Ancillary Magazine Advert Research

It is important that when bands advertise their albums in magazines that the advert incorporates their brand image and potential customers can instantly recognise the product as being produce of the band.

This Kings of Leon advert clearly establishes the brand image of the group by clearly incorporating the band logo in the upper third of the advert; the portion the eye is initially draw to when looking at an image. Below this the album cover itself which takes up the vast m

ajority of the A4 page making it unmissable and eye catching when flicking through the pages of a magazine. Another thing which makes it stand  out in a colourful magazine is the greenish sepia tint of the album art with matches the sort of colour grading used on their "Sex on Fire" video. Putting the release date in red totally contrasts the greenish tint making it stand out as well. 

This next advert features the artwork from the album cover as the entire background of the advert. The label section of the original album cover has been expanded to contain information regarding release dates and stores in which it is available for purchase. 

 

Mock up warning

For part of the video to add more realism I decided to recreate a UKWMO (United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation) T.V. warning which may have been shown if nuclear weapons were launched against in the 80's. I decided to heavily base my warning transmission on this mock up I found on youtube which features the official UKWMO warning plate which would have been shown. Link > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1GqzosWoVc

Here is also some background on UKWMO (now disbanded). Link >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Warning_and_Monitoring_Organisation

Album cover analysis

The album conver is a very important part of the project as a whole. It is the thing ultimately that lets potential buyers quickly see that this is the album they have seen on tv or advertised in a magazine. Also for people who have never heard of the band before the album is a way of getting across the band image and the message the album portrays quickly.

Here is the album cover for system of a downs album "steal this album". They have gone with a toung in cheek conraversial design that matches the brand image and what the songs on the album portray. The cover art is very eye catching in it's simplicity, proving that cover art doesnt need to be overly complex to be effective. It displays what looks like a pirate copy of a CD, a common sight for any teenager I am sure. This shows the band do not take themselves to seriously or perhaps dont agree fully with the law. As their album on sale is infact telling you not to bother paying for it. This however almost has a reverse psychology effect as it makes you want to buy it rather oddly enough!

Here by contrast is Amon Amarth's album cover for "Twilight of the Thunder God". This cover art is very rich and lavish and encompasses their nieche sub genre of viking metal well. It shows a ship going down in a stormy sea on fire in the back ground a a viking sporting the hammer of Thor dualing with a giant sea creature! Very over the top and showy as is the style of music. It also indicates the historical and mythological angles the music contains.

Finally dimmu borgir's cover art for"Stormblast". Keeping in ming the fact that their metal sub genre is black metal, a satanic based sub genre it goes without saying how effective the artwork is at summing up the feel of the music. The dark stormy sky indidcates the dark gothic tint that the music encompasses. The horned hooded demon figure itself gives glues to the lyrical content and overall would make a fan of the genre go "oh cool!" which is the main goal at the end of the day. Even the overall colour scheme the cold blues and blacks would catch you eye if searching for this kind of music in the shelves af any music store.

Keeping all this in mind I must create and album cover which portrays my band image, genre and is apealing to a potential buyer the moment it enters their field of vision.

Video update

As of today all the footage has been shot for the video. All the band footage was shot in a days shoot against the greenscreen background which I cleared out my back room tomake space for along with the lighting etc. I then went and shot all the background footage, although with the prolonged snow I had to incoporate that somehow as I wouldn't be able to get the firey sky look I was originally going for. I decided to make it a nuclear winter instead to make it in keeping with the theme of the song. This also allowed me to be just as stylistic and to play with colour saturation etc. I did a rough cut of the footage and then started to key out the greenscreen in After Effects I then began compositing the two different sets of footage and grading them to make it look more relistic. Examples and a rough cut will be posted shortly. I also decided that as the band members get nuked at the end I needed some narrative device to show what had actually caused this so decided to model an F-117 Nighthawk StealthBomber in Autodesk Maya. This model can then be textured, have lighting applied and exported as a PNG picture sequence for use in After Effects. Here is a shot of the jet for reference. This will also help add realism as these kinds of radar stealthed jets are used to drop nuclear grade warheads in combat situations.

Album Cover Analysis and notes on Digipaks

The album cover to be designed is for a Digipak. This type of CD case was created in direct competition of the jewel CD case and consists of resistant card folded to create four main faces and the spine. A plastic tray is then glued into the card to hold a CD. Here is a net/blueprint version of the digipak 

And here an example of an assembled an printed 4 page Digipak as I will make

Many real bands have opted to use this CD case design from my related genre. Killswitch Engage for example opted to release the special edition of their self titled 2009 album. Here is the cover.

The album cover is very striking. The use of colour the black and yellow "warning" colours indicate that it belongs to a heavy genre straight away, you wouldn't see a jazz album using this scheme. This eye catching scheme along with the manipulation of the leopard with a snakes tongue makes this cover very eye catching. The clever positioning of the bands title between the teeth of the leopards mouths draws your eye to it straight away. Thus the album uses eye catching colours and imagery to quickly establish genre and then draws the potential buyers eye to the band name leaving no more illusions about who the album is by.