Final Product: Advert

Here is our final advert for Christina Perri's album 'Lovestrong.'

Update

We are currently in the process of creating the advert for our digipak. So far, we have began to create the collaged heart and are sticking down some photos which we have taken to form the image of the heart.

The next stage is to add the polaroid to the centre of the heart and take a photo of the heart on some grass. Then we will create the advert in Adobe Fireworks.

Final Advert Idea

Our final idea for the advert is also relatively simplistic but this version holds a lot more emotive meaning than the previous idea.

Once again, we have incorporated the use of a heart as the main focus point of the advert. However, rather than just using the symbol, we wanted to create a collage using different pictures of the couple on the heart itself, to connote the transition of their relationship and their shared love. On the heart we will have both happy pictures of the couple and more distressed pictures showing how they're relationship deteriorated. The collage also makes the advert seem extremely personal and almost like a memoir of their time together. The artistic element could coincide with the personal feel of the album, as if the protagonist has created the whole album for herself, as a coping mechanism. This ties into the research we did on Christina Perri's original album artwork and how she created the album, which is a personal documentation of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend.

Advert Idea 1

Like our digipak, we wanted the advert to relate to our video and to the song we chose. Our initial idea of the advert was to take the song in a more literal way and to illustrate the title of the song 'Jar of Hearts.' This would mean that the advert would be easily recognisable, as people would relate it to the song (which is Christina Perri's hit song).

As the picture shows, we wanted the advert to consist of a jar which holds a heart. The heart drawn would be the heart of the girl, to link to the heartbreak connoted both by the video and the song itself. To link to the digipak and disc design we would show the heart with a jigsaw-shaped piece missing. This creates similar meanings to that of our disc design with the recognisable symbol of a heart to represent the girl.

As well as a jar, we wanted to explore the relationship shown in the video between our two characters and so to display this we thought of using a string of polaroid photos as a timeline of the relationship. We decided on polaroids not only to match our digipak but because of the personal aspect it presents. Polaroid’s are not used by professionals but by amateurs and so the use of them shows the emotion behind taking pictures of themselves as a couple; it creates the effect that they have taken the photos as memories not just for the sake of an album.

We decided against using this advert as it didn't contain enough emotive meaning. Although the literal interpretation of the song would attract audiences, we didn't think it would fit the heavily emotive video and digipak we have created.

Disc Design

As well as designing our digipak we created a design for the discs we would include. The right hand disc shows the design we would use on the DVD accompanying the album (the left hand disc).

We wanted to maintain our theme of love and heartbreak and so decided upon using a heart as the main image on the disc. The heart symbol is a constant symbol of love and is recognised almost everywhere and so by including this we are creating the desired effect. To connect with the idea of heartbreak we showed one heart with a jigsaw piece missing out of it. This heart represents the heart of the girl. It is red in colour to symbolise the love she holds and the piece missing from it represents the piece of her heart that her partner stole. When comparing this disc with the other, we can see that the DVD disc represents the boy’s heart. It is black in colour to represent his lack of emotive input and to identify him as the antagonist (dark colours usually connote evil.) Also, on the DVD disc we see the piece of the girl’s heart which has been abandoned in the corner. This represents the heartbreak between the couple as he has 'broken' her heart by keeping a piece of it for himself. The use of the heart as a symbol for their relationship also links to the name of the song we did for our video: 'Jar of Hearts'. Although not a literal representation, it does link in with the concepts explained in the song, such as betrayal.


As well as the reason stated above, the colour scheme does help to connote meaning. Red and black are colours which are commonly associated with gambling and so using them on our disc creates the idea that love is always a gamble, something that you have to take risks for. The contrasting colours also help us to separate the two characters as opponents, each with a colour, and so help us to understand the conflict in their relationship.


For the font, we wanted something which could almost look handwritten, this would make the discs look personal and so rely the meanings in a much more emotive and realistic way. We want the digipak to have a feel of the protagonist, the girl, as it is her story we are telling.

Although we don't have to create these for our final digipak design, we thought having an idea of what the discs will look like would help us in creating the digipak.

Final Digipak Idea

Our final idea for the digipak stemmed from our second idea. We took the idea of a diary or a scrapbook and decided to use this style of something personal to base our digipak on. As you can see from the mock-up of the idea above, we have decided to use a line of photographs of the couple in the video as our cover. The front cover itself will show a polaroid photo of the girl with tear tracks down her face. The photo will be in black and white to express the melancholy feel of the album. We want to use the polaroid style as it is excessively more personal than a normal photo as it is a photo you would get on demand. It also adds an aspect of art to the cover and so helps to display the idea of a photo album. The photo will be clipped onto a piece of string as it floats in the centre of the frame. This string will continue onto the back cover and the inside flap. The back cover will show a progression of photos displayed in line (as you would get from a passport photo machine.) I will be of the couple together but the photos will show a distance between them indicating problems in the relationship. The inside flap will show another polaroid of the couple together, except they will be shown as being happy and in love. On the inside of our design we will have the tracklist and the design for the back of both discs. The tracklist will be situated in the centre and we have decided to use the idea of the tracklist on the letter as we believed this was effective. For the two graphics behind the disc we have decided to use a collection of the lyrics from Christina Perri's songs. We will write the lyrics on pieces of ripped up paper and then collage them together. On one of the designs will be more loving lyrics and on the other lyrics of betrayal and heartbreak. All of this together is designed to look like a journal that the protagonist would have written.

We believe that this idea is the best idea as it expresses deep emotive meaning as well as involving the ideas used in our music video which will create familiarity for the fans.