Rihanna Promotional Poster

Loud Tour was the fourth concert tour by Barbadian recording artist Rihanna. Performing in over twenty countries in the Americas and Europe, the tour supports Rihanna’s fifth studio album, Loud.

When annalysing the poster,it was evident that the effect of it was very simple yeteffective at the sametime. This is because people know who Rihanna is by just looking at her face, and so the poster doesnt have to be 'in your face' to grab the readers attention.  Rihanna's hair is dyed a very bold red. It's a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. which can be related to numerous songs performed by her like 'Man Down', a song about shooting a man in Central Station and so violence and warfare fit into this. The poster in general is very significant for the stage in which Rihanna's career is at, as there is no back ground pictures or information, just a pure close up of her face on a black background. This fits into her career as she is at the stage where people recognize her just by her face so she doesn't have to try and stand out from the crowd, so the simplicity of the poster draws its audience in just by the face of the artist. The typography of the poster has been kept at a very minimal level . The only writing on the advert consists of the artists name, the name of the album and a slogan trying to make the audience feel closer to the artist. All the typography within in the poster has been typed in capital letters so it stands out and is more visible to read. The text is also very thin and so these two things allow alot of room on the poster for the picture of Rihanna. When viewing a poster it is important to gain the audiences attention straight away, and this is why pictures are the main sources on the poster instead of text.  There is a contrast of colour on the poster, from black at the bottom, to very light yellow/red at the top. The two different colours are a relationship between the subject  and its surrounding field to give evidence of the levels of contrast; the more an object contrasts with its surrounds, the more visible it become. An so with the the light colours in contrast with the black, this draws the audiences attention straight to Rihanna's face at the top of the poster. The colour black is used to convey elegance and sophistication and sexy.  As well as this, the colour of Rihanna's hair (red) is seen as a sexualized colour so this tells us a lot about her personal appearance.  Referring back to the typography, the slogan 'Coming to a city near you' in large capital letters is there to be stood out and to be highly visible to the audience. The use of the word 'you' also means that whoever is reading the poster, can be related to Rihanna as it is a direct statement to whoever is reading it. Within the poster, there are numerous links all to do with promoting Rihanna's career. The poster advertises her tour with website which ticketscanbe brought from aswell as advertising her album 'Loud'. Loud received generally positive reviews from contemporary music critics. Jon Pareles of The New York Times perceived a "hermetic, cool calculation" on the album, writing that it "works the pop gizmos as neatly as any album this year, maintaining the Rihanna brand. BBC Online's James Skinner called Loud "brilliantly sassy and exuberant at times" and praised Rihanna's vocals for "elevating it from a hit-and-miss collection into something oddly arresting" and  Los Angeles Times writer August Brown called it "strobe-thumping. However Andy Kellman of Allmusic found its material to be "slapdash" and "uneven", calling Loud "more an unfocused assortment of poor-to-solid songs than a unified set".