Research and Planning

Symbolism:

Glossy type magazine.

Make it cool

Advice column

Bright colours

Pictures of us with advice under it

Horoscope page

Inside exclusive on stuff going on in school.

 

 

Iconic:

A man’s tie

Manchester United shirt

Nike Logo

No smoking sign

No entry Sign

Harry Potter Picture

Symbolic:

A crucifix

Indexical:

Photograph of your name, spoken or written

The words zoo and chair

 

Rock magazine conventions:

Conventions for a rock magazine:

Flash, button

Masthead

Subheading

Image

Cover line

Anchorage text

Banner

selling lines

main image

main artist

barcode.

 

Conventions for a classic rock magazine:

Usually black and white images when the model is an older musician

 Simple colours for text, white or black or a colour that fits the common colour scheme of the issue

 Inconsistent colour scheme, the colours are usually specific to each issue. Example in an issue featuring Jimi Hendrix the colour scheme was black and green. An issue featuring Jimmy Page had a black and red colour scheme throughout. Both these colour scheme changes involved text and text blocks.

 As the viewers read the front cover (like a book, left to right, top to bottom) the bar code is situated in the bottom right corner and is therefore one of the last things seen on the magazine by the reader

 The free gift is placed in the top right corner and noticed by the reader quickly

 The masthead is placed centrally on the front cover and usually behind the main image

 

 Magazine planning schedule:

Date:	Task:	Location(s):	Executors:	Preparation:
5/12/12	Planning(sketch front cover magazine)	U13	MF	Think of ideas,
6/12/12	Photos?(check with pod)	Brick wall(grime look) white background(drama studio)	Markus Forrest, Joe Hoggarth, Rob Mason, Jordan Blackburn	Think of places to use
11/12/12	Go over photo’s from last lesson to make sure they are finished and are able to be used on the front cover. Edit them as well on Photoshop.	U13
12/12/12	Start to make the music magazine front cover try to finish in the double. If finished start index page	U13	MF	Use sketched front cover
13/12/12	Continue with index page then move onto double page spread.	U13	MF
19/12/12	Finish double page spread	U13	MF	Use stories

Test shots:

 

 

Music magazine annotations:



 

This magazine is aimed at a more mature audience, this is clear through the use of dull colours. However, the dull colours make the red stand out clearly along with the white logo on top. This means that the customer can clearly see the brand of magazine. Also the image of the main artist creates the dull feeling as what we see first is his black,blonde hair, black glasses and stubble. This magazine is aimed at young teenagers around the aim of, 13 years old. I feel that they appeal to this audience well. This is through the use of primary colours as they are bright, something that young children like. They have also used a well known artist ‘Rihanna’ as the main image to draw the customer to buy the magazine. The use of text over block coloured backgrounds makes it stand out more clearly. For example the ‘girlfriends, naked bits + never seen pics!’ is much easier to see over the block colours white and yellow. This magazine is aimed at more male audiences in region of 18-25. They will attract their audiences through the contrasting colours of white on black. This is seen as all the band is in black clothing, yet their name is in white underneath, along with the title Kerrang, making it stand out much more. However, at the top of the page next to ‘DOWNLOAD 2010 is a go’ the black font on the red background is hard to read. Mood Boards: 





 

 

 





 

 

Final magazine, all pages

Preliminary task front cover

This is my preliminary task front cover.

Mock front cover

This is my mock front cover.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be girls who are aged from 13-17. The reason for this is because of the font I have used and the colour scheme. The font is clear, bright and is much more attractive to the female gender. Also the colour of each of the pages in my magazine are purple, which is more attractive to females. For the shapes I have also used the colour pink which is a female colour. These colours are also primary colours, this means that they will stand out much more, and will be easy to see from a distance.

The target audience will like to hang out with their friends, go shopping on weekends and enjoy going to the cinema. They will like to read into celebrities private lives to get all he gossip so they will like being nosey. At school they will be popular, mostly talking to their friends about music and new songs that are coming out. There music taste will be the UK top 40 and solo artists as this is what the magazine talks about. Their house will be average size and they will wear popular brands of clothes. The reason for this is that they will be the popular ones in the school. The target audience will own a phone, it will most likely be a highly expensive one, with a variety of different features. The older part of my target audience will still be similar to this, yet they will probably have a part time job and enjoy going to concerts to see their favourite bands or solo singers. With the part time job, they may pay board or have gone to university and are trying to pay off their student debt. When they pick up magazines like this they will look at the larger images as that are what I want them to see first. The larger photo on the front cover will be someone who is popular or well-known and that they will most probably fancy. They may be a solo artist, or part of a band. Even though 13 year olds and 17 year olds will most likely have different hobbies, the images I use in my pages will still be attractive to these ages. I won’t use highly descriptive words as this will stop my target audience from wanting to buy the magazine. Therefore if I keep the words simple it will make my magazine look informal and welcoming, which will persuade my target audience to buy the magazine. This can be related to using text over boxes. The reason for this is that it makes the text more effective because it stands out more and is much easier to read.

