Magazine Advertisement

RESEARCH: Looking over Key terms for typical codes and conventions of Music Magazines

Researching Music Magazines
I was given a task where I have been looking over different codes and convention within a Magazine advert. The most typical conventions in which I would come across quite often would be things such as the artists name, album name, an image, the record label, social networking links, a review and the release date. All of the conventions I have stated above I will try to include within my very own music advert. From looking over different magazine advert I have saw  broad types of design of how labels have decided to structure their magazine adverts, From this I have still decided to stick to the simple design of a music advert where the picture of the artist is the main feature on the advert. Below are a few examples of existing music magazine adverts.

Clash

Clash is quite a popular magazine advert within the music industry. It has quite a broad genre selection that it advertises, for example it advertises genres such as rap and hip hop with artists such as A$AP Rocky, Jay z and Kid ink but then it goes to a more pop with artists suck as Ellie golding and Ella Eyre. The design of the music magazine i prefer to others. The reason why i like this design is because the picture is obviously the main feature so it automatically draws certain audiences in.Also this colour scheme they have gone for feel is appropriate for the target audience and it fits in well with the picture. I like the fact that clay basically has a split target audience in terms of gender. Clash magazine is much more suited to my target audience as the majority of their audience is in the 21-25 age range. 


Kerrang
Kerrang is another music magazine in which focuses on rock music and includes artists such as Green Day. Once researched the target audience i found out that the target audience for gender is pretty much split which is more convenient for me as the target audience for chiddy bang is also split in terms of gender. The layout for Kerrang is similar in how i plan on doing my music magazine. I plan on having big title for my artist and a picture of my artists basically taking up the whole of the magazine. 


Typical codes and conventions for a successful music magazine
Mast head - The mast head is the title block for the magazine, it usually is the most eye catching convention on the page and has to be the most distinctive feature.
Menu - The list of contents that goes into a music magazine.
pugs - To catch the readers eye they are well placed. A pug is on the top left hand corner of the music magazine usually a long side with the logo and prices.
Secondary lead -  a sneak peak of what the magazine has inside usually and extract from an article.
sidebar - an additional box next to the main feature of the magazine. 
Splash - main story of the front page accompanied with the headline and a photograph
Spread - a story that covers more than one page.
Stand Frist - sentence after a headline and before an article begins that sells a feature to a reader
Strapline - Subheading
Tag - categorisering the readers interest in a story by using a word or phrase to engage them e.g. sensational, new, exclusive.
Box-out - a coloured box behind some text, Usually used to make the text stand out.
By line - name of the reporter. 
Caption - text under a picture explaining it.
Credits - credits of people such as the authors. 

Looking at my chosen artist in music magazines

To the right is the front cover of a Music magazine called DIY and it features my chosen artist Chiddy Bang on the front. From looking over exciting music magazine adverts of how my artists are portrayed it has given me a strong idea in how i would like make my Magazine advert look like. Firstly i plan on getting an image like the one in the magazine on the right and making it also the main feature on the magazine advert. I also plan on having a heading such as the one where it says Chiddy bang at the bottom of the advert, the reason why i would like to have a heading such as this is because the style fits in all with the artist and it looks classy and effective. Something that i would change if i was to design this magazine advert would be i wouldn't have the Magazines name as hidden behind the artists such as they have done. I would maybe made the picture positioned more to the left so i would be able to write the magazine title on the top right and it will be able to be clearly seen. I also plan on inputting some advertising companies names just to make the magazine look full of information and professional.

Making of my own music magazine
I decided that the best form of practice for the making of my actual music magazine would be to go and make a practice magazine advert. Below are images showing how i went about making my music magazine practice advert. 

Firstly i went onto Adobe Photoshop CS6. For the magazine advert to look like a professional magazine cover i had to change the size of the canvas. i changed the width to 333 and height to 500 centimetres this is the actual size for magazine adverts. The way to change the size of the canvas is to click on File > New and the window displayed below will appear. 

Once i had the correct canvas size i imported the picture shown below. This was done by simply clicking on to File > Import > Images from device and then clicking on the file name of the picture. As you can see from the picture to the right my selected image has been imported.  

Once imported i began to add titles. I did this by simply clicking on the title box which is shown as a T on the side menu bar. Once i had clicked onto this i then experimented with different styles by simply changing the font colour and type. As you can see the titles are positioned beneath my artists. From my title i selected the colour blue, and then i also added a arc function to give a better effect to my titles

Once i had selected the font and the font colour i decided to then add an arc onto the style of the text. 

Once i was happy with my titles. I then moved onto inserting stars onto my music add. I did this by importing a image file like i did before and then using the magic tool to make it blend into my background. 

I then inserted more stars so i could pretend that it was given five stars from critics. Once i had inserted the stars i then inserted more titles and information of which you would find on a typical music magazine advert. As you can see from the image in the right that is my finished practice music magazine advert. 

My finished Music Magazine Advert

Below is the finished version of my Music Magazine Advert. Underneath the magazine advert is the process in which i went about to complete this music magazine. 

Process of completing my music magazine.

Firstly to start of the process of completing my Music magazine advert i opened up adobe photoshop CS6. Once opened i selected the size of and international paper in which is the size of a typical magazine advert. As you can see once i clicked this a blank canvas will then appear. 

The next step once I inserted a blank canvas was me inserting different layers. The First layer in which i inserted was a plain black layer so that i can clearly see the effects in which i was going to input, for example i added an outer glow as you can see from the shadows displayed on the black images. Once i added this layer and the black background i then added another layer in which i had a picture of my two artists walking away. This was quite effective i thought. Then once i inserted the picture, i changed the colour and hue levels. This enabled a black and white effect and emphasised the more dominant colours. One of the colours in which was emphasised was the tops in which my artists were wearing and the bush on their left.

Once I had completed the steps above I then moved onto the next stage. This was to import  a brick design in which i think would work quite well with my picture. I then changed the brightness and hue level of the bricks just as I did was the image of my artists so that it blended well together. Also the outer glow in which i previously created worked well with the bricks style.

I then added titles onto my work. I created my artists titles bigger then the album name but not by too much as they were both main points. I created the titles with a small border, i did this by increasing the stroke levels. I then also changed the colour so that it match the background and the rest of the pictures.

Within this Image you can see more features in which i have added. I inserted tour dates the same way I did the previous titles and then added a virgin records logo as the artists are signed to them. I also added a small "available on iTunes" as this is what you would find on a typical magazine advert.