EVALUATION - My Completed Magazine Front Cover & Digipak

My completed ancillary tasks:

Here are both of my completed ancillary tasks - a magazine front cover and a digipak. Both of my products follow the consistent house style that is used throughout our products as they both include the plain grey background, minimal colours used such as the black and white text and text boxes, the black font on a white background with black stroke around the box and one key image of the band with the lead member in the foreground and the other members in the background.

Magazine Front Cover:

My completed magazine front cover follows the conventions of a music magazine as it has a big and bold masthead, positioned in the top left hand corner, with musical connotations 'Track'. The masthead has a white stroke around it which helps the text to stand out at the top of the page. In the top left hand corner there is also the conventional issue number, price and magazine website. Down the left third of the page there are three main coverlines which entice the audience into wanting to buy the magazine with interesting and current stories. The main coverline is in red so it is very attractive and eye catching. This is important as this is the main element on the page, as it highlights that this issue features an article about Kings of Leon.

A puff is used to emphasise other important stories in this issue. This puff is black and star shaped with a white stroke around it so it stands out on the page, whilst conforming to the consistent house style used throughout the cover. In the bottom left hand corner is a barcode which is also a conventional aspect of any magazine front cover. Running across the bottom of the page is a banner which lists the other bands that will be featured in this issue, which interests the fans of those bands and could encourage them to buy the magazine.

Digipak:

This is my completed front cover for my digipak. The background on the front cover, and throughout the digipak, is plain grey. This gives the product a sense of consistency and a professional look. The band name and the album title is the same font - 'Skin & Bones' - and size. The font is black which stands out on the white block background. They are positioned equally on the page and lined up with the same border each side.

This is an image of the first two pages that appear in the digipak. On the left page is a combination of shots and images of the band in various locations. This was a good space to use a selection of images in different locations, as it gives the band a professional and realistic view about them. This is because in real life products, the band/artist appears in many locations in the digipak such as a studio and outside. I made sure that all of the images were of the same size and fit on the page correctly, without being stretched and pixelated.

On the right page are two songs and the lyrics that go with the song. The title of the song, such as 'Closer' and 'Crawl' are the same font and size - 'Skin & Bones'. The font is black and positioned on a white background, the same as the front cover of the digipak. This therefore demonstrates consistency throughout my product. I typed the lyrics into an 'Arial' font which is an easy font to read when there is a lot of writing. Here, I reversed the colour of the font so instead of being black I changed it to being white on a black background as opposed to being a white background. This distinguishes the difference between the song title and the lyrics.

This is an image of another set of pages in my digipak. On each page are indivudal shots of the band members. On the left hand page are individual photos that we took whilst the band were in the studio and on the right hand page are shots of them outside against a brick wall. The photos are positioned and scaled to the same size to give the overall look of the pages a professional appearance.

Across both of the pages, the lead member is purposely positioned in the foreground whilst the other two members are positioned in the background. I did this to highlight the lead member's importance as conventionally in band photoshoots, posters and digipaks the lead singer is always positoned in the front of the picture. Therefore, but adding this into my ancillary tasks, I am conforming to the codes and conventions of digipaks.

The font used on both pages is the same - 'Skin & Bones'. As well as being a consistent font with the rest of the digipak, it is a consistent style as it a black font on a white background.

This is the back cover of my digipak. Instead of using the plain grey background, I decided to make the background an image of the band in the studio. I changed the colour scale on Photoshop from colour to black and white. Therefore, eventhough the image is still carrying on the similar colour scheme of grey, the image takes the edge off the harshness of the plain colour for the back cover. I also did this as, without this image the back cover would look dull and empty as it only has the track listing, the name of the record company and the copyright details.

This is an image of the CD case, with the closed booklet on the left and the disc on the right. The background design on the CD links with the album title 'Only By The Night' as the image is of a moon. This idea was inspired by real life products by Kings of Leon as on their actual album cover 'Only By The Night' the image is of an owl, which is nocturnal. Therefore, I developed this theme into my own work.

The moon was a good choice as a background as its plain and text can, therefore, be written easily over it. The text written on the CD is the band's name centred at the top of the disc, with the album title in a smaller text centred at the bottom of the disc. The text is written in the same house colours as used throughout the whole digipak - white and black, keeping the consistency of the piece of work.