Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert

In order to create our magazine cover we researched a variety of magazines, but decided that in order to focus on our slightly niché market, we would base ours upon publications such as'i-D' and 'Dazed & Confused'. Dazed & Confused is a British style magazine,that was set up in 1992 and published monthly. Its founding editors were Jefferson Hack and Rankin. Topics covered include music, fashion, film, art and literature. The magazine reached its target audience of stylish, cultured, fun-loving young adults through club promotion nights.

DazedDigital.com




We particularly liked this edition, featuring Hedi Slimanes 'youth portfolio' photography.



We decided to use this as a focus for our own work, because we thought a magazine such as 'Dazed & Confused would represent the type of audience listening to The Black Lights well. We admired the use of black and white on all of their covers - we felt this, although possibly not as attention-grabbing as the colourful covers we see in tabliod-style magazines, would help to reflect the band's name as well as their image. Additionally, due to the fact that we used quite dark lighting and dull imaging in our promotional video we felt this would help to give a sense of synchronisation with all of our products. This would be essential if we were marketing on a larger scale because it would help the audience to familiarise themselves with 'The Black Lights' in terms of branding.

To follow this, we decided to give our magazine the name 'Noir'. We felt this gave the magazine a sense of style, culture, and class to represent the audience we were targeting. From this we eventually drew up some potential logos using photoshop, and using Hedi Slimanes photography started the process of creating our own publication.





Once we decided on the basic outlook for the cover, we went to a photography studio and took photographs of band-member and protogonist of the video, Morgan. He was styled in a Fred Perry polo shirt with a modern-style quiff - again we hoped that this would reflect the Black Lights audience. We tried to make him look as simple as possible, so that although he looked fashionable, he would not intimidate a wider, more commercial market.

The fairly basic theming was continued in the headlines we wrote. We wanted the cover to be bold and clear, but not too busy so as to keep Morgan's face as the primary tool in attracting a readership. We came up with a subheading under the logo of 'musicfashionculture' to help to give an unfamiliar reader an idea of the magazines content, as well as having an article on 'Noir's 10 Winter Essentials'. Underneath this we decided to put in a quote from the designer Giorgio Armani, 'The difference between style and fashion is quality' - we felt this would represent our audience who were willing to spend a lot of their disposable income on fashion as well as giving a slight twist to the slightly formulaic headline of '10 winter essentials'.

For the Black Lights headline we chose 'Paint it Black' followed by 'what turns the Black Lights on'. We chose to put this in a large font which was different to the rest of the text on the page as we wanted this article to be the sole focus to catch a readers eye, as it was the band we were trying to promote. Furthermore, through the reference to the song 'Paint it Black' by The Rolling Stones, we were again using intertextuality to portray the idea of Morgan as a sort of rock&roll persona. Through 'what turns the Black Lights on' we were trying to give a more sexual, provocative twist to the band and the magazine. This was because we felt the 'rock & roll' idea would be more appealing to a male reader, but we wanted to target females as well, so we used this to try and encourage a sense of sex appeal to the band.

The Final Cover