In what ways does our front album cover use or develop convetions of real media products?

I added this example of an album cover from a different genre of music to show the conventions of album covers that stretch across all genres

Our album cover conforms not only to the dominant stereotype of dance music album covers but to album covers in general in terms of the artist featuring on the front cover, just like the Sven Vath and Maetrik album covers which are artists within the same genre. We’ve followed this convention to focus the front cover on the brand image of the artist as a marketing tool. We’re creating an image for his fans to follow and create a fan base underneath. Within the genre of conventional marketing tools our front album panel conforms in its use of eye grabbing contrasting colour to help it get recognised in shops and online as we can see in comparison to Maetrik’s Cocoon Heroes. Again focusing on the artists on the front of each of these album covers we can see that a mid shot photo with direct address is conventional of an album covers front panel. The use of a mid shot keeps the image of the artists large enough to notice but not so close up that they are unrecognisable. Direct address is used to make the product and artist more intimate with the consumer to try and further market and build on a fan base. The style of direct address is important as well, in Maetrik’s album he is leering and smiling which has connotations of ‘guilty pleasures’ where as our artist is much more relaxed to make him seem more accessible to a wider audience, this and his clothing give connotations of ‘trustworthy’ and ‘laid back’. Another convention of media products is using two types of font, one for titles and one for sub text, we’ve implemented this to help the album cover conform to media product conventions and get recognised as a genuine media product, although a completely unconventional album cover can have its own selling points we felt that for it to be accepted into the media mainstream it had to convey some typical conventions.

In what ways does our album front cover challenge conventions of real media products?

Our album cover shares similarities to that of Stephan Bodzins, above, particularly in the unconventional use of strong contrasting colours. The difference however is our cover is colourfully confusing and almost looks like a clown and holds intertextual references to the Joker from Batman. These two aspects work well with our artists calm collected look to raise questions about his sanity beneath his cool façade which ultimately works as a marketing tool as it not only makes the cover interesting but on first sight presents an enigma that the consumer becomes interested in. In Comparison the Stephan Bodzin uses colour in a different manner as the colours blend into each other and look smoother however they both correspond to the high energy aspect of dance music and create an unconventional looking front cover to our digipack. The name of our artist adds to the complex nature of our front cover as the name Matrix has connotations of something that is intricate and complex. Our album cover and the Stephan Bodzin album cover share unconventional similarities such as the way the artist is pictured off centre to the side, In contrast the Carl Cox album cover is much more conventional with the artist picture directly centre. Another difference between the conventional Carl Cox album and our album cover is the horizontal square on titles contrasting with our choice to put the title down the side.

In what ways does our album back cover conform to and contrast conventions of a real media product?

 

The back cover of our digipack conforms to the obvious conventions of having a list of songs which it shares with both examples as well as having a barcode and record label logo. The record label logo in particular works as a marketing and publicity tool for our label and artist as the consumer can look into the label if they like the music we produce. Although the two examples don’t share this it is quite conventional to have a close up picture on the back like we have which allows us to directly influence the consumers mind set when looking through a listening to songs, which provides the right situation for them to accept the connotations that we’re attempting to get across.

However our back cover is relatively unconventional primarily through its connotations. The image we’ve selected to use is a Man Ray image which holds ambiguous sexual connotations, this allows our album to expand its audience and appeal to wider range of sexualities, allowing us to access a variety of niche and alternative audiences.