Magazine info

The New Musical Express (better known as the NME) is a popular music magazine in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 14 November 1952 edition. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music magazine. It has circulation figures of over 30,000 per 6 months, which may be on the decline, but reflect the whole magazine industry as a whole. It still holds itself at the forefront of musical magazines. It has however got over 1.6 million hits on its internet site, which shows that it still holds great regard in the music world.

As a magazine, it specialises in all things rock, and most recently Indie has become one of the most spoke about genres within it. With the amount of people reading it, it would be the ideal magazine to promote my indie band as my target demographic will be reading the copy. Its important that I make an advert that will be able to stand out when people are flicking through the pages.

Advert Planning Stage

To keep the brand identity going, this is going to be the main image of my advert. Also the same font style will be used. I will be putting the band name large as to promote the band more than is done on the digipak.

The features will be the reviews from different musical people, and also the release date and stock retailers will be listed on the advertisment.

Advert - Wretch 32 urban

I have chosen to analyse an advert by someone who is new to the mainstream scene. Also, this artist is British and part of the new real English sound. This is something that my band has in common. Wretch 32 is a rapper from England.

The main image is of the artist himself, putting him at the forefront, being the main focus of the advert. The writing is in a graffiti style, which looks good, continuing the font style I employed in the digipak. The graffiti gives the advert a "street" feel, which is continued with the drawing of a block of flats, iconic of suburban England. The white and pale blue background act as the sky and atmosphere surrounding the artist and the block of flats. This is the true environment of modern music and is represented especially well in this advert.

The black banner that goes across the advert is informing the public of both the artists name and the album name. This is informative and also eye-catching because of the contrast between the pale sky and the dark banner. All of the other parts inside the banner are informative such as the release date. This is a very important aspect because people need to know when they can get their hands on the album and the date must stick in their head. They are more likely to forget about the album all together if the release date isn't clear.

The final aspect is the places or retailers that the album will be available from. This inks to the release date and involves the audience, as it hints as to making them buy the album for themselves.

Advert Analysis - Manic Street

For preparation into creating the advert, I decided to choose an advert for an indie band. This band is Manic Street Preachers, a well regarded and main stream band in the public eye. I like the simplistic layout, with an image down the right and all the text down the left. It is ordered well and easy to read. Also, the colour scheme is simplistic with the black and white. The main image is striking and links in with the name of the album.

The two most interesting features of the advert are the reviews and the Itunes parts. The reviews are little comments, positively speaking about the artist by some of the leading names in the music world, NME and the times magazine. These reviews are seen as very reliable to people looking at the advert, as they are well esteemed and respected opinions. These are encouraging people to listen to the album.

The Itunes aspect is promoting the new and upcoming medium of listening to music, downloading. This makes it relevant to its audience, as the Internet and downloading off Itunes is fast becoming one of the main ways to listen to music, highlighted by the fact they now have top 10 charts based on downloads.

What is an advert?

An adverts primary job is to sell the thing that it is advertising. In music, this means selling a concert or a CD of the artist. This is a very important way of getting people to know who you are and recognise your face. When the advertisement is seen, people generally remember the name, will go home and find the song on the Internet or buy the album.

This is of the up most importance to an artist because, even if they come up with the prefect song, have the perfect voice and the perfect lyrics - it doesn't matter at all if nobody knows about it and nobody listens to it. This is the job of marketing and advertising.

Adverts can be put in Magazines, newspapers, billboards etc and most notably in recent years is the Internet. Now your advertisement and artist can be accessed globally, by anyone around the world, which has given advertising a whole new lease of life and is still paramount to any aspiring artist.

With this I will look to promote my unsigned band as not many people have heard of them and they have relied on word of mouth from some of their small, local gigs. To go with my digipak and video, i need to produce an ascetically pleasing and persuasive advertisement about the CD.

Audience feedback on digipak

I asked the same group of people who looked at my video to tell me what they thought of the digipak. I asked them all to watch the video once more and then look at the digipak to see if they felt it represented the song and video equally well.

There were 14 people (7 girls and 7 boys) that I asked all within the age group of 17-21.

The general feedback I got was very positive. The group especially liked the images and font for the front and back plus the CD. they felt that it suited the style of the video and the song very well. Also, they liked the sizing of the band name and song title as they were noticeable, however not overbearing on the main image.

They did however think that the images inside told the story, but were a little boring. Some commented that i could have added another feature to my digipak by adding lyrics into the middle. While this would interact with the audience well, I didn't think it would be necessary because I wanted the story to be told, and wouldn't have sufficient space for narrative and lyrics.

Digipak explanation

The digipak is all based upon the music video. Also, the brand identity is made by the reuse of the image of the protagonist resting against railings. The railings symbolise the "urban" sound to the band, because of the colloquial slur to the lead voice.

In continuation from this, I have picked out the main front image as the image that is shown straight away in the video. The audience can identify with this from the first second in the video. The front cover has the artists name and song title on it. As i said before, I have used a font called "Teen Spirit" which is meant to look like graffiti/spray paint, adding to the urban-street style. I decided that because the band isn't well known enough, this alone wouldn't sell the CD to people. For this reason I made the band name fairly small and the image to fill most of the space. I did however make the song title big so that it would stick in the minds of the audience far better. The idea on this was that the audience could listen to the song and then find out the name of the band, meaning they could search for other songs by the band.

The other images are just snip its from the music video. These images represent different stages of the lyrics/narrative and song. The black and white images are of a real contrast to the bright ones, so that it is apparent there are changes in the mood of the narrative. Also, the pint of beer symbolises the true meaning of the video and the message of sensible drinking it is sending out to the inexperienced 18 year old people that its aimed at.

The back of the digipak is meant to be an eye-catching funny moment, right at the end of the narrative. The whole digipak acts as a brief overview of the music video. This is why the very first and last images that are shown in the video, are the very first and last images of the digipak. This is kind of like a flip book of a story which can be interpreted however the person wants to. The same font style as used to show the name of the band and song, as well as legal things like bar code and year of publish. Another addition is the band website which is informational and interactive with its audience as they can log on and get involved with the band.

The CD is the same image as the front of the digipak, which is fairly conventional in modern times. I have the song title written on in the same graffiti style font as the front of the digipak.

Digipak

I have completed my digipak. Here is a visual look at it, the digipak is in order, with the Front cover first, followed by the rest of the pack (in order) and finally the back cover. Also, at the end is the CD design I have selected.

I will explain these all in the next post.

Font - "Teen Spirit"

I was looking for a font that would suit the urban theme, maybe a spray paint or graffiti effect. I felt that this would look most in keeping with the ideas I had earlier. So i typed into the search engine 2d graffiti font and the first website that came up was:


From this image i picked the font named "Teen Spirit" and will add this to my digipak and see the results. If i think it looks good and enhances the cover then I will look to replicate it in the Advertisement as well.