This is my final design for my magazine advert promoting my unsigned artist's upcoming release. I am now going to talk about how I created my magazine advert in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

First of all I opened my digipack album cover into Photoshop. I then made the size of the canvas bigger and a rectangle shape. I made sure that the extension to the canvas would be added on top of the existing digipack cover. This way my album cover would be at the base of the rectangle with a white section above it that I could use, instead of the extension being added either side of the original album cover making the album cover in the middle.

Next I used the paint tool to make paint the extension. When it came to choosing the colour I decided to use the colour select tool by clicking on an area of the existing sky on the album cover. I came to this decision because I thought it would be a good idea to continue the colour of the sky in the extension of the canvas as this would make the magazine advert flow and look professional. I thought using the same colour as the original sky would be a better idea than using a new colour and seeing an obvious difference from where the original album cover stops and the extension to the canvas was added.

When I finished painting the sky I selected the layer of the text "The Next Forever" and decided to move it to the top of the canvas. I decided to this because it is predominantly the most important piece of text of the magazine advert. As we read from the top, left to right, to the bottom, I thought by placing the artists name at the top would make this the first piece of text the audience would read. I then added a new piece of text and selected the same font as I had used in the artists name to create a recurring theme that the audience could recognise. From audience feedback of my original album cover, they stated that they liked the colour of the text, so I decided to use this colour again in the new text. After typing out the words "Presents" and "Upstream", I highlighted the text and clicked on the colour squares at the bottom, this opened a new box with a colour wheel. I used the colour selection tool and clicked on the original text of "The Next Forever" to get the same colour. This then made the new text the same colour as the existing text, again reinforcing the recurring theme of the font and colour scheme. I think this also makes it more professional looking and appropriate for my artist's genre as using a variety of primary colours would look a bit tacky and misleading of the genre of my chosen artist's music.

After studying existing magazine adverts from music magazines that are promoting a new release, such as the picture to the right, I discovered that quite frequently they include a rating system, such as the 5 star rating system. This is where well known companies (in the case of music magazine adverts it is often other famous magazines such as Kerrang! NME, Mojo, Q Magazine etc.) give a rating out of 5 stars that represents how good they think the release is, 1/5 stars being the worst and 5/5 stars being the best. This may persuade the audience to buy the new release if it received good

ratings, as it would make them think it must be very good to receive such good reviews.

This is why I decided to include the 5 star rating system in my music magazine advert as it would make the new release seem more appealing to my target audience and a high rating will grab their attention. After research and browsing through a selection of music magazines including Kerrang! NME, Q Magazine, Mojo, Vibe and Uncut, I short-listed the magazines that would be the most appropriate for the genre of music of my chosen artist. I thought that the most appropriate ratings to include in my magazine advert would be those from “NME” and “Mojo”. I decided on using ratings from these two magazines would be the most suitable for the genre of my chosen artist’s music as a number of articles they focused on in their magazines were acoustic singer-song writers. I thought that giving my chosen artist a 4/5 star rating from both NME and Mojo would be the most suitable.

I thought that 5/5 would seem a bit biased and could make some readers be a bit suspicious. I decided on giving it 4/5 stars because this would be a bit more believable but is also a very good rating so may persuade some readers to buy the new release. I then used the shape tool in Photoshop to draw a star shape. I then duplicated the star 3 times so there was 4 stars altogether and aligned them neatly. I did this process twice for ratings of both music magazines. I then used the text tool to write “NME” and “Mojo”. I used a simple “Times New Romans” font with the same colour as the previous text to write the magazine names. I thought that it would be a good idea to have the magazine names in bold so they would stand out and would be easy to read, however on reflection it stood out a bit to much and drew attention away from the artists name. Consequently I decided to not have the magazine names in bold. I then thought that writing this text in caps lock would look good as it would make the text bold, but not stand out too much, drawing attention away from the artist’s name. When it came to positioning the quotes and 4/5 star ratings I thought that opposite sides of the magazine advert would look good.

Next I invented a quote that could go with the star rating of the music magazines. Studying existing music magazine adverts I found that short, snappy and powerful one worded adjectives were the most effective way of describing the new release so I decided to use the word “Beautiful”, as the quote from NME. I also thought that it would be a good idea to use a more descriptive quote from Mojo magazine to support the theme of this new release being something that you really need to buy. I thought that quoting Mojo saying “The sound of 2011”, would be a really powerful statement. As my target audience is made up of 13-24 year old males and females, an important aspect of this age range might be being up to date with the latest music.

I then used the text tool to write “Brand New Single” on the canvas. I used the same font and colour as I had used to write “The Next Forever”. I decided to write “Brand New Single”, as I found this was a common feature in existing magazine adverts to emphasise on the fact that it is a “new” release. I think that this is effective way to grab the audience’s attention. Also as previously stated, as my target audience is made up of 13-24 year old males and females, I think that the concept of “new” and having the latest things is quite an important aspect to them. An example of this can be seen on the music magazine advert to the right: “THE NEW ALBUM IN STORES MARCH 24TH”.

Another common feature of music magazines that I discovered, especially of those advertising a Single release, was including a “Bonus Track”. I thought it would be a good idea to advertise a bonus track in my magazine advert. This may encourage the audience to buy The Next Forever’s’ single, as you get a bonus track, which they might see as a good buy. I decided to position the “Brand New Single” text just above the sea horizon, as I thought it almost acted like an underlining of the text. I thought it was also a good position because the colour of the blue/grey sky worked well with the red text. I decided to position “Featuring bonus track: Butterflies” directly below in caps lock in a Times New Romans font.

Having a quick analysis of what I had done so far I realised that I had included the name of the single “Upstream”, twice, one at the top of the magazine advert and one on the sign that Lewis is holding. I realised that I had not yet included a release date on my magazine advert, which is one of the most important aspects as it tells the audience when they can purchase the new release. I decided to erase the text on the sign Lewis was holding and replace it with the album release date. I thought that this was an interesting and quirky way of advertising the date and also added a bit of variation to the digipack album cover, so that my magazine advert and digipack cover were a bit different, but also recognisably similar for my target audience. From online research and looking through existing music magazines I found that typically big releases often included release dates that were unusual and bold. For example 11/11/2011, or 01/02./03. I liked the idea of this so decided on the release date to be 1/1/2011. This date also relates to the quote I have included from Mojo “The sound of 2011.” As the release date is the first day of the year it could represent that this is going to be the big release of the year. This could help persuade my target audience to buy the single.

Another important aspect of a magazine advert is to include information on where they can buy the single from. A lot of existing magazine adverts I looked at stated that the product was available from “All good record stores”, and available for “Digital download”. I decided to include this in my advert to make it look professional but also to tell the audience where they can purchase the single from. I then used the text tool to write “Available in all good record stores and Itunes from 01/01/11”. I used the same font as I had used to write “The Next Forever”. For the colour I used the colour select tool and took a sample from the colour of the sky and made the text this colour. I thought it would look good if I placed the information so it ran along the bottom of the magazine advert. I came to this decision because this is where you find the purchasing information in the majority of music magazine adverts.