This is it..

his is my last post, I hope that you have enjoyed reading about my experiences within A2 Media;

Here is our final Music Video:

Bye!

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

and

During research the media technology I mainly used was the internet. Youtube 'Broadcast Yourself' was a huge part of my research for music videos, it is easy to find video clips and music videos that will help to show you the conventions of the genre and even other projects done by people at other schools, their media products. This means that I was able to achieve realistic views about what to ask in questionnaires becuase I had seen the typical shots, costumes, colours, effects etc. of the pop/rock genre.
Another tecnology used in the research and planning stage was music channels. Channels such as Viva, MTV and TMF will show all types of music videos, including pop whereas NME, MTV2 and Kerrang will show more Rock videos, this makes it easier to see videos in our genre and make notes on the conventions. When watching music videos on Youtube you can get more information than just watching tv, they have user comments which allow you to see peoples views and opinions on them, people may be censored slightly in order to abide to the websites rules, the still maintain the individual opions of the audience.

During the construction of my media product i used many different technologies, the main one being the video cameras. the main part of our construction is the filming, this means that video cameras were the major part of construction. They were not the most up-to-date but they had all different functions that enabled us to use different effects at the time, rather than later on during editing, like zoom for instant.

Imovie on the apple mac's is the other technology that we used in our construction and is just as important as the video cameras, perhaps slightly more important. We used effects on this programme such as speeding up and reversing, without this on the computers then it would have been difficult to get the final product to how we wanted it and we would have been disatisfied with our product.
When making my digipak and magazine advert the technology I used was Photoshop- Adobe.7 and a camera. Photoshop helped to change the images that I have created with the camera, I can change the sizes of them, cut out the shape of the male and add texts that possibly are unobtainable in other programmes. I think that my previous use of photshop in Photography lessons has enabled me to have skills that i may not have had without this subject.
The camera i have used is a samsung that has a screen on the front, it enables the person i am taking a picture of to see what they are doing and change so that they are also happy with the pictures and eventually the final product.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

My music video, Album cover/Digipak and Magazine article must all have synergy and in order to create this I must explore the areas that the audience will relate to most and which will build a relationship between them and us.

• At first glance, there is no instant similarity between my music video and the digipak and magazine advertisement, however it does not necessarily have to match the exact image of the video. By not having a direct link between the two means that when they watch the video they will be surprised rather than already knowing what is involved. Superman can be described as shouty music since pop/rock songs often have loud vocals, the image of someone shouting refers to this and can create a subtle link between the two products.
• Between the Album cover/Digipak and the Magazine Advert there are a large amount of similarities and they are bright and bold so are very like to stick in your mind. By using a unconventional font on both means that this image will stick in the audiences mind, having it twice means that it is more repetitive without being annoying, enough so that they can connect the font to the album.
• Another feature that is alike is that they both follow the same colour scheme, this means that the colour will also be a reminder of the product and it will be hard for the audience to disconnect the colour from the album, therefore whenever they come across something that is this light green they will be instinctively reminded of our product.
• The image is also quite different to anything else out there, these images wont be seen anywhere else except on products that will relate back to the music video or digipak and therefore these faces, all similar yet different will be printed in the audiences mind since its repeated 4 times altogether and will be like the colour scheme and font in the sense that it will always bring their mind back to one thing: Our Product!

Overall I think that all three products are effective together, although the video doesn't have complete direct links it still allows the audience to create their own ideas about the album cover connected to the video and possibly come up with their own individual reasons for remembering these products together.

In what ways does your product use forms and conventions of real media products?

Music Video;

Our music video is the most important part of the production, this creates the basis of the two ancillary task.
The conventions that we have followed for our media are;

• Stereotypes; this means that the audience can relate to the characters and can connect to the characters feelings, so they can feel sympathy or empathy. They can also relate to the characters if they feel they fall under the same stereotype.
• Love; this is an important sub-topic, there are usually always the aspects of love, the narrative is often the story of two lovers and their battles for example, we have the story of three different dates.

Digipak;

This is the second most important, it has to appeal to the audience visually since they will be purchasing the album depending on how it looks on the shelf.

