Developing the Magazine Ad

I learnt whilst analysing magazines that the bigger the band, the bigger the advert in the magazine. The very mainstream would get full page adverts while lesser-known, indie bands would get half a page.

For this reason I will be using half an A4-size canvas in Photoshop to design and make my magazine advert. This post will show my methods in how I made my advert.

My first step was to consider my inspiration; I decided on a 4x3 tile design on a black canvas of 210mm width by 148.5mm height. I was going to continue with the stripe/tile/block of colour design that I'd used with my digipak.














I started by colouring the background layer in black, then drawing three squares and copying them on four different layers to maintain size. I coloured two of these squares with colours that featured heavily on my digipak and then added photos of band members to feature on other tiles.

Afterwards I considered the generic features of advertising material to add to my magazine. When it comes to promoting media it helps to add details of how audiences can buy the material, what publications related to it have reviewed it, how audiences can get involved with the artists, and so forth. I added basic details to some of the tiles, notably the title of the EP and artist name, then I added information regarding release dates, how to buy the EP and when, website and social media addresses, and brief review notes from two renouned music publications.

After I'd added this information I thought that it was important to make sure audiences would be aware of what the product looked like (despite offering a digital release on iTunes) so I filled the remaining four tiles with my digipak front cover.

I've submitted my magazine advert to my Facebook group and I'm receiving feedback on it. I may make changes to it yet but this is looking good as a first draft.