A2 Media Studies: Music Magazine Advertisement

Initial Thoughts

To start this section of, we where set a task to list a all the Uk music albums which we new. I quickly found that I did not know that many music magazines. This was likely because I rarely read magazines anyway and this was the case with the majority of the class. This shows that this type of medium is not that popular with student, and as I'm in the same age as my target audience this might be the case for the as well.

Overall I only knew one music magazines which was Q. After some independent research I found more music magazine. overall it took me less than 5 minutes to find 10 music magazines which are currently on sale here in the Uk. This shows that despite not being that common to young people they are still very easy to find.

The images below some of the notes which I was taking during this process.

When I went further in to my independent research I found they my original thoughts on the decline in this medium to the young public is increasing. NME is one of the biggest music magazines in the UK, and they sold 14,312 a week in circulation figures, according to an audit by bureau this is 28% less than 2013. Another audit by ABC found that between june 2012- 2013 all music magazines dropped in circulation. Mojo's (another large magazine company, who promote rock music) circulation stood at 79,345 which was 6.8% loss year on year.

All these facts show this current information age we have found alternatives o finding out about music which are for free, through the growth of the internet which can be accessed nearly anywhere in the modern day, due to cross media convergence. this has not just affected the music magazines, in the past year all magazine sales have dropped by 1million in the print section, as people find it easier to go on the online magazines and websites.

Magazines Genres and Target Market

I looked at 13 different magazines to what sort of music genres they are for, therefor this would decide who their target audience is. to do this is looked at the magazines websites as they would would reflect what they say in their print versions, this task was very simple as you could usually tell what the magazines genres and target audience at first glance as this is what they are designed to do.

A good example of a website I looked at was 'Big Cheese' this site was very informative and straight forward on the it's target audience and genre. on first sight we see dark colours with red splashed across it. We instantly think of danger and blood which is associated with rock music and rock fans are its obvious target audience. beneath the title it then tells us what sort of music its targeted at which is Punk, Metal and Rock.

Next to each of the magazines I wrote if they are a multi-genre magazine or if they are single genre, this also effects their target audience because if they re multi-genre their have a much wider target audience, and are most to be a passive reader, music enthusiast, where as the single genre are for people who are looking for a specific type of band or music. I then noted which genre they specialise in if they are single genre magazines. Eleven out of thirteen of the magazines where single genres magazines and five out of those where rock specific. this can also show that rock fans are more likely to by misc magazines as there is more of them than others. Only two of the magazines where multi-genre, which where 'NME' and 'Q' on the other hand these where two of the biggest music magazines in the UK so they have a wider audience.

By doing this task it allowed me to see which magazines where the best for my artist. I could clearly see that 'Kerrang' and 'Top Of The Pops' where not he best options for me to use for my artist.

kerrang was not a good choice for Chance the rapper because this was a single genre magazine and it promoted rock music. This is obviously the wrong genre as my artist is a rapper hence is name 'Chance the rapper'. This magazine has the wrong target audience, which does not match my target audience and it would be useless to put this in to the magazine as it will attract no attention, further more it is unlikely that the magazine would let us post an advertisement of this genre in their magazine. Kerrang is more associated with bands like Green day and 30 seconds to mars.

Top of the pops was a drastically different magazine both in the genre of music it promotes and its target audience. this magazine promotes pop music, even though pop music generally means popular music, it has com to mean music more like 'The Wanted', 'One direction' and 'Taylor swift' who are listened to by younger audiences and are more pink and bright and teenage churches, and they are generally more manufactured artists. When looking at the magazine itself it is clearly targeted at young girls because of its bright pink colours and its choice of artists to promote.

Because of the clear young audience of this magazine, this would be the wrong target audience, as some of the content in Chance the Rappers music can be very explicit. This would reduce the sales for this magazine and its likely that we won't be allowed to put this advertisement in this magazine, because of the content of his music. Chance the rappers Music can also be quite dull and serious at times which would not fit the style of this magazine, furthermore most of the artists in this magazine do very upbeat fun songs.

Out of the thirteen magazines I think that its best to chose a multi genre magazine to advertise my artist. I think Q I one of the best candidates for this. Upon independent research I looked at some of Q magazines to see if this was the right choice. I looked at the january 2011 review of the year edition of the magazine, and it generally didn't have that much which linked to my genre.

