Album adverts in magazines

Today, we looked at several cut outs of artists and their album releases in magazines. By observing the pictures, the cover and all the text that accompanied the advert we were able to draw some ideas from the ads that we may possibly choose to use in our magazine advert.

We focused on how the album art on the cover could represent the genre, what the pictures would mean to the audience, how significant the text was and why; because the information is what potential consumers would read, for instance the advert for the Manic Street Preachers had a whole listing of reviews and ratings down the whole left side - this helps give the audience an idea of what they need to know - if the reviews are good they'll consider buying it, if the reviews aren't then there's a bigger chance that they won't purchase it. The album cover below is an example of the ext being formatted around the whole image.

For each of the cut outs we concentrated on what stood out to us the most, so the album art on the cover of the Warpaint's CD stood out to me because I wouldn't have associated that sort of album imagery with a female group, not in a stereotypical way, just that the photo of the four women doesn't really match the album cover with the red and blue/green skull. However, on a closer inspection, the red of the skull is significant to the image of the artists because they are against a red background, also there is a wooden prop in the photo (which is some kind of a seat they're all seated around) that has red graffiti on it. So, there are links that correlate, and from this particular cover we've considered having the actress against coloured wallpaper (just a suggestion) or even having her on a prop, possibly the piano.

Some other suggestions and ideas that we took from these adverts was the possibility of having either a lot or a little amount of text since it is the debut album. Some adverts had a lot of the text listed either on just one side of the ad or under the album image or even on it; but we'll be considering having her image as the main attraction plus her name because we want people to notice the name rather than trying to remember the name of the album. Lastly, a lot of vital information that we will take from what we've seen on these covers are; the release dates of the album, where the CD is available (Amazon), live tour dates, sponsors, reviews and ratings, etc. These are all factors that we must consider and include in the advert.

Nilufa