1. Q2) How effective is the
combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?

2. • The combination of our product consists of: The music video (main
product), digi pack, and website. These three products were
distributed between our group members in producing them, in
which we all contributed at one stage to help finish it. The
consistency between the three products was to do with the font
used and the use of black and white and initially create a branding
between the three of them. We downloaded a free font off of the
website "1001 free fonts" in which we incorporated into our main
product and ancillary texts. It was on our title for the digi pack
cover, on the website and used for the lyrics which appeared on
screen on our main product.
I believe that the combination of our main product and ancillary
texts were greatly effective as they follow certain codes and
conventions of an alternative genre and helped to recognize the
branding of the product which we were trying to put out and
portray.

3. Digi-pak
• For the digi-pak we wanted
to express a lot of emotion
that was also portrayed in
our music video by capturing
Jake being his natural self. To
make our digi-pak effective,
we edited them on
Photoshop to make them
black and white and to
sharpen certain aspects of
the photo. For example
blurring out the background,
to illustrate depth of field.
The poster within the digi-
pak helps the artist to
connect with his fans; an
incentive for the fans to
purchase the CD and his
music.

4. Website
• We looked at similar artists during our research
process in order to conform to the codes and
conventions in which the audience could understand
and later relate to. We wanted the website to
be simple to navigate around, allowing those who are
not familiar in using the computer, to browse freely
and easily. The website follows what is expected of an
artist of an alternative genre. James Morrison and
Coldplay are just a few artists in which we looked at to
help inspire us to make our main product and ancillary
texts effective, and their website helped us greatly.
What we did realise is that they had a branding
recognition between their website and album cover
and we decided to take that forward to incorporate in
ours, if possible. The stereotypical use of black and
white created the sad look but also worked in our
favour into being plain and simple to use as it didn't
create colour clashes. If we compare the two websites
we can instantly spot many similarities, such as a
figure of the artist in the background, a bold, clear
name of the artist and links to different social
networking sites. These similarities help to make our
website effective as it sticks closely to the codes and
conventions of the Alternative genre.

5. Main Product
• Our main product contributed greatly to develop the kind of website and
digi pack we wanted to produce. It made clear what our branding strategy
was, due to the similar features that were held throughout the three
products.
We wanted to use a selective amount of words from the song to appear
on screen to help create the sad, glum effect we were looking for. The
main problem was deciding on the font. After experimenting on Illustrator,
we found a website in which we were able to download and use free
fonts. During the making of the digi-pak we found one which stood out
and was favourited by the whole group. This was when we decided that it
should be used on the website and for our main product. Furthermore,
the use of black and white (desaturation) on the main product also
became effective as it participated to a factor for making the digi-pak and
website this way too. These two aspects became consistent throughout
our main product and ancillary texts and thus became part of our
branding.