The conventions I followed were;

• The shape and size of the album cover; this is important, you never see rectangular shaped cd so its important that it is a square shaped.
• The barcode and other texts; This is important to make sure that the CD looks professional, website links and a barcode are typical features of Albums as they are important information. The writing at the bottom is boring terms and conditions which are also used on most, if not all albums covers.

Magazine Advertisement;

This is the second ancillary task and it is important to have a connection between this and the digipak however it cannot be too similar or it would be repetitive and may appeal less to the audience.

The conventions i have followed are;

• I have included date of realease- this is important to convey when the Album is out on sale, without this advert it would not have the oppurtunity to get publicity.
• Reviews; this is to make sure that the audience are aware of other opinions that could influence them and possibly insure the audience to buy the album.

Audience Feedback about my Advertisement and what I have learnt.

These two graphs show me that the audience think that like my digipak, my advertisement is very eye-catching and that they would go out and purchase the album after seeing it.
29/30 people think that my advertisement would catch their eye, this is VERY successful since it means that if 29 people were looking to buy a new album and saw this in a magazine they would notice it and 26 of them say that they would purchase it all because of this advert.
Similarly to my digipak the results to the question 'What Genre do you think my Advertisement would fall under' had the majority pointing towards 'Indie' however the gap was a lot smaller with only 4 guesses in-between.

Some answers to the other questions were:

Best Features of my advertisement;

• Bold colours- they are alternative to the usual magazine colours, they will catch your eye since they stand out.
• The reviews- two big names; NME and Scott Mills with positive reviews= gives reassurance about whether it is a good album.

Worst Features of my advertisement;

• Font difficulties- It is hard to see some letters since the background contrasts with the image.
• The Name- unsure whether its a band, or singer? no information.

I have realised from both my digipak and advertisement that I need to distinguish between the two genres Pop-Rock and Indie since a lot of my products fall more into Indie, unlike my Video which is under Pop-Rock. This needs to come from research, both questionnaires and independent research can help to show what a Pop-Rock advert is like.
Like I mentioned before, I would definitely need to find a way of making sure that I ask in detail about what makes my advert more 'Indie'

Audience Feedback about my Digipak and what I have learnt...

These two graphs show me that the audience think that my digipak is eye-catching and that they would go out and purchase the album after seeing it. This means that I have been successful when making my Digipak. Since the audience are very important, by the majority of the audience saying that they like my digipak means that I have full filled the potential.

The results to the question 'What Genre do you think my digipak falls under?' have shown me however that the image I have provided has given the audience the idea that Constant Invasions are an 'Indie' band since that is the most popular answer, with pop coming a close second.
If I were to make a digipak again I would make a prototype and then send out a questionnaire before progressing first, I would include questions that make the audience answer Why they think these things and What aspects I should change in order to properly portray the image I want.

Some answers to the other questions are:

Best Features of my digipak;

• The font- very interesting, never been used before- cool and different.
• The colour Scheme- 'Green and Pink are great together- it's neither too girly nor manly.'

Worst Features;

• Not a lot of text- Little information, no lyrics? or band information? the audience have no idea who constant invasions are.
• The blank CD holder- its plain could have been altered to make more interesting, or held the CD with a design in to make it nicer to look at.

Audience Feedback about my Video and What I have learnt.

Here are two of the clips that we recorded that contain personal opinions on our music video;




The General feedback to our music video was;
The Best Features;

• Comedy- reversing the characters, stereotypes.
• Stereotypes alone- they created likeable characters.
• The Effects- action changing as the beat changes.

The Worst features;

• The Grainy image- the camera is very unclear fuzzy.
• Some of the shots- there are a few scenes when the edges are messy, the backdrop is slanted.
• Lighting- its quite dark/dim in the 'speed dating' scenes.

What Genre did the audience think our video was?

• 80% thought it was a Pop Video
• 25% thought it was an Indie Video
• the other 5% thought it was either a Rock or Alternative Video.

