N.B - Advert Analysis

The advert above is promoting FrYars new single, ‘Olive Eyes’, and debut album, ‘Dark Young Hearts’. FrYars is a solo English singer-songwriter and fits into the indie genre, you can get this impression from the advert alone as it has some typical conventions that other solo English singer-songwriters have. FrYars (Ben Garrett) appears on the advert alone which is a generic convention of solo singer-songwriters however, he is facing away from the audience which is not a generic feature. Also, the text layout, size, font, colour and positioning connotes a solo English singer-songwriter as it is plain and simple. I found this advert in the latest NME magazine at the bottom of a page. The advert is not very large and is dark in colour so doesn’t immediately grab your attention when you first look at the page. However, in terms of the advert, the artists name does grab your attention because it is a large size font. The artists name is in an individual font that the artist probably had created for him whereas the rest of the text in the advert is a very simple font like Arial. This draws more attention to the artist’s name which is what they would want to achieve from the advert as it will only get a seconds glance from the reader, unless the reader is interested in the advert/artist in which case a few more seconds will be taken to read the advert. The advert is split in two with an image on the left and the text on the right. The text is most likely placed on the right as this is where the audience generally looks at first. Also, ‘FrYars’ is the first word that would be read because it appears at the top which is what the artist wants from their advert. Reading down, the text gets smaller and smaller as the information becomes less important, for example, the text that appears in the middle, about his new single and album, is bigger than the text at the bottom about his websites but smaller than the text at the top which states his name. The background of the text is black and the text itself is a creamy yellow colour which stands out from the black. It isn’t a total contrast to the black but is still bright enough to stand out. The image on the left of the advert is of a man facing away from the audience standing in what appears to be an open field. It looks like it is set in autumn as the trees are of an orange colour. The man in the image is wearing a black suit with a white shirt which is very typical of a traditional English gentleman. The man has slick brown hair which is also very typical of a traditional English gentleman. You can only see the top half of his body and you cannot see his face so you don’t get an entire idea of what this artist looks like which means if people are interested they will search for him and discover what he looks like, maybe listening to a preview of his music at the same time. This is exactly what the artist is looking to achieve from an advert. The sky is blue and there is only a single cloud which is positioned above the man’s head. This could signify confusion or a mental block that the artist is currently suffering from. Both the man and the cloud are positioned centrally in relation to the image. This advert is most likely consumed as ambient viewing because obviously it is the text it is and adverts are only ever looked at for extremely brief moments.