I did then find two pages of the magazine which did have other American rappers on them. The first one was a smaller extract about Kanye west and Jay-Z. This was a small preview telling us about Kanye and Jay-z collaborating on a new album. this was a good sign telling me that, the magazine must get some recognition from Rap and Hip Hop fan, there for there might be a potential target market in this magazine.

When I looked further in the magazine I found a full page advertisement for J.cole. J.cole is an American rapper who is mentored by Jay-z who started out just like Chance the rapper, who also wrote his own raps on homemade beats. This was a good sign as this meant there was a clear target audience in this magazine who would follow up the advertisement, as there where similar artists in it. This advert referred to j.cole as a newer artist which is even more positive as this is the same title which the artist I am looking art is under, Therefor this could be the perfect magazine to promote my artist in.

I then looked at the Q media kit, which is given to labels and artist so they know what Q wants to publish in their magazine, and facts and figures to entice the artist to chose their magazine. From the media kit I found that the magazine was actually voted the Magazine of the year. This is key is I want to ring the best magazine with a good reputation to put the advertisement in. There are also various figures like the circulation which was 61,485, and has a readership of 377,000 in 2012. These where very positive aspects of the magazine as it showed that the magazine had a clear public backing and was very popular. The percentage of reader where 70% male which was also positive as my main target audience was male oriented. The only down fall to the magazine was the average reader of the magazine. I found that the majority of readers are around 32 which was over my target audience at 18 to 25 years of age. This was the biggest down fall with this magazine. This meant that I had to look for another magazine, which would better suit Chance the rapper genre and target audience. But this is still the most likely magazine for me to use.

Word play Magazine

Another magazine which I looked at was wordplay magazine. This magazine is a UK hip hop and graffiti magazine focused mainly on UK artists. this magazine has been around since 2002 so it is still is actually quite young. Without much research I know that this magazine is a lot smaller and weaker than Q. This means that the audience is likely to be much smaller. This drastically decreases the numbers of the people who are going to view the magazine.

On the other hand, the main reason why I wanted o look at this magazine was because that it was a dedicated Hip Hop magazine, therefor it would go directly to the consumers of music much like chance the rapper. Upon further research I found that this magazine was still probably not the best as it was dedicated to British artists and mine was American, so the style of hip hop is drastically varied and he might not fit in to this magazine furthermore the majority of artists in this magazines are underground artists. This factor plus the reduced number who actually read the magazine makes this magazine less likely to be my choice.

Conventions of Music Magazine Advertisements

I have conducted some research ring the conventions of some music magazine, artist advertisements. so this is when the magazine advertise an artists or band specifically not just any advertisements.

By completing this I will learn what characterises the advertisements have in common, which is what is likely to make them so successful. at first i looked a general advertisements of any genera so i can compare then and see if there was any differences, then i moved on to the advertisements which relate to my artists more and see if they still follow the conventions of other genres.

The first magazine advertisement which I looked at was Cee lo Green, who is a pop sole singer. This add had the basics that even a CD case would have, which are the name of the artist in large bold writing and then the name of the new album which they are promoting. There was the also dates for the new album release, and any single which might have been popular which are on the album. There was also a large image of the artist above the writing ad this was the first thing that you would see when glancing at the advertisement.

The next advertisement which I looked at was for a rock band called the arctic monkeys. This advertisement was drastically different from the first just based on the colours used. This one is much darker with its black and white look compared to the pinks and blues used in the one above. On this advertisement the name of the band is in large bold characters, and it contrasts the background. this advertisement is for the bands tour instead of the release of the new album so it is expected to have different information, so when I saw the dates for their tour I was not surprised. We also see one of their supporting acts but in a much smaller font as its less important information. Much like the previous advertisement this does have an image on it right in the centre of the page, so people can see the artist, in this case its the lead singer of the arctic monkeys. generally these are targeted at different target audiences, and have slightly different purposes but the basic principals are still there.

The third advertisement which I looked a was for florence and the machines. This also has a different target audience to the above but it does have the same purpose as the Cee Lo Green advertisement, which is to promote a new album. we should see the same conventions as the the first, which we do. although the name of the artist/band is not s large as the previous two its still very visible, and they a have used a different type face to make it more distinct. the name of the album is actually larger that the name of the artist/Band which is breaking the conventions, but its still under the artist/Band name and the picture. We then see that date of the album release much like the Cee Lo Green and Arctic monkeys with their tour dates. There is a large image again of the artist in the centre of the page of the artist, there is a trend which is starting to emerge which tells us that the artist is the selling point of these advertisements, because their images are so large.

