Music Magazine Advert

Research : Music Magazines

Looking through these images of music magazines you can tell that there is a wide range of genres for each different types of magazine. There are magazines like NME which feature mostly indie groups and the magazine 'hammer' which feature very heavy metal music. However, there are magazines like Q which give a variety of groups in there magazine as they are more general. You can guess the genre of music from the look of the magazine based on things like the title, bands/artists featured and images that cover the front. You can also see here how music magazines have changed over time  as they used to include a lot of text which would now make a magazine seem 'dry', but now they have much bigger images of bands and artists that will help to draw people into the magazine.

The band i have chosen, 'The Hunna', would most likely feature on a magazine the NME as they show a lot of indie groups. This is the genre that 'The Hunna' are most likely linked to. On the front of NME is a band called 'The Wombats' and they are similar to my band 'The Hunna'.

Research: The Conventions Of Existing Magazine Advertisement

To help me further m knowledge of what music magazines generally include and feature on a regular basis, I have looked at and studied 6 different magazine covers and created a list of what they have and don't have on each individual one.

On the left is an example of a music magazine cover which focuses on highlighting the artist by showing a large picture of him which covers half of the page. Also his name is also a dominant feature of the page as it is one of the largest parts of text on there. It also features things such as album name, artist name, QR code, release date, website information and record label logo in the bottom right corner. 

In this cover it is different to the one before that I looked at as it doesn't feature a picture of the artist themselves, but instead highlights the album name and release date instead. It does however still have similar features to the other magazine cover with the record label logo, artist name, album name and release date.

Planning: Practicing Magazine Covers

Above, you can see that I have chosen a picture to use for my music magazine advertisement. I have decided to document this practice process as it will give me the chance to reflect on things I have done in the past when it comes to producing my final music magazine cover. By doing this it will also develop my Photoshop skills when I want to do my music magazine advertisement and digipack.  I chose this picture as the artist isn’t positioned directly in the middle so will give me some room to add a variety of text that I may want to add on to it. 

I started off by introducing the artist’s name and the album name. As you can see ‘The Weeknd’ is the artist name and is the most noticeable text on the page at this time. This is so people know who it is straight away and it is one of the first things that catches the audiences eye. I have chosen to make the font the same as each other and have used colours which can be found on the artist image to help keep a running theme throughout the magazine cover.

After adding the main titles of the artist and album that I am promoting, I decided to add a release date and barcode and added some other lines and boxes to it to give it a magazine feel. I thought at this point it was starting to look like something that is seen as promotional material. I have used some elements of Photoshop to my advantage here as I have changed the transparency of some boxes so that text can stand out more dominantly and have underlined some text to set it apart from other parts of the magazine cover.

I am very happy with the final outcome of the magazine advertisement I have produced using Photoshop. I have added some information with words that will want to make the reader more influenced to open the magazine like Inside, Discover and Exclusive, which makes them seem quite secretive.  I have also added text to the faded box going across my artist’s image and have added some information about him and what might be included about him inside the magazine. I also found out a way of cutting a part of the artists head using a lasoo tool, hiding certain layers using a mask and then managing to put a image/text behind it to make it look more 3D and seem like it was actually made by Billboard Magazine’s themselves. Overall, I think that due to my practice I will be able to continue developing my skills using Photoshop and produce a well thought out magazine advert that looks professional and very attractive to the target audience.

Creating my music magazine advert:

When I was creating my music magazine advert, I made sure that I linked it in with the rest of my music video and CDD by including a similar image or setting that the audience would recognise from each piece of work. This means I would look at having the same type of effect on top of my chosen image to ensure it has continuity and looks the same as the other pieces. I also made sure I used the same font as this keeps continuity as well which is important when keeping a professional look throughout my work.

I started off my music magazine advert by just choosing the image I wanted and making it the appropriate size for the magazine template. After I had chose the image I used the 'Posterize' effect to make it look like my CDD. The results of this are below.

As you can see the effect has changed the image dramatically and has gave me a lot of space above the 2 people to use for Artist name and song title if I wanted to. This is a good space to put them as most adverts would have this at the top as well, like I have seen in a lot of the other adverts I have looked at.

I then added text to my magazine advert to show what I was advertising and ensured that all fonts were the same as the ones that I had used in my CDD. I have made sure that the song name and artist name is the most dominant piece of text on the advert to let people know what the advert is advertising. I also made sure that the 'Debut Album' part was in red to make it stand out a bit more and show that it is an important part of the advert that might make the audience more captivated by it. I also included a few of the most well known songs that feature in the album to make people want to get the album a bit more as they will see the songs that they recognise the most perhaps. 

To finish off the advert, I added some well known and popular sites and apps that allow music to be streamed. This way people know that they can easily get access to the album through these sites. 

Final Music Magazine Advert:

This is my final music magazine advert. I am very happy with how it has turned out as it links very well to my music video and CDD, so this will make it easier for me to talk about in my evaluation. It clearly shows what is being advertised as well and has a professional look which any magazine company would be happy to advertise in their magazine.