Social Media Research & Development

Here is the research and development of my social media page, i (Jonathan) did all of this.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The German artist “Cro” has an instagram account that is exemplary for what we are trying to make.

His account does not always have direct promotion posts; instead he takes staged pictures of him from the set he is

filming his music videos and has them all including his posters for the music video in the same synth pop aesthetic

to create a consistent brand where each image has the same polaroid-like vibe or features a saturated poster.

We always see him with the mask which is consistent branding which we could do with Jason's black hoodie as a

defining brand. In order to achieve such an aesthetic I have to be active in taking pictures of us Behind the Scenes or

staging pictures on set.

I also looked at the account of the American Band “Twenty One Pilots” who stylize their name to be

“Twenty Øne Piløts” in posts but not their account name, inspiring me to stylize our instagram account name

from “officiallongwaydown” to “ØfficialLøngWayDøwn” which fits with the initial idea to call our

artist “E/GØ” (pronounced “Ego”) allowing for consistent branding.

The Twenty One Pilot’s account features advertisements of podcasts & snippets of those podcasts featuring the artist

talking about the album or music video while sharing anecdotes that may not be related to their product(s),  other than

that they also have posters for promotion of their music video which always features their logo and has consistent

colouring and aesthetics. something we want to emulate in our account.

 I also decided to add some posts that are inspired from the rapper Logic's account who made a song about depression

and its stigmatisation, he promoted the song using a podcast where he shared personal anecdotes about loneliness

or just being sad in general. We could use this idea where we will pretend to have a podcast where members of the

team especially the casted share their made up or even true experiences with depression or loneliness, in order to fit

with the brand the footage will be in black and white and the camera shots and angles will be simulated to resemble

as if someone is peeking into the podcast rather than having it upfront with professional shots , this is effective to

show it as a sneak peak thus a promotion for the podcast while showing that people are still shy and hush-hush

when it comes to openly talking about depression.

Another concept i liked was a picture of a text messenger format of one person asking if the other is okay though

in Logic's concept it was not about depression but creative choice, in our case we are able to utilise it to show

someone avoiding help or ignoring because depression is stigmatised as a sign of weakness, or it could be a feature

used to show interactions with fans where we could screenshot text messages to make it as if they are answering a

question posed by us.

The instagram account of the Taiwanese Indie Band “Cao Dong Mei You Pai Dui” features many posts with a

dark tint/filter which i plan to copy for all of our posts and not just some to fit with our representation of mental health

which was explored in our music video, the dark colours is a connotation for the negative &  exhausting emotions

going through a depression feel. 

Another post i liked from their account is one  a concert hall layout for a concert hall they plan to perform at, the post

announces which areas are sold out and which seats are still available (in Chinese), this only makes our account

resemble that of a real artist where it looks like E/GØ is active & prepping for concerts.

Looking at the rapper Orelsan’s account also added some ideas to the final product , i love the fact that he has his

own logo which has brought me to start designing one forthe E/GØ artist, three of my favourite post include one

where he poses with a digipak which we could simulate with Jason (posing as the singer) if we have time to make

a physical digipak.

Other than that i saw a post advertising an Amazon Prime series about him, if we could simulate this but for E/GØ

we could mention how such a post could be an attempt of the artist to sell other products in this case a synergy

between the E/GØ artist and the Amazon Prime where we believe that people would view the product

(documentary series) as explained by Bulmer & Katz’s User & Gratification Theory where people watch the

documentary for Diversion & most importantly Personal Identity since we assume some fans will look up to E/GØ,

we could say that some fans will watch for “Surveillance” where they would like to have a deeper insight into

E/GØ’s life displayed in the documentary series.

Finally to make it look like the album/song actually was released we could copy these 2 posts above which is effective

& easy to make due to the fact that i possess an Iphone and the Notes app, the first post above (in French) announces

the successful sales of the album & all the awards it gained. The second one simply announces tour dates further

making it look like E/GØ is a real and active artist.

The one and only non musical artist i looked into for research is a cartoonist called “Lelay” who’s first comic book

was entirely crowdfunded by her fans, this gave me the idea to create a post where the artist asks for fans to help

crowdfund the music video where we could mention this is how New Media empowers the audience to be more

active in the distribution and, in this case, the production of a media product where they fund us in this case which

is only possible with the technological convergence of the Internet & electronic funds transfer technology in the

form of crowdfunding sites.

IDEAS

Narrative On E/GØ’s Life Being Reasons Why Fans Follow Him

I wanted to make a post that announced Ego’s first world tour after having one cancelled previously due to entering

rehab following a divorce, the idea is that people follow E/Gø as an artist due to reasons explained by Richard Dyer’s

theory of stardom namely the “Downfall” & “Love Life” factor. The post features a poster advertising the

“Ghost Town Tour” which was inspired by Kanye West’s 2016 Saint Pablo Tour Poster.

