Magazine Advert Research

Magazine Ad Build a Rocket Boys (Elbow)

Before my group begin making a magazine advert for our digipak, I am going to research what magazine adverts usually look like in order to get an idea for codes and conventions. I am going to hopefully research the same adverts for the digipaks I analysed - this is so that I can create links between the two and see how similar they may or may not be.

 

Images:

The image on here is a replica of the one from the album, with it taking up the full page rather than being displayed small. This will be so the reader of the magazine knows what the album looks like and can identify it easily once they go to buy it. Also, by using the full page they are clearly embodying an image that goes across not only the advert but the actual album as well. All the connotations that can be seen on the album can be seen here as well; using subtle persuasion to buy the album. By keeping the advert the same as the album, the advert is clean and simple; there is nothing to distract the reader and lose focus on what the advert is for.
Colour Scheme:

The colour scheme is the same blue as can be seen on the album front, again showing the strong use of one campaign throughout the marketing process; this allows the reader to gain familiarity before buying the album so they feel like they "know" what they are getting. The colour will also stick out in a magazine as usually magazine pages are white and this strong difference will allow it to attract the readers attention; something that is needed in the marketing campaign.
Fonts:

The fonts are again the same used on the album cover; serif - which adds to the continuity of the advert and album. This makes things seem familiar and the reader will get used to it. The additional writing in the advert is also in the same serif font which allows for the information to be seen as part of the album - if it was to be in a different font it could create the impression that the information was separate from the album however having it the same allows the reader to take it in as one.
Additional Information:

The advert has information that is necessary for it to be marketed such as the name and band plus additional information as the release date so the reader knows when they can buy it. The advert also has additional information that is not necessary for the reader to know, but is included to try and persuade the reader to buy the album. This included the information on songs on the album; this will be included to try emote feelings for the songs from the reader and then hopefully make the reader want the album as they already know a little bit of the type of material on the album. Having the quote from a well respected magazine also gives the album credibility and will most likely spur people to buy the album as if a product is endorsed by a trusted figure a person will believe it is worthy of buying than having some unknown endorsement.

Digipak Research

This is the first digipak by the band Elbow I shall be analysing, however it is again an album rather than a digipak, which will help me build a bigger knowledge of the conventions that come with the digipaks by the band which in turn will allow me and my group to create a more professional and believable product.

 

Images:
The main image is what looks like it is hand painted, and additionally not of an amazing standard; this further drills in the message of music over fame, which is often common within this genre. The image is of what looks like a person, much like the people on the other Elbow album - the person is unidentifiable in age and gender; showing the mix in fans of the band. Although it originally seems to be of a person, it could be seen as a rocket to visually support the album name as a "A" shape can be seen above the person which allows the shape of a rocket to be viewed. This ambiguous nature allows for the buyer to make their own presumptions - which allows the buyer to feel they understand and "get" the band and their image. The band do not appear on the album, which gives a sense of "mysteriousness" of the band (which is supported by the fact that the band do not appear in some of the music videos) which makes the buyer want the album as this is one of the only ways to understand and "connect" to the band. As this is the only image in the digipak shows how the band prefer things to be "simple" and to have one focus instead of distractions from the music.

Colour Scheme:
The main colour throughout the digipak is blue which could be seen as aiming the album at males as it is stereotypically associated with males; however with it being such a pale colour this could be less dominant. Blue has connotations of sadness when it is very pale; this could be the main colour scheme as it tells the buyer the initial musical theme of the album. Additionally blue means serenity and infinity which could also link to the musical theme; the songs are calm and do not necessarily have to be played the year of the album, the songs will still fit in 10 years from now. Additionally the light colour allows for a soft feel to the album, which makes it "soft to the eye", and attract the buyer to it. The small splash of yellow allows to break up the blue in the digipak and allow for a bit of "warmth" to be added to the pale coolness of the album, which could also hints the musical theme within.

