The document discusses the effectiveness of the house style, colors, fonts, images, lighting, props, costumes, visual themes, and theory used in a promotional package for an indie/folk musician. The house style creates continuity through consistent use of colors, fonts, layouts and images to make the product identifiable. Audience feedback confirmed the house style successfully reflected the chosen genre. Natural colors like blue, brown and green were used for images to reflect the genre. Black and white fonts ensured readability and contrast. Simple, clearly readable fonts from the genre were also used. Outdoor images of the artist in natural settings were chosen over close-ups to reflect the genre's redundancy. Lighting also used natural

1. Question 2: How effective is the
combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?
EVALUATION

2. House Style:



The house style is an important component and media
convention in ensuring that the final promotional package is
successful. The house style consists of a certain level of
continuity – this can include: the colours, fonts, layout and
images. It also makes the product identifiable to the creator.
I believe that I have created a successful house style because
the colour scheme is consistent. I decided to use earthy
colours, such as: blue, white and green in order to reflect my
chosen genre. I also only used around 3 fonts throughout my
print work. This ensures that I have a continuous house style
yet it still creates some diversity within my work. Also the
images are all taken outside in a naturalistic element.
My aim was to create a coherent package that has a
successful house style that my audience will be able to
identify. The house style is fairly redundant as it reflects my
chosen genre (indie/folk). Simplicity is often the key in my
genre; therefore, I attempted to reflect that.

3. COLOURS


For the images I wanted to use natural colours, such
as blue, brown and green. I found that my genre of
music was quite simplistic but also incorporated a lot
of natural colours. In my research, I found that the
album artwork for Ben Howard‟s Kingdom album was
blue.
The colours I used for my fonts were black and
white. The CMYK codes for these are:
#000000
When researching other artist‟s
albums of my genre, I found
that their fonts usually consisted
of the colours black and white.
For example, Ben Howard‟s and
Ed Sheeran‟s both feature black
and white fonts.
#ffffff
By using these two
colours, it enabled the
font to be read more
clearly and it also
created a contrast.

4. FONTS




I decided that in order to create an effective and coherent
promotional package, I would have to choose fonts that could be
clearly read by my audience and ones that would stand out. I
downloaded the majority of my fonts from da font as they had a
broad range to choose from.
Some of the fonts I originally looked at did not fit in with my genre.
For example, „Birth of a hero‟ looked like a font that could have been
used for a heavy metal or rock band, rather than an indie genre. In
the end I chose relatively simple fonts that could be clearly read yet
were effective in promoting my package.
When I asked my target audience which font they preferred, they all
said they preferred the „Edmundsbury‟ font and „Impact Label‟. They
felt that they would have both reflected my genre well.
From the previous images on the other slide, it was clear that the
artist‟s in my chosen genre also used simple and clearly read fonts.

5. IMAGES


Arguably the images are the most important
factor in the promotional package. The
images will determine the brand identity of the
artist and will help determine whether or not
the artist will be a success.
On my digipak I only chose to use two images
of my artist, and I purposely chose not to use
close ups. This is because, in my research I
found that this was common feature within my
genre. Ben Howard‟s face isn‟t even featured
on the „Kingdom‟ album and Ed Sheeran‟s
isn‟t particularly very clear. I chose to use
images of the artist looking natural rather than
too posed or eye level with the camera. This
is to reflect the redundancy element of my
genre.

6. LIGHTING


The lighting in our video is very high key.
We only used natural light – the sun as we
only filmed outside. The use of high key
lighting reflects Andrew Goodwin‟s theory
of promoting the artist and giving them a
star identity.
We did some test shots of indoor lighting
in our research and planning stage;
however, we found that the lamps were
not very successful as the face of the artist
could not be seen clearly. Marketing our
artist successfully was very important to us
in filming the video, therefore, we chose to
use high key lighting throughout. We also
found that our genre of music tends to film
outside, for example: James Blunt‟s 1973
video featured him walking outside.

7. PROPS AND COSTUME


Often artist‟s in the indie/folk genre play
instruments, for example: The Lumineers in
their Hey Ho video. Therefore, we opted for
our artist to play a guitar in our music video.
The fact he is playing a guitar makes the
video seem more authentic.
Although our artist features in both the
narrative and performance section of our
music video, we chose for him to wear the
same clothing in order to create a continuity.
The fact he is wearing the same clothing also
establishes that he is the same person. We
chose to dress him in casual clothes, as the
more outlandish and quirky styles are found
in the pop genre.

8. VISUAL THEME



When it came to creating my digipak I had a
clear idea that I wanted it to resemble nature
as our music video was filmed outside.
I used images of trees and the sun light
peering through the trees. I then used images
of the artist holding his guitar and leaning up
against a tree. I also wanted the artist to look
deep in thought so that he would resemble
the narrative in our music video.
When I received audience feedback, they all
said that my print work looked effective, but
they did say that a couple of the images could
have been brighter. I corrected this on
photoshop, which made the images look a lot
better as the artist‟s face looked clearer and it
also made him contrast better with the
background.

9. THEORY

Eye-on design on state-of-the-art Mac computers with latest professional
Adobe, Mac and MacroMedia software. The studio is temperature controlled,
the ambient light is colour temperature controlled and the computer screens
are also colour-calibrated. They also create house styles from sketches or
from scratch.
As a result, they believe that the house style must emphasise the quality of
your offering, otherwise it won‟t be successful at all.

Proxemics can be defined as "the interrelated observations and theories of
man's use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture”

Edward T.Hall emphasised the use of proxemic behaviour and the use of
space in communication. He believed that the value in studying proxemics
comes from its “applicability in evaluating not only the way people interact
with others in daily life, but also "the organization of space in their houses
and buildings, and ultimately the layout of their towns”.

This links to my package, as my print work gives space in communication as
it links to the redundancy of my chosen genre.

10. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK




Once I had created my print work, I created a group on
Facebook which enabled me to get positive and
constructive feedback on my work.
Overall the comments were positive as they all said that
my print work resembled the genre, they also said that
the fonts could be read clearly and that the images were
strong.
Someone did say that I could have included a close up of
my artist – but I chose not to do that as I wanted to reflect
my genre.
Also someone noted that I had forgotten to add the
copyright for the label, I had already done so for Erik
Baker, but I then added in the record label.