Merch Shop Based On Nikocado Avocado’s Merch Shop.

In order to show that the artist also promotes other products i decided for a post that simulated the homepage design of

a fictional merch shop, the idea is that we would promote the hoodie throughout other posts and ask fans to take

pictures with it and put it under the hashtag “#LongWayDownToGhostTown” where fans wear it to express enunciative

productivity as explained by Henry Jenkin’s Fandom Theory.

The layout of the fictional online store was inspired by the Youtuber Nikocado Avocado’s own merch shop called “https://itsjustwaterweight.com/”, our bio also includes a fake link to this fictional online shop.

Hermeneutic Code in 2nd post.

The 2nd post in our instagram account looks nothing like a promotion for a music video though it references some

lyrics from the song “Ghost Town”, this serves to create an air of mystery to build up anticipation of our fans,

this hermeneutic code will keep people watching to uncover the hermeneutic code acting as an enigma to raise

discussions & our fan’s thirst for an explanation, the idea is that such a post will have fans talking to each other

about it as explained by the User & Gratifications Theory’s “Social Relationship Theory”. 

EXPERIMENTATION

After doing some work on the social media i decided to create a darkish color mixed with blood red colour scheme

which fits with the theme of depression and self harm, many of the images if not made by ourselves were generated

by the Shutterstock AI generator or were edited (flipped & reworked) images from horror game concept arts, they

were edited using an online photo editor called pixlr.net.

Our social Media page-->https://www.instagram.com/officiallongwaydown/

The mystery of the account which at first does not seem like a conventional account acts as a hermeneutic code to keep

the audience engaged and stick around to see what else is to come. There is a narrative in the post of going on the long

way down to go to Ghost Town.

After consultation with our teacher Mr.Nick i decided to start from zero and follow his advice to stay truer to our research

by having more elements that resemble Cro's, Twenty One Pilot's, and Logic's instagram such as featuring

advertisements for a podcasts and many videos of the artist asking questions or posing with merchandise,

concepts such as the text messages format from Logic's account could be used to promote something or spread a

message.

At the end this is how our account looked like 

I followed many of Mr.Nick's advice such as that to keep all the posts consistently dark or

darkish which fits with the theme of depression and anxiety that the song of the music video explores,

other than that if there were words on a post i made sure unlike their prototypes i would make

sure that the entire account would feature a maximum of 2 fonts, those being Horizon & Franklin Libre Bold

which were available on Canva.com where we designed many of the posts, other then that i decreased the line

spacing from default levels to lower ones where the post below once was on 1.4, its final version which is

aesthetically more pleasing had line spacing of 0.93

The post above also replaced another old post in the spirit of being more true to the other instagram accounts i

researched.After remembering how Logic & Twenty One Pilots featured a picture of themselves when advertising

another product such as a podcast i replaced the old post only consisting of text to one where Jason posing as the

artist is shown.

In order to edit keep a consistent dark tone with the pictures i used a website called pixlr.net which allowed me to

edit photos and upload them online, i manipulated the photo's saturation, darkness and at times added vignettes to

get the look i wanted.

I initially wanted to keep the post of our crew member Abizer sitting at the bottom of a staircase but i decided that

since Jason is the face of our brand we should only have him on our account or at least appear much more frequently

than anyone else, this is to follow on how instagram accounts like Cro's & Logic mostly features pictures of

themselves on set, doing random things, or when in a video format promoting something or asking questions to the

fanbase.

I decided to use the text message format for the first post which was inspired by Logic's instagram account, the

second post did not look like a conventional advertisement or promotion for a music video where it references parts

of the song without explicitly promoting the music video.

In order to increase the presence of the artist on the instagram page i created more and more videos featuring Jason

some of them replacing old post that fulfil the same purpose, one of them being a fake instagram story that asks fans

how they deal with anxiety which was replaced with a video of Jason asking how fans do so instead, this is consistent

with branding where Jason is the face of the product and should be associated with it, plus this is a chance to show how

the artist personally interacts with fans with the help of Social media.

The 2nd post of the account serves as a hermeneutic code

This hermeneutic code is intended to keep anticipating fans wondering on what is about to happen where the mystery

can spread the word through the fanbase or even outside of it where as per the User's & Gratification Theory our fans

will talk to each other to discuss on the cryptic nature of the post to fill the Social Relationships need which might

result in Textual Productivity in the form of commentary videos discussing theories.