Fonts:
The fonts are again serif fonts, which seems to be a running theme in the Elbow albums; this could be to add familiarity to the audience - it is to represent that the band keep a similar musical style throughout the album and will know what to expect from the album. It could again be to show how the band is quite varied in the audience of young and of older generations. Additionally it supports the image theme of being neutral in gender, so the band is not alienating gender, the fonts and images allow for the album to be approachable by all ages and genders.

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Inside Pages:
As the product is again a album rather than a digipak the inside pages will unlikely have additional information and images like a digipak. As Elbow have not released a digipak and just albums, when it comes to make our digipak we will have to rely more on other research on digipaks whilst bringing the research of image etc to make a product that would be similar to a digipak that Elbow could possibly bring out.

Additional Material:
There is a lack of additional material in the album, which is why digipaks are sometimes seen as a more popular option; the missing amount of material that can be gained from a digipak could be seen as a bad decision not to bring one out as customers want to know as much information and gain as much value from a product as they can; as this leads to them forging a "relationship" with the band.

Feed Back

For the back of our album, after the first draft, we decided to ask our classmates and our teacher what they think of it. Our teacher said it looked very nice and neat but perhaps it needed something else. She told us that we need to add the record label on there and also to make the small print smaller as the current size drew too much attention to it. Our classmates gave us similar feedback and they said they loved the image that we took. They said the image was very nice and the style of the text matches perfectly with the image.

Final Magazine Advert

Here is our final magazine advert we have changed it a lot since our last draft as we got a lot of feedback and quite a few people said it was repetitive also it is too cluttered. What we have done to simplify this magazine advert is we got rid of the all the text on the right hand side and replaced it with ratings and quotes by well known music magazines.

We have also made the artist bigger who is sitting on the heart because one the pieces of feedback we got was to make him bigger and we realised it made him more noticeable.

First Draft

This is our first attempt at the back cover, we took this image on a bike trail and we thought it would be pefect for the back of the album because it gives us room to put our text on there in a unique way. This isn't the final version because we haven't finised the text yet. We wanted to do something interesting such as a drop shadow and awaiting feedback from classmates and teacher. The writhing on the side was created our selfs from looking at other album covers. The bar code was taken from a different CD as we didn't need to make our own one.

Magazine Advert

Here is another Magazine advert draft so we took the advice from our feedback and made the text more modern and added more to the top of the magazine advert which makes it more exciting and eye catching.

We have added the date at the top of the page of the release of the single which is one of the most important features in a magazine advert promoting an artists new single/album. We also gave it the same font as the other text on the advert to help the continuity and make it look professional. We have also put a quote underneath the date from a well known music magazine which people can trust which may attract new people to his music.

Finally we made an image using the hmv logo which is well known and wrote 'Exclusively at hmv' using there company colours for the text and font. We used a technique that we saw on other magazine adverts to make the smaller aspects stand out by using bold colours and iconic shapes.

Album Cover Practice

To get used to using photoshop, our teacher gave us a task to do. We got given random names and pictures. As you can see above, I got given the name Clayton Benhke and my album cover name I had to use was Adult. This image was given to me and I had to fit the text and album cover names on it. I felt that I have successfully made this album cover look professional apart form the magnum productions part that is on the bottom left hand side. The 'Adult' font was designed in photo shop where I got a standard font and erased bits from it which gave it the sprayed look. The name of this artist is written with the font 'Impact'. I felt that it matched this album picture and its also very clear and it stands out from a distance which is a advantage if it was in a shop. I added the Magnum Productions bit because I felt that this image just need another layer but after hearing all the feedback from other classmates, I now know that it was a bad idea as people said that it made the album look less professional. The logo on to of the album was actually already on the original image but I moved it around the image to see where it fitted best and I think that where I placed it now is the best location for it.

Second Draft of the Magazine advert

Here is the second draft of the magazine advert and as you can see it is much darker. What we have done to the image is adjust all the levels of the layers so the image looks gloomy. We also used the burn tool on photoshop to add shadows on the heart and as you can see now it looks like it belongs in the picture and it should be there as before it looked like it didn't.

We have also added more text and re-arranged the magazine text. We have moved the words 'Heartbeats' and 'Jose Gonzalez' to the bottom of the page as the shadows on the words lets the words sit there nicely. The font that we have chosen for the text is very modern and we have done this so it would appeal the younger generation.

