Magazine Advert Research

I am going to be looking at Ed Sheeran and Ben Howard for my magazine article research because they are artists in the same genre as my performer, and therefore I believe their audience will be similar to mine, and so some aspects of their advertising will attract my audience, as well as theirs.

A shown to the right, this is Ed Sheerans magazine advert - this is approximately A4 size - although the artist is an acoustic artist, he is very popular in the charts today and has a very large fan base, along with a huge record deal - therefore he can afford to have a full-page adverts in magazines/papers.

This image is a totally different image to the one in his album artwork, the album artwork has a close-up of his face to really show off his star-image and represent his contribution to his music, and his simplicity within it. The advertisement however completely flips this - as on teh album the majority is bright orange with a small section of white/grey for the album name - '+' to make it stand out to his audience. In the advert however, the majority is grey, and small parts are in bright orange, to make them stand out, unlike the album cover, the advert tries to represent more about the artist himself, as teh artists name, 'Ed Sheeran' takes up the majority of font space, in an entertaining and interesting font; and the image of the artist takes up a large section of the advert, in a mid-long shot, all with a black and white effect, however his ginger hair is bright orange - matching his name. This could connote his actual, personality image, and could be a humorous approach to the album as it is quite unique having such a talented, famous man who is ginger. To be con traversal, the artist is holding a cat which covers most of his body, accept from the top of his face. This could connote the uniqueness of his music, and the irony that he is in ginger instead of the cat - which is what would be more likely. All the key details are stated clearly on the advert, such as credits, record label logos, copyright, critics quotes, release dates, iTunes links and availability... The advert holds more information in one place, whereas the album cover is more spread out over various sides of the digi-pack.. and so the advert tends to look like there is more going on - more busy - less simplistic, however it still has an aspect of simplicity, with quite large areas of clear space - however the colours are still very similar, and the same theme runs throughout. (in this case, orange and grey)

In my advert, I am going to have it A5 size, because I don't think an artist, such as George Bills, (who I am using for my A2 Media project) would be able to afford such a big space in a newspaper/magazine and to make it look as realistic as possible, I am going to have half a page for my advert.
To follow the acoustic genre, I am going to be using the same colour theme throughout both my album artwork and advert to make a complete and realistic digi-pack - and these colours will be quite dark and gloomy, however both will be very spacious, and simplistic, to represent the music my artist produces.