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Adverts

Tame Impala

 

The simple grey font stands out against the bright sky behind it. While the thin square and diamond 'logo' doesn't jump out at you, it still adds to the advert. If it wasn't there, it would be too plain.

 

 

The advert is sort of calm, there's nothing jarring about it. The font seems huge against the wide angle shot of the mountains and desert.

 

Seeing as James Bay's - Let it Go is soothing and slow, I think going for this sort of style is a good idea.

I could use a picture from the music video, or take one separately while we're filming at our locations and see if any of those would work.

I also think having a shallow depth of field would look nice.

Lucy

 

The film is about having super-human abilities, and using 100% of your brain instead of the supposed 10%.

Because of this, there is a lot going on, with the faint maths equations fading into Lucy's face.

 

Her vibrant eyes stand out against her completely white face and hair, drawing your attention to the 'LUCY' above them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sainsbury's have bought the rights to advertise their shop, and that they are selling the movie on DVD and Blue-Ray, even including "Available at Sainsbury's"

I may include this in my own magazine advert, making up a supermarket or shop like HMV. 

Kingsman

 

At the top, you see an advertisement for VUE cinemas, in which the gold text stands out against the black background. It matches the other text on the page, but isn't the same font.

 

There is the main part of the image about halfway down the page, and the title of the movie 2/3 the way down. It mentions the director of another film you may recognise.

 

It says "exclusive" and "be the first" which are buzzwords they use to grab your attention.

 

 

At the bottom, there's a link to where you can book tickets, once again, advertising VUE.

Bond in Motion

 

Once again, thin lines are used to separate the page up, giving it a clean, refined look, matching Bond's style.

 

There is the Bond logo underneath the main title, with the classic Bond car below in the centre of the page. Everyone that has heard of James Bond will recognise this car, and is an identifying feature of the series.

 

The bottom quarter has information about the event itself - Where to find it, a Facebook link and ticket / event websites.

Generic conventions I've found between magazine advertisements:

  • One central image relating to the artist / product

  • The use of bright colours with contrasting text to stand out

  • Basic information about the album (Title, band name) and its release date

  • A website link or other way of buying the product

  • Big, legible, simple font to grab your attention followed by...

    • Smaller font with information about the artist / product (Reviews, what it actually is, etc...)

  • There might be a limited colour pallet

  • Advertising the company selling the product is as important as advertising product itself

    • (Although not always the case for music releases)

  • Thin lines tend to be used to separate the advert

  • Some kind of logo on the advert

  • The main text usually appears in the top third of the page

 

Institutions

Here I'll be talking about the type of institutions likely to produce / print my magazine advertisement, and how this will change the way I design it.

One of our two ancillary products is a magazine advertisement. I have researched into various existing magazines, identifying which ones would be most appropriate for our song choice, and therefore decide the overall style of my advert, but I will also use elements from any magazines I’ve encountered that I look the look of.

 

Q

Q is a magazine that’s published in the UK monthly. It typically contains a review section that has new music releases along with film, live concert, TV and radio reviews. It uses stars to rate them. Also, a lot of magazines have interviews with popular artists or ones featured inside.

 

Q doesn’t tend to focus on a specific genre of music; instead it gives attention to new releases and upcoming artists. Since James Bay – Let it Go was released in May of 2014, it’s very unlikely to be written about now, but this song and some of his others have already been featured before. In the bottom left picture, you can see an article written about him in March of 2015. This means it’s definitely a candidate for my ancillary product, so I will try to tailor its design to a similar style that Q follows.

 

Mojo

Mojo magazine was first released in November 1993. Since 2008, it has been owned by the same company as Q, (Bauer) and publishes monthly in the UK. It was made to fill the gap for the quickly increasing interest in classic rock music, shown by the first issue showing Bob Dylan and John Lennon as its cover stars. Although its main focus is on classic rock, it still features newer acts.

Kerrang!

Kerrang is a British magazine that is dedicated to rock music, published weekly by Bauer Media Group. It was initially devoted to the ‘New Wave of British Heavy Metal’ (a musical movement started in the late 1970s as a way of describing the emergence of original heavy metal bands in the United Kingdom) and the rise of hard rock acts. When it first started, in the 80s and early 90s the magazine had many extreme metal acts on the cover (Slayer, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Venom etc…) but changed after grunge acts such as Nirvana rose to fame. (It’s been criticised for doing this many times when a new genre becomes popular.)

 

James Bay doesn’t fit the type of artist / band to be featured in Kerrang! Instead, his music is more of an ‘indie rock’ or ‘soul’ genre. Because of this, my advertisement won’t use many ideas from those in this magazine. (Although I will imitate it slightly, as it is music magazine.)

After having looked at many music magazine adverts, I managed to find similarities that were used in almost all of them. These will help me construct my own advertisement by making it look professional and conform to the norm.

 

Conventions I found from my research include:

  • The album title

  • The artist/band name

  • Main image is either an image of the band/artist or the album cover image

  • Quotes from reviewers/magazines/newspapers

  • Link to the band or artist website

  • Release date of the album

  • Songs on the album that the band or artist have released

  • Sometimes a smaller image of the album if the main image is of the artist/band

 

Although I am not making a front page or inside article for a magazine, I will still include some of these techniques in order to make it look professional, and like it would fit in with the rest of a magazine.

Sam Viner 2015/16

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