The fourth and final advertisement which i looked was Jessie J's Who you are album release. this again has a different target audience to florence and the machine and The arctic monkeys, but might have a similar one to Cee Lo Green. this again had avery large artist name, in gold. this was in the centre of the page and was the focus for this advertisement. Underneath was the name of the album, which was actually quite hard to read from a distance, so again we see the artist is the sales point of the advert. The large artist image in the background overcrowding the artists name and other information on the page supported this claim. From this evidence I see that the artist has to be the focal point of the advertisements, and this is likely the same for most genres of music. On the advertisement we also so extra information like the record labels which also appeared on the others, meaning the labels also want recognition for their artists. We also saw like the arctic monkeys and Cee Lo green, a single or featuring artists on the poster, but this was still not as large as the main titles though.

Overall from this research I see that the conventions of the advertisements are very simple. All the advertisements had an image of the artist, and they made sure it was large and could be distinguished from a distance. The artist has to be the focus of the advertisement so the name has to be the largest text on the advertisement, then followed by the album name. The dates of the album release is also likely to be found on the advertisement.

Analysing magazine Advertisements

In the analysis below I looked at some existing magazine advertisements which related to the Chance the rappers genre of hip hop. This allowed me to see if there where any trends and conventions used in the this specific genre which I could bring forward in to my own magazine. I also looked at Chance the rappers existing advertisements. this allowed me to see if there where any special traits which his advertisements had which made them unique, and therefore carry them in to my own advertisements. By doing this it would allow me to carry the artist image forward with the new designs.

I also found that chance the rapper wears a snapback in most of his poster as seen in Four of the advertisements above, this will be a key part of the Mise-en-scene in all the elements of this project.

Planning

In preparation for the making of the magazine advertisement I had to choose what sort of advertisement I wanted. The choices I had where; Full page, half page and Double page i believed that one will page will allow me to get the best out of the advertisement, with out the need to constricting myself to a small section in the magazine and overworking with the double page. the measurements I used for this advertisement was from the magazine Q as this looked to the most likely for me to use.

The measurements where in the magazines media pack.

I then created a template on photoshop - using the ruler tools - which I would then later use to create the advertisements based on theses measurements.

The template is shown below

The lines would help me as they would be used as guide lines so I know where the image is likely to be cut out so I don't put any text of key images outside these lines.

Planning Fonts

In planning for what fonts to use for the album cover and the magazine title for the artists name, I looked at some already made fonts on a website called Dafont click here for the link to the website.
the website allowed you to view a range of already made fonts, arranged in different categories.
this site made is easier to find the sort of fonts which I wanted as I would instantly know which ones would look good as it showed a preview of what the text looked like.

To use the font you clicked on a category, and searched for the one you wanted within that category.

In the screen shot below, it shows how the choices appear. for this example I will use Skygge as a font. click on download.

Once you have downloaded the file you will have to locate it and then install it.

The font will then appear in the Word or Photoshop application you are using.

The only down side to this some dots will to work, and will appear as normal format. As shown below with this particular font, it is the last one on the list. On the other hand a large amount of them do work like the ones shown above, the Skygge.

Once I have all the fonts which I like, I will then ask the potential target audience which ones they prefer, and this will then influence the one which I will use on the CD digipack and the magazine.

When I had all the fonts I wanted I created a small table to go along side with the fonts, this would allow me to ask the audience which top three fonts they liked and mark it down in the table. At the end of this I will collate the data to see which are the most popular fonts.

The images below show the fonts and table

I asked 31 students who where in the demographic which I was targeting, it was essential I asked the right people as if not the product might not be properly tailored to the right people therefore the target audience might not purchase the product. overall there where a total of 93 votes as each person voted for their top three.

From the results I found that font 15 which was "Hacked" was the most popular with 16 votes out of 93, this was most likely to be top of the list of fonts which I was going to use. There was a general trends as the fonts which where the most popular where thicker fonts, like the second font "College" with 12 votes overall. these two fonts where very different as hacked was a much sharper but futuristic font, whereas college was and American style college football text. Although the second one was very popular I will not likely be using this as, this album does not relate to this font, as this was his topic from his last album and in my design I want to show that he has developed as an artist instead of sticking with the same look and feel as he did with his first EP which he actually wrote in high school.

The image below is of the second most popular, but this I will not be using it.

