Tuesday 14th December 2010

EVALUATION 2

How effective is the main product and the ancillary texts?

I'll firstly explain why I chose to create the album cover the way I did and the reasons behind those choices:

The Front Cover

I chose to show Imogen - the artist - as quite vulnerable and alone, her looking at the rose symbolises her longing for the boy she likes to finally tell her if he likes her too, hence the title "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" - which also links back to how Harleigh feels about Will in the music video. The colour scheme is black and white with the rose and the album title in red. This is because I wanted to connote the colour red as the love she feels for the boy and deepens the meanings of the other songs on the album. Love is the overall theme throughout the album and the video, so I wanted to incorporate this in both ancillary texts to suggest the meaning further and also make it easier for the audience to understand. The font for the artists name is bold and in capitals to make her name really stand out because it's her first album and I wanted it to be noticed. The album title "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" is in the style of handwriting and italicized, as I wanted to make it seem like she has doodled her thoughts out onto a page, which is a huge contrast to the artists name and the album title itself.

The Back Cover

This shows Imogen walking away from the rose, I did this because I want the audience to really think of distinction of the front and back, asking questions like "why has she walked away? Is it because she's given up on waiting". A real sense of ambiguity is being thrown out to the audience here, as I really want them to use their own interpretation, letting their imaginations run free. Again it goes back to the colour scheme of red, black and white, this is because I wanted to keep it consistent and not look too mis-matchy, otherwise the overall theme would not really have a purpose.

The Left Inside Cover

This cover has the acknowledgements on it because I wanted to show the audience who the artist was grateful too. I wrote it as if it was the artist herself as I did have a few thanks to share also. The image shows Imogen looking up, I did this because I wanted it to look as if she was looking up at her thoughts in her head, and the smile on her face represents her thanks. The colour scheme is black and white, however Imogen and her thanks are in colour signifiying she is happy and 'loving life'. Again the font is in the style of handwriting to portray that she is memorising what she wrote down, and the colour is pink to connote love again.

The Right Inside Cover 

Finally, the last part of the digipak! The right inside cover of the album cover, is where I have put the CD. I showed hands holding the flower - the background is a black and white version and the CD is a really colourful version to distinguish the good and bad times of relationships. The black and white version symbolises the bad moments, although the CD (colourful version) shows how exciting it can be. Two very contrasting moments. This again relates to reality and how people live through bad and good relationships. The album cover is basically representing the video in still image form, we see Harleigh's love life in moving image and how misleading relationships can be and because of this, I have incorporated the flower as the overall decider in the album cover. The album cover was designed in Photoshop, this way was a much easier solution to being really creative and it really helped to make the images stand out.


I changed my idea from the planning process because I thought it would be better to link the whole project with the theme, love, so the Hummingbird idea wouldn't work because it connotes nature, whereas a red rose symbolises love. I thought this idea of incorporating the red rose would work better with the theme of love/relationship towards the audience as it would be easily distinguishable if they were searching for the artist in a shop or online.

The magazine advert.

What I did here was to show the flower in snow and I made the colour deep red to entice readers to look at the picture of the flower. The flower is in the advert as it corresponds with the album - the theme of love, with the red flower symbolising love. Also any flower is a major contributor to saying "I'm sorry" or "I love you", so I thought it would be good if I put the flower as the main focus on the magazine article as it focuses love. The colour scheme is yet again black, white and red, however black is not the main colour this time. White is the overall colour as a it is a bright colour which would catch readers attention in a magazine, also I didn't want to stray away from the running theme, as then it wouldn't really have a purpose, which is what I intended to do in the planning process. The font is more suitable for girls, just because it looks more appealing to their eyes and they were my target audience as I believe they would prefer the songs on the album. As you can see there are some comments from The Guardian Music Review and Radio 1, I decided on these two as they have a dramatic input into the way we listen to music, so I thought why don't they make a comment about the album?

Finally the albums front cover is on the bottom right hand corner, as I want the readers to be able to recognise the album if they were to see them in any HMV stores - indicated on the advert. I decided on HMV stores because that is the place where most people buy albums they are interested in.

The magazine advert was created on publisher as it was an easier format to use to make everything work together and I could also grab all the elements and place them where I wanted. I designed the background on Photoshop; which is the flower in the snow, for the reason that I could change the contrast and brightness to suit the magazine advert.

New Magazine Advert

The new magazine advert is completely different to the other because I wanted to focus more on the new season and Imogen the artist herself. As the song has the lyrics ‘Just like the seasons he’ll come around’ I thought it would be suitable to have a new season to relate back to the song which links to the video that I created for this coursework. What I did to create this magazine advert was to take a picture of Imogen in her everyday clothes to show her as someone my target audience can relate too – as she is dressed appropriately she would be a suitable role model to young teenagers/young girls. After doing so, I used Photoshop to incorporate all the images I wanted to use together, so by doing so I contrasted and saturated the image of the flowers and used the overlay tool and applied it onto the background of Imogen sitting on the floor underneath the balcony in the Sixth Form building. I then took the image of the flowers again and used the overlay tool to apply it onto the side of Imogen sitting on the floor and changed the opacity of this image so that the audience would be able to distinguish who Imogen is. The flowers together link back to the music video as the theme is of relationships/love and flowers do connote this theme and the vibrant colours represent how you can have exciting moments in your relationships. I kept the font for ‘Whitney Wiatt He Loves Me He Loves Me Not’ because it is the font on the album and would be recognisable for the audience to buy in shops/download. I chose iTunes for the distributing of the album because audiences are more liable to download songs than buy them in shops because it is easier for them to do so. I also chose her record label ‘Big Machine Records’ because they are a Folk, Indie and Acoustic label who strive to support their artists with these genre’s and I put the logo on the advert as again it shows who represent Imogen the singer and why Imogen identifies herself in the way she does.

So there you have it, hopefully you now have a knowledge of why I created the ancillary texts the way I did and the reasons behind them. Thanks for listening!

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