The second post and the another one appearing much later where we simulated fans texting us on their tips and tricks

to battle anxiety were created in an app called ifaketextmessages.com

I added many videos (reels) where Jason would advertise merchandise, advocate for mental health awareness,

or ask our fans to help fun our music video through a fictional site called crowdfund.com/longwaydown,

for consistency i added the link on the account's bio & the post and in the next post announced that our crew

member Angelo was enjoying the camera stabilizer purchased with the crowdsourced money, a legitimate reason for

someone other than Jason to appear in a post. This way we can say that our fans have engaged with the social media

page and that the Technological convergence of the Internet & Wire Transfer Technology (which allows us to

wire money via phone or ATM) allows fans to contribute in the production of the music video thus is a proof

of how New Media's interactiveness can help creators.

I did not like the fact that our profile picture for the social media was less than ideal where it was once a picture of

Jason, i changed it to a placeholder picture before working on a design for the profile picture which i decided to

conform with my research should take example of 21 Pilots & Orelsan and have an original logo as the profile picture

which is featured in other posts.

The final logo was simple text of the artist’s stylized name in the Horizon font

Since there is a video of Jason trying to sell our merch i decided there should be a fake/simulated website where we

sold our merch bringing me to add another fictional website link on the bio and the post.

I was not satisfied with the result after trying to simply put text on plain hoodie pictures on Canva.com,

so i found a website called printful.com where i could input images and text into hoodie designs which

with the help of Printful.com’s AI can change the appearance of the input whether text or image to make

it look like an embroidery.

I wanted a post that looked like a screenshot from the website that where we sold the merchandise from offering

a discount but i had trouble trying to simulate the interface of website, i decided to inspire myself from Nikocado

Avocado's merchandise shop itsjustwaterweight.com.

(Nikocado Avocado's Merchandise Shop)

(My attempt to copy it's interface for our 12th instagram post where the design from Printful.com's is featured).

Finally, i though that it would make sense for us to collaborate with a company like Betterhelp,

a startup which offers online therapy due to the themes we tackle and purposes we advocate

where we spread awareness of mental health problems. Because of this i created a post announcing

our Youtube premier along with our collaboration with Betterhelp, this collaboration will also manifest

itself as the creative choice to add QR codes to their website on our digipaks the idea is that people

who buy our music are likely to do so because they have mental health problems of their own thus collaborating

with Betterhelp and having their QR code on the digipak can help access online therapies which as promised by

our instagram post are discounted up to 80%. Thus the synergy between us and Betterhelp has created a better

product. 

While creating the post i wanted to insert Youtube’s logo too to announce the video’s premiere on Youtube Live

but i decided to abandon that idea as too much colours were in the posts, the fact that red unlike green is a

warm colour made the post look much to crowded thus leaving us with only the Betterhelp logo for now,

the Youtube Premiere announcement will be a separate post. 

https://www.instagram.com/officiallongwaydown/

(In order to fit with Orelsan and Twenty One Pilots)

The instagram page is titled officiallongwaydown but after seeing how Twenty One Pilots stylized their

name in order to allow for consistent branding i decided that it would be a good idea to not only stylize

the username where the accented “ø” replaces normal “o”s  since it already fits with the stylistic choice to

write our artist’s name as E/GØ. But i ran into some trouble doing so where instagram did not allow

special characters, so i settled on only changing the username which appears on our Bio & is displayed on the tab

when people open the instagram account.

After another consultation with Mr.Nick, he suggested that it would look better if i made the instagram page

more mixed since i uploaded all the videos & photoshoots first and then made promotion art, having

videos/photoshoots & promotion art next to each other would make it look more authentic.

I spent the night repositioning some post where the video of Jason promoting the hoodie

appears at the top now along with photoshoots that are mixed with promotion for a tour.

I changed some captions for the social media & added a post in order to convey more meaning in the social media

page, since Jason appears to be happy most of the time in videos & photoshoots i added post to show him

with unhappy expressions accompanied with captions that indicate depression or behaviors depressive people

exhibit such as losing their self-worth & hiding their true feelings which should act as a binary opposite

to those cheerful post, this can be interpreted as an attempt to show how depressed people have a dangerous

tendency to hide their true emotions & present themselves as happy.

When making these posts i had to create strikethrough text but i could find out how to do so using my

macbook so i used an website i found online called "ip.opengenus.org/strikethroughtext.com" in order

to create the strikethrough for "no he's not" & "maybe" for the (currently) latest post on instagram.

This google doc contains this post in a document for due to errors in Blogger.com in displaying the post fully.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wlvJui5YERjrhT2y7GquF00zFSrz3jauJ73wgkjfTeQ/edit