Individual magazine advert analysis - Miss Georgiou

Individual magazine advert analysis

Introduction

The reason why I have created an individual magazine advert is to promote my artist's song and album release. The magazine advert will promote the album, which the song is included on, and this song will be from the music video that we are creating. It will hold similar conventions to the music video itself so the audience can relate to both. This magazine advert will be a method of promotion and will help to reach a wider audience than her own target audience. A magazine advert helps show of the artist, and shows conventions and surprises of what is going to be held within the album itself.
Main

Within my magazine advert i have decided to use certain elements that will make my advert appeal to a wide audience, and promote my artist effectively. Firstly, the colours i have used are conventional my genre, soul. I have included the colours black, white and red, these are the main featured colours in my music video also. This running theme of the colours means the audience can relate to the audience easily, and understand the clear connection between the two. The colour red in the title, as well as the colour on her lips shows passion, love and also anger. This colour helps portray her emotions, and how she has strong emotions on missing her hometown, in connection with the title. The red reflects her love towards her family and friends, and how she misses them, and remembers her happy past. The black reflects on the darker time in her life and her depressed and sad emotions. This is shown through the black and white filter of the background, and the reviewers logo which is black with an outline or white. The black and white filter use in the background, shows her past behind her, and now she expresses sad and depressive emotions, this is portrayed through the connotations of the colours and Amy looking down. The conventions of the soul genre, include features of the artist being down because of family or a heartbreak. Dark and mysterious colours are conventionally used to portray the artist's feelings, and want the audience to create a relationship with the audience easily. Using conventions from the soul genre means the audience can quickly recognise that this is a soul album being promoted, and will be instant attracted by the conventions used, as they stand out to the audience, and means its easily attracted to people. The images i have included involve a picture of my artist, looking down away from her audience. The purpose of my artist looking down away from her audience, means she's hiding her emotions and showing a mysterious side of her personality. She wants her audience to listen to the album, so they can work out how she is feeling and why she is feeling like this. This helps the artist reach a wider audience as people will stop and read the magazine article, and think to buy the album promoted, people stop and think in the street about how this album may make them feel if they was to buy It and listen. The other image I have included is behind the artist, and shows big ben in London. The London picture, represents the song Hometown glory included on the album. Big Ben is the main attraction of London, and Amy's song hometown glory shows to the audience her now living in London, but missing her hometown where she used to live. The picture of Big Ben also being in black and white helps reflect her emotions of sadness to the audience and how her life now is dark and not a happy time/place. The picture of big ben helps reflect the song Hometown Glory and the context involving London, showing a clear connection between the two, meaning a clear understanding for the audience. The layout/design that I have chosen to use on my magazine advert shows a clear structure to it actually being a magazine advert as the typography is bold, and everything matches. The layout shows my images standing out at the top of my advert, and the writing overlapping at the bottom, showing the debut album and the name as well as added extras. The typography I have included shows the title of the album, the representation and the release date. The representation of the album states this is her debut album, and the layout shows the name of the album in larger font underneath. The colour of the debut album sentence is white, and in a simple font that stands out from the darker background. Whereas, the "Amy 18" title includes two different sentences which I have put together to create an effect from the white and red colours. The "A" and "18" are the colour red, with the background of white, and vis-versa with the other letters in the name. These two colours work well together on my magazine advert as they represent the innocence to my artist through the white and the passion through red, and in contrast they show Amy as a artist. The colour red also links in with London, which is also shown in the background. I have chosen to use a simple font for my typography as it stands out and is easy to read from a magazine point of view, if the text was to be smaller or more complicated it might put of people flicking past the page of the magazine, whereas using a simple font means anyone can understand it, and it being quick and easy to read. The logo I have chosen to include shows the iTunes logo, and 5 stars underneath to represent a rating from this company. This logo had its own font so i couldn't change it, although it does stand out from the background as I have added a white border to show contrast from the black colour that it is written in. The white stars underneath connect to the writing that is underneath them, as they are the same colour white and represent her innocence as she is looking down at them in the picture on the advert. The type of language I have used on my magazine advert is very minimal, as I have chosen to use simple language so I can aim for a wider audience. I haven't included any complicated vocabulary in my language, and kept it simple by simple stating the name of the album, the release date and that it's a debut album being released. Only using a small amount of language on a magazine advert means the audience have more reason to focus on just the artist herself, as well as not needing a lot of information in writing as they can see from the connotations used, and buy the album to see how good it is.
I used photoshop to create my magazine advert, although I had a few strengths and weaknesses on this programme. My strengths were shown through finding pictures of my own, and on the internet and adding them in by dragging and dropping from my documents. This was a simple task, as I then had to hold shift whilst dragging picture to the size I wanted, so the picture did not stretch or go fizzy once entering. Using photoshop helped me to create high standard ancillaries which allow the audience to see. One weakness I found was using the magic wand tool. The magic wand tool allows you to select certain images on the page. This tool helped me to either cut out the background or the main image, and edit either one. I used this tool a lot meaning I could change images when I wanted to, being able to reach a wider audience rather than my target audience. Using this tool meant I could delete certain aspects or put them into a new layer. I had to look for instructions on the internet and ask my peers how to use this tool properly, as I found that I would highlight more than one thing at a time and not know how to get the original copy back. After several attempts I found that I could use this tool properly, and managed to use it for both images shown on my magazine advert. I enjoyed using photoshop for my magazine advert as it allowed me to create the advert I wanted and too a high standard. Photoshop allowed me too use as many layers, images and editing effects that I wanted to create my magazine advert. The fonts I decided to use were times new roman, as they created a simple effect and also being easy to read. The double up of the times new roman font shows a clear picture of what it says, conventionally showing two different colours reflecting on the soul genre and the reoccurring colours on the magazine advert, music video and digipak meaning its easy to recognise. The time new roman font is used on most magazine adverts as it allows any audience to be able to read it.
Conclusion
I feel that my magazine advert does conform with my genre of soul. I have included conventional colours from the soul genre such as red, white and black, which are reoccurring themes throughout my whole song of Hometown Glory and the album. All of these colours work well to create the image of my artist being innocent, sad and angry. I have used a conventional layout to my advert, which shows simplicity and shows my artist fully as I have positioned my typography at the bottom of the page, although still easy to notice. My target audience is 16-30 year olds, and I feel that my magazine advert does appeal to that age, as well as a wider one too. Although I have included conventions of the soul genre which means it will be recognised for that genre easily, it will also appeal to a wider audience too as I haven't included any bright colours or images that will put off the audience, and make them turn the page of the magazine easily. I feel that using photo-shop has helped me reach my full potential to creating my magazine advert.