Interview

Kalon: Hello James, congratulations on the completion of your music video, I have a few questions which I would like to ask you. How have you created a brand for yourself?

James: Well, whilst designing it was important to be consistent throughout my products. I needed to create a brand that would be easily recognised by an audience, for example, Rizzle Kicks' logo is very simple but also unique, allowing the brand to create this image. This means that you would be able to take the name away and we would still know what the brand was. They have gone to globalised recognition with their brand being applied to things like T-shirts and other clothing, Books etc. because the brand is well known and unique, making it stand out as it is different to everything else. With my products I wanted to create something that people would recognize, hence the font that i have used throughout, it is sufficient enough for it to be recognised on the shelf without even reading what it says. As you may have noticed, there is a guitar in my logo, which is situated on every one of my products. The reasoning behind the guitar is that a guitar plays a big part in the music video as it represents my shield against the rest of the world and it has a lot of meanings to me. I decided to add this onto the Digipak Poster and the Website to make everything within my own brand consistent.

Kalon: How effective do you feel the branding of your products is? This includes the Digipak Poster and the website

James: When creating my brand it was important that I had a unique selling point, something that would make my brand stand out from all the rest and be easily identified against other brands. Even if the audience doesn't listen to the music, It would be good for them to recognise what it is as soon as they see the brand.

Kalon: Is the brand shown through all three texts?

James: I feel that the brand has heavily and expressively been shown through all three products, the Digipak Poster, the Website and the Music Video. I think this as both the digipak poster and the website clearly reflect and relate to the video. I have strongly used my unique brand throughout the video, with the guitar to represent as my shield, as seen in the logo, as a prop on the website, and with use of it in the video. 

The music video has lots of nature shots within the background, which shows the exploration and hides a bit of a mystery into the video. When creating my Digipak and Digipak poster it was quite difficult and challenging to decide what colours to use and which would work well, so I used the eyedropper tool to choose a colour that was in my music video, the light grey colour. This helps to represent the song as a fairly gloomy song, but at the same time quite mysterious to help keep the audience interested..

Kalon: What would your Digipak look like if you went ahead and made it?

James: If I made the Digipak it would follow the general codes and conventions of some Digipak's that I looked at. Jake Bugg and Eminem are good ones as they are very limited in colour, matching the theme of the song, and going well with the story of the song. However the design would be really modern in order to match the digipak poster and the Website.

Kalon: Overall, do you think that your brand is successful?

James: Yes, I think it is very successful. Obviously the main fact is that it looks professional, however there is a lot of small added touches that help add to the success of my brand. The bold, eye catching colours help to capture my audiences attention within the Digipak Poster and Website, and the less colourful products help add a sense of mystery to the brand which makes the audience more intrigued. In my research I found out that people buy Digipaks if they look more attractive, some people don't even look at the songs on there, they just look at the digipak and buy it depending on the presentation of it. Using lots of close ups to create a relationship and a bond with the audience, like with the music video. The social media icons can provide my audience with additional content, as they can keep up to date with any on-goings through social networking.