Magazine Advert Analysis

Here is an advert for Gwen Stefani’s album titled ‘Love.Angel.Music.Baby’ released December 2006, taken from the glamorous ELLE magazine. The advert features the artists name and album title in a bold font that is always used when advertising Gwen Stefani’s merchandise, this is an important feature of the advert as it gives Gwen Stefani an identity that is recognisable and individual to her as an artist. It is also important to notice that the artists name is in a much larger font than the album title, this has been done purposely as Gwen Stefani is the number one selling point for the album as consumers and fans will buy the album as fans recognise her as an artist they enjoy listening too and enjoy the music she produces, rather than the name of the album. Looking at the information on the advert we can see that it uses the same font as the album name and artists name previously used, however the font is a lot smaller. This is mainly due to the size of the image on the advert taking up most of the space, this would have been done as the advertisement team that created the advert would have seen the image as more important than the information, this may have been because of the audience they are trying to reach and the artists identity and her ease of recognition down to her unique style. However, song titles are in larger fonts as fans and consumers will be able to recognise and relate to various song titles as a result of seeing/hearing them on the radio, telle and/or chart lists, as long as they like the songs they hear, this will encourage them to buy the album.

When discussing the main image on the advert our attention is immediately brought to the distorted, urban edges to the photo, this allows Gwen Stefani to stand out more and she appears to have a sharper, more dreamy effect to her. By doing this, is also enables Stefani to be easily recognised and ensures that she is the main element of the advert, however, looking at it from another perspective, it may have been done to give her a sense of perfection, against an imperfect world, being the back drop of the image. Following this, it is noticeable that Gwen Stefani is holding a crown and royal staff that has represented her as a queen or someone from a royal background, this has given here an identity of power, Stefani is known as ‘Queen of Dance Rock’, it is also directly connected to some of the songs featured on the album such as ‘Rich Girl’. Within the magazine advert we see a smaller image of the album itself, this has been done to inform the audience that that advert and album images are not the same, allowing them to recognise the album in a store. The smaller image also reveals the rest of the main image on the magazine advert. The complete image shows Stefani looking a lot less glamorous, wearing tight clothing and striking a suggestive pose. However when analysing this particular magazine advert I took into consideration the magazine it was taken from, ELLE, a glamour magazine. Due to the fact of it being a glamour magazine, it is likely that they would avoid using a picture of an artist such as Stefani looking anything less than glamorous and an idol for the readers.