Logo research

When starting to think about the logo for our band, I will focus on the main objects or ideas that are associated with the group and the music video.

The objects/ props/ costumes that are featured the most are:

• A tie
• Suits
• Sunglasses
• Ska hats
• Saxophone/trumpet
• Ruler 
• Brotherhood symbols
• 
  

The Specials' logo is black and white, which is what we want our colour scheme for our band to be, as this fits with the rest of our general theme. Their logo also features the name of the band, this is something we're not planning to use in our own logo. Their logo is quite simplistic which is an aspect we are planning to include in our logo too. 

Madness's logo is probably the closest to what we're aiming for in our own logo. It's simplistic look and symmetry is something that appeals to me when thinking about the logo we will use, along with the common black and white colour scheme. 

This logo also focuses on the name of the band which is something we're not planning to do. Their logo is quite detailed which also isn't something we're planning to replicate in our own logo. However, their black and white colour scheme is an aspect that we will take from this logo. 

Digipak research

All of these Ska band digipak's have a monochrome colour scheme, all with a slight splash of colour, generally red. The actual aesthetic of these digipak's differs quite dramatically, with some featuring just one person, and some featuring the whole band. We are planning to include the whole band on the front of our digipak, as we want to portray the same sense of brotherhood that is highlighted across all of our products. On the other parts of our digipak we will have the individual band members, as the digipaks in this genre seem to be more people-based rather than objects or other images. The backgrounds of these digipak covers is also very plain, which we will use ourselves.

Tour locations for website

Bands like The Hunna have performed at Brixton Academy, and as they are also a fairly new band this could be a possibility for a location for our tour page. These locations will all be in the UK, as this is where the band is from and they wouldn't be popular enough yet to have a high international demand. 

Since our band is fairly small and up-and-coming, with Lost Art being their first album, the locations for their shows will be quite small and basic.

Kentish Town forum is also a smaller gig location, which would fit with our bands growing audience. This has also been the location for Madness' tribute band show.









The Boiler Shop in Newcastle has been the location for multiple Ska Bands, most recently The Dualers, who have a show there soon.

A Ska band called The Selector and The Beat are performing at Brighton Dome in March, so this could be an appropriate location for one of Common Decency's shows.

website research

Before we start designing our website, i need to research a few websites in the genre of Ska. From this i will gather a list of codes and conventions of Ska band websites in order to make our own website look as professional as possible. 

Madness's website is not as playful as their music. It has a more serious and information based feel to it. Their website includes a gallery of their images, links to their social media bases, a store to purchase merchandise and a news blog along with some other pages. Their colour scheme is quite basic, with the main focus of colour being in the images of the band performing live. The colour yellow features as the font colour, making it stand out from the fairly dark background of the photographs. 

The website for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones is very different from Madness's. This is a much more colourful website which features very bold colours such as blue, red and white on their home page. Each of their different pages has a different colour scheme, which distinguishes them from each other in an interesting way. There is also an illustrated depiction of the band members, which is an aspect which we are hoping to feature across all of our platforms as a band. 

The specials' website has the sort of theme that we will be most inspired by when designing our own website. It has a black and white colour scheme, which would go perfectly with our music video colour scheme. Their merchandise page consists mostly of t shirts, with the band's monotone colour scheme and their band logo. 

Audience Interview Questions

(play them the song)

1. What genre of music is this?
2. What other artists can you name in this genre?
3. What images do you think of when listening to this song?
4. What themes come to mind when you hear this song?
5. What colours would you associate with this style of music?
6. Do you think there would be a narrative in the video for this song?
7. Does this music have an emotion that you would identify with it?
8. Which messages and values do you think these artists convey in their songs?
9. Have you ever seen this band live? If so, where and when?
10. What setting/locations would you expect to see in a video for this song?
11. Do you have any merchandise? if so, which items?
12. What situation are you likely to listen to this music in?

The idea of these questions is to try and gather information about our audience and what kind of things they would be expecting from our video so that we can possibly work around this and adapt our ideas to suit our audience. Some of the questions are to try and assist with our website and give us ideas for some of the merchandise and tour locations, etc that we can include. Some of the questions we may have to ask to older people as Madness is a fairly old band that may not be particularly popular with people our age, however most questions will be asked to other students as this will be more suitable to our target audience age group.