The text boxes that we have put in complement the artist and his work to promote him as an artist and to buy the CD. We have also added that it is exclusive at a mainstream music store which most people have access to on the internet or high street. We have also added translucent black boxes behind the text so it is easy to read and gives a modern feel to the advert.

We then again asked for feedback on our magazine advert and people said that we should change the font on the smaller writing because it doesn't match the titles and add more images and text at the top of the page as it looks quite bare.

Magazine Advert Additional Information

This is the picture we took especially for the magazine advert but we thought it was too simple to use and we wouldn't get many marks for using this and then just putting text over it. Also the facial expression didn't match the song as he looks too happy in this picture. The background was ugly but at first we thought a fallen down tree would look really nice. We like the angle in which the picture was taken though because we felt that it gave an interesting feel to the image. So in the end, we picked a different image.

Magazine advert first draft

This is the image we started off with to put in the magazine cover and we decided that this image would look good with we photoshopped him and put him sitting on something. We discussed for 30 minutes what we could put him on and we decided with a heart.

After deciding to put him on the heart we got some feedback on our idea and people agreed with it but we should put him in a darker setting as he is going through a rough time in the music video.

This was the first rough draft of our magazine cover where we custom made my 3D text for the words 'Heartbeats' and 'Jose Gonzalez'. We learnt how to make this 3D text by using a tutorial on Youtube. We asked to get feedback for this draft and people told us that we should put more text in the picture and make it look like the heart is sat on the ground because at the moment it looks like it is hovering. 

First Attempt

This is one of the album covers that we designed but we decided not to use it. We didn't use it because we encountered a problem with the foot. In it initial picture, there was a branch in the way of his right foot therefore we had to get rid of it otherwise it wouldn't look professional. You can see that we tried to get rid of it but it proved too difficult.
There were several things we liked about this image, firstly it looks as if there is a spotlight shining on him. Secondly we liked that he is sitting on the log and that log enabled us to add text on it as it is like an empty canvas. Also the expression on his face matched the song as the song is a sad one.
One thing that we didn't like was the background, it looks a bit ugly and odd. Big chunks of mud in the background of a album cover doesn't look good.

Artist Research

José González -


He was born in 1978 and he is a Swedish-Argentine indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist. José González's trademark sound is solo classical guitar, he only released a few singles in 2003 but when he became more well known, he released his debut album called 'Veneer' in 2005 which proved to be very popular in the UK and USA. This album contained the song we are using in our video, the song isn't actually his. He did a cover of 'Heartbeats' but the original artist are 'The Knife' who are also Swedish. 
In 2007 after he released his most recent album 'In our Nature', he won the EBBA (European Border Breaker Award) award because of his success in reaching audiences outside their own country.

Album Cover Practice

Original Image

I got given a random image which is this one on the right and 2 random names (one artist name and album name). So I thought how I could get around making this an album cover with the name Ted Dollins and the album name Alphabet. So I decided I would edit this photo in Photoshop and get rid of the mirrors using the lasso tool. I then decided to get some alphabet blocks and I had to trim around each block and insert them into the album cover. After that I went on to the artists name and I decided on a font and I started to play around where to put it. I then decided to get the 'T' from the alphabet and use it as the first letter for 'Ted Dollins'.  Overall as a result of editing this image I decided that this album cover would be produced by an alternative/indie artist.

Image after Photoshop

Editing Softwarre

Film:

The software we have chosen to edit our film on is Final Cut Pro because this is the software we are used to using. This would save time as we will know how to use the software from previous experience  but we could step it up a level. I feel that we have learnt new skills on Final Cut and this really shows in our video. Adding transition are easier know that we know what to do and this made our film more professional.

Digipak:
We used Photo Shop to make our album covers and magazine ad because we feel that it is the best software to use as it allows us to add many effects and layers to make the images more interesting. We tried to make it as professional as we can by looking at many different digipaks by professional artists.

Target Audience

Generic Conventions Of a Music Video

Final Ideas For Our Music Video