From our audience feedback there are changes that i would make if i were to redo the video or to help me improve for my next project that will enable my video to be the best that it can be, these changes are;

• Use a higher quality video camera that will enable the shots to be clearer and less grainy, this will also mean that there will be a more professional finish rather than quite amateur which was one member of the audiences comment.
• Make sure that when filming that all areas that we do not want in the scene are not in the scene! If using a backdrop that we have made ourselves then we must make sure that it is larger than what the camera views to make sure that there is no possible chance that the sides will be messy.
• When filming lighting is as important as the mise-en-scene therefore we should have made sure that there was clear and well lit areas in order for the video to be top quality and to make sure that the audience can see everything that is going on. This will be another feature that will make it seem more professional.

We also asked the audience if they saw our video on the television or internet would they purchase the single;

• 97% said they would which means that only 3% said no, this means that our music video is well liked and that it would have a high success rate if it were in the real life charts for example.
  

Questionnaire for my Digipak

This is my questionnaire for my Digipak:



Like my questionnaire for my music video this is handed out to 30 people, 15 males and 15 females. I will also post the results in a future post.

Questionnaire for my Advertisement

This is my questionnaire for audience feedback for my magazine advertisement:


Exactly as I did for the other two questionnaires I have handed them out and will be collecting them and posting the results in a post in the future.

Questionnaire for my Video

This is the questionnaire for the feedback about our video:


This was handed out to 30 people, 15 males and 15 females.
I will collect the results and post them in a future post.

Research, Planning and Evaluation

We used different varieties of researching from questionnaires, watching alternative videos and films in the same genres, storyboarding and more.

When it came to other media products we watched a lot of films/videos from films like Kidulthood and Adulthood to Blink 182’s ‘Always’ music video which we were directly inspired by and in fact attempted to use the three section dividing technique from it but were unfortunately unable to recreate this effect due to the programmes not being available to us. By watching other videos and films we were able to see the features and techniques that were used which we could then use on our own products to make sure that they followed the conventions of other videos/films in the same genres

that we had chosen.

This in turn helped us create questionnaires, we had some ideas that we had collected from our wider research and could make the questions more specific whilst still allowing people to have their own opinions for example a selection of music video effects, Blink 182’s ‘Always’ video split screen effect being compared with Powder’s ‘Up here’ cartoon to reality transitions. These types of questions will result with more detailed answers that are precise to our genre.

The audience are the most important factor of our products since the point of our work is to create entertainment for them. This means that questionnaires are equally as important as it allows us to hear exclusively from the audience to hear what they like to see and what they don’t like to see in our music video/ film opening.

I think as a group we managed our time a lot more successfully when producing our A2 music video compared to our previous teenage drama opening since we were able to learn from our prior mistakes which allows us to divide our time sensibly, for example when it came to storyboarding we spent a little more time to make sure that we had every second accounted for by going through the timings and setting an image for each period, this meant we could spend less time filming, since we didn’t need to worry about what needed to be filmed next and where because all the timings were written down.
We had schedules to keep to when it came to filming, storyboarding and meeting up in school to edit our film. However since there are some times when members of the group are unable to make those set times/dates then its difficult to have everybody together, however the whole group tried their hardest, all of us gave up our free time in order to plan our production be it times to film or drawing on the storyboard.

There were very few disagreements between the team members because individually we are all quite open people and were willing to listen to each others ideas whilst still inputting our own views. Its important to have a group that get along since its easier to make sure that everyone involved likes the final product, if members weren’t in a position to comment and get involved it could jeopardise our product since people that are uncomfortable wont be able to contribute as much as they might want to and could be depriving our product of their skills.

There will always be things that you want to change when you see the final product, problems with the setting could have resulted in the mishaps with the backdrop showing its edges in the clips since this would not have happened had we stuck to the original location. Things like the grainy image cannot necessarily be helped since we had limited resources and the quality of camera had its boundaries and our videos our bound to look less professional since we have only ever made two productions at school.

I think that if we were to do the whole thing again then it is likely that we will spend even more time on planning and research. I also think that filming will take more time since we did have to return and film again on another date, had we spent more time then we could have had more shots and replaced the bad ones with other options.

