Magazine Advert

For our final magazine , we produced a portrait magazine advert. This features a mid-shot of the two main artists that feature in our music video looking straight into the camera. This builds a relationship between them and the reader which helps to entice the audience to purchase the single. 

When you immediately look at this image, you are instantly drawn to the name of the artist we are trying to sell.The styling of the two characters in the background continues the theme that has been evident throughout all of this year with the two artists being your average teenager and not a real 'celebrity' that the audience perhaps couldn't relate to.

This location background also sets the theme of our urban video whilst giving a sense of creativity and excitement. The logos on the poster are instantly recognisable and not only do they give the single we are trying to promote creditability but also information as to who the record label is and where the song can be purchased from. This works effectively due to the audience trusting what MTV do and iTunes as a mainstream seller of music and they can therefore make the choice to purchase it.

The font used for the poster is that similar to the artist's font used in their logo and promotional work thus reinforcing their brand and star image. It gives the poster a rough and edgy finish through its aesthetics so that whilst it maintains a sense of professionalism it is interesting to look at. 

We chose this as our final idea for the magazine advert as we believe it continues the strong work of the digipak design in creating a feel for what the music video is about. 

Magazine Moodboard

Below is a moodboard I created, of magazine albums I researched and found whilst searching for inspiration for our own commercial production. I have decided to bring in a range of genres and artist backgrounds to make a colourful and contrasting moodboard, with different styles of adverts we could take note from.

Magazine Advert Analysis

Here are two magazine adverts I discovered whilst looking for mood board ideas.Though both commercial products converse, it is evident that they share the same powerful marketing tool- simplicity. Therefore as a group we collectively decided to make our own work simple- whilst grabbing the audiences attention and also selling our product. Stay tuned to the blog for more updates!

Here is the cover for the Lana Del Ray album 'Born to Die', appearing in a magazine. I decided to write the notes freehand and upload them, gathering ideas off the top of my head.

This Plan B album advertisement appeared in a Newspaper. I firstly jotted down ideas on paper, then put them together on a computer for a different presentation format.

What is a Magazine advert?

Limited Edition Digipak

In addition to our original Digipak, we wanted to have some fun and develop the product even further and so set about making a Limited Edition Digipak that customers could buy for a slightly increased price. The panels themselves haven't changed drastically but the most noticeable thing about the Digipak is the colour change. The Digipak has been given a slightly more classy and professional look and uses the "expensive" colours of gold and silver. On Panel 1, there are the signatures of the two artists in question in order to incentivise the fans to buy this Limited Edition CD and we have definitely exploited Adobe Photoshop CS6 more than we did on the normal edition Digipak by using even more filters and effects on our photos to make them look more visually appealing. 

The idea of this Limited Edition Digipak came about when we wanted to use the front cover of the limited edition as the front cover of our normal edition. We then as a group decided that this wouldn't fit the codes and conventions of a standard pop single front cover and would go against our ethos of creating a fun and playful Digipak. 

The Limited Edition Digipak is displayed below:

 Panel 1

 Panel 2

 Panel 3

 Panel 4

Final Digipak Design

Our Final Digipak Design

Front Cover

Our main idea for the Digipak was to reflect the running theme in our video of fun and colour. We also decided there needed to be an explicit link to our video and so we wanted to use a screenshot from part of the music video to use as the front cover. The original photo was slightly darker than the one on the left so using Adobe Photoshop CS6, we altered the colour of the sky and increased the brightness. The font used is that synonymous with Rizzle Kicks and so was an obvious choice to put on the front and back of the final Digipak.



Back Cover

This is the back cover featured our Digipak. We chose this original image from a collection of photos we took on one of the last days of filming. This was one of our favourite locations due to its urban feel and therefore wanted it to be featured in either the front or back cover. We again chose the Rizzle Kicks style font and this gave our digipak some consistency amongst the randomness of the video and picture choices. After carrying out our Digipak research, from looking at existing products we knew what the majority of back covers looked like. We therefore printed a barcode in the bottom right-hand corner for merchandising uses and copyright information in small print for legal issues. In addition to this we made sure the record company's logo featured on the back in order to give credit to all those involved in the making of the song.

Panel 1

As we have previously mentioned, we wanted the Digipak to tie in with the music video and so the majority of the panels that form the Digipak, are taken from the music video itself. This panel is from one of the final parts of the video but it to has been tweaked using Photoshop. A filter was put over the top to enhance some colours and darken others and we feel it is something different from what has been produced before.

Panel 2

Panel 2 puts a lot of attention on one of the stars of the video (James) and satisfies the star image criteria that most music products now need. The fans will want to see their icons on products such as the Digipak and so we have delivered by placing James in an empty space and filling that space with a sky backdrop. The backdrop has the lyrics of the song running over the top of it in the same colour of the clouds and in an urban font that has been smudged to replicate the look of clouds.

Panel 3

This is the panel on which the CD will fit on top of. It features both James and Joel looking straight down the lens as well as an action shot again from the music video. This is a slightly more animated shot than the others in the Digipak and develops the fun theme, that we said at the beginning, we wanted to create. The outline of the CD itself has been put on top of the image to give a better idea of what it may look like once filled with a CD.

Panel 4

This panel is one that tries to replicate the nostalgic feel you have of a typical park that you used to visit as a child. The sepia filter that has been put over the image is trying to replicate an old style developed photograph but yet there is still a modern feel to the image. It again features both James and Joel and features some more of the lyrics to the song in the bottom left-hand corner of the page.

Rough designs for Digipak

Whilst in the process of creating our Digipak, we felt it would be beneficial to come up with more designs than we actually needed so that we could then ask our peers as to which designs they liked the best and how we could improve. Below is one of the first designs that we created using Adobe Photoshop CS6:

Some feedback we received from this design was that the colour scheme was very dull and didn't capture the eye of a potential customer. The video is based around having fun and acting childish and the colour scheme doesn't reflect this. We then decided to move on and try to add a bit more life into the Digipak with this design:

The feedback we received from this was also not as positive as we may have liked with some criticism being that the images around the centre piece were irrelevant and that the design as a whole looked unprofessional. Taking this on board we endeavoured to create a more professional looking page.

The image shown above is one that came close to making the final cut. The responses we received when showing others was that it was a clear, crisp picture that was only enhanced by the use of the colour/black & white effect. To create this theme, we used an application available for Mac called Colour Splash Pro. In the end we as a group decided that to be consistent and keep to the them of the video, the images in our Digipak had to be bright and fun and so the extra colour was put in this image and after some tweaking, we had finalised the front cover of our Digipak.