I did a quick plan of my product and I decided to keep it really simple with a black background, white text and a white image. I really like the look of this design. I started by finding random words on word generator to put on the front of my album cover. I found a few and decided for the word on the top to be the band name and the word on the bottom to be the album name. After quickly planning I started to make it.
To design this product I started off by making my background completely black.
I then started choosing font for the words I chose and layering it on to the black background. From then I manipulated the text. I did this by duplicating the text and moving it slightly so it created a shadow type affect. I took the lasso tool and zoomed in to the word. I started taking small parts of the word out to make a more industrial affect. It looked like this:
I added the album name in the same style.
Then I found a picture on google of a snake that I thought would fit on to that and this was my final product:
Over the past few days we have been learning about the basic functions of Photoshop. For the A2 year, we will be using photoshop to create our digipack which will count for a substantial part of our grade. It is mainly used for manipulating, creating and layer pictures to create the final image that we want, in our case a album cover digipack. The way we have been taught how to use Photoshop is skill rather than a program. In my opinion, the reason why we are taught that is because we are going to be using it as a creative tool therefore it is a skill. Also like every other skill it is going it grow and develop over time.
The basic things that we learnt about were the different tools, layers, transforming
<----- The tool bar on the side of the program enables the user to change between the different tools when editing a picture. For example the move tool means you can drag pictures around. The lasso tool helps you to select things from images which is helpful when moving parts of an image on to another image. There is also the clone stamp tool which I found very useful, it means that you can take parts of the picture that you drag your cursor over and clone it somewhere else on to the image. It is useful when colouring in bits and filling up gaps.
The layers function is another thing that we learnt about, it helps us to separate the different images, text and anything that the user puts on to the program. ---->
Before making something on photoshop, you should plan it out on paper first, this gives you a draft of the idea that you want and then you can create it electronically and also develop your idea as you go along.
Tip: remember to always check layering when you are stuck as it is mostly likely the problem.
Tip 2: check that you're not in scale mode when trying to edit other things
I took one of the template that the website creator Wix provided and turned it into a website for one of my favourite artist. My goal was to portray him in the way that he would portray himself if he set up a website. This means that the people who visit the website will be able to tell what kind of artist he is.
HOME PAGE
On the front page I put a photo that I feel represents him well. On the navigation bar, there are sub pages "home, tunes, live shows, words". This along with the photo shows the casual nature of the artist.
TUNES
LIVE SHOWS
WORDS
Lyrics to one of his songs 'Passing out piece of me' shows that he cares about the music that he writes.
Mac DeMarco's USP is his casual attitude and sloppiness. As you can see from the photo, he's no well groomed or well dressed which attract the audience to him. He breaks the stereotype of most people in the music industry today who are clean cut and well dressed. His website should therefore convey this carelessness.
To evaluate the website that I created, I had to use the template for artists as a basis of my graphic design idea, but for one of the first websites that I've properly created using the Wix website, it went okay. I really like the minimalistic aesthetic when designing things and it almost always fits with the theme of what I'm creating and it does fit in this instance.
As well as the Fifth Harmony website, the purpose of this site is to advertise and educate viewers about the band. It again, gives the viewers an idea of the bands ideology and what kind of music that they produce. If we look at Catfish and the Bottlemen's website in comparison to Fifth Harmony's, the biggest difference is the lack of colour. Because of the amount of colour on FH's website it gives it the poppy, manufactured group aesthetic. Catfish and the Bottlemen's website is a lot darker, everything is in B&W. This give the band a darker aesthetic, usually implying that they play darker, heavier music in comparison to FH. You could assume that Catfish and the Bottlemen play a form of Rock music, most likely Alternative Rock.
They also aren't too wary about their image and more worried about their music. Unlike Fifth Harmony, there are no overly stylised pictures of the band on the front cover, instead the first thing that the audience sees is their album covers advertising purchasing their album, just above this, they also have tickets for their tour. As well as this, they have a lyrics tab in the navigation bar. It means that they take pride in the music that they write, this indicates that they are an organic band who write their own music.
The point of this website is a showcase to advertise and educate audiences about the musical group Fifth Harmony. On the front page of this particular website, the main focus are the big images of them. It immediately show the audience who they are and can indicate the type of music that they produce. Because the image on the front is so highly styled, edited and obviously taken professionally, one can assume that they are quite reliant on the image of their group. You can also assume that because of the stylised image and the high contract, bright colour, they are a pop girl group. They are all also very clean cut and quite sensible in the way that they dress, this may mean that they are aimed at younger people, specifically teenage girls.
In addition to this, a website is also a hub that they use to link their audiences to their other products that are related to them or that are sold by them. For example on the navigation bar there is a link that leads you to a page that sells merchandise of the group.
Firstly, this music video shows off that Madonna is a single artist, it also shows that she's probably signed to a larger record label meaning that they have a budget to afford the scale of this music video. The audience can tell that this is because of the mies-en-scene, for example location, actors, props, lighting. It could be argued that this shows off her synthetic nature, although in my opinion Madonna is an organic artist becuase she writes her own music and seems to have creative control over the content that she releases.
Intertextuality is also included in this video, the biggest reference is a biblical reference. Throughout the whole video they are referencing the Christian faith, this is shown through location, the music video is based in a church as well as props, the big crosses a statues.
This music video for Like a Prayer consisted of a performance and narrative based music video. Whilst featuring Madonna in it as she lip-syncs, there is also actors and a story line behind the video that correspond to the lyrics of the song. The director, Mary Lambert probably chose this becuase it was the most engaging method of showing off this song. They also probably wanted to tell a story with music video.
The narrative of the music video from my perspective is a story about a couple how get beaten up by a gang, the girlfriend gets killed or severely injured and when the police arrive, the gang flee and becuase the boyfriend is black, he gets framed for the crime. This can be seen as a common stereotype associated with black people and many white policemen associate them with criminal activity, This can also be controversial for its time of its release which was 1989. This is because there was still a lot of racial discrimination in the 80s including police brutality, although it wasn't spoken about as much as it is today. Madonna and Lambert may have also been trying to portray that racism was specifically more prevalent in religious circles and they were not very excepting of other races. In addition to this, the music video also features a non-liner narrative, in the beginning of the music video it shows clips of the some of the scenes that happen towards the end of the film. An example of this is when the gang is beating up the couple as well as the man arrested.
Another way that characters are represented is how Madonna is being represented. Throughout the video, the costume she is wearing is a little bit provocative for its time as well as wearing it in a place of worship. Along side this, she is shown at a high angle shot portraying her as more vulnerable. In my opinion, the director chose to do this because its portraying her as the worshiper and the other man as a saint emphasising the story line more. Although it could be argued that another reason they chose to do this is becuase she is being objectified and her image is being sold to the public to get more KPIs, hence the reason why she is wearing slightly more provocative clothing.
To conclude, this was a successful promotional campaign and collected lots of KPIs because it was quite controversial. Madonna’s image in the 80s has always been quite controversial but with reference to religion, addressing racism and wearing slightly revealing clothing, she would have attracted a lot of attention from the press which would get more people watching the video and buying into the campaign.