My Advertisement

This is my Magazine Advertisement.
I have used a different image to the ones on my album cover to make sure that the audience know that the same picture is not overused. The font is the same though to try and create a image in the audiences minds so that the next time they see scrabble writing they instinctively think of my band and album/digipak.

The information I have included on my advertisement are;

• The Date of release; this information provides the audience with a date to which they can obtain the Album, this is important since they need to be aware of when it is available.

• OUT NOW!; This huge heading catches people's eyes and will attract them to take a closer look and investigate what is out now, this means that more people will look at the advertisement and it will full fill its task.

• Reviews; This is a way of showing positive comments to the audience, allowing them to make up their own minds still, these two comments show that a popular magazine: 'NME' and radio presenter Scott Mills like it and this could influence their decision on whether to bother buying the album or not. Since both are popular then its like to work in a positive way and encourage more people to purchase the album.

Brand New Album Cover

Although i previously had finished my digipak, however after more research and also asking people what genre they thought my album cover was i have decided to change it once more, this is my FINAL digipak and i think that it is more 'Pop' than the previous two designs.

This is my new Album cover. The ways I have changed it are;

• The colour scheme; previously i used 'Black Leather' as the background, this made it more Gothic and i decided to change it to a light green since it gives the impression that its more light hearted and 'pop-py'
  
• I have altered the font; i decided that by not have a block colour creates a different font, the letters with holes in them like- O and P have been filled in and it creates a more rocky edge to the font.
• The Album name; I have changed the name of the album since 'Faking it' leads to a large amount of connotations, some possibly explicit, which is not the image that I wanted to represent in my album cover.
  

This is the inside of the front cover of my digipak.

• Amount of sides; I have reduced the number of sides on my digipak as i think that 6 sides is unnecessary and creates extra sides with usually useless and disregarded information on it
• Similarly to the front i have discarded the block black font and changed the dark leather background for a happier, brighter colour- light green.
  

These are the final two sides of my digipak;

• The green side is very similar to the previous designs, its just meant to hold the CD so the only difference is that its no longer black leather like the others, its light green.
• The back side still has the same image its just that it has been copied and flipped on to the other side of the side and made more transparent.
• I have used a font called 'Parade' and blocked our the letters that have holes like front cover on the names of the songs. This was inspired by Daniel Merriweather's album 'Love & War' which uses a similar font. It also inspired me to have the distorted pattern in which the titles are presented, which alike other album covers in the Pop/Rock genre.

This is my complete design and I am finally happy with the result, i think that it properly represents our music video and genre. With the colour, font and image i think that it will be clear to the audience what type of music to expect from this digipak


This is the Tab of my Album cover and an Image of the Four sides together:

Pop; One.

This album cover 'Pop' is very similar to my design, the colour scheme, the effects and the general points of interest all coexist with my ideas.
Minus the blue background rather than black the whole idea of the album is spookily close to mine, it has a portrait that is pink and has markings on it, near to sequins or glitter and the hair is very similar, whilst they use the idea of a different font like i tried to create, since this writing is very unique and i have never seen any other album covers with the same font, this makes the album cover more appealing since it shows they are alternative and don't follow the same ideals as everyone else, an image that i also tried to recreate.

More Digipak...

This is the last side to my Digipak, its not very interesting since it just holds the CD, i think that the design of the CD will be important to and since it will be covering the majority of this side then it will be more of a necessity to be appealing than having a lot of images on this side.




I will be posted a design for the CD at a later date, which will then be the focus of this slide.

Digipak...

This slide is a single image but this has the word 'Blah' written in the same font as the title and band, these is to make sure that there are connections throughout the album cover, as well as just the images. I had used the letters in the exact same way as the cover but enlarged it more to make sure that the side wasn't to bland and empty.
I chose the word 'blah' since its a popular word to describe nothing, its used in other songs such as Ke$ha's 'Blah, Blah, Blah' this song is in the same genre and i thought it would be a relevant word that wont impose to much or take the attention away from the real name of the album and band.
I used the image that i had previously used on one of my original front cover designs, i didnt want the image not to be used and since its similiar to the other images it didnt create any problems by having it within the digipak, it also gave the image i like a bigger 'part' as it has writing on it so its marginally more important than the other two single images.


