Research into Ancillary Products...

On top of the music video, I am going to create 2 ancillary products: a promotional poster for an album and artwork for a Digipak. This would usually include a  direct link between the Digipak and poster and at least a link between the ancillary products and the music video. To show this, I've decided to use two of each product to research, two that promote the same album, The Resistance by Muse and two others that are completely different in theme and layout. For this reason I've chosen the TRON soundtrack created by Daft Punk, and after struggling to find a poster that had more going on in the picture, an album by Mika. I've also got example artwork from Welcome to the Breakdown by I Fight Dragons to establish themes and ideologies.

First of all, lets look at the posters. The poster for the resistance is very minimalistic with just 3 keys parts to the artwork, the titles and the image. The poster does slightly conform to the Gutenberg diagram, refraining from putting lots of information in the top right and bottom left corners. That being said, it is not really read diagonally and so it conforms more to the rule of thirds being centred to the middle third, overlapping the first and third but not spanning the entire page. The second poster is much more the opposite, there are things everywhere! Most importantly the title, included tracks and the date of release are in the primary optical area (P.O.A.) and ending in the terminal area. The strong fallow area contains a lesser important image which isn't as key as Mika's name as his music is sold as part of brand identity. In the weak fallow area there is only part of the background article so is least significant. As for rule of thirds, it conforms but only loosely, if "MIKA" is perceived as being written in the firstst and middle thirds and the third is where the picture of Mika himself is. The lower information would then be slipping into the middle third from the right, which could anchor the idea of the artwork that it is absolutely everywhere!

As for the Digipak artwork, there is a clear consistency between the poster and digipak for Muse, The Resistance shown by the repetition of the main artwork and the font with the two lines above and below the artist name. OK, both of these examples of these digipaks are not like usual 6 sided digipaks - I struggled to find any that were relevant and I don't have any of my own to scan/photograph. However they do represent how consistency creates a professional feel to an album. The album artwork varies for The Resistance however as it completely follows the Gutenberg diagram, unlike it's poster as the artist name and album name are both in the POA and ending in the terminal area. The colour is also consistent in both with the black and neon blue/white feel of Daft Punk and the black, white and the colour wheel is a repeated contrast throughout The Resistance. The TRON album is really rather simplistic which acts as a counterweight to the bold contrast of the blue and white on black although subversively, the images and titles are in a middle horizontal third rather than the conventional vertical rule of thirds.

After researching this, I think it is clear to see that consistency is definitely key and that minimalistic or busy designs can work but it all depends on how deep the contrast is between background and the subjects in the images and text colour/font. Establishing a house style is the single-most important part of making a brand for an artist. For my own product I am interested in taking I Fight Dragon's current ideas on artwork and making changes like showing the members of the band and steering away from using 100% pixel art, but I wont rule out the use of it completely. Feel free to post any comments as always!

~ Jack ~