Ideas for Magazine Advertisment

From researching into multiple magazine adverts for various music artists, I have found that there are multiple conventions which we should include in order to ensure that our magazine advert is as effective as it can be. I have listed these below, along with examples of innovative ways which we can include them.

1. Artist and album name in the largest font - This is the most important feature of the magazine advert, as this is the information which the reader needs to take away from it the most. Whilst all the other information is important, this is the crucial part, as the rest of the information is fairly useless without this part. In order to make it stand out on our advertisement, I believe it should be white, as the background of the advertisement is most likely to be black in order to match the dark theme of our video. In order to separate the artist name from the album name, we may try having one in bold and then one in normal script, for example:

                                    SBTRKT 

                               Trials of the Past

An image such as this one would make a
good basis for the magazine advertisement.

2. A picture of the album cover should take up the majority of the advertisement - The album cover we design as part of the production of the ancillary products will match the mood of our video, and so if this takes up the most space on our poster then it will be effective. By matching the theme of the ancillary products to the music video, those who have seen the video are more likely to notice the other items when they see them.  Ideas which I have had for the album cover include a fuzzy picture of the protagonist of our music video in order to match the haunted theme, or a more scenic shot of the dark woods which the video will be shot in.

3. A website, Facebook and Twitter should all be provided - These are all essential, as they provide most people with a first port of call in order to hear some of the music which is being advertised. In order to incorporate each of these, I think placing small Twitter and Facebook logos next to the names of them is an effective way, as if the social network plugging is too overstated within the advertisement, then they will begin to effect the colour scheme and make it seem unbalanced. 

4. The small-print should be kept minimal - I have found that the most effective adverts were the ones where the pictures and large text did most of the selling of the product, with the small print used in order to tell the reader about the release date, the formats which the single/album will be released, and perhaps less essential information such as which song will be on the B-side. An idea which I had for the small print of our magazine advert was to use it to say the release date, but to direct the reader to a website in order to gain more information about it.

By George Martin