This slide isnt complete yet since i am waiting for results from a questionnaire on how the font and labels for the songs should be on the reverse of the digipak; For now i have just used an image that is facing the side, since it allows enough room for the titles of the songs and for the timings if its decided that they should be included. The majority of this side is the black leather so it could be said that its quite dark but i think that the pink face still contrasts with the black even though unlike the front cover its not an image of a full face. I also like this picture due to the effect of the sequins, its as though the face has Stars on it due to the reflection of the light and since there are no material things in this picture, like clothes it puts the image in a innocent and sparkling light. This is my favourite image since its interesting and alternative to all the other image which are quite similiar, however i could not of used this image on the front cover since its not very big and i do not think it would be appropriate for a Rock/Pop album cover since it doesnt follow the conventions of this genre.

Digipak Template.

I have made a template to show how my Digipak should be set out, this enables me to plan out which side should have which image. This also allows me to be able to print out my deisgn more easily, since i will be sure of which sides should be next to each other so that when it comes to folding it they are all in the right places.


These are the other sides to my digipak;


















These two sides are the single image sides, they will be on both the outside and the inside of my digipak, these images, are similar to each other, they both have wide open mouths and like the whole of my album cover the image of 'Black Leather' in the background. The image of the wide mouth is to represent screaming, although our genre isn't hardcore rock or music that is traditional very shouty there are often tracks that are strong and loud and I chose these two images to represent that, I feel that people will look at them and imagine them to be powerful and positive shouting rather then violent or negative since I have taken measures to avoid that area of Album covers I.e. removing the Parental Advisory sticker.

My Final Front Design.

I looked at these two designs and wanted to develop it further to make sure that i was 100% happy with my final product, this would be the most important side of my Digipak since it would be what was on view in shops and what people would take their first opinions of. I made a list of features that an album must have in order to stand out from the 1000's of other discs in shops;

• Bright/Bold Colours
• A Striking Image
• Interesting/Different Font
• Relevance to the Genre
• Memorable Name of Artist/Band/Album

Baring all these factors in mind here is my final front cover;



I think that my Album cover full fills all of the above bullet points since it has a bright background, The pink really stands our against the black background and will definitely stand out if it were in a shop. The name of both the band and the album are ones that stick in your brain and are likely to be remembered by a lot of people. Having previously discussed the font i think that it will be a big selling point since it has never been seen on an album cover before and this makes it unique and interesting. I have almost connected the bands name ' Constant Invasions' as this makes it more together and shows that its actually the bands name fully, Almost like one word rather than two separate ones.
After three attempts i am happy with my final product since it full fills the conventions of an album cover and also fills my ideals about my perfect album cover.

Front Cover.

The front cover of my album cover required the most attention and i in fact made two versions before i made the final product;

1. This idea is completely different to my final product, i used a different image for this design, one that was of Hasan without any face paint or glitter on and used editing instead, i think that it is very unclear and that it would have been a bad idea to use this image since when showing people they found it hard to actually work out what it was. I also think that there is too much pink borderline, it makes it look very amateur and also very childish, which isn't the image i wanted to portray on my cover. I also decided against having the parental advisory sticker since this gives the image of the album being quite negative and slightly cuts down the possible audience since there will be people that are put off by the possibility of expletives etc.
There is also a huge amount of the cover being taken over by the background to the font, which looks untidy and once again quite amateur so this is something i have removed in my further designs.

2. This is the second cover i made and it is very similar to the final product, i used the scrabble font and separated them all so that there wasn't a huge amount of the background colour distracting the cover like in the first attempt. By not having an image that isn't completely photoshop based means that there is a stronger image that people can see and recognise, a feature that wasn't apparent in the first draft. I also decided to use a 'Black Leather' background to make the album cover have more of a rocky edge, since before it seemed very indie. By using leather then the genre of the CD will be portrayed in a more relevant light and will also cohere with the conventions of this genre. I think that the lack of Parental advisory sticker means that the CD is friendlier and also helps to sell the album to parents and other people that may be concerned with the contents of the disc, allowing our Album to become available to a wider audience.