Even though the magazine is for females, males can still read through the magazine. This is because the articles will still be interesting to them even though the images are for females. And every real media product that is similar to my magazine, will have an anomaly of male readers.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The institution that would distribute my music magazine would be the same as the one for, ‘we love pop’ magazine. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, both of these magazines will have similar target audience meaning that the size of the font will be similar, where images and text are placed will also be similar. ‘we love pop’ is also a well known music magazine and will sell well due to the articles that are included and what celebrities the magazine talks about. Therefore, if they were to distribute my magazine there is a chance that it would become a highly popular magazine. The articles are similar to magazines distributed by them as well. I know this because we looked at professional we love pop products. And for the articles they were usually titled as ‘Exclusive’ showing that this article will only be featured in that magazine. This is a great way to persuade your target audience to buy your magazine as that article will not be featured in other music magazines.

Another reason why I want this institution is because they distribute a variety of different magazines which sell all over the world. The format for their magazines is also similar to the way that I have layed out my music magazine. This can be seen through the main artist of the magazine takes up the majority of the front cover. Then the article about them is placed next to the image or either going through it. Because the magazine ‘we love pop’ is well known, when they use a main image they can cover up some of the main title. This is because the people that buy their magazine will still know what magazine it is. Their index page for ‘we love pop’ uses a variety of colours, they also make use of text over shapes to make it stand out more and look more effective.

Furthermore, distribution marketing is very important in the music magazine industry. Because of distribution marketing it means that your magazine will be sold worldwide. This can be vastly improved by having a company distribute your music magazine. The reason for this is that you can have apps for your magazine so that your target audience can see what is new through tablets etc. with distributing your magazine you will also have an online website where any of your audience can connect to the internet and see it there. Some professional music magazines are also advertised on telly, which gives them a much larger target audience to sell to.

I feel that these would be the right company to distribute my magazine because the magazines that they distribute and the magazine that I have created are very similar. This means that both of the music magazines can be advertised in the same way. It would also be useful as it means my magazine would have an app which many people could access, this is the same with the magazine being advertised on telly as well.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt much more about how to use Photoshop. I didn’t have much experience with the software so I didn’t know how to use many of the advanced features. I started off by using the basic glow features, then got help off my other classmates and looked on the internet for tutorials on how to use the more effective features. At first I didn’t really understand how to use them, but overtime I became more comfortable. With Photoshop, I found it easier than other software’s to manipulate the photos and make them blend in with the background, whereas with publisher I wasn’t as sure on how to make it look professional. Another technology is using a camera as for our images we needed five individual ones each. At first I took plain pictures of one person however, when we transferred them to the computer they didn’t come out well. So when I went to retake them I needed to consider lighting, wind and where they are all stood in the picture. I had to do this so I could get the best picture possible. We also did not use professional cameras so taking in all these different aspects was quite a challenge. When I first started to create my magazine I was going to produce it in Microsoft publisher however, this did not have anywhere near as much features as Photoshop. Because of this it limited the amount of editing you can do to photo’s therefore it may leave your pages looking unfinished and unprofessional. The only problem with using Photoshop is that we could only access it on school computers, so when I wanted to work on my magazine at home I couldn’t. This was a problem as we didn’t have many media lessons a week. This meant that we were limited on the time we had to work on our magazines.

When we had finished transferring our photos we were able to look at them and decide which ones were the best to use. Once we had chosen them, we placed them inside Photoshop and began to edit them. We took a large amount of photos, we did this because when we did it the first time, we didn’t have many to choose from and we also didn’t feel like they would work in a music magazine. We took the photos in a large variety of different areas. These ranged from inside the hall, to outside by reception. This was useful because when we came to choose the photos we had some good locations to use as a background. Other backgrounds that we used were plain walls. Using these was good as it made the people In the image stand out much better. An example of this is when we used a plain white wall. This area wasn’t affected by wind or sunlight due to it being inside. Therefore, as it was inside the image came out fine, so when we moved on to edit it we didn’t need to mess around with shadows etc.