Analysis of existing magazine CD adverts

I couldn’t find any Owl City magazine adverts, so I looked through the music magazines ‘Q’ and ‘NME’ to find other adverts that I thought looked effective to see if this gave me any ideas for my own CD cover. Here is my analysis of my 4 favourite magazine adverts.

Name of artist and CD name in biggest font

Image of the star taking up most of the page

Website of the artist

Simple colour scheme –white, black and a pink/purple colour – links with colours of CD cover

Picture of CD front cover on the advert – relates to the picture and text on the advert

Details at the bottom of the page such as when it’s released, quotes about the CD etc.

Simple font style – all text in black

Colour links with artist name – white belt yellow tag

Quotes about CD, top of the page

Yellow banner at bottom of page – details and logo

Simple image taking up the page –brightness looks enhanced

Artist name and track name centre of the page

White ring around main text – drawing focus

CD cover used within advert

Image on advert relates to image on CD cover

HMV logo –where to get the CD from

Puff at the top of page –stating its ‘mind blowing’

Simple colour scheme – grey, black and red hair and lipstick – image looks like it has been made to look more subdued

Simple font style – all text in black

All details –price, quotes etc.

CD cover only image on page –takes up over half of the page

CD cover is the only coloured part of the advert

Name of artist and track biggest text on page

Website of the band

Big, heavy font used in black –creating a statement

Straight lines used with text to contrast with the curve within the CD cover

Details –when its out etc.

Aspects I would like to use for my own CD cover

After looking at these 4 completely different magazine adverts I found some parts of each of them that I would like to incorporate into my own CD magazine advert, such as:

• In the 2nd magazine advert I really liked the use of the banner at the bottom of the page containing some information

• In the majority of the adverts they placed the front cover of the CD within the advert – which I really think works well

• I liked the overall style of the 3rd advert – using an image as a background that relates to the image in the CD cover – I also like that the artists name and CD name is only written on the CD I think this looks a bit more interesting.

• I also like the use of putting the bands webpage on the advert as in the 1st

and 4th adverts.

• The use of quotes, praising the album or artist also seem like a good way of advertising the CD