Ancillary Text 2 - Magazine Advertisement

This is the final edit of my magazine advertisement promoting the album. I decided to change the layout of the advertisement from the origional draft as it looked better when I moved some of the texts around.

Magazine Advertisement Creation

I created my magazine advertisement using photoshop as this was a quick and easy way to do it as I already had knowledge of how to use it from my foundation portfolio last year. This magazine advertisment is to promote the album therefore I included the album cover and reviews along with the release date. I decided to have the main image in colour to show continuity from the music videos coloured graveyard scenes rather than the black and white shots to contrast with the album cover.

Examples of Magazine Album Advertisements

Here are many music album magazine advertisments from a range of genres and from a range of different music magazines from NME to Kerrang.

Plan of Magazine Advertisement

This is a rough draft of how I want my magazine advertisement to be layed out. I have already taken the main image for the advertisement making it easier for me to plan were I want everything else to be. I have decided to have the albums name at the top and as the main headline as its the most important piece of information for the audience to rememeber. The website is at the bottom right hand corner of the advertisement as this is conventional for magazine advertisements in general not just album advertisements. I wanted to include the release date as that is also very important to the audience as they will then know when they can consume the product.

Ancillary Text 2 - Critical Analysis of Magazine Album Advertisements

This is a magazine advertisement for Plan B’s album ‘The Defamation of Strickland Banks’. The headline is a simple red bold title showing the most important feature of the advertisement – the name of the artist. This is written in capitals making it easy for the audience to read and recognise. The subheading is in a white bold font again written in capitals which is again easy to read and recognise, the subheading is the name of the album which is the second most important information in the advertisement therefore the second largest font in the advertisement.

The third largest font is another subheading written in simple bold red capitals that link back with the headline. This is to promote the album by stating it is ‘multi-platinum’ meaning the album has sold 2,000,000 copies therefore must be a popular album which is a very strong advertising technique.

The smallest of the texts is the 4 star rating other magazines and newspapers have rated the album, this is again a strong advertising technique because its promoting the album as it proves that others rate the album highly therefore highlighting its popularity. This text is a capitalised simple bold off-white font which shows continuity and sticks to the conventions of the magazine advertisement. 

The main image is a black and white photograph of the artist ‘PLAN B’ performing which represents his Motown revival music genre. He is wearing his trademark suit which the target audience will recognise and again links back to his 60’s genre. The mis-en-scene is difficult to determine however we can see that he is looking away from the camera which gives the illusion he is looking at an audience whilst performing therefore he could be at a concert. He is pulling his usual serious expression in this image which will make the target audience recognise him.

The second image is of the album cover; this is again a good advertising technique as the target audience will now be able to recognise the album when they see it in the shops. The red and white fonts in the headline and subheadings reflect the album cover which is another example of continuity. This is because the headline (name of the album) on the album cover is in a simple red font and the background is white. The main image also reflects the album cover as the artist is wearing the same grey suit. This advertisement also includes a website to cater for online shoppers and people interested in the artist and who want to find out more information on him.

This is a magazine advertisement for the American rock band ‘Thirty Seconds to Mars’. The main image is of the album cover of the new deluxe edition of ‘This is War’ album which has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. It is conventional for a magazine advertisement to have the image of the album cover somewhere in the advertisement even if it isn’t the main image. It’s conventional for a Rock album cover to be very bold therefore the album cover uses a large white simple bold capitalised font onto a black background. The word ‘War’ takes over the majority of the album cover meaning the name of the album is the most important aspect of the image. The name of the band is a simple plain white font on to a red background which is very clear to read and this album cover is easily recognisable.

This magazine advertisement reflects the album cover as it sticks to the red and white colour codes, showing continuity. The background is white which makes the main image of the black album cover stand out. It also makes the red simple font of the headline ‘all new CD & DVD deluxe edition repackage’ stand out making it easy to read. The red font has connotations of danger, this is a conventional colour used within the rock genre. The smaller texts inform their target audience of the new singles that will be on this album. The song title ‘Hurricane 2.0’ and the artist the band has collaborated with ‘Kanye West’ are a larger font making them stand out as this is the most important information regarding what this album consists of. The smaller text is the less important information regarding what is on the DVD ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘the making of the album’. These are things that only the minority of the target audience are interested in, most people will only be interested in listening to the music and watching the music videos.

In the bottom left hand corner of the advertisement there is a ‘virgin records’ logo showing the audience which record label the band is signed too. This is also conventional for magazine advertisement as it allows the record companies to advertise themselves as well as their signed artist.

This is a magazine advertisement for the electropop album of the singer/songwriter ‘Marina and the Diamonds’. The main image of the advertisement is the album cover of her debut album ‘The Family Jewels’. The background of the main image is a very retro textured flowery pattern which reflects the genre of her style of music.

The headline of the advertisement is also the headline of her album as this is the text that stands out the most and shows what is being advertised. The font is also alternative as it looks as though it has been handwritten in a plain white font making is easy to read and easily recognisable. The name of the artist is the larger text because this artist is new therefore needs to get her name recognised more than the name of her album to become better known to her target audience.

The second image is of the CD single ‘Shampain’. The same font is used in this image however the colour has changed from white to pink. This could be so it is easier to distinguish the album from the single. The image on the single is similar to the image on the album cover as the artist is laid down on both and looking at the camera - this shows continuity.

The smaller plain white font gives the information about what is on the album which is conventional for a magazine advertisement. The singles featured are in bold making them stand out to the audience as they could quickly glance and recognise a song title – this is again conventional for magazine advertisements. The pink font is carried onto the advertisement when showing that the new single ‘shampain’ is on the album being advertised to make the target audience recognise the CD single. The digital music store ‘itunes’ is referenced in this advertisement as this is where most music is bought. There is also a website in the bottom right hand corner for their audience to have a read about the artist and listen to samples of her music before buying the album.

iTunes 1. Single

I decided to photoshop my album front cover onto the iPhone iTunes store as this is what would be used in real life on iTunes as artists often use their album cover as their single cover to show which album it is from. For example you can see here that the 'Nicki Minaj' song 'Starships' also has the same single cover as her album cover.

iTunes 1. Album

I decided to photoshop my artists album onto the iPhone iTunes store to show what it would look like for the consuming audience as this is where the highest percent of music is downloaded.

Ancillary Text 1 - Digipak Final Edit

Digipak almost finished

I've had to move my images around to fit into my new 2 disc template. The top left and middle images will now be were the CD is placed and the bottom right is my front cover. I have darkend the front cover and back cover to make them look more black than grayscale to show continuity from my video. I also chose to keep the lights in colour as they keep to the music videos colourscheme.

This is my final edit of my digipak, I decided to add the artists name onto the image of the lights as I didnt think the image looked finished.

Digipak 2nd Edit

This is my 2nd edit of my Digipak. I changed the Digipak template as I chose the wrong one to start with as it only had one space for a CD, now I have 2 CD spaces. I have changed the colour scheme to black and white to show continuity from my video. I have added a barcode and music label to make the Digipak look more realistic and I have listed the tracks as this is conventional for a Digipak. I chose to use gravestones in my images as it is conventional for my genre.

Digipak in the making

These are the images in place onto my digipak plan, I havnt edited the photos yet and I am still undecided whether I am going to use all of these photos or take some more.