This document analyzes and summarizes several music posters to gather inspiration for designing a poster for the band The Skeleton Boys. It discusses posters for the bands Foals, Marina & The Diamonds, and All Time Low. Key aspects discussed include font choice, image selection, color schemes, layout of text, and how the posters fit the style and image of each band.

1. Analysing Posters Jess Pardoe

2. Foals Having the title of the album in the centre in bold makes it stand out on the blue page, I find it really interesting that they have used two contrasting fonts to create this poster. One of which is old fashioned and looks as though it has been written by hand; the other is very bold and in block capitals, completely contrasting the first choice. When I create my poster I will choose my fonts carefully and may use the contrasting effect and take inspiration from this Foals poster. I would like to create something similar to this poster particularly incorporating the faded opacity text as it means the focal point doesn’t cover up any images or other text. The colour scheme could be broader including shades of green or purple to compliment the original blues; however I think the one tone colour palette works for advertising an indie/alternative band like the Foals as the rest of their products are similar. Foals fit into the same indie/alternative genre as The Skeleton Boys so this poster is an ideal one to focus on and look at in close detail. The colour scheme of blue and white is very basic but works exceptionally well and ties in with the album cover of Foals actual CD. I really like the fonts used and the opacity effects on the lettering also; it means that although the focus is on the text, the background image does not go unnoticed as it is a very symbolic underwater photograph. I really like the effect of the lighting beaming down from one side, highlighting the text reading ‘Foals’ repeated across the top and ‘Total Life Forever’ across the centre. This poster includes gig tour dates at the bottom which I will not be using on my own version of The Skeleton Boys advert poster, this is because our poster task is simply to advertise the album alone.

3. Marina & The Diamonds Marina & The Diamonds’ album cover and poster use exactly the same image and font, this shows excellent continuity in design. I really like the scribbled font overlaying the imagery as it shows a dominance in a light colour; if the writing was in black it would look far too heavy and would shadow the rest of the image. The photograph of Marina herself is well positioned and I like that the rest of the text is printed over her hair as it makes use of the entire background image. The use of two contrasting fonts is very similar to the previous Foals analysis as the scribbled effect compliments the block capitals of the very digital font used for the detail about the album. I like this poster as it features the artist herself and fits in with her quirky, vintage theme to her style. The colour scheme of this poster looks very basic but is well thought-out and in-depth; it consists of white, nude, brown and some pastel colours among the background such as green, pink, blue and cream. I am really inspired by using a textured background as it adds another element to the advert. Marina & The Diamonds is well known for her unusual voice and style, so this poster advertises her really well; I could do a similar thing with The Skeleton Boys as they will be known for being cheeky yet fashionable and serious about their career, so I could incorporate this within the fonts and layout used. It is common on album posters to have the majority of the detail written in smaller writing at the bottom, I will try this on some of my designs when I come to it.

4. All Time Low The font used is suitable for the image used as the colour scheme all ties in together; with the genre of the band being ‘Pop Punk’ the cartoon style drawing and neat font show the personality of the band. The ratings from Kerrang!, Rock Sound and Allmusic represent that the poster is specifically advertising a band, as many music posters can be mistaken for film posters. It is important to include the release date for digipak purchase or downloads online; I really like how this information is discrete and it still allows the attention to be focused on the image of the hand. I will use this layout as inspiration but I am much more likely to feature either a photograph of the band or a drawing of the band members on my own advert. I will also use more colours than just the yellow, as the black and white images and text does stand out but it doesn’t suit the indie/alternative genre. This All Time Low poster advertises their new album ‘Put up or Shut up’. I really like the simplistic colours with the cartoon effect as it makes it look particularly unrealistic. The idea of using cartoon is not what I am looking for to advertise The Skeleton Boys, I will probably choose to feature the band themselves or a drawing of something related to the band. Iconography is important on posters as the band or artist can be represented through imagery other than photographs of the band, or through drawings of band related objects. For example I could take a clip from our music video and develop it for the poster. The colour scheme is a very basic 3 colour palette, consisting of yellow, white and black. If I had designed this poster I would have made the colours a lot brighter and bolder to enhance the band’s image.