In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms or conventions of

real media products?

Question one:

CD Front Covers

We put a lot of thought into linking our album name with the front cover, as research and planning proved most of the images of the front covers related back to the album name. For example the image of the Arctic Monkeys album ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ uses low key lighting making the image appear dark and sinister, it also blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy, this type of image is a suitable parallel for the album name. We thought we would make the Album name, Canvas, and image correspond by incorporating an image of the band onto a canvas, we wanted to make it appear as if the image has been painted onto the canvas. Our product draws parallels from existing products as it uses selective colouring and has a contrast between bright and dark colours. The bright colours are used as a way of highlighting what they mainly want the audience to focus on, in our products case the main image. Another similarity convention that our front cover shares with real products is the clearness of the typography, this is done so that the text can easily be read and understood by the audience. Although overall our front cover mainly uses conventions of real life media products I do believe that to an extent our front cover has challenged most pop album front covers by not being as colourful and the main image not being as big, however I believe that overall it works well with the album name.

CD Back Covers

KeyTrack list Spine on CD including artists/ bands name, name of album and logo of music company Barcode Company Logo Institutional information

The CD back cover includes typical conventions found on existing CD back covers. I have mainly used and developed forms and conventions found in real media products rather than challenge them. As it is apparent by the images above and previous slide, my CD back cover mirrors most pop artists back covers. The colours used for the imagines and typography are bright and vibrant, which many pop ancillary products use as they are mainly aiming the products at a young audience. Like the Justin Bieber back cover, I have lowered the saturation of the image making it appear darker. I believe that this works to my advantage because it makes the bright colours, especially the typography, stand out more. However this is not a typical convention for pop ancillary products as the aim is to make the product bright, light-hearted and innocent, the darkness in the image goes against these connotations. Another way I have challenged the forms and conventions of real media products is by having my image appear grainy, which is an effect I have used to make the image appear as though its been painted. This is subverting the typical conventions because most images of the artists used on albums are very clear so that they are easily recognised by the audience. I’ve made the background of the image blurry so that the main focus is on the artists, this is a typical convention of images on albums as artists need to be clearly shown for audiences to recognise them.

CD Inlays

Our inlays also use conventions of real products because like most inlays they share a running theme with the rest of the album. This is why we used images that were similar to the front and back cover. From researching other inlays we realised that inlays are mainly plain photos of the artist/artists, with little to no text, our inlays mirror this. Our inlays, like others offer audiences a rare photos which are only obtained through buying the album, they hold a lot of sentimental value for fans.

Magazine Advert

My magazine advert shares many similar conventions to real existing products as it contains the basic information about the album as does every album advert I’ ve seen. One difference is that put down the bands Facebook and Twitter web addresses because many audience members have become digital consumers.