I was given the brief to create a tour poster for a client who plays in the genre of Jazz. I am using my star image from my previous post ‘My images that use MES to communicate meaning’. Every genre has its own conventions and it’s own ‘look’, and I want to be able to convey that. I have researched what fonts, colours, layouts, typography have been used in previous jazz tour posters above. I want my poster to be the same as these but innovative, and unique. Something an audience has never seen before but still stands out as being apart of the jazz genre. When making my tour poster, I will need to consider ‘AIDA’.

AIDA stands for

A – Attraction – I want my poster to be visually appealing, eye-catching, and aesthetic.

I – Interest – I want my tour poster to spark interest in my client, and generate him a larger audience.

D – Desire – I want people to see the tour poster and wish they could be there to see my clients show(s) live.

A – Action – I want my poster to show people how they are able to go to the tour after seeing the poster.

In my final tour poster I fulfilled the brief of creating an eye-catching, informative, aesthetic, jazz tour poster. My design uses a consistent colour scheme of primary colours, which I found was commonly used in other jazz posters, however I added a satin effect to add depth to the colours/text to make it unique, and make it my own. I used white text along the side to tie in the colour of my clients shirt, and the background is a complementary blue to his jacket, the same with his waistcoat.

I’ve ensure that all text on my poster is legible, even if it has been slightly obscured by my client. I used a serif font for the key pieces of information (My clients stage name, and that fact he is embarking on a world tour.) For the rest of the poster, I used a sans-serif font, I did this to make a contrast between the two different types of key information, and to make the poster seem bold, strong, and powerful.

My clients stage name ‘Jazzendary’ waves under my clients star image, to highlight his importance, but over the faded cutouts of his face in the background to emphasize my clients importance. The poster shows my client looking into the distance, I tried to represent this as him staring into the future, at the time of the tour, and show his excitement and enthusiasm to the audience.

The costume I gave my client to wear is what is typical of the jazz genre. This helps my audience know what to expect when going to his shows, as well as promote his tour to new listeners in the correct target audience. The trumpet my client is holding emphasizes this. I tried to enforce a sense of desire and urgency to buy tickets to my clients tour when making the poster, the amount locations my client is going to shows his popularity, and tells the audience that the tour will be a high budget, high quality show. It is clear what website you need to go to to buy the tickets, with the website name running down the side.

I have successfully communicated that there is a jazz world tour happening, run by my client, and every aspect of the poster links back to this.

The experience of making this tour poster for my client will help me know how to replicate these conventions in my own music magazine. I know how to use two different programs to do so, and I know how to research and put in all the key features to convey the meaning and genre of any given piece of media.

I recreated NME’s My Chemical Romance magazine cover. Shown below is my recreation:

Shown below is the original cover:

By doing this, I have learnt how to use InDesign, and how every magazine has the conventional features. E.g. Masthead, Cover lines, Main Cover Star, etc. I found I picked up where all the features I needed were quickly. I learnt how to apply technical forms and conventions, how to correctly lay out a magazine cover, how to adjust something’s proportions, how to adjust colors, fonts, and typefaces, I have also learnt how to place and size an image.

I am confident using:

-Framing

-Text settings

-Special effects (FX)

However, I struggled navigating:

-Stroke settings

-Making different fonts wider/thicker

Knowing this program, and knowing my strengths and weaknesses will help me know what skills to develop, and what skills I’m confident using in my own music magazine. Whilst making the recreation of the poster, I started to understand why certain choices were made when the original was being created.

Here are some tutorials for me to use to improve my weaknesses in the program:

I took my own photos, in each using different distances, angles, framing, and compositions. I portrayed a different narrative in each photo, displaying a variety of denotations to convey the correct connotations. I represented my ideas through the images that I took. In the hashtags added to each picture is 1) The type of shot that the image is, 2) The denotation, and 3) The connotation. Each image signifies something that I have intentionally signified in my pictures. I applied different parts of media language to my work, and this has taught me how to do the same in the future.

By doing this, I have learnt how to take images in a variety of different ways, which will be key for the creation of my music magazine. I now know how to effectively utilize camera angles, composition, distance, framing, and MES of proxemics. I know how to represent and create my own star image (dyer) and my chosen genre in my magazine.

I was allocated to research the genre of ‘Jazz’. In my research, shown in the moodboard above, I discovered that the conventions of Jazz are focused on the music itself, rather than a specific style. Posters often included flying music notes, and often muted colours to represent the soothingness of jazz. At this stage, I learnt everything that I needed to about the Jazz genre, and how to use MES to create a Jazz poster of my own. By learning all the aspects of jazz this will help me elevate my own star image (dyer) of the jazz genre.

The adjectives used by our audience to describe our model include; talented, sophisticated, authentic, relaxed, focused, intellectual, classy, and sensible. The audience correctly decoded our model’s look.

We recreated our own jazz poster, using MES, and we learnt what aspects were crucial for us to encode for our audience to correctly decode (hall), and the feedback we received is shown above. The conventions we showed were correctly represented, and we created a star image. The adjectives that our audience used to describe our model were the ones that we used to describe. We know that we have correctly represented our genre, and our work displays the right denotati9ons to express the correct connotations.

Here is a collage of the photos that we took of our model to represent the genre of ‘jazz’ using stereotypical jazz conventions. We tried a variety of different poses that were used in the height of popularity in the jazz genre in order to show the media language at the time. We tried to convey the correct signifiers (De Saussure) in our images, for our audience. Below is the final photo that we chose to use as the best one.

We chose this photo because it makes our model look sophisticated, and the look of the camera being low down represents how jazz was often listened to by the upper class.

By creating this star image, I know how to use MES and how crucial it is to reflect what I’m trying to convey in an image. This will help me know how to correctly reflect my creative vision, and correct genre in my music magazine.

In my textual analysis above, I look at the denotations, and the connotations of ‘The Who’. Denotations are the things that you can see at face value, and connotations are what these things may suggest. I analyze what all of the aspects of this poster represent, and how the band manage to convey their narrative, just using MES (Acting, gesture, posture, and proxemics).

By decoding this tour poster, I now understand all the aspects that will need to go into my music magazine, and I know what to do to attach the correct connotations to my denotations.