Ancillary Task 2: Further Digipak Research

Celebrity Skin - Hole

This digipak is more conventional than the Sonic Youth album, as it uses full-page photographs rather than collage, and typed text instead of handwritten text, but the use of off-centre photographs & the painting on the back give it a less conventional and more quirky feel. I don't like the design of this digipak as much as the Sonic Youth digipak as it seems too traditional and dull, however I like the use of full page photographs and I think we could use a similar style in creating our own digipak, but possibly overlay it with collage, hand-written text, or drawings.

BACK                                                                   FRONT

BOOKLET                                                              DISK

DISK

BOOKLET (background is plain black, rainbow effect is scanning error)

Ancillary Task 2: Further Digipak Research

Sister - Sonic Youth

This album by 90s alternative noise rock band Sonic Youth uses an unusually artistic scrapbook-style approach to this album, using collage and handwritten lyrics rather than the more conventional photographs and type-written text. I like this digipak because of the way the artistic style of it makes it feel more informal and personal. I find the way the disk is printed inspirational in the approach to creating our own digipak, as I think using handwritten text is a good way to make an audience feel closer to the artist.

BACK                                                                    FRONT

DISK

BOOKLET                                                                      DISK

BOOKLET

Ancillary Tasks: Ideas

In addition to editing the video, this week we started more intense research into the ancillary tasks, creating a website and a digipak to promote our artist. To make our ideas more clear and linear, we wrote them out into graphs for each task. We drew from the content of the music video, as well as inspiration from already established artists' websites to create initial ideas for what the website and digipak are going to look like. Katie and Rachael, the other members of the media class, looked at other artists' websites such as Radiohead (link) and David Bowie (link).

Editing Progress

This week we started looking at the ancillary tasks, creating a digipak and website to promote our artist, and so editing temporarily became a secondary task. In order to make what we had to do clearer, I wrote a list of all the problems in the music video so far so we could fix them after further research into the ancillary tasks. So far the first 5 problems have been resolved in a single period of media, and so I don't think the rest of the list will take too long to complete.

Ancillary Task 2: Digipak Research

This week we have started looking at digipaks with an aim to create our own to promote Adash, our artist. I analysed the digipaks of two albums, Nirvana's Nevermind and an album by a relatively unknown Norwegian band called Royksopp. When comparing the differences between the albums, I noticed that as Nirvana were already an established band at the time of Nevermind's release, the booklet inside the digipak contained more photos of the band than Rokysopp's album, but the photos were more artistic and less clear, and the band were not as visible as the photographs of Rokysopp. Another significant difference between the digipaks was that the outer sleeve of Roksopp's album had reviews and quotes from critics on, which suggests that this album was created to promote the band.

An example of a plain digipak

 Nevermind - Nirvana (front, back, inside booklet)

Melody A.M. - Royksopp (front)

Side-by-side analysis in notes of both digipaks - Roksopp in first column, Nirvana in second and third.

Ancillary Task 1: Website Research

We have been looking at famous musicians' websites who we think are similar in style to the way we are aiming to promote Adash. I looked at Patti Smith and Nirvana's websites; I thought this was a good selection of artists as they are both in different stages of their careers: Nirvana are no longer active following the death of their frontman, but still have a huge cult following, and Patti Smith is still alive but has mostly retired as a musician and now writes books and promotes performances as 'words and music'.

Patti Smith's website is very minimal but has many links to different pages. Her website does not follow typical conventions of an artists' website as it is not entirely self-promotional; one link takes the user to a page she has written about her dogs, and another takes you to a tribute she has written to artist Lou Reed. Her website is overall very minimalistic and focuses entirely on the content of the page instead of unnecessary decoration.

As Nirvana are completely inactive as a band, but the two living members are independently active as musicians,

Audience Focus Group

We gave a questionnaire to a group of 10 seventeen year olds. None of them knew anything about the artist and hadn't heard the song before, so their answers were uninfluenced by prejudgements. After playing them the song, we gave them these question sheets. Their answers varied slightly but the general consensus was that the artist was around 20 years old, and a white, 'alternative'-looking male with long hair. The majority of people guessed that the song was about love, and aimed towards 'hipsters', a sub-culture of people who thrive on rejecting mainstream culture.