The third most popular font was number 12, titled "Good morning Good afternoon" with a total of 11 votes. this font was also one of the thicker fonts. supporting that the target audience liked this thicker bolder fonts to the thinner sharper fonts.

from these results I have decided to pick three main fonts which I wall test during the making process of the Digi-pack cover and magazine to see which would be the most effective. The first font which I will use is "Hacked" as this was the audiences favourite.

The send font which I will take forward is "Good morning Good afternoon" as this was the third most popular font chosen by the target audience.

The final font which I will go with is one which I have picked and believe has the most potential and best represents the artist and his type of music. this font might be a risk as this wasn't even following the trends set by the data but, I believe that this font could potentially stem the rest of the Digipack and magazine advertisements.

Design Brief

Due to the stylized method of rapping which chance the rapper does, it would be expected by his audience to follow this trend, and create more unorthodox magazine covers and digi-packs. This means that it is likely that I will avoid using a normal image or portrait to represent chance. I feel that the image will have to stand out from the rest of the promotional materials, in shops and online, to create a successful marketing scheme. The image I am using will have to be quite artistic or graphic, and show the wild side of chance the rapper and represent his acid rap form. I have had ideas of using patterns to illustrate the artist, and this could link to some of the titles, which I have chosen to follow up. Another idea was to turn the artist into a cartoon.

The key to these being successful is for the as advertisements for the artist, is for the images to clearly identify the artist, as this will be the key focal point of promoting the artist. The images, which I use, will likely be extreme close-ups so that I can fully portray the emotion on the artist’s face on both the digi-pack and the magazine advertisements.

Photo-Shoot 1.

This was the first photo shoot for the magazine cover. the shots which I took for this where mostly mid shots as this was the style i wanted for the magazine, simply because we had a bigger canvas to work with, therefor I did not have to focus on the face as much.

From this selection of Photographs I prefer the black and white photos. this is because they look much sharper and crisper compared to the coloured ones which I took at the start. The black and white also have more depth in the, and the shadows in the background work a lot better as they are darker and more apparent. The second series of coloured shots where better that the First swell as the images looked darker and upon reviewing the images I believe this is the sort of look I would like to use for the music magazine.

Magazine Background ideas

The first idea for the background is to use an inverted effect on a black and white image, with the pen effect on top. This creates the sort of image shown below.

Another option which I like is to use the normal black and white images like the ones below.

these can be very effective as well as the artist image is still maintained as he is very easily recognisable from the images.

The third option which I like is the movement shots where the subject is waving their hand in front of their face while a photo is being taken, to give and action shot.

At the moment these are the three types of Images which I am most likely to use for the magazine advertisement. To get confirmation on which I should use, I will conduct a target market research experiment to see which they like the most, and this will likely confirm which one, I will use for the final advertisement. It is key that I get the audience feedback as they are the ones who are going to be purchasing the magazines and they are the ones who will decide if the advertisement has been successful or not. The images are still subject to manipulation to develop their aesthetics to suit the magazine advertisement better.

Audience Feedback

To find out which image I should use for my magazine advertisement I designed a questionnaire, to hand out to the target audience. This questionnaire contained some of my favourite and most successful photos, and I asked them to pick their top three favourite for the music magazine advertisement.

The design is shown below.

Below are some of the target audience filling out the questionnaire.

I ensured that the target audience where bombarded with the images at once and gave them a short amour of time to fill the questionnaire in. This meant that the one which stood out to them the most was the one which they picked, therefor determining the one which they would look at first if they where quickly looking through their albums. This also allowed me to see which image had the best imprecation on then at this quick glance, therefor they will be likely be to remember it for longer.

Overall I asked 20 members of my target audience.

The Images for the background for the digi-pack are shown below. These images are the most polar images chosen by the target audience.

The first image is the one which I am most likely to use as this was the most popular. Despite this, it possesses some of the key characteristics which I wanted the image to have, so it can successfully promote chance the rapper. in this we can clearly identify the artist which is key for his promotion. thee are key mise-en-scenes which identify the sort of music and genre which he is part of, with the snapback hat and the hoodie. the subject is looking up and forward in to the light, something which chance does a lot as he is still a developing artist and is still looking forward to an illustrious career. so this image has both key subjective and objective mean sing which make it a potentially strong magazine advertisement.

With some editing this could become even better, so that it will better represent chances album and his personality better.

The second image which was actually the third most favourite was the one below. this image was second on my list because it was easier to identify the artist that in the one which the audience voted for as second on the other hand this age does not leave much breathing room as it is quite cramped, and there is a lack of space to put any text which I would want to overlap with the image. Because of this it is likely that I will not use this.

