Focusing on Taylor Swift's self-titled debut album, I will discuss the conventions used in the front and back cover and the disc itself. This research will benefit me later on in the process when I will begin to create my ancillary texts.
The typical conventions start with the use of the artist's logo or distinctive presentation of their name, it is present on the front, back and on the disc. Its important that the artist has a unique way of presenting their name as this makes it easier for the audience to distinguish it, it also validates it as official merchandise from the artist. The artist shown above, Taylor Swift, has used this unique logo of her name on 3 out of her 4 albums, the only album not to feature it is her latest release, RED. Besides albums, Taylor Swift has her logo imprinted on memorabilia too in order for her audience to recognise it easily, which enables them to purchase it. The next convention is using images that reflect the album's genre. In this case, Taylor Swift is of the country genre, so it was important that the images showed this. They have in the sense that it is heavily associated with nature and Swift is wearing a white dress, these conventions are stereotypical of a country album which presents it as a country album to the audience. Another convention of an ancillary text is that it needs to be consistent, in the sense that both covers and the disc have to be in sync with each other. So if you saw one of the covers or the disc, you'd know what album it was from. Taylor Swift has maintained consistency through the colours (light blue), the fonts and the logos, which include the artist's and the record label's. One final convention which is small but important is the bar code on the back cover. This is used for scanning when someone buys the album, each bar code is different for every product, and it is used as another way to distinguish albums. Today, there are programmes and applications that can scan the barcodes to help you recognise the product.
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