Category: Preliminary Print Tasks

Before we started to create our actual tour posters we first made a mood board consisting of existing tour posters of the same genre to help get a sense of the themes and conventions of the genre while also considering their use of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) within the posters and how they catch peoples attention.

 

Reflection.

Brief:

I believe that my poster does cover what the brief states as it contains all the relevant information the audience needs to know about and the colour schemes and layout used within it does draw in the main target audience.

Colours:

 The colours have stayed consistent throughout the poster primarily being a pink that has a LED light affect except for the info which uses a bold white against the black background to be easy to read and the name of the artist being half pink and half blue where the blue came off of the clothing the model was wearing to make the name match the colour in the image.

The colours being bright and having a glow to it is reminiscent of the EDM genre neon lights are very big in the concerts and tour posters.

Typeface:

While the text is easy to read the specific info of the arenas are a little hard too from a distance but the main info (the tour name, artist name and dates/cities) can be read easily.

I believe that the font used fits their placement as the artist name stands out and the slight cursive font does fit the name of the tour as the rose tour sounds more elegant and a matching font was required. The needed info is in a bold plain font to make it easy for those interested to read it.

There are three different fonts used within the poster: one for the artist name, one for the tour name and one for the info.

Integration of image and graphics:

I think the model’s eyeline does focus the attention of people as the glass worn almost stares at you and the filters used on the image just makes it stronger.

The placement of the text is nicely suited around the images used within the poster.

Image:

While i think the costume was a bit lacking originally i think it does get better with the filters on as it looks sharper and more fitting of an EDM artist. I think the body language is suitable for an EDM artist as it has a more serious feel to it.

AIDA:

I think the font and design of the text does draw in people making them want to go but with the way my tour poster is made it makes them seem as a bigger more known artist with how the minimalism used so there isn’t much text on it.

Connotations:

With the way the model is posed and presented it gives a more urban, rebellious feel to the artist giving off that their music might be heavier than other EDM artists out there which does relate to the genre as EDM usually has a massive amount of subgenres under it, like dubstep for example, in which the model could easily fit within the expectations one would have about that genre.

In preparation of making our magazine covers we learned how to use adobe InDesign which will be the primary tool used in the creation of our own magazine cover. To help learn how to use InDesign we recreated already existing magazine covers as it was a good way to learn the ins and outs of InDesign and also how to make a magazine as it was good practice on placement of images and how to use placement as it was very easy to accidently make cover lines or a inset too big or small when practicing ruining the cover as everything gets pushed around.

I think the parts of my poster that fall short are:

• The fonts as it was hard to find matching ones.
• The image of the main cover star being the original uncropped image making it harder to lay things out neatly.
• There are same parts sadly misaligned with the things above or below.

The parts that I’m proud of are:

• Being able to use drop shadow to fake bolden the text used in the poster.
• I think that despite the layout having to be changed to suit the full image I believe that I translated it well to fit the bigger image.

When it comes to using InDesign I’m pretty confident with my skills as I have used similar software like it before making it kind of simple to understand how to use it though I do constantly forget to click on the select tool again after doing something else.

This project will be useful later on when doing the magazine covers or anything else that uses InDesign as this was a great way to practice using it.

Below I have embedded two videos from YouTube I believe will help me in the future when using InDesign:

This one will be a good refresher on the basics as it will help remind anything simple I may forget.

This video is good as it covers a lot of key information about InDesign and some tips to make it easier to use.

To learn the importance of camera angles and how they help display a narrative with just the distance, angle and framing of the shot. To do this we took several dozen photos all with different the different types of angles, framing and distance as practice to help us think more about them when using a camera.

With the photos taken we then put nine of the photos on a mood board and gave them hashtags each about the denotation, the way the photo was taken and the connotation. This task helped me realise how important camera work is as the angle can help control the narrative, it can give and take power completely changing who’s in control of the scenario encoding that idea in the shot for the audience to decode.

This task will be a good thing to look back on for future projects, especially the music video, as it helps show how important camera work is when taking videos and photos.

In order to help understand how to create magazine covers we started a project of making a tour poster, but before we started on the poster we had to make a mood board to help understand what themes are within he genre given to us. For my group, we were given EDM as a genre. With EDM as our genre we made a mood board that covered all the conventions seen in EDM artists and the audience that listened
too them. One thing we needed to focus on was the star image of EDM and the representation of it and so we used the mood board to help identify those key images seen displayed in EDM.

After finishing the mood board we used the ideas we gained from it to encode the image of EDM onto one of our group embers and then the other members of our class worked as an audience and wrote the ideas that they decoded from the outfit (energetic, neon, self assured, flashy and show off) onto post-it notes and stuck them onto the outfit. I believe that the post-it notes generally got the right idea about the outfit and what it was trying to display. While our outfit showed an okay idea of what EDM is, I do think it was a bit lacking as EDM is a very hard to convey genre as it has such a wide umbrella of what falls under it and what type of audiences it has making it hard to display in just an outfit.

We dressed up one of our group members as what could be expected of an EDM artist to wear and then had a photo shoot and of that shoot we made a collage of the best six from the shoot and then chose the best one from the collage in preparation to use in our tour poster. The outfit we put together displays some conventions of EDM artists in the way they wear flashy clothes that sparkle with the neon lights. When making the outfit we had to think of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Signifier and signified as we had to think of what clothes represented EDM artists and would the audience be able to tell the genre of music from the outfit. I chose that image as the best one as I think it displays the outfit well and the pose captures the look of an EDM artist in the way that they represent themselves, I did think about using the image above it in the collage but figured that this one also works better on a tour poster and shows a pose more reminiscent of what you would expect on a tour poster.

 

Mise En Sene is important to consider as a media language when taking a photo or filming a scene as you need to think of the things going on in the scene and whether or not the lighting or costume fit the image. Mise En Scene is important because if it isn’t thought about it when producing media it could be off putting if the lighting is off or the costumes don’t fit the theme of it. When working on other projects I’ll need to put actual thought into Mise En Scene as it’s a very important part of media that could accidently ruin the project if not thought about.

When making a magazine cover it’s important to think of what’s on the cover, the colours and images used within it. To get practice with placement on magazine covers we deconstructed band tour posters and annotated the important aspects behind them and what they represent. The reason as to why we looked at tour posters is that they’re a good example on placement of text and images within a piece of media and can be easier to understand than magazines as they have to be more straight forward in what they’re displaying as most of the time you only get a bit of time to look at them.

I chose to look at the poster of a recent Iron Maiden tour that took place a couple of moths ago in the UK. While looking at the poster I had to think of each thing in the poster and the connotations behind them and why are they were denoted that way decoding the meaning behind the idea displayed in the image. This was a useful thing for me to look at as for my magazine I’m planning to lean into more rock and metal music for my magazine, so it was a good chance to see what sort of colours and images I should use within my magazine and it’s cover as Iron Maiden is a similar genre. Throughout doing this it helped reinforce how important placement is within physical media texts as normally when looking at it you never think about the placement of it but when you do actually stop and think about it you start to realise how much thought is put into it and how important it actually is.