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

I think that our ancillary texts: our Poster and our Digipak create a brand identity for Tweed. Having our poster and album front and back cover the same simple tweed material makes people who have heard of Tweed instantly recognise any of their other material. An example of an artist who has a brand identity is Mike Skinner from The Streets. For his first two albums Mike Skinner kept the CD design very plain with just the title and the Streets lighter which is instantly recognisable not just because of the name. The choice of a lighter can also be related to The Streets as his first album Original Pirate Material had heavy influences from drugs and the youth drugs culture. When the album was released it wasn't an instant success and after time it became highly praised by surprisingly older audiences and was popular with people from all classes. Original Pirate Material was voted album of the 21st century by The Guardians Ben Thompson which is an impressive feat for a debut album.

As for the rest of our digipak I am very pleased with how the other images compliment each other. We have the powerful image of Ryan in the rear view mirror which is located on the inside cover as you open the CD case. If you unfold the slip in the inside cover we have the images of the forest where we filmed the car scenes with the Tweed logo and the track list. At first we found it difficult to select what would go in the digipak however after a few lessons of brainstorming while editing we decided that using the images of the forest in the digipak would be suitable. We decided on the images of the forest because of the common things associated with forests such as murderous activities and bodies being found by joggers and so on. The link may be over exaggerated however it does link in the subjective storyline of our music video, it can be seen as he may have ran her over and disposed of her in the forest. A very dramatic link but a significant one.

As I said before we wanted to make Tweed an instantly recognisable brand and I am really pleased by our poster. Most of the time adverts and posters for bands are egotistic or trying to create an over artistic impression of the band, like the image on the right for a group I have never heard of. The image for The King Blues tries to show the group in a way which is appealing to a young audience, however the simple shot of the band may attract some consumers but it is more likely to have the opposite effect with the majority of consumers. Trying to show a band in a "cool" way is risky, modern day examples are Lady Gaga who has pulled it off with her odd sense of fashion and attention seeking acts. An example of a group who failed to pull the "cool" look of are The Kooks, The Kooks achieved relative success with singles such as "Niave" and "She Moves In Her Own Way" in the UK music industry however they have came across some harsh press such as Simon Amstell (Never Mind The Buzzcocks) calling them "Brit School rock star wannabees". So by deciding to keep the poster simple and not trying to show Tweed in a "cool" way if our production was to be released on the market it would be hard to find any attacking comments about Tweed in the press. Our poster is a neutral inviting advert for consumers to make their opinions of the band after they have heard the music, whether positive or not after they have purchased the album the advert has achieved what it had set out to.