Evaluation Question 2: How Effective is the Combination of your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

The mood we were originally going for with our music video and our ancillary texts was more Psychedelic and hippy with a Gothic and almostGlam Rock spin. When going through the design process we looked at what was and what was not relevant to the mood of the song, therefore we would accurately portray the artist's tone without any confusion. We used the galaxy design due to Cosmo's name being strikingly similar to cosmos. Not only was this relevant to the artist but also very relevant to today's hippy culture in which galaxy design etc. is very popular. When looking at how to present the imagery etc. we looked at artists such as Pink Floyd, Boy George and David Bowie who were visually similar in a variety of ways and appeal to a similar target audience.



One of the posters that we have on our website uses imagery that is on the back of our digipak. This was implemented in order to create a clear link between the merchandise and the digipak, therefore promoting the album further. When asking people which posters they liked more, they told us that they much preferred posters 1 and 3 because they merge better with the background and also fit better with the rest of the ancillary text. The first poster uses an image of Cosmo taken straight from the video itself, therefore promoting the video as well as the album. People who have already watched the video would see this poster in particular and notice that this is a scene from the video that has been dressed up to fit with the galaxy theme. This poster also promotes Cosmo's tour dates that are shown on the website (creating another link to something else we have created).





MAKE-UP




When considering the artist's make-up the general theme and colour scheme was kept in mind. To keep it from looking less hippy and moreGlam Rock the eye shadow was toned down a little bit, however by keeping the glitter and diamonds it loosely linked to the galaxy theme and could within reason be linked to stars. We also kept to the purple colour scheme by using purple eye shadow. As our music video contains very little reference to the galaxy theme and the colour scheme it was extremely important that we use the make-up to show this. On the website we also use yellow therefore the shadow on the upper eye was not completely irrelevant.

When looking at the video itself you can see we show this make-up a lot in the throughout. This meant the fact that we had little reference to the general theme that surrounded are artist wasn't so bad. To cover this up we made sure there were a lot of shots of Cosmo wearing the make-up. The reason we had little reference to the galaxy theme was because it was extremely important to us to make links to the 60's thehippy era in practically every shot possible meaning links to old cartoons such as Mickey Mouse or old toys such as Rock Em Sock Em Robots. If we had made more reference to our theme than the 60's. the video may not have matched the song because of the style and era in which the music was created.

COSMO'S IMAGE






COSTUME

In the video Cosmo wears two outfits, one being a dark Gothic military jacket and the other being a T-Shirt saying "Happy". The T-Shirt acts as an ironic statement that contrasts against the moody and dark atmosphere of the video and the song. Below is a mood-board presenting what direction we wanted Cosmos image to adhere to; as you can see we wanted Cosmo to retain his mysterious and almost Gothic persona while retaining the 60's easy going and at times very odd vibe. In the video Cosmo wears a leopard print bandanna. This is a clear reference to bands such as Guns N' Roses which is just one of the artists we took style influence from. We also took influence from the likes of John Lennon, using the tinted circular sun-glasses.







ARTIST LOGO


We have used our logo on a variety of our products. We have used our logo mainly on products such as our merchandise , digipak and also our website; this is the image which ties all of our products together and regardless of design tells you that this product promotes Cosmo as an artist and brand. I feel our design is unique and well presented. A lot of our peers liked this logo when it was shown to them, therefore it has appeal to a range of people regardless of music taste.



As you can see we have incorporated Cosmo's logo into the merchandise that is 'available' from the website. This also includes the galaxy theme that I have made multiple references to. In actual fact this is where the galaxy theme stemmed from. We originally took the idea further when I started designing a variety of t-shirts, bags etc. and had the idea to use the theme of galaxy, stars, nebula's etc. due to Cosmo's name resembling the cosmos as another name for galaxy. From that point on we stretched this idea onto every aspect of Cosmo, much as we did with the logo.