Ancillary research task

1. The colour orange not only stands out from
the crowd due to its brightness, but also it’s
a very clever piece of marketing. As we all
know Ed Sheeran has ginger hair, this tied
in with the fact the album and poster
artwork are his face but in an orange/white
take on a grey scale, makes a complete
digipak marketing campaign for Ed
Sheeran himself. This contrasts to the
actual CD however, which is just plain
black. This is used to reference the fact Ed
does not put his sole focus on how a song
is presented, but rather how it sounds and
its meaning.
The album front cover and tour promotion
posters are virtually identically, the only
difference being that the poster has writing
on the front. In saying that, the goal of this
album was to launch Ed Sheeran as a
brand - make him a household face,
recogniseable by his unique voice.

2. Both the tour poster and album artwork
feature very clean, simple, and bright
designs but with calm colours. This
connotes to Sampha’s style of music,
which is soul with modern beats etc. This is
again shown through the font, which is
modern for the era in which soul was more
popular. The font could however be used,
in an obscure way, to represent a digital
alarm clock’s number style - giving a
message that time is running out and you
need to be quick to get a copy/ticket.
In the tour poster, the fact Sampha is sort
of in a falling/leaning back position says a
few interesting things. One being that he
could be suggesting that he is a free
person and the music is not under the
pressures of popular artists i.e he’s not
selling out or moving to a genre that
actually doesn’t suit him. He’s being loyal
to himself.

3. Drake’s “Views” album and his subsequent
tour are an interesting case of promotion.
The two contrast completely, with the
album artwork being just the same image
of Drake sitting on top of the CN Tower in
his hometown Toronto. Whereas the tour
poster has no imagery, just words. Whilst
this has no real consistency, the colour
schemes provide a good link to the
synergetic pieces, though not an obvious
one.

4. Both the tour poster and album artwork
feature the same font and colour scheme.
The colour black is not just the canvas for
the texts, however it represents the more
serious nature of the songs Dave made for
this album. Additionally, it contrasts well to
the yellow and orange colours - helping to
make the artist name, album/tour name
and dates stand out.
For the tour poster, the visual of Dave and
a black panther have been split. This is a
design choice and helps to portray Dave as
an animal, waiting to take on his prey (often
politicians and policies in his music).
Overall the colour scheme and visuals
work well together to promote Dave as a
brand, and also as a kind of activist.