Research on Promotional Posters // Final Design and Rejected Designs

 This is a promotional poster for the Oasis single 'D'you Know What I Mean?'. Immediately, the band name stands out thus promoting the band name effectively. Having established themselves as a famous duo, the logo then draws the audience to the name creating a sense of anticipation for the upcoming single. The audience would then follow down to the photograph in which references the mod subculture. This then suggests to the audience, who are not necessarily familiar with the band, the genre of their music based on the style that they are portraying. Furthermore, the humorous title of the single with the idiolect references the origins of the band, who are a duo from Manchester. This effectively promotes the band by portraying something about them to their audience, who would as a result find this humorous. Therefore, my promotional poster needs to reflect the band - as well as the album - in order to present something about them to their audience who are in anticipation of this album. Similarly, for those who don't know of the band, they will look at this poster and the digipak to gain a better understanding of the band and their genre of music.





This is a promotional poster for the band Kasabian in which clearly takes inspiration from playing cards with its clever link to the 'King' of the pack and the associations with the name of the album 'Empire' (linking to Romans and it's rulers). Its simplistic lack of writing makes a statement and creates a sense of anticipation with its lack of information. The effect of this is that its audience are in suspense, waiting for the CD to be released. For now, they are relying on the picture to suggest something about the album. Nicholas Abercrombie stated that 'Genre permits the creation and maintenance of a loyal audience which becomes used to seeing programmes within a genre' and therefore for those who are prior fans of the band, they will be familiar with the genre and have some expectations of the album. For those who are not familiar prior to this album release, they are simply relying on what they see in order to reflect something about the band. Therefore, as a member of the audience who has very little knowledge of the band but have heard some songs, the font for the band name immediately suggests indie rock, as oppose pop. It is important that for my promotional poster, I consider the minor details such as font to indicate the style of genre of both the album, and the band as a whole.









I took inspiration from this and linked it to my production with the use of cards in the Alice in Wonderland scenes. I then manipulated Coco and the Butterfields logo, as seen in their E.P. 'See the Sun' and 'King of the Corner', by changing the colour to add contrast to the white background. This, I felt, catches the eye of the audience with the bold colours, thus promoting the band. Despite this, I felt this was still not the right design to promote the CD and band as it didn't reflect the music video enough and therefore I rejected this design.

 
 

This was my final design for my promotional poster in which I felt best represented the music video and the genre of the band. The forest location is a predominant feature of our music video and links to the theme of adventure. Furthermore, the band's own video of this song depicts an adventure further supporting the use of a forest as the background of my poster. I manipulated the photos by adding a tint of pink to create a sense of magical realism and illusion thus giving it a dreamlike quality. It put focus on the centre tree and logo by blurring the edges of the photo to highlight and isolate the logo, immediately drawing the audience to that aspect.

Additionally, to follow the conventions of a promotional poster I featured a release date, reviews from a music video, the band's website, and social networking logos. This promotes the CD leaving no room for confusion with the precise information being laid out in an articulate way. Since my audience are predominantly teenagers to young adults, featuring social networking logos such as Facebook and Twitter directly targets the youth who statistically use these sites the most (89% in 2014) and therefore presents the band and their music as easily accessible.

Overall, based on feedback, this poster was preferred to the previous design and therefore I have chosen this design as my final promotional poster as it represents the music video and the band the most.