Scrabble Letters.

For the text on my front cover i didn't want to use a font that had been used on other album covers, especially since i wanted mine to be unique, for this i researched into many fonts online but none really fitted the image i had in my head.
In the end I decided to use Scrabble Letters, i set them up on my scanner and cut around them separately in photo shop. I think that this is effective since people will recognise the letters from the board game and it also hasn't been used on an album cover before.





In 'Faking It' I added an extra I as i was planning on turning it into an Exclaimation mark in photo shop but when actually trying this it didn't look very realistic so instead I decided to completely cut it from my writing.

Album cover

I have decided on the name Constant Invasions for my band and the album will be called Faking It, Both of these names have been chosen from Lily Allen lyrics and are selections that I feel will fit in with our genre of Pop/Rock.
I asked a friend, Hasan Beyaz to pose for pictures that I could use for my Album cover, i decided i didnt want just a portrait since when looking at other album covers there are very few that just have a plain picture, effects are frequently used and make the cover more interesting.
We decorated his face with pinky/purple face paint and a lot of glitter, this made for interesting pictures. These are my favourite 9 pictures, I am pleased with the results as they came out exactly how I imagined them.

My Questionnaire.

To help make my digipak the best it could be i have made a questionnaire to find out what people like/dislike and are/arent attracted to in an album cover. I handed out 30 copies of my questionnaire and here are my results;

Gender: The female to male ratio is very biased. There are only 9 males: 21 females which means that less then a third of my questionnaires will represent the male views on album covers. However i could use the fact that more females would prefer to listen to the band, due to the feminime lyrics and powerful lead female vocals.

Preference to digipak: Similarly to the graph above, the ratio is very uneven, this time however since its due to opinion it is not detremental to have to adapt my album cover. The 10 people that chose Jewel Case Cd's compared to Digipaks wrote many different reasons as to why they prefer this option, some claim that they preferred 'having less space with just the two sides of the cd case rather then the never ending panels on some digipaks' and oone person said that they 'just buy the cd for music and do not need or want the extras that some digipaks provide.'

Overall most people would prefer a Digipak, because its 'modern and easier to store' and 'gives you bonus features and interesting information on the artist or band' compared to the standard jewel cases.

Band Name: I think that band names cannot just be a random spur of the moment thing, but i cannot just express my own views, by asking people which they think is most important means that i can see whether it actually matters if the name of the band is meaningful and representative or just one thats catchy and memorable. The general response from my questionnaire is that 19 out of 30 agree with me which is just under 2/3, this means that the bands name has to have some kind of meaning, this doesnt have direct impact on my album cover since this kind of information is not presented on the front of a cd. However it would be better if the band name had an impact on the images that are presented on the front of my album cover.

My Band.

When listening to our song, i have always thought of the singer being part of a band rather then just a solo artist, its a usual sight that the main singer of a band is the most popular and recognisable member, which means that most people are fans of the singer rather then the band all together, and interviews and other projects are often done as a solo thing. Its also a very reoccuring thing that the lead singer is female, examples include;

Hayley Williams; Paramore, Elly Jackson; La Roux, Beth Ditto; Gossip, And Florence Welch; Florence and the Machine.

This shows that even if i chose a band then its likely that the lead female singer will be the iconic image if the band were mentioned. Another positive of having a band rather then a solo artist are that a band will enable more people to relate to the band, perhaps certain members could be personal favourites to different people, creating more fans and also making a bond between the other members, which could feel less superior to the lead singer, that usually has all the attention. This will help to make all the features of my Band, album cover and Music video become realistic and effective.

CLC visit number two.

Our second trip to the City Learning Centre gave us the oppurtunity to edit our film with a professional near by, able to help us with any problems that we have or any questions we might want to ask. This was helpful since as mentioned before we werent very confident with the new version of iMovie and the online tutorials couldnt answer all the questions we had.

