Ancillary Task: Magazine Adverts

Research

From researching on the internet we wanted to make sure we produced a professional and eye catching magazine advert, as potentially this way of advertising to the public would have an influence on how popular the song becomes.  Therefore, we researched similar artists to our genre and had a look at magazine adverts that we felt worked really well and were popular with the public. We found that Katy Perry’s ‘One of the Boys’ advert looked particularly interesting to the eye. On the right hand side of the advert her name is expressed in a big bold and ‘pretty’ font, we felt that when deciding on our own magazine advert the artists name needed to be in the biggest font as it’s the artist who is the iconic selling point to the audience, also we felt it was important for our font to fit with the artist Childish Gambino, as Katy is female here, her pink font looks girly and fits with her image, we felt that when producing our advert we needed a font that would suit a male artist. We also felt that having the artist on one side of the advert worked well and this is something we would try perusing when we created our advert. Below Katy expresses a comment that entices the audience into buying her music, ‘The album includes the #1 smash hit “I kissed A Girl” we felt that this was a fantastic way to engage the audience by providing facts about the artist to suggest to the audience how popular their music is. From doing this background research we came up with some initial ideas for our first magazine advert. 

 Magazine Idea 1:

This was our first magazine idea; we went for a bold white font against a darker background of grey, we felt these two colours contrasted well together and made the artists name really stand out to the audience. We also made sure that the word ‘DOWNLOAD’ was in capitals and in a large size font, we thought it was important for it to be clear to the audience that the single is out now! From looking at Katy Perry’s ‘One of the Boys’ and other artists magazine adverts we made sure to include a catchy comment to entice a big audience. ‘Best up and coming artist- Radio 1’  This we felt was a great comment as it indicates to the audience that Childish Gambino is soon to be one of the most popular artists around, therefore it encourages the audience to check out his music. Also by adding in that the comment was made by Radio 1 it again appeals to a mass amount of people as Radio 1 is one of the most popular Radio stations in the UK.

To follow the conventions of a typical music magazine advert from previous research of existing products we knew it was important to make sure all copyright information was included in the advert. Therefore, we created a black banner which expressed these issues.

However, we did feel that the grey background may not be ‘eye catching’ enough as it is plain, also we felt that the font of the song title ‘Heart Beat’ may be too small as ‘Heart Beat’ is the song we are trying to sell. Therefore, we took on our own criticisms and decided to build upon them with a new design.

 Final Magazine Advert:

Here is our final magazine advert! For our final idea, we felt that the central position for the protagonist was the best, it expresses to the audience that Childish Gambino is the main selling point and from having James look into the camera it allows the audience/reader to feel personally involved. We took inspiration for this central image from Example’s ‘Playing in the shadows’ album cover as we felt this simple design looked professional and enticing. Also we felt from having discussed background ideas it would be best to use a background that is used in the actual music video, therefore this allows the audience to associate the video with the advert and verse visor. We used the font ‘Impact’ throughout the whole magazine advert as we felt it was simple, clear and bold. From looking at the previous magazine idea we felt it was important to make sure the words ‘Heart beat’ were highlighted and were noticed in the advert. Therefore, we put them in a blue font and added a ‘glow’ like lighting around the words to stand out; we felt this looked really good as the words ‘Heart beat’ were clearly dominant words in the magazine advert. We also put all words in the centre as we again felt that it addressed the audience clearly. This was similar to Example’s ‘Playing in the shadows’ album cover as Example’s name is clearly expressed in black with a bright yellow rectangle around it. This time, included in the black banner at the bottom we had both the production companies names as well as the logo of Glass Note Records as this is the label Childish Gambino is signed with. We also put the ITunes logo in the same grey colour as the logo for Glass Note Records as we felt both logos’s looked smart and efficient either side of the advert. We felt the ITunes logo was appropriate as it’s the most popular software to legally buy music on. Therefore, we knew the audience would recognise that they could buy the single off of ITunes. We also said ‘Available to download now’, we made this font quite big too as we felt it was vital information for the reader/audience to know. We had James in a ‘hipster’ on trend outfit (tee and leather jacket) as this is the clothing he wears in parts of the music video and we felt it would allow his image to come across as ‘cool’ and ‘fashionable’.