Analysis of Magazine Advert 1

There are no obvious, instantaneously recognizable iconic images to the drum and bass genre such as images of space, drugs or raves on this magazine advert. What I would argue however is the use of graffiti being very conventional, as it is arguably a music genre associated with youth and rebelliousness. Graffiti is symbolic of this notion. The uses and gratification model can be used as a template when analyzing this advert. The layout of this magazine advert sees a great deal of writing, there is information regarding artists on the Cd, release dates, websites and also quotes from well establish drum and bass artists stating their positive view on the album. We can, then, argue that the audience uses this media text for the information purpose. They are educated towards the contents of what they will, if they chose to, purchase.

In terms of Typography analysis, the writing is all in a white colour, over a black background. This makes it stand out greatly, and I believe the artist who designed the advert chose this for that reason. Our attention is instantly grabbed. The writing is of a relatively thin font, however it is very large at the top of the avert where it writes MALDINI & VEGAS in capital letters; again an element implemented to grab our attention, and then still relatively large even bellow to make the artists names clear. It is very conventional to the genre to have the artists names in a large font as this is the only was the audiences can relate to them; images are rarely used. The font, although thin, is very sharp edged; it exerts masculinity, which is highly conventional to The genre in this magazine advert is the drum andhere bass genre. represented in quite a dark manor. The design artists has created this somewhat gloomy atmosphere in a variety of ways, however mainly, it boils down to the colour scheme. It is a black and white colour scheme. The corners of the entire image are far darker than the center; this is interesting as it draws our focus to the actual CD image that is the lightest part of the advert, it has the white graffiti and its background id far brighter. We are drawn directly to this. Dark colour schemes are very conventional to the drum and bass genre, and this use of black and white is something I am thinking about implementing into my work. Graffiti in

The primary image is the CD, directly in the center of the magazine advert. The image is somewhat large, and designed beautifully in that it both stands out due to the lighting but also blends in to the background, due to the identical graffiti style seen both in the background image and primary image. In terms of rule of thirds, the primary image in the central third, and therefore our eyes are automatically drawn to this, establishing what the magazine advert is about instantly.

Very conventional to the genre again is to not have an image of the artist/artists. Although this is a mixed CD, with various artists on one record label, there are no images of any of the artists. This is conventional to the drum & bass genre; a genre where the music matters only, not the artists images or the facades many artists hide behind, with their clothing and jewelry etc.