bottlemen or Arctic Monkeys, you can still see similarities such as the filter over top of the music video being faded and thus muting a lot of the vivid colours. Some of their other music videos from other albums like the song Shake Me Down also has this theme and similar colours to the Tell Me I’m Pretty album.

Catfish and the Bottlemen

For our final band inspiration we decided to go with Catfish and the Bottlemen. This was less for the digipak and more for the website, music video and how all 3 of their products worked in conjunction with each other. We wanted to create professional looking products such as these and make them work together. The product we worked off was their music video Kathleen from the album ‘The Balcony’. The entire music video is in black and white, thus reflecting the website and digipak and the writing on the digipak (for example the font, colours, sizing etc.) is all the same which further creates a recognisable image for the band whilst tying all their products in together. This is similar in Homesick in terms of the filter. Some of the photos on the website are also the same as in the Homesick its just a collage of photos.

Our ProductsWhen we created our products, we knew we wanted to have a continuous theme running throughout. First we created the digipak and were so happy with how it turned out. Even if the girl on the front cover had nothing to do with our music video and website, we could still use it because it’s what Arctic Monkeys and Cage The Elephant did. After apply filters and having a very grunge, yellow and brown colour scheme we decided to leave it alone as it looked create. When creating the music video, we thought it’d look good if we boosted the saturation and made all the yellow and orange undertones come through and look like the digipak. Furthermore, in the music video the band members were wearing blacks and blues and dark colours to further relate to the other product. Finally we created the website and originally used a black background however this looked really unprofessional and didn’t relate to either products we had created therefore we decided to change the background to the same colours as the digipak and were really impressed with the outcome of our 3 products.

Social Media

Social media allows bands and artists to get closer to their fans in terms of picture sharing, messaging or just liking different posts. It also allows for a lot of promotion for some bands. Bands or artists that are signed to indie record labels especially rely on social media to spread the word of their music and get themselves known. Because the genre we were working with is indie rock, we decided to create social media as a platform to share our music on so our audience and fans could see what we were up to. Social media also helps us link all of our products together as, for example, the logo we used on the merch on our website is the one that appears in the profile picture of our social media accounts. Furthermore, on our twitter there is a picture that is also on our website’s ‘band’ page

SynergySynergy is the cooperation of two or more organizations to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. We have used synergy mainly throughout our website. For example, you are able to listen to and then download songs from our website which uses synergy because it’s our band’s website with help from iTunes which is owned by Apple. Another example is the merchandise, which is available to buy on the website, resulting in synergy between our band and the merchandise company. We decided to keep the logo theme running throughout our merchandise for example it’s in the corner of the hoodies and t-shirts and the song list from our album is on the back of them. We also have tote bags and phone cases with the album cover on which promotes the album and you can buy it directly from the merchandise page of the page or you can buy the songs individually on the listen page.