This advert/poster is an old advert that was used to promote famous rock band U2's album "War" - which was incredibly political and one of their first album that documented the atrocities of war and invasion. Before I go into any major detail about the album, one thing that immediately amazed me was that throughout the digipaks and adverts I have analysed there has certainly been one commonality that unites them all: the concept of minimalism. This album takes that notion to a whole new level and actually compels me with how basic yet impactful the cover is: the rich red against the black and white/monochrome background appears incredibly pleasing on the eye and does the main thing that the advert is meant to do - sell the album. This album does that incredibly well with no fancy editing techniques, the red typography connotes blood due to the name of the album (War) and it is in bold font with no serifs or fancy text which as I said previously, encapsulates a minimalist approach to a digipak/advert so well. I find this advert so truly captivating that I am genuinely considering experimenting with black and white backgrounds and striking red, bold, basic fonts myself.
Also, the boy featured on the front manifests a very dissatisfied expression and consumes the majority of the frame to denote importance. To reinforce the importance of the boy the background has clearly been more blurred in order to make it more difficult to decipher and draw more attention to the boys facial expression and ensure people are able to recognise his youth. The album also encourages sympathy from the audience as there is a visible cut on the boys lip which connotes that he is a victim of war, corruption and the injustice that haunted the world at the time and the band clearly wanted to convey this message to people buying the album - a prime example of how people can set an agenda and get people to buy into an ideology: the consumers may just happen to like the music itself and be completely passive to the ideas and agendas in the album but by marketing/promoting the album successfully through magazine adverts the band can get people who are unaware of what they are buying to buy something solely on the aesthetics and audio thus allowing the band to bombard them with their ideologies that the audience will subconsciously consume - which makes reference to the hypodermic needle theory.
The text is placed further to the right of the frame in order to give the boy the majority of the frame when taking into account the rule of thirds as the boy takes up roughly two thirds of the frame. In addition to this, the band's name and the album name are the only text featured on the advert, which again contributes to the band'd idea of minimalism but the very rich red makes it stand out incredibly well over the background. I also feel that having an advert that uses the same image as the album cover is a huge benefit to the band as it gives them an identity and it gives the album as a whole and as a project a feel of cohesion and organisation that allows the band to market it as an actual brand, something that will be recognised on an advert or a digipak which opens up opportunities for other merchandise e.g. t shirts.
Also, the pose in which the boy finds himself reveals his slight, diminutive figure which connotes weakness and evokes sympathy from the audience especially when taking into account the social historical context of the album (war and invasion). All in all I was incredibly impressed with the advert and will look to incorporate many of it's ideas into my own products (ancillary texts) for the band I am producing for who are also a rock band. This will bring elements of "Pastiche" and "Bricolage"into the production process of my ancillary texts and I will look to gain extra marks as a result.
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