Final Magazine Advertisement

Here is the final draft to my magazine advertisement. I used all the conventions of what I drew on the draft of the magazine advertisement. Also, as a convention that I wanted to include in the final outcome of my magazine advertisement, I wanted there to be a short description of the album, therefore, I used quotes from other magazines such as MOJO and Q magazine to illustrate that the album has the approval from other music magazines and industries. This should make my audience feel confident when buying the album if they were to see this advertisement casually. Also, in the right hand bottom corner, it says that the album is available to buy in HMV music stores, hopefully resulting in this shop gaining more business.

Magazine Advertisement - First Draft

In the process of drafting my magazine advertisement, I did a hand drawn draft first and decided to annotate it to put across why I used certain conventions of magazine advertisements. Also, this helps me to relate back to an image when using Photoshop to edit my final draft of my magazine advertisement.

Magazine Advertisement Questionnaire - Results

Due to posting my magazine advertisement questionnaire on the networking websites Facebook and Myspace, I was able to receive my questionnaire results within four days. (I noticed that my results were gained quite promptly when devising a questionnaire for my digipak and music video when posting them on these particular websites, which is why this has become a regular habit). I posted my questionnaire to 18 respondents, however, I only received 15 out of the 18 respondents results. This was not necessarily a problem as I had gained the majority of my audience's feedback, also, 15 is a a more rounded up number of respondents compared to 18. I decided to structure my results in graph form, which makes it appear relatively qualititative, this enables me to make comparisons on which respondents prefer which alternatives.



The results gained from question one on my questionnaire, is that the majority of my respondents prefer my magazine advertisement to consist of the same background as on my digipak. Therefore, this is my first initial idea in the construction of my advertisement. The audience's feedback makes clear that they prefer to see the synergy between the digipak and the magazine advertisement so relate to one another when in the public eye. Personally, I would also agree with the majority of the respondents.

On question two of the questionnaire, the majoirty of my audience feedback answered that my magazine advertisement should also consist of the same font and images as on my digipak. Therefore, I am planning on having a similar layout on my front cover, as on my magazine advertisement. By doing this, I am using my audience's feedback as my guidelines of including the electric guitar alongside the bold, black writing. This will instantaneously make my audience see the link between the digipak front cover and the magazine advertisement.

When I was looking at the generic conventions of magazine advertisements, I noticed that every music album being advertised had a release date on the advertisement, or 'OUT NOW' or 'OUT SOON'. I decided that I definitely want to include one of these three, however I was unsure as to which particular one. So, I added this question on my questionnaire, and it seems that my audience would prefer to see 'OUT NOW'. As a result, I am planning to include this as my magazine advertisement.

Clearly, my audience would like to see what particular bonus tracks will be included on 'The Lightning's' album through the magazine advertisement. Therefore, I will make sure that this is included. However, as 9 people out of the 15 preferred this alternative, I still wish to take into consideration the opinions of the other 6 respondents which did not think that bonus tracks were that important in the advertisement of the album. So, I have decided that I will include only one bonus track on the magazine advertisement instead of the two. This way, I am trying to compromise with both oppositions of my audience's feedback.

My audience feedback has shown me that a teaser type image would not be that necessary. This, I was in fact surprised with, therefore I asked personally one of my respondents who thought that this was not necessary why they thought this, and they replied ''This would not show a correlation between the advertisement and the album cover as the album cover has a simplistic design and layout''. This made me realise that this was in fact true, especially with a front cover such as mine. As a result, I shan't use this convention. I also have come to realise that this convention is very rare, which shows a sign of uniqueness, however, as it is such a rarity, some people may not resemble it as something which should appear on something such as a magazine advertisement.

Exactly as I thought, my audience respondents have made a preference of wanting my magazine advertisement to be similar to my album cover. Even if I did not devise a questionnaire, this is something I would have made a decision on as the majority of the magazine advertisements I have viewed shows a very strong correlation with the album it is advertising.

Magazine Advertisement Questionnaire

To be able to create a magazine advertisement that would be suitable for my target audience, I thought it would be a good idea to gain some audience feedback before the actual creation of it. Therefore, I know what particular conventions to use to gain my audiences attention as they would have had some input on my final draft. Again, I will post this questionnaire on networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook as by doing this, I will be able to gain my audience feedback at a faster rate compared to giving them to people in person to fill out.

Relation to Magazine Advertisement

Today, I was in HMV, and whilst I was glimpsing at albums, I straight away noticed that Seasick Steve's album stood out at me. This was because one of my magazine advertisements analyses was for his album and I immediately noticed the synergy between the actual album cover and the magazine advertisement. This is how I want people to notice the relation between my digipak and my magazine advertisement - the way I did with Seasick Steve.

