Individual magazine advert- Miss Miller

I have created an individual magazine advert to execute all of the ideas for artist and genre representation and how they will appeal to an audience and promote the song. Each member of the group will be creating their own magazine advert which means that once these are complete, the group can compare ideas, choose the elements that promote our artist and the indie genre positively and then create an even more successful completed advert containing elements we believe to be the best from our original work. 

Firstly, I have decided to make the artist's name black and bold and also in a hand writing font to make the look seem feminine and personal, the boldness also highlights the importance of the artist. Her name is also centred in the middle of the album, highlighting the artist's importance to the audience and promoting her name to the public. The album title is also in bold and a type written style, to show the theme of vintage and again, makes the cover more personal, appearing as this came from the artist herself, and inflicts a positive message to fans highlighting that she is in charge of her own music and works hard to make everything herself. The use of the colour black highlights the theme of death which is an occurrence within lyrics of the album songs, this is also paired with the white text underneath, inferring the idea of good vs bad and life vs death, showing more intelligent and intellectual meanings. This is conventional of the indie genre as artists usually add elements on to their album that link to their songs, which causes links for their audience, making their products memorable. This is also a bold and dark colour, making everything on the page more prominent, and causing the white font to show up on the artist's body, possibly highlighting the idea of purity. The colour black however, subverts the indie genre as it is more grunge but, this causes the artist to become unique and more interesting which appeals to a niche audience. 

I have chosen to use a mid shot to show the artist on the advert, which makes the artist's face and upper body visible. This causes her to become the main focus of the whole cover promoting her further and making her look independent and powerful. The camera is also tilted, as she looks down and fans look up to her highlighting her an idolised figure and a powerful female. This further shows her as an independent individual, vocalising the idea that she works hard and this album came from her hard work alone. The artist is also dressed in a vintage shirt and wears a floral head crown, back combed hair and 50s make up for example, nude lips to create and effortless vintage look. This creates something new whilst bringing back elements that are historic within fashion from stars such as Audrey Hepburn. This causes the artist to be seen as an idol and makes her seem more important however, the effortless look causes her to become relatable to her audience, and her simplicity causes her to become impressionable as younger fans may want to follow her, and create her look on themselves. This look overall matches the music within her album and conforms to the indie genre as her look follows the typical artist within this genre of music. This links to the artist holding a cigarette, causing her to seem rebellious and not conforming to a typical feminine image. The use of this can link her to her older fans that may have the same habits as her. The cigarette also links to negative habits that are typically portrayed within the indie genre as aspects of artists lives and usually explored. The smoke appearing within the image creates more depth and makes the image look ghostly and dimensional making the advert more visually pleasing and linking again to to the songs and the usage of the colours black and white.

The layout is not complicated, and overpowering which causes the artist to stand out, showing her importance and promoting her to the public. This idea links to the indie genre as the idea of simplicity is apparent. The picture also contains elements of naturalistic features as the artist is surrounded by trees and is pictured having flowers in her hair. This is conventional of the indie genre as this contains naturalistic themes such as the forest. Although the magazine adverts highlights naturalistic scenery the main focus is the artist acknowledging her importance and making her apparent to her audience and standing out within a magazine and receiving attention, which is a positive promotion tool. 

The language used within the advert is short and colloquial/informal and doesn't take away attention from other key features such as the artist. This is shown through a shortened date, which can make it more memorable to the audience. Also, the phrase 'includes hit' gets to the point and expresses the successful song to viewers showing the artist's success and promotes individual songs to her fans, and highlighting a successful song to the public, which can causes them to purchase the album as other songs may be a success, also. Lastly, the advert also adds a website for the artist, giving fans an easy way keep up with their idol and giving new viewers an easy device to search and share her music. The use of a website is a positive promotion tool and causes the audience to feel connected to the artist and with each other. 

I used Photoshop software to create this magazine advert. I had many strengths when using this software, such as creating new layers to make the text and finding colours and the correct fonts that matched well with my chosen vintage theme such as 'snell roundhound', and I believe that this helped me create a more successful magazine advert as the text should stand out to the audience, I believe that the text I chose to incorporate through the use of this software is able to conform to the indie genre and make the advert more personal from the artist to fans for example the use of type written wording. However, I did struggle with the editing of pictures as some filters such as 'cooling' effects would change the look of the font as the wording became difficult to read. To overcome this and make the font more prominent, I changed the colour off the text to darker colours such as black, and dragged them to different locations of the page. I also changed the filter to overcome this problem by adjusting the hue/contrast/brightness.

I overall believe that my advert conforms to the indie genre conventions due to mise en scene for example, the costume that the artist is wearing such as vintage clothes and make up and setting as an example, as artists within the indie genre are typically shown within a naturalistic background. I believe that this advert appeals to my chosen target audience as every aspect was chosen in great detail to make the audience bond with the artist for example, cinematography as the artist looks down at the audience creating a person connection and involving them into what she is doing. Fundamentally, I believe that creating an individual magazine cover will help ensure that my group will produce a final successful cover as we will meet and discuss any positive features within each and how the will be incorporated into one, the representation of the artist and indie genre will be taken mostly into account and how the audience will react to them.