Group magazine advert

As individuals, both members of our group, created individual magazine adverts for our chosen artist. This then led to us having to create one as a group. We did this in similar fashion to our group digipack, extracting ideas from each of the individual magazine adverts, culminating in one final piece. As a group we looked at both individual adverts, deciding on elements that we both liked and disliked. The lighting in my own advert and also the typography were two things that we as a group felt were conventional to the music genre, especially in contrast to Harry's. The dark lighting and scenic background provided escapism, a conventional element of dance, and something we felt was effective in engaging an audience. We did agree that it may be too dark however so took inspiration from Harry's more colourful engaging piece, and changed the colour of the silhouette to stand out more, and liven it up slightly. I believe that the combination of the dark and mystery, combined with the bright colourful silhouette, both conforms to and subverts conventional dance adverts, and provides something rather unique to the audience in doing so. Both members of our group had similar sorts of things when it came to the writing on the advert, so deciding on the actually content of it was quite an easy process. Words like 'number one UK album' would further attract the audience as they want to hear a successful popular artist' music. The images used, as mentioned, included a picture of a mountain and an artists silhouette. The mountain ties in with the album name summit, and the silhouette of the artist further created mystery. The fact the artist was in the forefront of the advert shows that we wanted to place the importance with him, whilst the simplistic layout shows we were successful in not overcomplicating our advert and only putting across what we felt was important. I believe the simplistic feel was also successful in portraying the artist as professional, as the advert has a clean cut, serious feel to it. This may also attract the audience, who would want to listen to a serious, committed artist. The colours use also show a contrast in the font and the background, putting emphasis on the writing and drawing attention to it. I feel that my advert, when analysing it as a group, may have been a bit plain and dull. However, harry's may have been seen as too colourful and in your face, which is why i felt the combination of both provided a good balance to our final magazine advert. I felt that our group worked well together due to the fact that we had such contrasting individual pieces to begin with, which meant taking parts from each and combining was quite easy, where as if we had quite similar pieces we would have struggled to make many significant improvements.

Individual Digipak

 We created a digipack to partner our album, in order to appeal to an audience and attract them towards our artist. The hope was that it would provide more for the audience than just a regular album, therefore encouraging more people to listen to the album. The digipack consists of six slides which include the front and back covers, the track list, a note from the artist and two further slides. We wanted to keep a theme throughout our digipak, which would also match our magazine advert, and give the album a recognisability factor. The album name summit is clearly shown on the front slide along with the artists name. This immediately puts the artist in the main focus, and in partnership with the artists face this helps to promote him. Writing that says "UK number one album" is also shown to attract the listeners and to show the success of the artist. By using these adjectives to describe the album and mentioning how successful the album was, this improves the artists image and therefore makes me people want to listen to his music. The colour theme that runs throughout is white black and blue. This matches our magazine advert and creates more a brand feel to the album. There are shots of landscapes with lightning in the background as well as mountains, which ties in with the album name summit. This creates a sense of escapism as the scenery is very striking and will hopefully intrigue potential customers. The dark colours used are conventional to the dance genre and give the artist a professional sharp image. This was also seen in Digipaks from the artist Daft Punk.  The darkness of the cover, partnered with the simple typography, create a feel where the artist is wanting to know more. The simplistic layout further develops the professional feel and moves the digipack away from looking too amateur. The silhouetted face of the artist on the front cover, provides an element of mystery in the digipack which is also a key technique used in many dance videos and album covers alike. The language used is straight forward and minimalistic, which I feel puts more emphasis on the words that are used without over complicating things. The message from the artist includes phrases like "the journey we have been on", which personalise the feel of the digipack and connect the artists with the audience. This is something unachievable with a regular album and provides more for the customer. The signature on the actual CD helps to build on this as the signature is another personal touch. Overall the digipack is a very conventional one, with the elements combining to clearly show the genre of our artist. The positive about each creating an individual digipack is that when our group comes to creating our final digipack, we can take ideas from both of ours and therefore have more to work with when creating the final piece.
I feel through the element of mystery and also the personal feel for the consumer that was translated through the artists message, that the audience would be attracted to our digipack. The programme we used to create our digipack was photo shop. I felt that the limitations of this programme was the complexity of it, which at times seemed slightly over whelming and hard to get used to. However I felt I quickly adapted and was able to put together a successful digipack which attracts and audience and presents the artist in the way that we desired.

Magazine Advert Miss Miller

The individual magazine advert that I created was made in order to appeal and attract my target audience. The impact of this is that it means there is an increased awareness of the artist’s album. The magazine cover I created had a background of a mountain top with the album name ‘Summit’ clearly placed on the front along with the artist name. The font used was either grey or white. The simplistic colour of the font was intended to stand out against the dark background and immediately catch the reader’s eye. The other magazine adverts we looked out for our dance genre like Avicci and Martin Garrix also used dark colouring for theirs, which meant that there was an element of mystery created, which was backed up through the silhouetted figure of the artist. I feel that the overall simplistic layout of the magazine advert was also conventional in the fact that it was not over complicated and too colourful with too much going on in it. This is something that would have been expected of an indie or alternative type of album. The typography again tied in with the simplistic theme of the advert. Although simple however, I felt that the writing was bold and presented the information clearly to the audience. I felt the style of the advert overall was not dissimilar to that of daft punk. The style, I believe, presents the artist as professional through the clean and neat presentation of my advert. I created the advert with the use of Photoshop. There were limitations to this and having to get used to such a complex programme in such a short space of time meant that much of our creation of the advert was done through trial and error, which proved to be very time consuming. Tutorials online and especially on YouTube helped me deal with this obstacle making me more accustomed to the software and therefore making it easier to create my project. I think that overall the finished magazine advert I created does appeal to my target audience. I believe this is achieved through the element of mystery created in the colouring and layout and also in the language used when saying things like ‘the number one album’, which will make the audience more inclined to purchase and listen to the album.