Research into music posters for advertising albums

1. Poster Research
By Olivia Doherty

2. Example 1
I have researched some posters to look at the main
features of a poster for an artist’s album. Posters are
used to promote the album and the artist and attract
the target audience to buy the CD.
The first poster I looked at was by Rihanna. This poster
has the same theme as the Digipak with the same
colours used. The poster shows the artists name and
the name of the album in a large font. This could be to
attract the audiences attention and to draw them to the
poster. The poster also shows a picture of the album
front cover from the digipak. This is useful as it will
show the customer what to look for when trying to find
the album and also demonstrates the continuity
between the digipak and the poster. The is also some
information on the poster about songs that are featured
in the album. There is only a few songs listed here as
they are the only released or most well known songs.
This has probably been done to attract people’s
attention if they know the songs and possibly tempt
them to buy the CD. The photo used on the poster is of
the artist showing that they are trying to promote the
artist and draw in the audience by letting them know
straight away what the poster is advertising. The
colours used on the poster are bright and could appeal
to the target audience who are typically female for this
genre (pop/chart music).

3. Example 2
The second poster I looked at was by the artist Lana Del Rey.
This poster is different to the one above in both the features used
and the overall effect of the poster. In this poster you can see the
size of it and this demonstrates the effect it will have when
attracting the audience. This is because the poster is very big
and therefore more eye-catching to consumers. This will hep to
draw people’s attention to the poster and will make it more
effective in promoting the album. This poster, as well as the one
above, has the feature of the name of the album and the artist
name in large font. This has helped to let the audience know
what the poster is advertising and will help draw in the right
audience by use of the artist name. Both of the posters also have
the artist name at the top of the poster, possibly so it’s the first
thing you see when you look at it. In addition to this the poster
contains an image which is similar to that on the digipak for the
album. It is from the same photoshoot and is using the same
black and white theme. This again will help to let the audience
know what they are looking for when buying the CD and will
create a sense of continuity. The poster is in black and white
which could help show the genre of the album (alternative/indie)
but this could also be a disadvantage as the colours could blend
into the background slightly and may not stand out as well as it
could. This poster also shows the date of the album’s release
which would be useful to the audience if they want to buy the
album. It also contains information of where you can buy the
album. The poster contains a large image of the artist much like
the rihanna poster to show off the artist and promote them and
attract people who know the artist.

4. What I Have Learnt
Both posters are similar and contain similar features such as the name of artist and album, as well as
containing small parts of information at the bottom, although both posters decided on different information to
display. They also both contain a large main image of the artist to attract people’s attention which I believe
would be very effective in trying to advertise the artist and their music.
After looking at these posters I can see that very few images and writing is on them. They contain little
information and are mainly used to show the name of the album, the name of the artist and a photo of the
artist. This has helped me to decide on the main features of my poster and I will take into consideration the
minimalistic design of the posters.