Planning magazine advert - Miss Miller

Magazine adverts are very important in terms of advertising an artists new album for several reasons, one it lets the artists' audience know that they're planning to release a new album for their audience so it gets hype and buzz as well as word of mouth started among the artists fans. The advert advertises the artist so the audiences know that this is his style of music, the advert will present the genre the artist is trying to appeal to so that audiences of that genre will be interested in a new artist for the genre that they're fans of, making our artist appeal to those audiences. One more additional reason magazine adverts are effective is because they act as constant reminders of an artists new album towards the audience, as they probably have seen posters and TV adverts about their new album for a while, the magazine advert further emphasises to the audience the artists new album being released, this makes sure that audiences won't forget about their new album and will buy it to see why there has been so many different advertisements of this new artist. Me and my group will be creating our own magazine advert for our own artist, to do this we had to take on board existing magazine adverts of the same genre so we could take inspirations when we created our own magazine advert, this genre was the indie rock genre. Me and my group had to create individual adverts but to try and make sure they kept within the boundaries of the indie genre conventions so that they would actually look as if we had a famous artist for the advert and to make it look as professional as possible.

I will now analyse my magazine advert that I have done to illustrate the different meanings and conventions i was going for. I'll start with the colour of the magazine advert and why I chose very basic black and white for the magazine ad. Black and white has often been a conventional colour combination of the indie genre for years now, this idea came from one Jake Bugg's first albums magazine advert which was also black and white, the reason behind my choice of black and white was because it would make the magazine advert look very conventional and professional for our artist. The magazine advert will attract our target audience towards our artists new album because it's conventional to other magazine adverts, as discussed before the colour makes this conventional to the indie rock genre, this means that our target audience will relate to this as it's their favourite genre of music and will be open to new additions to the genre. This will give our artist a good representation in the indie genre because indie audiences will begin to like him more so as he appeals to indie audiences, the advert also demonstrates the hidden connotation that the album might be very dark about his life before being famous.

The magazine advert I have created can clearly be associated with indie rock conventions for several reasons. Firstly the artist is playing a guitar on the magazine advert, this is conventional to the indie genre because most indie solo artists sing, write and play their own songs so that their audiences respect them more for their talent in the music industry, another convention followed in the poster is the artist wearing similar clothing that is associated with the artists particular image in most forms of media like interviews, videos, posters, magazines articles etc. as he will be wearing the same clothes that he does in the video, one last convention followed in the advert I have created is the black and white colours that were discussed before hand. The guitar the artist is holding will attract an audience because they will appreciate the lengths he'll go to in order to satisfy his audience, they will also respect the artists talent as it shows he can perform, sing and write all his own music. The artist wearing similar clothing is a convention in the music industry as builds up an artists image, wearing certain clothing allows the audience to associate some styles of clothing with the artist at hand, making them build up more of a relationship with the audience.

The next element i'll discuss for the creation of my magazine advert are the images that i have used, there is only one but it's the content i will look at. The image shows the artist resting on a wall playing the guitar, he is wearing all black and has scruffy hair, these two traits will be commonly associated with the artist that me and my group have created for the music video, the image also shows the artist playing in an urban area as he is rested on a brick wall. The images in the advert convey that the artist is dark and gloomy as portrayed through the use of his clothes, showing that the artist is a dark character with dark emotions that he evokes through his music, the urban area the artist is in shows that this is how he grew up or this is where he lived before getting famous, his darker past that not many of his fans would know until the release of his new album.

The next element i'll discuss within my magazine advert is the use of the layout and design to create different meanings. One example i'll discuss first is the design choice, there is writing all over the artist detailing who he is, the release of his new album, the artists name, the album name as well as some songs he has made that audiences may have heard of. Anyway, it's pretty clear he's covered by writing in the advert, the writing is supposed to connote the information surrounding him and what all these people say about him, however, when you look through all of this, the audience finds that artist's core, his truest form almost, this connotes that the artist doesn't necessarily care for these labels but wants the audience to learn something about his past before becoming famous so they understand the hardships he has had to overcome and for the audience to relate to him as they understand the troubles he has gone through in order to accomplish their dreams.

The next element i'll discuss is the typography of the poster and why it is used. The typography or font is quite noticeably basic and is hand written, however there is reason for this, this is because the artist doesn't want to focus on appealing to other audiences who like golden coloured as well as shiny fonts, the artist instead wants to stay true to his target audience and wants to show them that he is indie rock so that they buy the album out of support for the artist. The connotation I tried to achieve as discussed before is that the reason it's basic is because the artist doesn't necessarily want to appeal to other audiences and would much rather to true to his current audiences as they have followed his music for longer and want the best out of his music. The next element i'll look at is the language of the magazine advert. The writing of the advert is kept to a minimum therefore the audience aren't overwhelmed with a barrage of information, however it contains all the information the audience need and i kept short and formal. This is to make sure the audience relate to the language used as they don't expect to see paragraphs of information nor do they want to, this connotes that the artist just wants the artist to like the music and not just the writing that advertises, this is because the artist feels he has more of a voice in the music industry.

The final element that i'll be talking about in terms of my magazine advert is the connotations or secret meaning behind the advert. The connotation i was aiming for was conventional to the indie genre, i purposely made it black and white to show the darker tone to the artists music, to further imply this the artist is wearing mostly black clothes, the urban area suggests this is the sort of area the artist grew up and finally the name of the album also suggests the songs come from very dark places in his life as it is called "Rock Bottom" a term associated with someone being at their lowest point emotionally. The connotation of the album is essentially that it contains songs that are true to artist as he struggled his way into the music industry as well as some songs that convey a darker side to the artist that audiences weren't aware of beforehand.