Ancillary Task: Magazine AdvertisementWe began the advertisement for The Maccabees’ album release by adding important information to the bottom half of the page. We made sure that the writing on the advertisement is identical to that on the album cover so that there will be a sense of recognition for the audience when seeing the album, after previously viewing the advertisement. The same font we used on the album cover is the same as the important information on the advertisement (i.e. text relating to the band) such as “THE MACCABEES” and “COLOUR IT IN”. We did this so that it can be associated with the band and the band’s font. We then used the font ‘courier’ for the remaining text. We chose a different font so that it doesn’t all look the same as it may not look so interesting. However, we still want the text to stand out effectively to the audience so we placed a black rectangular shape behind white text so that it looks professional and stands out on the page. In order to make the main text stand out and look unique, we hand wrote the text ‘THE MACCABEES’ and ‘COLOUR IT IN’ as we felt that this would continue the house style of the album and would make the advertisement stand out much more. We also felt as though this would make the advertisement look a lot more personal to the viewer as it makes it look as though it was written for them. We alternated colours between pink and blue so that the advert is stereotypically aiming towards both genders. However, a greater majority of the target audience is girls, which is why we added a quirky heart at the end of the text making it look much more relaxed and easy on the eye.

We also used the official logo of the band’s record label so that the advert looks realistic. We also placed the NME logo on the advertisement as this is a magazine that the typical person of the indie rock genre would be familiar with, this logo is seen on several album advertisements and by seeing their rating and comments on the album the audience may feel swayed towards purchasing the album much more, making the advertisement seem very official. We have added certain links at the bottom of the advert such as the bands official website as well as the record label’s website as this very much seems to be becoming a convention of album advertisements due to the increase in social media and being able to access the internet from many locations people can look on the links in order to find out more information on the band. Meaning that less information is needed on the advertisement as if they are drawn in by the short persuasive techniques used in the advertisement they may look to the websites to see if they are performing soon or whether they have a single being released soon. We have included a star rating on the advertisement by a well known magazine as this is a typical convention of current advertisements as this makes the audience feel persuaded to purchase the

album as it gives the advert prestige, it also creates a link between the magazine and The Maccabees as both of which will be of interest to the target audience. We didn’t include a quote in the advertisement, just simply included the star rating in order to save space on the advert and create a sharp message as to what the reviewer thought of the album, ratings can be found in the form of stars or numbers out of 10 however we felt that using stars would add a graphological feature to the advert as we felt that this would stand out to the audience much more.

We then went on to adding the main image to the advertisement, this will be the first thing reader’s would see when looking at the advertisement. Firstly, we opened up the image on Photoshop and adjusted the image size, we changed the resolution to 300 and then changed the width to 2592, which makes the image bigger in size and helps towards the manipulation of the image as you can see what you’re working with a lot more. We then adjusted the levels and curves in order to make the lighting in the image look brighter so that it stands out to the audience more and makes it look as though the image is rather welcoming to the viewer’s eye. After this,

we altered the lightness, brightness and contrast of the image in order to make it look slightly more professional and cause certain colours to stand out in the image more than others. I then duplicated the background layer and began to work on the background copy in the creation in the image. We then decided to add a slightly worn to the image similar to that of a Polaroid, we did this by adding a sepia tone to the image.

We desaturated the background copy and selected Image>>adjustments>>variations and selected ‘More Yellow’ and ‘More Red’ a few times until we achieved the exact sepia tone we wanted. We then decided that certain colours that were noticeable and vibrant in the image before no longer stood out, so we altered the opacity of the background copy in order to cause certain colours to come through so that the image stands out much more. In the end we altered the opacity to 64% so we got the best possible outcome. We then printed the image and drew the main characters of the video as stick people to make the image look very personal as well as following the conventions of the diary style of the digipak. We then selected ‘File>>Place’ and added the image to the advertisement page and changed the size of image to fit the page correctly causing it to stand out much more on the page.