Magazine Advertisementsof indie/alternative band CDs

James Thompson

Exhibit 1: Kings of Leon

• This advertisement follows the conventions of featuring the name of the band as the main title, as well as the announcement of ‘THE NEW ALBUM’ and the date of its release.

• The advertisement refutes the convention of featuring the band on the album, as well as having a lot of open space with not much filling it.– This may be because the artists want to portray the band,

not as individual artists but as a mood/feeling/tone and that their music is a medium they use to express this. This is a completely opposite approach to the pop industry which very much attempts to sell the artists as individuals.

– This also makes the advertisement very minimalistic and thereby easy to read (which may represent the artists).

• This minimalistic design is shown to be conventional of the genre in the following exhibits.

Exhibit 2: Kasabian• This advertisement follows the conventions of

having the band name as the title, announces the fact that an album is being released and also features contact information in the form of a website.

• This advertisement is similar to exhibit 1 in the sense that it is very minimalistic, only including as little information as possible.

• The logo which takes up the majority of the advert is ambiguous but we can just about tell that it is a person wearing some sort of mask. This in turn makes the artists come across as quite ambiguous

Exhibit 3: Bombay Bicycle Club• This advert follows the conventions of having the

bands name as the title, announcing the album, providing a date and also contact information.

• This advert makes use of more of the space than the previous 2 however it does not feature a significant amount of more text, making it easy to view, likewise to the others.

• The vintage looking picture in the background is very contrasting to pop adverts which might have bright colours and high definition images. The retro vibe this image provides makes the artists seem a lot more deep and thoughtful – as well as applying to the ‘hipster’ target audience.

• The calm blue font colour on top of the low saturation image makes the text stand out quite well as well as making it easy to read.

Exhibit 4: Biffy Clyro• This advert follows the conventions of having the

band name as the main title, as well as the album name, date of release and contact information.

• This advert shares the minimalistic convention of the genre shown by all the previous exhibits.

• The image of the animals fighting underwater is very different to the name of the album/single: ‘Mountains’. This shows that adverts of this genre do not always take an illustrative approach and that it is not uncommon to have the visuals of the advertisement to completely contrast the album being advertised. This may have been done to make the advert eye catching to its audience.

• The fact that the background image appear to be painted provides specific connotations. A painting takes time, hard work and skill to complete to a good standard. This suggest that the music on the album has been written well and thoughtfully, unlike some pop music which is very basic and many would consider distasteful