1. Ancillary Task: Magazine Advertisement
We began the advertisement for The Maccabees‟ album release by adding important
information to the bottom half of the page. We made sure that the writing on the
advertisement is identical to that on the album cover so that there will be a sense of
recognition for the audience when seeing the album, after previously viewing the
advertisement. The same font we used on the album cover is the same as the
important information on the advertisement (i.e. text relating to the band) such as
“THE MACCABEES” and “COLOUR IT IN”. We did this so that it can be
associated with the band and the band‟s font. We then used the font „courier‟ for the
remaining text. We chose a different font so that it doesn‟t all look the same as it may
not look so interesting. However, we still
want the text to stand out effectively to
the audience so we placed a black
rectangular shape behind white text so
that it looks professional and stands out
on the page. In order to make the main text stand out and look unique, we hand wrote
the text „THE MACCABEES‟ and „COLOUR IT IN‟ as we felt that this would
continue the house style of the album and would make the advertisement stand out
much more. We also felt as though this would make the advertisement look a lot more
personal to the viewer as it makes it look as though it was written for them. We
alternated colours between pink and blue so that
the advert is stereotypically aiming towards both
genders. However, a greater majority of the
target audience is girls, which is why we added
a quirky heart at the end of the text making it
look much more relaxed and easy on the eye.
We also used the official logo of the band‟s record label so that the advert looks
realistic. We also placed the NME logo on the advertisement as this is a magazine that
the typical person of the indie rock genre would be familiar with, this logo is seen on
several album advertisements and by seeing their rating and comments on the album
the audience may feel swayed towards purchasing the album much more, making the
advertisement seem very official. We have added
certain links at the bottom of the advert such as the
bands official website as well as the record label‟s
website as this very much seems to be becoming a
convention of album advertisements due to the
increase in social media and being able to access
the internet from many locations people can look
on the links in order to find out more information
on the band. Meaning that less information is
needed on the advertisement as if they are drawn
in by the short persuasive techniques used in the
advertisement they may look to the websites to
see if they are performing soon or whether they
have a single being released soon. We have
included a star rating on the advertisement by a
well known magazine as this is a typical
convention of current advertisements as this
makes the audience feel persuaded to purchase the

2. album as it gives the advert prestige, it also creates a link between the magazine and
The Maccabees as both of which will be of interest to the target audience. We didn‟t
include a quote in the advertisement, just simply included the star rating in order to
save space on the advert and create a sharp message as to what the reviewer thought
of the album, ratings can be found in the form of stars or numbers out of 10 however
we felt that using stars would add a graphological feature to the advert as we felt that
this would stand out to the audience much more.
We then went on to adding the main image to
the advertisement, this will be the first thing
reader‟s would see when looking at the
advertisement. Firstly, we opened up the
image on Photoshop and adjusted the image
size, we changed the resolution to 300 and
then changed the width to 2592, which makes
the image bigger in size and helps towards the
manipulation of the image as you can see what
you‟re working with a lot more. We then
adjusted the levels and curves in order to
make the lighting in the image look brighter so that it stands out to the audience more
and makes it look as though the image is rather welcoming to the viewer‟s eye. After
this, we altered the lightness, brightness and
contrast of the image in order to make it look
slightly more professional and cause certain
colours to stand out in the image more than
others. I then duplicated the background layer
and began to work on the background copy in
the creation in the image. We then decided to
add a slightly worn to the image similar to that
of a Polaroid, we did this by adding a sepia tone
to the image. We desaturated the
background copy and selected
Image>>adjustments>>variations
and selected „More Yellow‟ and
„More Red‟ a few times until we
achieved the exact sepia tone we
wanted.
We then decided that certain
colours that were noticeable and
vibrant in the image before no
longer stood out, so we altered the
opacity of the background copy in
order to cause certain colours to come through so that the image stands out much
more. In the end we altered the opacity to 64% so we got the best possible outcome.
We then printed the image and drew the main characters of the video as stick people
to make the image look very personal as well as following the conventions of the
diary style of the digipak. We then selected „File>>Place‟ and added the image to the
advertisement page and changed the size of image to fit the page correctly causing it
to stand out much more on the page.