The document discusses the effectiveness of connecting a main product like an album to ancillary products like music videos, posters, and digipaks. It analyzes how artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Ed Sheeran connect their different products through consistent branding elements like color schemes while also allowing for variety. The author's own ancillary products - a poster and digipak for a music video - have related but different designs, inspired by other artists, to appeal to wider audiences while still linking the products to the featured artist, Mike Swanson.

1. How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
Evaluation Post 2

2. Why promote?
When producing a debut album there comes a big promoting process in order to
put the album into the audience’s line of sight. There is usually a connection
between the album and all other products associated with it in order for audiences
to associate the products with one another. For example Taylor Swift’s song ‘Bad
Blood’ is associated with her album 1989 and that is how audiences recognise it.

3. The main connection
Throughout my main product (my music video) and my ancillary products (the
digipak and poster) there is not a clear indication that all of them are linked. This is
shown by a particular colour scheme and outfit choice for the poster and the music
video whereas the digipak has a ‘sketchy’ design to it. I gained the inspiration to
not have a reoccurring theme throughout all 3 platforms from artists such as
Taylor Swift and Drake. The whole promotional content from Drake and Taylor
Swift’s albums (Take Care and 1989) didn’t follow the same style throughout and it
showed a variety of ideas that they considered whilst producing their products,
Drake’s Take Care album specifically has a similar colour scheme for the poster
and digipak whilst having a completely different tone and colour scheme for the
video of the title track.

4. Differences of colour scheme and style in
Drake’s Take Care music video and digpak cover

5. This shows how even though the products both
contain the artist, therefore showing a
connection, there is a difference in how it is
presented. This is so it can be presentable for
many audiences by having different styles

6. My Ancillary Products - Poster
My ancillary products have a similar colour scheme but different overall
designs. The reason being is due to the fact I wanted the poster to be linked
with both the music video and the album that includes the song. The design
of the poster was heavily influenced by the likes of Justin Bieber’s ‘Purpose’
Poster, with the positioning of the artist, the social medias used and including
the release date. Furthermore I took the option of making the main heading of
the poster ‘Mike Swanson - Debut Album’ in order for it to stand out that this
is us putting our artist out into the music industry. Furthermore the picture of
the artist in the poster includes the jacket that is associated with our artist in
the music video. I saw this as a symbol that audiences would be able to
recognise as being a ‘Mike Swanson’ image. I was able to gain this idea from
artists such as Coldplay and Michael Jackson as both of them have iconic
images or objects that audieces associate with them. For example the
colourful piano for coldplay and the sparkling glove for michael jackson.

7. My Ancillary Products - Digipak
My intention for my digipak was to create a completely different
image and style from the music video produced. The design was
to put the artist at the centre of the digipak in order for the
audience to know this album is to show them who Mike Swanson
is. The sketch design of the digipak is to put my preferred reading
of the artist is ‘drawing his story’ to show to audiences that the
company JWK studios is still in the process of making a main
name for Swanson. Moreover, the plain and simplistic design of
the disc was to resemble how simple and straightforward the
music on the album will be. The main inspiration for simplistic
ideas for my digipak came from album designs such as Ed
Sheeran’s ‘plus’. I used this idea as he produces a similar genre
of music to my artist so I saw the oppurtunity to have a slight
similarity.