Album Cover and Advert Analysis

All-American Rejects album cover



Album covers tend to follow certain conventions; they attempt to sell the artist and the genre, and appeal to their target audience.

This album cover on the right is from a band who play pop-rock music, similar to 'HateBoss', the artist we've used in our coursework. The cover displays all of the band members, the band logo and album title; which helps fulfill its role as a product.

The familiar logo will immediately stand out to loyal and new fans alike, who will see the brand and instantly know what they're looking at because of the image created by the music company from AAR's previous two albums. This piece of familiarity creates a source of comfort for established fans, who feel confident when they recognise a label, it allows them to perceive the artists as established and reliable.

Putting the band members on the front also creates a connection with the audience, they see the people that they are effectively buying into, and put a name to a face, a voice to a body. On some level this should increase interest because the appearance of the band can very often lead to a person's interest in their music. Their positioning stances and clothing outline the kind of image they want to put across, simple but stylish and with attitude; this would appeal to a younger audience, drawing them to the product.

The album title displayed also gives quite a good indication of the genre; by putting it in clearly visibile font the audience can read it quickly and efficiently, and pick up any connotations.



The Verve magazine advert


< This is a magazine advert for 'The Verve's new single and upcoming album. Naturally, the advert takes a page, features either a) the artists' physical appearance or b) their logo. It also features the release date of their album; both of these are the primary conventions for this type of media text.

Magazine adverts generally take a whole page because not only is that the most common size, it allows more space and more advert to attract the reader. The amount of space can give the designers more creative freedom because they have a bigger gap to fill, so can use big ideas to fill it.

The design of this promotes the band as an entity rather than individual members. They choose to use a spiritual background photo which reflects the mood of the album being promoted, and would therefore appeal to certain people, perhaps in the 35-45 age range who're searching for an on-trend band who offer a gentle pace of music they feel comfortable with.

Finally, the display of the album release details is compulsory to the advert. These are often less prominent because they aren't used to attract the viewer, but inform them once they have been captured by the graphics of the text.