Research For Ancillary Texts

As part of my coursework I will also be creating 2 ancillary texts to help promote my music video, I decided at the start of the project that these two will be a a magazine advertisement and a CD cover in the form of a digipak. 

CD Cover

I began by researching some existing CD album art to see what techniques are most commonly used. Many of these CD covers feature a mixture of photographs and graphic design elements, whilst others feature only artwork. I also saw that each album cover has a minimal amount of text by only listing the artist and the albums name, this seems to be so that the main focus is on the imagery itself.

Digipaks are created as a way to promote a new album or single, they are made up of a CD case that also folds out to show a range of different images, album information, or song lyrics. The dimensions for digipaks can differ depending on your chosen size and the way in which you want it to fold out, the image above shows the dimensions needed for a 6 panel digipak, however they can also be made with 4 or 8 panels. 

Magazine Advertisement

When an artist releases a new album or single they will commonly place advertisements in magazines as a way to promote the product further. These are often made with the same or similar style to the album art itself as a way to make it recognisable to customers through continuity. I researched some existing magazine adverts for CD's and they are all portrait sized as they are specifically deigned to be on a magazine page, this artwork is also often used on billboards because of the similar dimensions.