EG - Our Magazine Advert & Audience Feedback

Our Magazine Advert

We decided to stick with the theme of using cartoons which beth and I drew ourselves, for the album advert and the digipak cover. This means that our digipak and magazine advert tie together as a package.
As the album is for a compilation of Gorillaz remixes, we chose to draw a picture of a DJ at a mixing table, which ties the theme of remixes and the imagery of the advert together.

After researching the existing examples of magazine adverts from Q magazine, we narrowed down what need to be on the adverts. This included:

• The band or artists name  
• The album title
• A release date
• Available formats
• A web address
• Advertises songs it includes
• Advertises where to buy album

Here is our first draft of the magazine advert:



The audience feedback we gained from this was that the theme of remixes and the DJ imagery works well, but it was also suggested that we definately need to add some colour.

Also that the date shouldn't be larger than the album title.

An advert or link to a place where you can purchase this album such as iTunes, Amazon, HMV etc.

It was suggested we could add some information on what the special edition digipak includes.

It was also suggested that festival season would be a better date to advertise the release date.

And due to the increase in popularity recently of vinyl, we could add that as another available format of the album.

Here is our second draft:

I have added to this, colour which matches the digipak, as it is a common convention of magazine album adverts for the imagery to match the album artwork, although we have challenged this convention as our album artwork doesn't match the advert I have also added an image of the album, so that an audience would know what to look for when purchasing the digipak.

I added the small image link to iTunes, beacause after a quick survey of asking people if they owned an iPod, most of which did and also wether they use iTunes to download music or listen to their music files on their computers, again most said that they had and did. Therefore iTunes seemed like the most popular choice. It also adds some authenticity to the advert.

Finally i added the small section on what the digipak contains, for which I took inspiration from existing examples of bonus features.

I hope to upload this and our digipak to facebook in order to get some audience feedback from a variety of age ranges but mostly our target audience, and find out whether they think our digipak and magazine advert work well and are effective in drawing in the target audience.

The feedback we gained on this 2nd draft was that the colour of pink/purple on the text is "perfect".
The combination of only 3 colours are "simple yet effective".
It looks professional
They like the graffitti style of writing on the Gorillaz
The advert is in keeping with the 'youthful' style of the digipak
They also suggested that we should:

• Use the same pink text on more of the white text
• Make the text on the digipak features stand out more, for example: in shape of a record.
• Re-order the writing as it is a little squished up
• Compress 'THE REMIXES' so that the edges of the letters arent lost

Here is our third draft:

Here we have edited the sections which we were told needed some work from our audience feedback.

However Beth and I have decided we dislike the text in the shape of a record, we don't think this works well so with our next draft we will straighten that back out again. Other than that we are happy with this design.

Here is our final design:

The audience feedback we gained from this deisgn helped us decide that this was the one we would use as it wasn't suggested anything needed changing and also that it looks proffesional.