When talking to the people at the CLC we were told firstly that our transitions were too slow and werent going with the beat, which was important so as not to make our music video look sloppy or unprofessional. We were quickly helped by being introduced to 'Beat Markers' which was a simple marker that you can drag onto your clips which would automatically change the time of the clip in order to make sure that it didnt miss the beat or go on to long.

We were also informed that our hopes of imatating the technique used in Blink 182's video of having three different sections to the clip, to show off the three boys, it wasnt possible due to the programme we had, something that we will have to change on our storyboard and work round, finding alternative ways to show off the three dates. Possibly a wipe across the scene, which if timed right could look just as effective.

I think that the trip has helped us, because it enables other people that are professionals to look at our video and give us constructive criticism, and to let us know things we are or arent able to achieve; another example being the fact that our video is very grainy in some scenes, we were informed that we couldnt actually use any type of programme on the computer it has to be done when actually filming, which means that we can remember this for future projects, to help us get a more proffesional result.

All Time Low.

When looking at Pop/Rock Album covers there was one band whose Album covers always stood out. All time low, an american band fall under the same genre as the song for our music video. Before researching about Pop/Rock bands i had never heard of them or any of their songs.
If i were to see these album covers in a shop then i definitely would have wanted to pick them up. They all vary in design,

So Wrong its Right, All Time Low.

This album cover is bright, it has three main colours; Yellow, red and Blue, contrasting with eachother they send off the image of summer, due to the yellow and red being warm colours and the blue as a very small section which could represent the sea or water, something that is strongly associated with summer ie. the beach. The black figures are bold against the background and they attract your first attention, its as if they are jumping, making it seem as though they are elated, perhaps at the album or even reiterating the point of summer since people are often happier in the summery months. The other feature of the cover is the birds that are flying across the whole cover, they fade at different parts and are consitent from one end to the other. These birds have no obvious relevance to the title or the rest of the album cover but its similiar to the colors since it is a contrast to the people and the images in the background. This album cover has features that are opposites crushed together, which makes it interesting and sets the cd off as unconventional which often results in the potential buyer more tempted to pick it up and have a look.

Nothing Personal, All time Low.

This is my favourite out of the three album covers. In a way its simpler then other two, yet more complicated! The image is like wallpaper that has been split into two, crushed in between is the bands name in a huge black block font and the album name as if it has been written by hand, it is very inferior to the band name. The other insides of the album cover include to our eyes random objects, the end of a pencil, an american cinema ticket, a pair of legs and a casette player are a few to name, none of the objects are in full yet we are still able to identify the majority of them. The objects are not bright coloured at all, they are all quite neutral tones that dont really leap off the cover yet it makes them all blend together making all the items flatter eachother and work well all together as well as seperately. There is also the repetition of the birds on this cover, like the 'so wrong its right' cover which could show that its a theme that the band are using to associate themselves to this image, in turn this could make a connection for fans, so that when they see the flock of birds they automatically think of All Time Low. I think that the fact they have such a simple yet busy album is fun and fascinating, as a potential buyer i would be curious about what else is there and why, by making the viewer think about what they are looking at has enabled the band to once again make an interesting and effective album cover.

Put up or Shut up, All Time Low.

The final Album by All time low, is equally as eyecatching as the other two. The main person in the front has no facial features and is the only one in colour, this could be as to not attract the viewers attention away from the album names situated above and on the man. I think that the contrast between the other people and the man in the middle creates an image of individualism and once again the unconventional side of the band because he isnt the same as the others and stands out, making sure that the person looking at the album cover sees the seperation in a positive light rather than negative. It has similar features to both the above, for example; just like 'Nothing Personal' this cover has a HUGE focus stealing band name and an understated, 'handwritten' title. Alike 'So wrong its right' it has bright colours that will stand out when its amongst thousands of other cds and albums in a shop. It appears that the band like to keep their album covers close to eachother by using a lot of the same effects; the birds, the fonts and the colours all show that the band has consistancy but still allows room for change so that the fans and buyers can see a comfortable changing band.

Im going to use All Time Low's album covers for influence when it comes to designing my own album cover and i hope that i can achieve the kooky and fun yet complimentary edge to my album cover like they have, three times!