For our ancillary tasks we decided to both a magazine cover and an album cover. This is because we felt that our study of magazines in the Collective Identity part of the course would aid us in the creation of our magazine, as we were comfortable with the techniques that are used in order to attract a readership. Furthermore, an album cover would be suitable as we have two very artistic members in our group so we felt that we could utilise their skills in the creation of an artistic style album cover.
In order to get a wider and more in-depth knowledge of youth culture, we decided to look into how it was presented in magazines. In doing so we found a magazine called 'Vice', a lifestyle magazine which focuses on contemporary youth culture, including fashion, art, music, film, and literature, all reflecting a culture away from the mainstream. We felt that if we wanted to follow this slightly more abstract and artistic representation of youths through the media, in order to captivate an audience and encourage them to consult wider forms of the media. Additionally, we studied ‘Dazed and Confused which eventually played a huge role in the creation of our ancillary tasks to gain further insight in to the ‘indie’ counter-culture. In both magazines fashion seemed to play a key role in representing both the models in the pages of the magazines, as well as the audience they were trying to include. Some of the images once again steered away from the popular mainstream press images, but focused instead on personal expression and how clothes could be used to represent aspects of one’s personality. These magazines mostly portray a care-free, rebellious youth of today but in a fashion that doesn’t conform to how some forms of the media represents youth culture – driven mad by video games and terrorising the streets. Furthermore, with this in mind we looked into historical subcultures adopted by young adults, such as Rockabilly, Mods and Punks who express a variety of beliefs through the media which are used to present them. We found that as the media picked up on these subcultures, they often grew in popularity to the mainstream, and so essentially these ideas are globalised through the media.
Further media texts which show this liberal and care-free sense of living that we wanted to portray included the Diesel ‘Be Stupid’ advertising campaign, featured in a variety of fashion magazines, which encourage the concept that those who are living life ‘stupidly’ are having far more fun than those who are living life ‘smart’. An example of one of these is a poster saying 'Smart may have the brains, but stupid has the balls.' in which a woman is exposing her breasts at a CCTV camera. Thus, challenging the expectations of society and taking on a slightly non-conformist role – something which we would develop as a theme throughout the production of our advanced portfolio.
We wanted to show some continuity within our video and the ancillary tasks as this would aid in marketing the band. We chose to follow quite a dark colour scheme, which is apparent due to some of the lighting we used. Furthermore, this would help to become a enigmatic symbol for the band as they are called ‘The Black Lights’ and so, black and white, are the main colours which we used, thus connoting the colour scheme to the band’s name. We even decided to use a light bulb on the cover of the album but in order to represent the name of the band; we inverted the colours so that the image was in fact a ‘black light’. This was set against a cracked wall, which we decided would help to keep an element of recklessness which was a theme throughout our video. Additionally, for the magazine we used a black and white colour scheme, similar to that which we had seen in Hedi Slimane’s January 2009 edition of ‘Dazed & Confused entitled ‘The British Youth Portfolio’ – a similar concept to what we were trying to portray.
Here are some images from Hedi Slimane's British Youth Portfolio:
We decided to use an image with the band member’s face half covered in darkness – we felt this would create an air of mystery around the band which would eventually make the reader want to pick up the magazine in order to discover the mystery inside. This also created quite a slick & stylish effect to the magazine, which although it contrasted some of the content in the video, we felt this would give another good representation of the band, possibly to a wider audience beyond teenagers to adults. We felt this element of sophistication in our magazine and album cover was necessary in order not to alienate our audience – some of the content in the video like drunken teenagers asleep on the sofa would obviously not be appropriate for the cover of a magazine. Whilst it would appeal to the audience interested in the band itself, we felt it would also represent the magazine well, as we had chosen the name ‘Noir’, thus presenting a more realistic synchronicity. We chose the name ‘Noir’ as we felt it added a sense of sophistication and class, which would be likely of the culture magazine we were trying to create.
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