Evaluation (Two).

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

After completing my video I set about creating the advertisement and the digipak for the release of the EP. I felt that an important aspect of the marketing of an artist is the recognisability, and ease of identification among the audience. I therefore decided to create not only a visual link between my three productions, but maintain a theme with them.

As you will see there is a strong link between the EP cover and the magazine advertisement, as I’ve used the same image on both of them. The image is of a male figure, profiled from the shoulders up, looking down to the ground. This image was taken from my art sketchbook, one painted and one mono printed, and I applied it to both of the print productions. This recurring image will be memorised by the consumers, and therefore identified and associated with the artist; meaning this will become the artist’s sort of ‘logo’. The way in which the print productions are connected with the video itself, are a little more subtle. One connection is the use of a male figure in both advertisement and the video, as the song is about a male character named Justin; this links all three together regarding subject matter, and creates ‘a world’ that surrounds the release of the song. Another recurring theme within the three productions is the sheer sense of isolation, all three feature just one character and his withdrawal from the world; again making the release recognisable by its theme.

The three productions come together to create a kind of ‘movement’ as it were, a sort of campaign that highlights isolation and self destruction. However, this doesn’t represent the artist; it purely creates attention surrounding the song – almost how advertisement creates buzz around a film release and not the director. This creates a sense of mystery that obscures the artist, and will hopefully cause the audience to be primarily interested in the production, and then become highly intrigued by the artist – bringing about recognition in a slightly new way.

Another key aspect that linked the productions was the use of text. Using a consistent font across all productions creates familiarity among the audience, and connects the audience to any advertisement to the unsigned artist. Familiarity is key in creating a successful artist; if an unsigned artist continuously changed their style committed fans wouldn’t be able to keep up. Although it may seem basic and unimportant, text is one of the key visual formats that keeps things recognisable and easy to identify. I utilised this and maintained a constant font that spread across both of my print productions, this kept it not only simple and easy to follow, but easy to recognise and identify with the artist.

Overall, I feel I’ve been successful in creating a continuous theme throughout all three of my productions. Visually there is an evident connection, especially with my print productions, and I feel consumers will easily be able to identify and access the visual themes. However, the link between the print productions and the music video are not so obvious in a visual sense, but more in a theoretical sense. The audience needs to think about the actual message and theme within the song and the productions, in order to identify a recurring theme of isolation and self destruction. I felt this is actually a really positive aspect, as the information isn’t being fed directly into the audience’s mind, it needs to be reflected upon and thought about in more ways than one; everyone can find a personal connection to this production.