Representation in Music Video

Due to our A2 exam being based on our coursework productions, the class decided that it was compulsory to begin looking at the different concepts which had a chance of being brought up in the exam. In one section of the exam, we had to focus on either our foundation portfolio or our advanced portfolio when analysing the coursework. There was the possibilities of one of the exam questions being based on genre, narrative, representation, audience and media language. We decided to look at representation in particular, then later on begin analysing the other concepts of our coursework productions. I decided to focus my analysis on my advanced portfolio for the exam due to it being fresh in my mind. I looked at the aspects that I wanted to represent, then looking at how I represented them.

- Typical teenage girl : She could make her own choice as to who she wanted to go out with. She appears dominant. Use of male gaze as shots of her chest are used - also adds to the dating atmosphere (subverts patriarchy) - female dominance.

- Three male stereotypes : Used the idea of the signifier and the signified (Saussure) with the costume designs such as ''glasses'' for the ''geek'' and black eye make up for the ''goth''. Cutting is also used to represent difference between the stereotypes.

- Youth : Swings in the playground represent young activity and having fun. Also cartoon effect is used to represent child like features, however also links in to the genre and the name of the song.

- Class/region : Represents urban area when walking down the streets as streets are relatively wide with buildings in the background (wide shots used) and people walking casually down the road.

- Sexuality and relationships : Appearing that straight relationships as the norm as there is no sign of homosexuality (two shots used to emphasize this)(romantic effect also used to represent the norm for the use of romance in heterosexual relationships).

- Ethnicity : Coincidence that the ''Superman'' was of the same ethnicity as the protagonist female character.


Many of the ways in which we emphasized our representations was through the idea of the ''signifier'' and the ''signified''. This idea was developed by Ferdinand Saussure in which the signifier was the physical aspect of something and the signifiedis the meaning attached to the signifier which makes people immediately understand what the physical aspect is associated with.

Roland Barthes took Ferdinand de Saussure's ideas and consolidated onto them. He called the way these signifiers were organised and put together the ''symbolic code'' if the text.

Using, Challenging and Developing Conventions - Album Cover

-In order to evaluate the way in which I have used, challenged and developed conventions of real media products on my album cover, I thought it would be influential if I compared my final album cover to that of Avril Lavigne's album cover "the best damn thing" as she was my main inspirational music artist of a pop/rock genre.

Using and developing conventions...

-Firstly, both album covers have a similarity of using a bland coloured background to make the actual album cover elements more unambiguous to the audience, which resulted to be very successful, according to the comments I received off of my peers in my media lesson. A few quoted that "it caught my eye subconsciously" and "I noticed the graphic use of art instantaneously". This made me feel confident about using this particular convention from Avril Lavigne's album on my own album cover. Also, I did not realise until evaluating my album cover and comparing it to Avril Lavigne's album "the best damn thing", that the font used on my album cover for the name of the band, "The Lighning", was also similar to that of Avril Lavigne's font of her name. This is a relatively bland type of font, however it could be a way of illustrating the originality and individuality of both the "The Lightning" and Avril Lavigne as an inspirational teenager pop/rock princess. Another factor which is similar for both album covers, is the way in which both covers stick to the specific colourscheme, which only consists of a few colours. This can relate to the theme of the music genre, as rock music generally uses a few instruments on stage when performing in front of an audience, which is on most occassions a set of drums a possibly 2 guitars at the maximum. Therefore, each colour could represent a musical instrument. Additionally, the parental advisory label which appears in the left hand bottom corner of "The Lightning's" album cover is a well known convention on many album covers of all genres. Therefore, I decided to use this convention as a way of making the album cover appear more realistic.

Challenging conventions...

-Ways in which there is a constrasting view, is the fact that in my album cover for "The Lighning", there is the use of graphic art, whereas Avril Lavigne's album cover only consists of an image of herself with a straight face, which could also be considered as ''moody', which is a stereotypical portrayal of teenagers. However, usually on most pop/rock album covers, there is never only one image of something which represents the band, which I decided to demonstrate on mine. This was my attempt of challenging the conventions of real album covers of a pop/rock genre as this is a very differentiating convention I decided to experiment with. I decided to put this into practise as it would make apparent instantaneously the genre of music of my album. Also, I wanted to see if it would attract people whos preferred genre of music is pop/rock as this would not be the average pop/rock cover. I have come to also realise that Avril Lavigne is also challenging the conventions of a pop/rock album cover as the front cover is focused on her, especially with the white background to make her stand out even more, this is a convention used by mainly R'n'B albums such as Taylor Swift's ''Fearles'' and Rihanna's ''Good Girl Gone Bad''.

To conclude...

-Overall, I feel that the creation of my album cover has worked relatively well with the combination of my music genre, also in using the conventions from real media products of the same music genre to help "The Lightning" progress into a successful and youthful band.