In what ways does your advertisements use, develop or challenge forms and conventions?

When researching magazine adverts I noted different conventions of 'RnB' magazine adverts which I intended to use in my own creativity. I also researched into the typical conventions of a magazine advertisement, in order to allow my design to be successful.

Used

As I was influenced by Mariah Carey's album, 'Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel' I used the conventions of her colour scheme. The use of gold and white colour font is a typical usage for 'RnB' female artists. Therefore, I embeded this into my design making them my two main colours. I used the typical conventions you would read on a magazine advertisement, these were the release dates, the artist's website and so on. I used similar shots, close-up shots on both my digipak and magazine advertisement, these shots relate to the male gaze aswell. This will enable audience to familiriase with the artist at once. When conducting my research I noticed many adverts take note of where the album is available, this was mainly at HMV. Therefore, I used this convention, adding in this information, permitting the audience to familiarise with a well known company.

Develop

I have developed my ideas into my album magazine advertisement through the use of my naming my main song. Many album advertisements just name the album rather than name the hit single, this is something I noticed for most 'RnB' adverts. However, I decided I would include my song as this is a main promotion, in order to allow the audience to straight away familiarise with it.

Challenged

I have challenged the conventions of an 'RnB' advertisement by not using a provocative female picture. Many female artist from the 'RnB' genre, like Beyonce, Mariah, Ciara and Rihanna use provocative pictures, revealing alot of skin in their pictures, attracting the male gaze. However, I challenged this and did not use a picture like this. I thought is would not be necessary and realised from my audience feedback the pictures I did use did attract people and came across as appealing. I have also not used a typical male figure onto my digipak or advertisement as many 'RnB' producers do. I intended to make this production as a form of concentration on just the artist, Priscilla, eventhough there are male characters in our video. Other than this, I do not feel like I have totally challenged the convention overall.

Audience Feedback - Magazine Advertisement

Above is the results I collected after asking a group of twenty different people which magazine advertisement they preferred. I asked friends and family to contribute to this question in order to help me with my final decision. My results shows that out of twenty people, seventeen people favoured my second design rather than the first, leaving the other three people to chose advertisement one. Evidently, my second advertisement wins, and is much ideal than the first. My audience noted on the design, layout and choice of colour of my second advertisment, commenting on the way it is able to easily attract anyone. My audience became aware that I had followed the conventions of a magazine advertisement, picking out on the shop retailer, which I had not included in my first design, release dates and mainly the familiarity with the design of my digipak. I was able to productively create synergy between my digipak and advertisement as my audience noticed similarities between the two productions. Consequently, I have officially made my second magazine advertisement my final design!

Magazine Album Advertisement (2)

The choice of a floral background allows the magazine advertisement to have a feminine feel to it, reflecting on the artist. I selected to use this as my background, as my previous background was described as having too much 'white space', so a more detailed background in this design was necessary. I have chosen to use black as my font colour in order to allow the key information on the advertisment to stand out. Also, the background is floral all over and choosing a lighter shade of colour would make the information provided, difficult to read. The use of the two pictures and layout of them, on the top of the advert, permits it to catch the readers attention straight away, letting them to familiarise with the artist. Once again, I have followed the conventions of a magazine album advertisement, making my advert look like an archetypal one. I have made the changes which were suggested from my audience when looking at my other design, I beleive this advert is a more appealing and attractive design, when compared to my first advert, however I will base this on my audience feedback I intend to collect.

Backgrounds for Magazine Advert

One of the main suggestions made by people about my first magazine advert design, was to use a more interesting background. In order to come up with a more striking background I have found some pictures which I will choose from. I think the gold and white design below is the one I am more likely to use as it is the one that relates more to my digipak. I have picked out the other two designs as they can also relate to my digipak, seeing as they have butterflies on them. However, I feel black and white will not suit the design when put next to the coloured gold and white design.

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Editing Pictures for Magazine Advert

When commencing on my second design, I took the pictures I used and decided to edit these on the iMacs. As I wasn't 100% familiar with the editing software I have not been able to successfully give the pictures a 'professional' look, but have managed to change it's original form.

Here, I blurred the edges of the picture, turned its original form into the sepia mode and changed the saturation level, enhancing brightness or sometimes darkness into the picture. I also thought it necessary to crop the picture as I wanted the focus to be on the face of the artist and not on the background of the picture.

In this picture, by playing around with the saturation level, I gave the picture a blue tint to it. This was not intended, but I kept it this way as I thought it was original. I used the modal key on the iPhoto editor to give the round border shape to the picture, enclosing on the main focus, being the artist is face.

In this picture I have cropped it to a smaller size in order to make the focus of the picture clear. i thought this may be a usable picture as you are able to see the artist is full body ( long-shot). Once again, a light sepia tone has been applied to the picture.

I intend to begin to use these pictures in my next design now and hopefully be able to blend it in well with the overall design.

Audience Feedback for Magazine Advertisement (1)

In order to begin my second magazine design I thought it necessary to gather some audience feedback on my first design. Therefore, I asked a group of people the following questions:

1. Does this magazine advertisement grab your attention?
2. Do you like the layout of the advert?
3. What can be improved about this advert?

Here are some of the views I collected on the three specific questions:

Sarah Jane: 'This magazine advertisement does catch the eye of the passer by, however when studying the advertisement one may find the advert too simple and less creative. I beleive the layout of this text is great! It allows you to easily read the information provided. In order to improve this I would give the magazine advert background a more detailed look'.

Liah Campbell: 'I think this design is simple and not too detailed. The magazine advertisement is layered in a way which enables you to quickly gather the key details needed for this advert. If I was to change this advert, I would change the background as there looks like there is too much white space'.

Sabrina Mohammed: 'When looking at this magazine advertisement I found it very attractive, the use of colours allow the magazine advert to look simplistic. The layout is very neat. If I was to improve this I would use one picture and made it clearer'.

Candice Modeste: 'When I first looked at this advertisement, the choice of colour and picture grabbed my attention straight away, it's great! The layout is perfect as everything is clearly stated, nothing is confusing. If I had to change this advertisement I would probably change the choice of background and make the same of the artist bolder and bigger'.

Roza Zobedey: 'The design is very uniqure, there isn't too much detailed but relevant information for the audience, which is good. The pictures are very simple and clear. The layout is good as it follows the conventions of a magazine advertisement. However, if I had to make changes to this advert I would make the detail in the same font and the same size an change the background, maybe a designed one would be more appealing?'.

Overall, from looking at the above comments, it is quite clear the background of the advert does not successfully grab the eye of the reader. Therefore, when producing my next design, I intend to find a more attractive design and work on this. The choice of colours, pictures and layout has been liked by people and therefore I will take on board the suggestions and change this.

Magazine Album Advertisement

Here is my design of a magazine album advertisement I have created. Most obviously, I have used the same colours from the formation of my album cover. I have chosen to do this as it creates a connection with the album cover and magazine advertisement, permitting the advertisement to be easy to recognise amongst a wide range of audience. I have followed the typical traits of a magazine advertisement in order to make my advert readable and most importantly look like a magazine advert. The use of italics highlights the feminine artist and it is for this reason why I have selected to use this font. The butterflies are a reflection on the album's love songs, most importantly the 'If I Had My Way' soundtrack. Therefore, I thought it was important to include this in my magazine advertisement in order to signify the hit single. I kept my advertisement simple, as I beleive a simple outlook results to a more attractive result. I do intend to create another design in order to collect a wide range of audience feedback to choose which is the best.

Representing Reality - Mediation

In today's lesson we read about Mediation. The media is known for placing us at one remove from reality. They take something that is genuine, either a person or an event and alter its form to produce whatever they are aiming for, and it is this text we as readers and viewers end up reading. This type of representation can be linked into our music promo videos as we have been constantly editing our video to portray a specific storyline.

It is like thinking of an album, it is not just the sound of one or two musicians but the sound of mediation. The authenticity in the sound of the album has been mediated before it reaches to listeners. This is done through engineers and producers changing the sound which is created in the music studio until it is 'just right'.

Linking this specific type of representation into the production of our music videos, it can be said through the chosen setting and the use of our mise-en-scence we have mediated our video into a precise representation. This is evidently true as my group and I made sure we editing bits of our video which did not look like it conformed to the stereotype of the 'RnB' genre.

When something like the news is switched on we automatically tend to beleive what is being said to us. However, the News is the greatest mediated piece of media in today's society. Specific shots are used in order to interpret the story they are telling in a specific way. The story is always different to the experience of someone who was at the scene, this shows how mediated the News is.

Here are the three key things to look for in Mediation:

1. Selection: Whatever is being portrayed to you, there is a greater selection that has been omitted. For example, a specific picture has been chosen from a great number of pictures, to be shown to a wide range of audience.
2. Organisation: Different components are organised in the way the producer has ordered it to be in, usually not the same as in real life. This is known as mise-en-scene, linking this into the production of my music promo video, we chose to film in a females bedroom and urban area to follow the conventions of 'RnB'.
3. Focusing: The whole mediation process is to please us, the audience. Therefore, the audience are encouraged to concentrate on a chosen aspect. For example, when a film or video wants to depict the importance of character the camera pans towards them.

Beginning Ideas For Magazine Advertisement

After commencing on some relevant research, I have put together a few of my ideas for my magazine advertisment and made two designs. I intend to work on these designs, improving them and creating them on a photoshop software. These are not my final designs, but my starting point to this ancillary task. Here are the designs:

Design Number One:

Design Number Two:

Analysis of 'The Family Jewels Marina & The Diamonds'

I have decided to analyse this magazine album advert in order to gain ideas when commencing my very own design. I found different typical features of a magazine album advert when studying this specific ad. One of my main findings was the similarity with the albm cover and the advertisement. This can be said to create a specific identity for audience and readers to relate to.

Marina and the diamonds The Family Jewels Album

The Family Jewels Marina & the diamonds Magazine Advertisement

Ancillary Task Two - Magazine Advertisement

Ancillary Task Two: to design a magazine advertisement for your digipak

As our second task, we have been told to design a magazine advert demonstrating a clear relationship with our digipak. In order to achieve this task we have to do the following:

• Research - look at designs, colours, images, font types, layouts, mise-en-scene and texture used in other magazine adverts from our genre to help begin our designing.


• Use similar, if not the same design colours, images, font types, layout, mise-en-scene and texture in our magazine advert as previously designed in our digipak.


• Be able to successfully show coherent links between our digipak and magazine advert and our music video and at the same time create a professional and realistic look.

Having begun researching some magazine album adverts I have already noticed the following are typical information found on an album cover:

• Artist's name and album title
• Websites are included
• Tour dates
• Outlets in which the album is available at
• Slogan/tagline
• Product content
• Name of record label