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

Tegan Woods

My group and I aimed for our product and ancillary texts to clearly link which would therefore create a strong profile for our band and what Suburban ink represents. One way that we kept the continuity of our three products was by using the same or similar images throughout, an example of this is the photographs that we have used for our digipak and on the website, as these are shots from our locations where we filmed our music video.

Digipak Website Music video

Specifically for our digipak, we took images of one of our actors smoking because smoking occurs in our video. Smoking is a strong theme and prop that we used in our music video and therefore to use it as part of our digipak reinforces the link between the product and text and the cigarette then acts as a symbol or iconic feature. I believe that the continuity between all three products is vital in order to develop brand Identity in an effective manner and this is also very beneficial to the audience as it will help them to understand and relate to each product. The theory of Hegemony is shown through our three products which is conveyed by the actor smoking. In our music video the actor drinks and smokes and he is represented as contrasting against social norms by doing so.

Digipak Music video Zoomed in version

One of the main techniques that we included in our music video was a black and white effect. We chose to use this as we felt it would be the clearest and best way to present to the audience that these scenes are memories and flashbacks. After creating our video, we chose to involve the black and white theme in our ancillary texts. The black and white theme is a simple and subtle effect that I feel has a large impact and this dark colour scheme is a technique that our focus group commented on and said they liked. We chose to keep the front and back cover of the digipak in colour because these images are the first and last thing that the audience sees and we felt like we needed to leave a memorable impact.

We then involved the black and white technique and used it for the design of Suburban Ink’s website to reflect the digipak and music video, trying to keep all three products looking as authentic as possible. We were able to add features to our site such as links to social media, links to the website ‘Ticketmaster’ on our tour page and merchandise on our store page. One member of our focus group said that our website “looks genuine because of the external links” as this was our aim when creating the website, I believe we have achieved this successfully and overall all three of our products effectively work well together.

The back and front covers of the digipak are in colour

Black and white theme continued onto our website

A flashback in our music video

Link from our website to Ticketmaster