Our brief was to create a promotional package for an album release, the package included three things, a music music, a digipak and a magazine advert.
We believed it was essential that all of our individual products worked well together as a complete package, the video and the adverts should work well to compliment the digipak and the package should establish a link between the products and the old style of Joy Division.
All three of these products would be normally created by different media company's and agencies. A music video would be produced by a film production company such as Warp X though often music video are made by solo directors who take it upon themselves, an example of this would be Spike Jonze who often had worked on his own to create a music video.
The digipak would be created by a graphics company such as WeWow, companies like these are given a brief and a idea and are paid to design and create digipaks for bands and for record labels. We created our own graphic company called "Limited Edition Graphics".
 |
| All our work |
Overall a record label will arrange all of these. The record label will pay the costs of producing the music video, pay a company to design digipaks and adverts and to publish and distribute them. An example of a record label would be Favourite Gentleman Recordings who released the debut album for the US band Manchester Orchestra. We created our own record label as well which we called New Transmission Records (after the Joy Division song Transmission).
Quite often though a small upcoming band may decided to ignore the large costs of creating all these promotional package through other company's, in stead they will take it upon themselves to create a music video, and design their own albums. Then they pass these onto large company's who will show the video on their music channels and use their own YouTube accounts and Facebook account to distribute the video. This way will still cost a lot of money but will eliminate a lot of additional costs with companies.
We believed that it was vital that all three of our products share similarities because when together they should form a package which shows Joy Divisions style and brand. We considered the idea of rebranding the band or if we straight out went into replicating there old work.
We noticed that past JD work shared common traits between them for instance nearly everything by JD was in greyscale. This is mainly due to JD working with certain photographers and film makers such as Kevin Cummings and Anton Corbijn both of which we research extensivly. Kevin was the main photographer for Joy Divison during there short span so it was easy to follow the way JD were portrayed and styled, we often used his work to influence our own work and we used resources such as "Joy Division" a self titled book showing a collection of his work.
Across all the three products they are a few similarities which create a strong promotional package.
Grey scale
We decided to follow this common code of Joy Divisions work in our promotional package from the very start of the project. Everything we have done is in grey scale, it helps to recreate the brand while also creating a brilliant piece of work. The grey scale is perfect at creating a urban feel. We used filters for the adverts and digipak to create the black and white look. On the double page advert we used a pink HMV font as this was the same colour scheme used on the adverts for the Ian Curtis biotic "Control.
Minimalism
Minimalism is describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. With Joy Division they wasn't any over the top special effects, multiply overlays on images or vast amounts of text. We decided this was perfect for our idea and it was what Joy Division did in there prime and we wanted to continue with this. For instance our Vinyl only have the image on the front and back and no text, apart from on the inside and on the vinyl. Our adverts went down a minimalist route with us only putting on the most needed text such as artist name and album name, only on the double page spread did we add more text. The digipak is the same with only the main details given which is something which we noticed with Joy Divisions album "Unknown Pleasures". For the vinyl we opted to use stickers so that they was the necessary information but the owner of the vinyl could remove the stickers to go back to it being minimalistic. With the advert and the music video at times we experimented with the more complex designs but in the end through feedback and our own views we noticed that it didn't work as well as the simpler ideas did.
 |
| Too Much? |
Same Character
Across everything we used the same character, this helped to make it seem like a combination of products and not just a music video, a advert and a digipak. He is dressed the same and acts the same across everything too. We felt to make the protagonist iconic we wanted the audience to relate the protag with Ian Curtis.
Also we felt it was vital to use the same characters across the digipak and music video so the consumers would draw clear comparisons and notice that the video is essentially a advert for the digipak.
Locations
With the locations we went to great lengths to find settings which suited the concept and style of the band, the video, album and adverts all really have the same concept so it made sense to link all three of these again to create a brand for the album that the consumer would remember. The locations also contained links to previous Joy Division artwork.
Font
On the advert and digipak we used the same font that JD used on their old albums. We believed that using these on our digipak albums and advert was a great way of sticking to the bands style. We downloaded a free font add on for photoshop of the JD font. We created a video showing how we added it to photoshop.
All inspired by previous Joy Division work
Nealy every piece of work we have done from the individual shots to the adverts and the digipak is inspired by previous Joy Division work. We have extensively researched films such as Control by Anton Corbijn, to the two Joy Division music videos, to photography and artwork.
Target Audience
When it came to creating the promotional package we had to look at the target audience for the band and the core and secondary audience. We needed to make the production suitable for this audience. Our secondary and core audience are within the 15 - 55 age range so really our promotional package as a combination needs to appeal to this age range and it did.
The images and themes within the combination can appeal to 15 to 55's though the themes may be more relevant to a older audience who understood Joy Division more. Though the themes may serve as a means of introducing the younger spectrum of the audience into Joy Divisions style and brand.
We decided that in order for us to attract our target audiences we had to use ideas, text and imagery which complimented the bands original style but not copy.
Summary
Building a consistent concept was exactly what we wanted because we believe its what JD did during their run in the late 70s and early 80s. As well as this when placed next to original imagery by Joy Division they will be a significant resemblance and they would be a large degree of intertexuality. For instance the bridge scene at the start which links to the Greatest Hits artwork.
No comments:
Post a Comment