My final poster

My final inside cover

My final front DVD cover

The Neon Effect

For all of my images of my artist I felt they were quite plain being left as they had been taken, so I went through and added an effect that would relate to my artists name 'Allegro Neon'. I added a 'Neon light' effect which really brought the images out - especially on my poster. I experimented with the functions to create an inner glow on each of the images. I changed the colour of this glow to purple or blue to keep to my set coulur scheme.

Creating Poster

A poster is important as its soul responsibility is to sell the album/DVD. I decided to keep mi one quite plain to bring focus to the main image of Lorna walking up stairs made of a keyboard. I carried on my main colour scheme of purple and blue by choosing a plain blue background and added some purple gradient to the corners to create an effect interesting to look at. I observed from other posters that there are normally reviews from magazines and newspapers commenting on the album, which I included. I also added a relice date and formates on which the album would be reliced (CD, DVD etc.). I included a web address that could led fans on to learn more about my artist and lastly put in tour dates, all of which I had seen being deomonstrated on other album posters. For my main image I carried on the central theme of keyboards by having my artist walking down a set of stairs made of a keyboard. This then warped round and through the album name.

Creating my inside DVD cover

For my inside DVD cover I wanted to carry on my theme I established on the outer cover. I began by using the gradient key to create the colourful spectrum pattern on the left pannel. I then had to build using individual squares the purple and blue checkered backdrop on the right. With these two backgrounds I cound now press on and create text with track listings and the album name, as these were some inside themes I had found on DVDs I had looked at. I then inserted a picture of my main singer like my design. I wanted it to look like the light was comming from behind her, so I experimented with lighting effects and colour to try and create this, after cropping her image. I then began to add the keyboards to the image, comming round and down like in my design, using the warp options for pictures.

Creating my DVD cover

Using the programme 'Photoshop', I used many different effects to create my cover. I measured the size of an existing DVD cover to create an appropriatly sized canvus to begin with. I had to create the isometric purple and blue box effect on the back of the cover by hand, drawing out individual boxes which took a long time. When they were all lined up, I could merge the layers together to create one single one. I gradually built up my design layer by layer, to create the strange world my lead singer resided in. Looking at album covers for La Roux's album it looked as if the world she was standing in had been created on a computer. I tried to do the same, building solid walls for her picture to stand behind, and adding lighting effects to make it look more believable.

Artist and album name

After much discussion, me and my group chose the name Allegro Neon for a band name. We wanted something fairly short, but at the same time interesting for any reader. WE found it hard to invent one by ourselves, so we decided to create an anagrame of our main actors real name, with the help of an internet website. Upon looking at the results I discovered one of the words was 'Allegro' which is a musical term for playing fast and joyfully, so for me this was was an imediate choice.'Neon' also relates to our genre, as neon lights are related to the night club scene, which is highly influentual in Synthpop music.
To chose the name 'Luzes' we wanted something strange and exotic, so we went on a translation website and began to translate the word 'Lights' into many different languages untill we found one we liked, which happened to be portuguese.

Font Choices

To choose my fonts for the project, I went on a website called 'Da Font', which is a database of free downloadable fonts which can be used for anything. I found many fonts that would have worked well, but the font I wanted was a 'handwriting' type of font, which I found called 'Jed'. I used this for my main title and a front called 'Jellyka Endless Voyage', which I used for my track listing. This decorative font reflected the elaborate nature of the genre.

Designs

Before I started to produce my media products on photoshop, I started by designing my media products on a sheet of paper with color. I used the keyboard to create an innovative collidoscope effect on the front cover, with isometric square patters that carried through all the products.

A Choice of Theme

For my theme I chose to use a Synthisiser Keyboard, as I feel ths best represents the genre as well as its role in the video. I also chose a colour scheme of dark purple and blue, as these were the colours warn by Lorna for her main costume.

Ancillery Tasks

To accompany the music video, I also had to produce 3 other pieces of media: A 4 sided DVD cover and a poster advertising the release. To go about this project I first had to do some research into the typical aspects of DVD covers and posters - in particular music albums. Some key features I found was:

- A track listing
- Pictures of the artist
- Screen shots from the videos
- An overall colour scheme to link the package and a central 'theme', E.G Jay-Z's recent album 'Blueprint 3' had a central theme of 3 red lines, and these can be found throughout his whole marketing campaign
- Dates for tours on posters
- Quotes from magazine reviews