AUDIENCE FEEDBACKI created a survey to ask people what they thought of the mock up I created, and what they felt needed to be changed or added. This mock up included a image of Lorde, as I was just planning what I wanted my magazine advert to look like. This meant that some people commented on the photo too, so I aren’t going to take these comments into consideration as this isn’t the image I am going to be using on my final product. I also changed the image on the product straight away so that I could have a feel for if the contents of the advert worked with it or not, and could make any changes that I needed in accordance with the image and make it work as a whole.

This is the mock up of the magazine advert I have to create for the brief I have chosen. I thought that this looked quite professional because of the simplicity of it, but thought that creating a survey would be a great way of asking other people their thoughts on it and would allow for my product to develop and become a better product.

This is the first comment that I am going to look at and see what I can do to help make my product look better. I didn’t really think about this being an issue when I created my product, but I am really glad I was told this because now when I look at my product, I have noticed that this is true and they do slightly steal focus.

This isn’t something that occurred to me either when creating this product, although it is something that is really obvious if a product like an album is going to be successful. I am definitely going to add a release date to my product as this would help to boost sales, and is clearly an expected part of an advert.

Although this comment is about the mock up and therefore the image of Lorde, the image I am planning to use on my product is the album cover which has an image of the artist looking directly at the camera.

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Using the review was a good idea, as this comment illustrates the reason why I included it in my product; so I am happy that this has been understood by someone.

I aren’t too sure about doing this as I don’t want the advert to look really overcrowded because this would portray an unprofessional product which is something that I want to avoid if I am going to create a successful advert. I am still going to do this though to see if it looks effective and if it doesn’t I can simply remove the text. This shouldn’t take too long as it is only some text, but could be the difference between a good product and a great one.

Using social media icons was a good idea, as this is a comment I received on the use of them. I think that using social media on an advert or any kind of promotion for an artist is important because it shows that the artist understands the importance of Web 2.0 and means that the artist will be more likely to interact with her fans; this may be appealing to prospective fans as I am aiming the product at the younger generation who are known for being ‘tech savvy’.

Because I have found in my audience feedback that I need to change the icons I have on my magazine advert, I decided that I would use Google to find some others that would look better.

As I had searched for something in Google’s Image Search tab, Google gave me suggestions to try and narrow down my search, which was really helpful. This gave me a selection of different types of social media icons that I could choose from, and the three to the left of this box are the three that I clicked on and searched. After looking through the icons that came up after choosing the categories, I decided that I really liked the look of the round ones because they looked really quirky and fun, but still followed the same style of my product and didn’t steal focus off what really matters on the advert.

THE DESIGNS I LIKED AND WHYThis is the icon design that I am going to use on my advert, because I really like the simplicity of it; how it is simply dark grey and white. I am only going to be using four of these icons, and think that they will work really well together because they are the same style and will still be eye-catching, but wont take the full focus from the advert as they are still quiteplain. I also think that using around icon will work really well because indie artists are known for breaking conventions and being different to other people.

I really like how this style looks but after deciding why I like it, (I really like how the background of the design is glittery as this looks really fun and interesting) I have figured that it wouldn’t work on my product because the style would contrast with the rest of the advert and therefore wouldn’t have a professional-looking finish.

This is the before and after screenshot of what the bottom half of my advert looks like, which I think has improved immensely. There is a really consistent colour scheme throughout the product, and changing the colour and style of the icons for the social media websites adds to this and completes the product.

I then thought that I should change the colour of the stars from golden to a black colour as this would make the product more consistent and would make everything relate. After doing this, I changed the colour back to gold because I think that this is one of the most important parts of the product as it is a review from a trusted source, which someone said on the survey was a good thing to use so wanted to make it really stand out.

This an example of how the bottom section of my advert would look if I wrote what the social media icons were underneath them, as this was one of the comments I received from my survey. I don’t think this would work very well as the text would have to be in colour because of the white background and the dark icons, so would be a bit of a distraction. I aren’t going to use this but think that it was a good idea to try it out because now I know that this doesn’t work for my product.

One thing I hadn’t used on my product was where the album could be bought from except for the artist’s website, so added this final touch to complete the magazine advert. To make things easier, I merged some of the layers that I wanted to stay together because this allowed me to move them all at once rather than individually. I used iTunes and Amazon MP3 on my advert, as iTunes is one of the most – if not the most – used site for downloading and storing music, and Amazon is also quite popular with people who don’t have Apple devices.

MOCK UP MAGAZINE ADVERT NEW AND IMPROVED ADVERT

ARTIST APPEARANCE

TITLE

LINE

ALBUM NAME

SOCIAL MEDIA

WEBSITE

REVIEW

RELEASE DATE

RECORD LABEL

WHERE ON SALE

MOCK UP MAGAZINE ADVERT NEW AND IMPROVED ADVERT

I think I have made a massive improvement on my product as it looks a lot better than the previous one. I still kept some things the same, like the font of the text and the placing of some of the text. I had to add quite a lot of things to my mock up to make the product look better because it seemed a little too empty, and the social media icons stole too much focus because they were brightly coloured; these were changed to a grey colour which suits the product a lot more and fits the style of it. I think the one I have created for my artist will appeal to the younger audience because of how simple it is to read, and is really modern-looking because of its simplicity; reflecting the genre that the artist is – indie pop.