Music magazine advertisements - skepta

Music magazine advertisements:

The use of magazine advert are used to help promote an artist and song.  These are the best ways for artists to advertise their upcoming songs and albums, as they are very popular with music fans, and it is also a very good way for new artists to get noticed, as it does not cost a lot of money to be mentioned, compared to on TV or other forms of media.

The reason this is an effective way of promoting music videos and songs etc. is that if they are interested in your specific genre will buy the magazines that you are in, therefore everyone who sees you in the magazine will be interested and want to listen to you. However, a negative factor of advertising in only magazines, is that only people who buy the magazines will see the adverts, and because things like radio and TV are a lot more popular nowadays compared to magazines, this could mean that an artist would not become as popular as they would like to be.

Adverts show similarities to things such as posters and billboards as s the main thing on the poster is the artists name or new song/album, and it takes up the majority of the space. Pictures are also used, however they are used differently compared to posters, as they are often used the background in magazines, whereas on posters, they are just put to the side or above/below the main text. Magazine advertisement also tends to be more detailed than posters, as people take more time to read a magazine articled compared to looking at a poster. Although the layout is quite different to a poster/billboard, the context is very similar as it will contain the same bits of information, only a bit more detailed in most cases. An example of this is the magazine advert of Skepta, and he is a dominant figure of the whole advert making him stand out more, and it contains more detailed information around him,

magazine advertisment plan

G324 - Plan For magazine

When designing our Magazine Advertisement our group all agreed that we liked the simplicity of The Verve's 'Love Is Noise' advert. We then took this as inspiration for our own design and created a similar poster, only we wanted it to a few clouds in a blue sky to match the band's name. Similarly we wanted to include some information along the bottom, we decided up  the website address and other websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.


We then thought that it'd be a lot better if our Advertisements has a larger link to the music video that we are creating. So by including the two main characters of our video and another element of our music video (sunrise/sunset) there would be a continuous style.  This could also then connect to our Digipak. This is the design idea that we have decided to use for our final Magazine Advertisement.

Final Digipak

This is the final digipak that i created in which i stuck with the original them of going with the picture of the main character within out music video. I have only used the one picture for this digipak as i feel it flows better and looks more effective once folded into a digipak instead of using to different pictures and reflecting 3 different vibes. This also reflected the importance of the character within our music video.  We used these theme as it reflected aspects from both our ancillary tasks and music video. I have also used an orange brown colored theme to reflect quite an old school view which is associated with India rock music.

digipak 2

Here is my second digipak in which i have created which shows i have updated upon from my previous attempt. This digipak is much more effective as i have positioned the layout of the picture so when it is folded to together within the digipak all the panels match up together to create one picture. I have also used 2 pictures to give the inside and outside of the digipak a different view. I further used a bar code to make the digipak look more effective.

DIgipak 1

Here is my first attempt of my digipak where i included a picture from the actual footage of our clip. As you can see it shows to be very basic, as this was the first idea that I had come up with when creating a plan for my digipak. I have also used  CD to show where the it would sit within the digipak and the basic information such as the album title and songs included.

Digipak Analysis 2 – Tinie Tempah

This digipak is of Tinie Tempah and this album is called discovery and was released in 2010. The style of this digipak is different to what is usually seen and due to the fact this is completely the opposite of my genre therefore I will not be influenced in any way by this, however as a digipak I do rate it highly. I fell that the colours and the use of effects on the images are good as it shows Tinie’s personality which is nice to see for audiences.

 A close up of the artist which is Tinie Tempah is used on the front cover as he is famous and therefore attracts the audiences who already know him and like him as an artist.

The colours used are quite bright, for instance pink, purple and blue. They are also put against a black background which increases how the bright colours stand out and therefore help gain audience’s attention. 

Text is placed in the top left corner of the cover so that it does not cover up the image of the artist and is next to him to show the person on the cover can be visibly seen.

The artist is seen to be wearing glasses, a watch and a bracelet, this works well as it shows the artist personality etc.

The watch and the bracelet as well as the urban area edited onto his jacket relate to the rap genre. Since he is actually a rap/pop artist I think that the visual codes do their job well.

Font is easily readable and looks rather professional and whilst the image on the cover is used to get the audience’s attention, the back cover is used to present any necessary information. 

The image on the cover has been edited very well and professionally. The effects seem very advanced and are appealing.

The image/colours on the cover clearly link to the back cover showing good consistency.

Digipak Analysis 1 - Rihanna

As Rhianna is a well-known and famous artist there have been close ups of her faced used on the album so it is instantly recognisable as catches people attention. This digipak is therefore effective as people who already know and listen to her music would be more influenced to but it but seeing her face dominating the face of the digipak.

This digipak inside is made up of 3 different panels which has been carefully layed out across all off them so the picture is created in the three different sections which gives the digipak a more professional look. The colours used on these panels are reflected on the outside of the digipak along with the image of the artists and the colours contrast together.

They have used a clear font on the cover of the digipak which contrast as the white font although is quite thin is easily visible and doesn’t not cover much surface area of the digipak. The use of the angle used on Rhianna makes her come across as quite as an elegant and agile artist. The size of the font is a reasonable size but is slightly on the small side as it is a bit too thin, but still can easily read.

The Male gaze theory of Andrew Goodwin maybe reflected though the use of the picture on the front of the digipak of Rhianna as you can only see her showers and bare skin which suggests that she is actually nude, which may have been used to attract in the male audience opposed to females. There is no use of clothing shown to been have used on the artist and a distinct red colour scheme used with the red hair and red lipstick.

I will take the idea of using a one picture to pan across the 3 panels of the inside of my digipak in my own work as I think it looks quite effective in terms of outlining the flow of the music and what the artist is trying to get across. On the other hand I do not like the thin font they have used as I do not particularly think it looks appealing and is not bold enough.