Planning individual magazine advert

A magazine advert is important to promote an artists album because it helps to create awareness of them album, which creates a buzz around the artists and the new release. By creating this buzz, the audience are likely to look into the artist to trying to find out more information and songs by them. The advert also gives the audience some hints and clues of what the music within the album will be like and what the should expect. Additionally, it reveals the artists style and characteristics by showing what they are wearing and their look. I am going to be planning a magazine advert for my artist to promote her new album with her no1 single in it. It is important to effectively plan this to makes sure I include genre conventions and ensure the advert appeals to the target audience, in order to effectively promote her album.

     Magazine adverts are important to help promote an artists album because it helps to show the artists personalities and gives the audience a sneak peek of what their artists music will be like.

        In my magazine advert i have decided to use primarily pastel colours in my advert. The writing is going to be in two different shades of blue, her name "Sharna Rae", the album name "Illuminate" and the number 1 single name "wings" is going to be in a darker shade of pastel blue because these are the most important words on the advert therefore needed to be highlighted to stand out to the audience. This will appeal to the audience as thee most important information will stand out to them, making it easy for them to quickly scan over the advert and find all relevant information. Also this darker colour of blue has connotations of tranquility, implying that Sharna and her music are quite calm and easy going. These connotations will appeal to Sharna's target audience because it revels partly what her music style will be like within the album.  The other writing/words "New debute album" and "featuring no1 single" are going go be in a lighter shade of pastel blue. By doing this it highlights that this information is not as important but it is still needed to make the writing make sense if you read it as a whole. By having the lighter blue it implies that this writing is fading into the background, which could represent our artist as quite shy and reserved. This is conventional of indie artists because without their music they can be seen as innocent and not outgoing, but use their music as a way of being confident and expressing themselves. Also I am going to have a dull grey sky background because I think this shows that her music is based on past experiences that may be a little negative and the artist was unhappy at this time in her life. However, this is contrasted by a fresh looking green colour for the grass, which further connotes that although the artist was going through a negative time in her life she has now learnt from this and can look back at it as an experience and learning curve for her.

       One convention that I am going to include in my magazine advert is the iconography of the guitar, this shows our audience that she can actually play an instrument and therefore has pure talent. Unlike other 'stars' that use auto tune and have other people create their music for them. It also portrays to the audience that she writes and composes her own music, this will make her more respectable as it highlights that her music is purely her and her own original style. This helps to promote Sharna's music because it reveals a clue of what her music will be like within the album and implies she will be playing the guitar in a song. It is conventional for indie artists to have a type of instrument in their music because they are much more about showing their own natural talent and not an auto tuned version of themselves.

      The image used in the magazine advert is a long shot of Sharna. In this shot she is holding her guitar tightly in one hand, and is standing up straight, but looking down away from the camera with some of her hair falling slightly over her face. This implies to the audience that she is quite a shy and insecure person as she is trying to cover her face and isn't making eye contact with the camera. Suggesting she is not confident with her facial appearance and could lack some self esteem. This makes the audience feel sympathetic towards her as many of the target age group would have been through confidence issues at some point, which makes them able to relate to her and share some emotions. However, the fact that she is standing up straight and hold her guitar tightly suggests that she uses her music as a way to express herself and be confident in who she is. This helps promote her music, because if it shows her as normally quite shy but confident in her music then it implies to the audience that she values and thinks her music is quite good, encouraging them to listen to it.
      By having her standing in an open field with green grass and a grey sky it suggests to the audience that she is a very open and accepting person, the open field could represent her mind. Anyone can walk into a public open field, suggesting she is open to every type of person. This makes her highly relatable to the audience because they would feel automatically accepted by her even though they don't actually know her.  Furthermore, it portrays that there is two sides to her, the duller grey side which is not very confident but then the green brighter side which is more confident and represents Sharna when she is performing/composing her music. As mentioned before it is conventional of indie artists to use their music as a way of escaping their insecurities and expressing themselves confidently.

      I decided to put Sharna herself just off centre because I think it displays her as a very humble person, even though it is her magazine advert she does not have to be the centre of attention. By representing her like this is displays her as a likable person and approachable, this will appeal to the target audience of my indie artist because if they relate to her as a person it helps them then to gain a better understanding of her music style and lyrics. It is conventional for indie artists to want their target audience to understand them as a person and convey their personality and experiences through their music, they often do this by presenting themselves a particular way and having primarily a narrative based music video. I put her name in big writing at the top of the page, just above her head because promotionally it is important for the audience to know the name of the artist they are looking at, also it makes it easy for the audience to link together and remember her name and face. The album name and single name are in the same size writing (slightly smaller then the artists name) This is because this is still very important information and needs to be noticed by the audience but cant over power her actual name. The rest of the writing is in an even smaller font because it is still needed but isn't anything that the audience actually need to remember. This text is more to make the advert make sense.

      I found planning my individual magazine advert and taking pictures of my sketches very helpful because it helped me to map out my ideas and see what worked and what didn't. I had a picture of what I wanted the advert to look like in my head, and this helped me to physically see what this would look like. It also helped me to consider the specific various colours that I am going to use In the advert, whereas before I was just thinking blue or black and not thinking about the various shades available. Also now when it comes to creating my advert of photo shop I will have a clear layout and plan of what I want my advert to look like. Furthermore, when I do my photos for the advert I will have a clear idea of what I want my artist to do and how I want them to position themselves, because I have already planned the position and look I want her to have.