Individual Magazine Advert - Miss Miller

Magazine adverts are used by many artists and their record labels so that the artists audience knows about the artists upcoming album or next single that will be coming soon. They help promote the artist because audiences of the artists genre might be reading a magazine they prefer and will see an advertisement for the artists new album, the helps the audience remember the artist as it may feel like they're being constantly reminded to buy this artists new album. Me and my group were given the task of creating our own individual magazine adverts to promote our artist, to create this, I used Photoshop to create the magazine advert. The reason why I used this software was because of the variety of different options there are available to me, and you can edit each individual element of the advert through the use of photoshop's layer system where you click the layer you want to edit and start tweaking the colour, the size and even the background of the image. To come up with my idea of the magazine advert I had to look at two examples, firstly I used the artist Jake Bugg, this was appropriate as me and my group were doing a video about one of his songs called "Two Fingers", the example was of the same genre but completely different artist called Ed Sheeren. From these two adverts I took as much inspiration as I could from both and applied these inspirations to my own magazine advert and started drawing it up on pencil and paper as a rough idea of what I wanted, this rough plan was then used as a building block of all the pictures me and my group took for filming and to try and replicate the plan of our adverts to the best of our ability.

For my individual magazine advert i tried to use colour quite effectively for the whole advert. An example of this is the black and white image of the artist and his surroundings with the use of orange, black and white being used for the text throughout the magazine advert, this includes songs, album name, artist name and reviews from specific sources. The effect of the colour for the image is to show that the artist sees things for what they are and the black and white colours are to show his music is dark but additionally shows that they are hopeful for the future as conveyed by the white in the image. The use of orange is to show that the artist stands out from this convention in the indie genre and that his music, while it applies to indie convention can be original for some audiences tastes. The connotation is tried to achieve was that though the artist has had a depressing life at the beginning, he tells his story in a new and original way as the colour orange stands our from the rest of the advert and the other font colours like the black and white.

I have attempted at including as many conventions as possible for the indie genre for my magazine advert. Some indie conventions I have used are the artist wearing dark clothing, the artist holding their preferred instrument, the location of the advert is in an urban environment and the artists hair hasn't got a particular style, the black and white colour I mentioned before is also a convention of the indie music genre. This illustrates that my artist is an indie artist as he follows most of the conventions of an indie artist, this means audiences will instantly associate him with the indie genre because he follows so many of the genre's conventions. The connotation of the advert shows that the album is very personal to him, black and white represent the past, or the past of my artists life, the instrument shows that he is talented in his specific field of expertise, the hair not being styled means he wants his audience to see his true appearance for this album.

The image I have used for the magazine I think is appropriate for the fact that the artist is trying to appeal to the indie genre. The image shows the artist in an urban area while he is resting on the wall, he is leaning on the wall with one leg and the guitar in his hands looking straight at the camera. The image shows that the album the magazine advert is advertising is personal to the artist as the urban area conveys that this is the area he is brought up in, the poster further demonstrates this idea as the artist is looking straight at the camera which means he's looking straight at the audience member who is reading the magazine, making them feel the artist is trying to communicate to them. This appeals to the indie audience because they like songs that are deep and philosophical, these hidden connotations of the poster are something they would want to understand more by listening to the songs the artist produces.

The layout and design of the poster I have tried to keep as clear as possible so that the target audience aren't filled with tons of information. At the top of the poster, the name of the artist can be seen in bright orange letters, "presenting his debut album" is in black with the album name written below it in white, "features is also in black and the songs of the album are written in white, and finally just below the songs are the reviews from the two music magazines including the rolling stone with 5 stars and Q magazine with also 5 stars. This appeals to the audience because the two reviews hold the album in high regards, this means that audiences are more likely poster doesn't look convoluted, it has the right amount and length of detail for an advertisement while also generating more buzz around the album as people want to know more about it which creates more awareness of the album.The connotation behind the layout of the poster shows that the artist doesn't pay attention to much of the titles he receives and prefers that his target audience just listen to the music instead of opinions.

The font or typography that has been used for the poster I have produced are varied to make it seem more realistic to an actual magazine cover and the indie genre. The fonts were all created for the indie genre purposes, one font that i used for the artist's name almost looks hand written with a highlighter, a font that is almost like a stencil on the wall in white and the songs looks handwritten with a pen . I have varied up the fonts on the magazine advert so that all the information doesn't blend in together which makes my poster look a lot more professional, these fonts are different for the purposes of making sure that each bit of information is different so the audience do not become confused. The target audience will appreciate the font as the typography illustrates that the artist is an original addition to the genre which would want to make the audience buy the album so that they can understand what makes the artist so original, they also understand the album is personal to him because it looks handwritten which means the audience are lead to believe that the artist wrote the album poster himself.

The language of the poster was kept very simple as was planned from my rough draft of the advert. The language of the poster is only basic information about the songs on the album, the album name, the fact it's his debut album the date of release, the songs on the album, and the name of the artist as well as the reviewers of the album. The language has been kept simple and to a minimum as to not overwhelm the audience with so much information but to make sure that they don't forget much of the important parts, for example it's the artists debut album yet he had already got 5 stars from two music magazines, making the audience think he will be impressive. However the limited amount of information keeps the audiences anticipation up because they want to know specifically what the artist does and the music he makes, the mystery behind it makes them want to buy the album so that they can see what all the hype is about for the artist.

Whilst using photoshop, there was one tool that i always seemed to struggle with which was the cropping tool for the pictures, this was a problem as most of my pictures were taken from a landscape perspective and needed to be cropped so that it would fit into a poster like the one above. To overcome this obstacle I simply practiced with the tool, however I still found it was tricky as sometimes photoshop may not even decide to crop it, and learned that making another layer then putting the photo into that layer and then cropping it works fine and that picture can then be dragged into the magazine advert layer and the original picture will look smaller. Putting in the black and white filter was easy enough as it was just a simple filter layer you could put over the layer to render it black and white, another strength was choosing the right colour as i compared pinks with blues to purples until i finally selected orange as my colour because my thinking was that it stood out from the picture in the background and was very clear to read. The heavy inspiration I took was Ed Sheeran's own magazine advert as he also favoured the colour orange so that it stood out from the rest, and Jake Bugg was a very heavy inspiration as the two artists which my artist and Bugg himself, both rest on a wall with a guitar in their hands. I feel as if I have effectively followed my plan for the advert as the artist in my plan is in a similar position, however there were many influences that made me change from following the plan exactly like the complete lack of colour in the fonts was changed as it looked dull.

In conclusion, I believe that my magazine advert mostly conforms to the indie genre conventions because my advert tries to implement a lot of the conventions you would see an indie artist use, for example, the use of the guitar associates him with the indie genre which allows our target audience to appreciate his music. I believe it does appeal to our target audiences which is the indie audience, i think this because they would recognize all the conventions of an indie artist, they well then start listening to the artist as he is part of the genre that they all listen to and prefer over other genres of music. It will promote our artist because the advert will act as part of a constant reminder to audiences to get the album so that they may understand why it has been getting so much attention.

Final Magazine Advert

Based on feedback i have received from my target audience, I have now updated the magazine advert so that it appeals to them further. I blurred out the background where the picture included trees, the trees didn't blend well with the brick wall so i blurred it out so it looks unimportant. The next change i made was adding a tint to the black and white effect so that it had a bit of colour other than the orange while it still relates back to the indie genre.