Evaluating Other Magazine Adverts

In this post I am critically evaluating other artists magazine adverts to see what conventions and techniques we can use and which ones we should avoid.
Here are two very different artists and very different adverts.

 

The XX

 This is the magazine advert created by the band "The XX" and i find it extremely interesting. The band are an extremely indie band with a very unique style of music. Thy are a band made up of 3 boys and 1 girl which is something that occurs very rarely on the music market, especially currently.
Here we can see that they don't even include their own images. This may be because they are very diverse and don't want to draw attention to their image but only to their music. They have got their name as the biggest font at the top of the page with the name of their album just below in a smaller font.
The image is a very interesting one, made up of graffiti in a very derelict scene. In my opinion I dont think this is that effective because it gives off an image that they could be quite unruly etc. However this works for them because they are aimed at a very niche audience. If they changed this convention and turn to mainstream this could effect their already established fan base.

The have included the release date and Amazon, a specialist place where an audience member can purchase their album. They may have set up a partnership with Amazon who could have involved the recognition of their name to be on this advert. The XX have also included a two quotes and a rating from quite a major show biz celebrity. By having this it subconsciously makes the audience member approve of the band and will them to purchase their album.

As we can see they have also included the legal areas needed for this to be legitimate and we will have to consider this whilst creating our magazine advert as well as our Digipack.

Marina and the Diamonds

Here I am looking at "Marina and the Diamonds'" magazine advert. As we can see it is very different and we will have to balance up different aspects that have been used to create a good magazine advert ourselves.
Here we can see that the main focus of the advert is Marina herself and her title (very different to the conventions used in The XX advert.)
She has created what i see as a quite classy advert, involving her in a relaxed way and with a classic pattern backdrop. However we can see here the sense of sex appeal she is trying to convey in the way she is pictured and her facial expressions. As we can see she is laying down and we can see no clothes or jewelry on her body, just smooth skin. Also if we look at her facial expressions, she isn't smiling or frowning yet she is pulling quite a mysterious and seductive face to her audience members.

By her style of music we can see she is quite a quirky character with a sense of naivety which isn't all portrayed in this image of her.
 In this image it seems like she is longing for something more in her life, possibly jewels and diamonds, referencing her name "Marina and THE DIAMONDS" and her albums names "The family JEWELS" AND "SHAMPAIN"
The effect she has overlayed on her advert and image gives of an almost old style colour scheme. Like it is classically old fashioned and now washed out. This portrays her as sweet with a sense of ladyness which  is contradicted with her seductiveness.

From this magazine advert I am going to take with me the inlay of the actual album cover, the links to music stores, the feature of her being the main focus, the title and the date of release.