Magazine Advert Construction

Advert Construction

By Charlotte Lloyd

1) To construct our magazine advert, we decided to use photoshop CS6. We started by opeing up a document of 850 by 1250 pixels. We chose this size as it replicates roughly the size and shape of an a4 page, which is what our advert would be within a standard magazine. We decided to chnage the background colour to black, as this is what we intended to have as the main backing colour.

2) The next thing we did was to insert what was going to be our bulck of the advert. We seleted a photo of Harry (the main singer) and cropped his head and shoulders away from the background. We then pasted this into our advert and then decreased the opacity and saturation, turning the image of harry into a white sillouette.
We was trying to link our advert with our music video and re-create the shadow affect that all the singers give off through out the whole video. We was trying to make the poster look iconic and simplistic. This increases the likely hood of our poster being remerable.

3) The next step we did was insert our title. We decided the best idea was to keep the continuity between our products and increase brand loyalty, hense we decided to use the same title we did on the front of our DigiPak, as we did on the front of our advert. We are trying to sell a brand therefore everything must match seemlesly, reducing confusing with the audience. We pasted in our title and alligned it to the left. We decided to keep the colours as white and red. We wanted to keep basic, simple colours and patterns to have a simplistic affect making it stand out to our audience.

4) The next job to do was add in the information we was trying to sell. We had to ensure our information was straight to the pint and catchy. If it was to long then our audience wouldnt read it and just skim through our advert. We inserted a text box, writing the cruital information such as the date when it is released and in what format the album is avaliable. We decided to use Abadi MT Condesend Extra Bold font as it fit perfectly wqithin our simplistic theme. We decided to use different sizes for different information, connoting the importance of the details.

5) With the all the main details enetered, we now wanted to add a few design feautures to ensure our advert looked professional. For the title of the album 'These Streets' we decided to have it in bold font, matching the colour of the title (continuing with the colour scheme) and centred, to attract attention. We used a colour overlay, then the colour picker tool, and slected the title, ensuring they were identical colours.

We also added feautures such as lines and circles to make our advert look more professional. We used the shape tool to insert all the feautures. We ensured all the shapes were on different layers, so if we needed we could move a single shape at a time. This turned out to be really useful. We kept the lines black matching the detaling text and changed the circles to match the title colour, again using thc olour picker tool.

6) To add a few finishing touches we added social media links. We added a facebook logo, instagram logo and a twtter logo. We did this by saving all the images from google, then inserting them into our advert document. We then re-sized them so they were all approiate sizes, matching each other. We then used the text tool to insert a contact email for Paolo Nutini. Again another feature adding to make our advert look more professional.

Feedback:

The feedback we recieved from our first draft incldued many positives and many negatives.

Firstly people really liked the idea of matching the shadows from the video and making Harry look like a sillouette, however they do not feel like they will know him well enough, or he is iconic enough to just have an outline of his shape. They would not be able to tell the diffrence between whether it was Harry or one of the other band memebers. Secondly people felt it was not professional enough. There were features missing such as sponsors from companies such as iTunes or HMV. Thirdly people thought we took the simplistic idea to far. The font was boring and nothing caught your eye as everything was to simple. None of the detalis or information stood out and caught the audiences eyes. People said they would just flick past it in a magazine.

However despite the negative we recieved there were also many positives. Firstly people really liked the colour scheme of matching the titles together and the continiuity that ran throughout the advert. Secondlly everyone loved the title and the coloursand fonts used for it. It matches our genre and album really well. Thridly people really like the dsign features we had added. The circles either side o fthe album name and the lines underlining and braking up the information about the album. They said if there wernt lines it would be quite hard to read and take in, so adding these lines were a really good idea. Lastly people thought adding the social media links also were an added extra to making the advert look even more professional.

Action Plan:

From the feedback we have created an action plan of what and what not to included in our next advert.

Keep the title
Keep the colour scheme
Change the background
Change the font
Keep the social media links
Keep the design features

Final First Draft of Magazine Advert:

1) To construct our second magazine advert, we decided to use photoshop CS6 again. We started by opeing up a document of 850 by 1250 pixels. We chose this size as it replicates roughly the size and shape of an a4 page, which is what our advert would be within a standard magazine. We decided to chnage the background colour to white, as this is what we intended to have as part of the background, by lowering the opacicity of the image going on top of it.

2) The next step we did was insert the selected image we wanted for the background image. We again decided to use an image of Harry (the main singer) so that people recognise the link between video and DigiPak. We streched the image to size, then decided to position him alligned to the left. Therefore we now had a space with a plain background to add in the title and details without worrying about a colour that will work over several different backgrounds. We also used th magic wand tool, to select all the bricks in the background, then we increased the brightness and constrast, making the bricks slighty more whiter, making it easier for black text to be written over it.

3) The next step we did was to insert the title. Previously people really liked our title and we had a lot f positive feedback from it therefore we have kept the same title the second titme round. We also wanted to keep continuity between DIgiPak and Advert so therefore again we have used the same title on both. However thi time around we decided to replace the white colour of 'Paolo' with black. We decided that black and red was a better colour scheme and matched the DigiPak better, again creating another link between the two. We also believe it is easier to read the black on the brick then it is the white. Therefore we did this by using the magic wand tool too select on the 'Paolo' and then selected image, adjustments and the replace colour.

4) Next we added the album title 'These Streets.' We decided to keep the title the same as we did preivously as this was something our audience really liked. We used the same font of Abadi MT Condesend Extra Bold and agin used the colour picker to change the coulor of the font to match the red of 'Nutini.' This helps reinforce our colour scheme throughout. We placed 'These streets' just below the artists name. Therefore you can now clearly tell what is the artists name and what is the album name. We allowed enough spacing between the two and lines up the titles witht he lines in the brick background, making it look smarter.

5) Next we added all the details relating to the album release. Songs that are feautring on the album, what forms the album comes in and a few reviews about the album. We did this by inserting a text box, then selecting the font we wanted to use. This was the hardest thing to decide as there are so many avaible. We had a few ideas including Bangla MN,Candara and Gurmukhi MN. However we concluded to using Abadi MT Condesend Extra Bold. This was because we feel it matched the rest of the poster and fit well with our theme. It was a bold catchy font, catching peoples eye. We learnt that from our last advert the font was not eye-catching therefore people flicked past it, therefore we believe we have acheieved the look we want this time round.

6) We also decided to keep the design features we made from last time. Everyone really liked the feautres we added last time, therefore we decided to recreate the feautures we used first time round. We added the two circles either side of the album title 'These Steets.' Again we used the colour picker to match the colour identically. We also replicated the lines we used to break up the bits of information regarding the release. However this time around we also used the colour picker and changed the lines to match the title, again bringing together our colour scheme. This time we also added white boxes behind the text to mke it easier to read. We used the shape tool to create them, then reducded the opacity so you could still see the image background behind it. We also added a 5 star review using the shape tool. This adds to making the advert look more professional.

7) To complete our new advert, we recreated the social media links, everyone loved on our first advert. We downloaded an image of facebook, instagram and twitter and insrted them into our advert. We resized them to an appropriate size and then alligned them to the left bottom corner of the page. We also then used a text box, to create a link to 'paolonutini.com' again making the advert a little more professional. We also downloaded a iTunes logo. We aligned this to the right bottom corner. This tells the audience that the album is also avaible to download on iTunes.

Final Advert: