Question 2:How effective is the combination of

your main product and ancillary texts?

CD Cover

The CD cover is in my opinion the most successful of the 3 pieces. It works well to convey the hip hop/grime genre. This is because the genre is a hybrid of both the underground grime genre but leans more towards the mainstream hip hop genre. As a result the cover conveys the theme of a hybrid we were trying to create. The urban shot image illustrates this however the effects placed on top of the image move it away from the more darker tones of the grime genre and towards the upmarket look of hi hop. The USP on the cover is the colour and lighting effects give the unique look. On the cover all that is clear is the artist while on the back everything else is clear except the artist because he has his back turned. The colour is a direct link of the album title, ”True Colours” as well as being a play on words. You never see the true colours of the cover only the colours the artist wants you to see. The cover where a lot of similarities has be drawn from is ASAP Rocky’s LoveLiveASAP. His genre shares similarities of being a niche of grime/hip hop.

Poster

The album poster isn’t as successful as the cover in my opinion. It does not convey the genre as well as the cover. This is because of the layout of the poster shows to much white space. It also does not use the same colour scheme of the grayscale and colour effects as effectively as the album cover. It does advertise the album release well however. The banner placed at the top still manages to convey the urban-ness of the grime genre without looking tacky.The image effect of the ghost was inspired by a poster of Tinie Tempah. While the poster was simple we figured we could use the ghost effect as we thought this would be good in conveying the genre as well as a visually appealing technique. What would probably make this poster better the inclusion of institutions that would distribute the album like iTunes, HMV and Amazon, as these are the main distributors of music in this digital age.

Music Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA4eRSATThA&feature=youtube

Finally the music video. This piece is also highly successful as a music video. It subverts from the stereotypical look of both grime and hip hop videos. The one aspects that adhere is the studio shots. This is a common aspect in grime genre. In order to convey hip hop concepts as well we looked at established hip hop artist that we would have wanted our artist to also represent. We ended up inspired by a lot of videos from the artist Kanye West. In his video the “Good Life” the use of the words flying into the video was a concept we chose to use. This was to make the video much more light hearted and fun. Kanye is another artist who subverts from the common representations of the genre. As a result the artist look is presented to be as a more up-beat artist with a more positive representation than some hip hop artist. This will appeal to the audience presented in the research as the majority said that they would watch music video based on their preferred genre.