The third image below which was actually the audiences second favourite, is the one which I am least likely to use as this image makes it very hard to identify the artist. Despite this it has all the key characteristics with the miss-en-scene to identify the genre, as we can see the gold chain, the hoodie and the snap back which is calmly placed across half of his face to create mystery. But because there might be people who might not know who he is who want his face to be clear.

Making

To make the Magazine advertisement I first imported the image which I wanted in to the magazine template. I then cropped and resized the image to the size I wanted. when the image was at the correct size, I cut out the subject and deleted the background.

I then duplicated the image moved it slightly and made the new layer a hard layer.

I then cmd deleted the background to make it black and that created the image below.

The image needed a more purple filter to darken and match the image to the Digipack.

This effect created an almost outer body ghostly effect on the subject, and creates the almost confused psychedelic look which the digipack had. To keep the continuity of the advertisement of the artist from the digipack and the ad I will use the same fonts and font colours. To keep the colour of the text the same I used the same co-ordinates as id did on the Digipack.

For the background of the first text I drew a box using the fill box tool and then changed its opacity to 50% i made sure that the box was the same colour as the text on the divi pack so i could transfer some of the theme over to the advertisement.

I duplicated the layer and placed the new layer on to. Because it was at 50% opacity when they overlapped it was slightly darker, this overlapping section is where the text would go. I then changed the length and width of the top layer so there would be sections which where not overlapping to get the effect which is shown below.

I then added the text which was taken from a popular hip-hop site called HIP-HOP DX. The quote promoted the artist and it was key that I show that there was a lot of excitement around the artists, so the audience will want to join this excitement.

I also used the website logo. to start the logo was actually very difficult to see on the dark background, so I had to increase the contrast and brightness of the image. the second version is shown below.

For the next text I drew the same boxes but slightly thiner and pasted the text above them. to do this is had to change the spacing above and below on each line so it did not look too cramped.

For the two main titles, the artist name and the album name, I drew a new box which is shown below. I duplicated this layer, one for the name and one for the album title. I then changed the opacity of these boxes to 32% as I needed them to contrast the titles slightly more, as they where going to be the same colour as the boxes themselves.

I added the titles straight from the Digi-pack by copying and pasting them as they where, all I did was adjust the sizes to match the advertisement. I used the same titles as I wanted to keep the link between the two products, and this was supposed to promote the Digi-pack. By using the same font I am also creating am image for chance which the audience can then associate this font with him. This is a curtail part of advertisement because its a form of image association, meaning every time the audience see this sort of font they will instantly think of chance the rapper.

When promoting the album I have to then show true audience where to then get the product, so I wrote in some sites where the album can be downloaded. And a store where you can by the CD version.

To complete the Digi-pack I added some of the award and accolades which chance the rapper has been nominated for and won to show the recognition which he is getting for his art work. This will make the audience more interested as they will start to believe that he is good artist and they will then go and look fro the product and listen to it. I have also added the release date of the album at the bottom. this is because from most of the advertisements which i have analysed the date of the album is generally at the bottom of the page, so i wanted to keep inline with this convention.

Below is the completed version of the Digi-pack. Once I had seen the completed version I realised that it was to cluttered and over whelming. A lot of album advertisement where very brief and passive, meaning this was to following the codes and conventions of Music magazine advertisements. I have decided to slim down the advertisement and remove a lot of the clutter which is on it.

To De-clutter the advertisement I removed some of the background information on Chance the rapper, as this was not actually needed and from the analysis of other advertisements I found that it is actually vary rear to have the description of the artist on a album release advertisement, it is usually on a special promotion artical. when i had removed the text I then removed the boxes behind, this created a large amount of positive space and made the advertisement look slicker and cleaner.

I then decided to remove the red boxes behind the quotations, and have them on a simple black background, This greatly benefited the ease of reading for this advertisement because there was a greater contrast between the text and the background. This makes the text more visible when quickly flicking through the magazine, therefor it would greatly benefit the passive reader. I further simplified the look and feel of the advertisement by removing some of the logos and only keeping the key ones. I removed chance the rappers personal logo as this would not be seen on a magazine ad, simply because its not his personal product. I also removed the reviewers logos and just wrote them as normal text meaning the flow of the advertisement will remain constant as there will be less insignificant parts which stand out and distract the readers from the main key information.