Magazine Research and Design

For my other ancillary task, I have created a magazine advertisement that works in conjunction with my music video to promote my digipak.

I first researched music magazine advertisements in order to gather information on their codes and conventions. Here is what I discovered:

Conventions of an advert

The Release date - important to the audience so that they can find out when they can start to purchase the album.

The Album title - promotes the upcoming album and establishes it as a product.

Artist name - advertises the album further by gathering interest in audiences by associating the band with the album.

Reviews - reviews seek to create a positive first impression of the album as they come from respected members of the music industry, and respected companies such as NME and Kerrang!

Main image - The main image should be eye catching and should follow the same theme as the other products in order to link them together.


I chose to follow all of these conventions as I felt that defying the conventions of a key piece of advertising would be ineffective. When advertising a product, defying conventions can be risky because audiences want to see something familiar that they can relate to, and also to compare to other similar products.

Example Magazine Advertisements

I used this advert as my style model, again following the minimalistic style I used for my digipak. The advert uses one image of a clouded sky. There is a minimal amount of text on the cover, keeping a clean image and creating an advertisement that could also be used as poster to hang on a wall. 

I followed my style model and used one font type in order to create consistent branding within my products. 

I was unable to fulfil my original idea of having a full page image as I would have then stretched my image too much, so I instead used the image on half of the page. 

Here is my unfinished magazine advertisement. I have kept a consistent font style throughout both of my anciallary tasks (Return to Sender)