The front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, produced by you - minimum of four images. I was asked to produce a front cover, contents page and a double page spread for a new music magazine. My front cover contains a bold heading which catches the attention of the audience and is a main convention for a successful music magazine. The heading on my front cover ‘INDIVIDUAL’ is very eye catching in my opinion as it is bold and stands out well on the dark background. The reason for my choice of title ‘Individual’ was because my magazine is aimed at indie music lovers and individual connotates independence and independent music. The strap line on the front cover is also very eye catching with a yellow outer glow on black text which works extremely well together. I tried to follow the layout which a real music magazine consists of by making the layout similar to a music magazine currently on the market such as NME or Q. My main image on the front cover is a medium close up and it dominates the page which is one of the main purposes of the main image on a magazine front cover. Another way my music magazine conforms the conventions of a real music is through the use of strap lines on the front cover. The purpose of the strap lines are to give the audience more information about the magazine before they have read it. My strap lines are located to the left and right of the main image as this is where they are usually located on real music magazine. One of the strap lines I have used contains the album cover of Kings of Leon’s new album ‘Come Around Sundown’ which gives the audience more of a visual image of the album and persuades them to buy the magazine and read more about it. Around the album cover I have used a yellow outer glow around it to make it stand out more and appeal to the audience. The main colour scheme I have used is mainly yellow, blue white and black. I have used these colours as I think the yellow and black contrast well with each other and the white stands out well on a dark background. The font I used for my title ‘INDIVIDUAL’ was Eras Light ICT as I think it was the right font to suit the style of my music magazine. I used this font for the front cover, contents page and double page spread to maintain a consistent house style throughout my production. My contents page also conforms the conventions of a real media product as it contains page numbers, text images etc. I have attempted to maintain a consistent style throughout my production but I believe I could of made them look more professional. I struggled to make my contents page follow the same house style as my front cover.
My contents page also conforms the conventions of music magazines currently on the market as it contains page numbers, a title and an image to preview a page in the magazine. I feel my contents page is my biggest weakness because the design of it isn’t as good as I wanted it to be. I have used a yellow outer glow around the advertisement of the beady eye poster to make it appeal to the audience and catch their eye. I feel the best part of my contents page is the band index as I fell it looks very effective. I alternated the colours of the font in the band index to give a different effect and I also used a grey outer glow effect to contrast the yellow font. I used yellow font as I think it makes the page look more exciting and reader friendly. My contents could be improved by filling some blank spaces on the page as there are a few white areas.
Social groups have been targeted mainly on my front cover on my music magazine. One of the strap lines is ‘two free tickets up for grabs’ for Leeds Festival which is mainly targeted at students but could also be targeted at 18+ who enjoy going to festivals. Having an advertisement for having the chance to win tickets for a festival which is very expensive is a good way of selling more magazines. The socio-economic groups I have targeted are C2, D and E. This is because my magazine is targeted at customers with lower income so they can afford the magazine. The magazine would be published monthly as I believe that a weekly magazine is too frequent and won’t gain as many readers. C2 are skilled working class, skilled manual workers. D are working class people, semi and unskilled manual workers. Grade E is aimed at those at the lowest levels of subsistence, casual or lowest grade worker, pensioners or those who rely on the welfare state for their income.
I carried out some customer research via a questionnaire of 40 people. The most popular genre of music was indie with 67% of the vote. This made my choice of music genre easier knowing that indie music is a popular genre for students. The majority of my poll was male with 73%. 75% of the poll read music specific magazines, and 66% of these people buy one monthly.
An organisation I feel my product could be distributed by is NME as they are the institution which are most related to my magazine style. Other institutions which could distribute my magazine are MOJO and Q as my magazine could be a subsidiary of these mainstream magazines.
The audience I have targeted my magazine at are students who enjoy listening to indie music and mainstream bands such as Kings of Leon, Kasabian etc. I think that students are a good audience to target because they are a large percent of the population who buy music magazines. I took out a survey to find out how many people buy music magazines and what age they are. This was so I knew what age group I needed to target and write the relevant information.
The model on my front cover was wearing fashionable clothing which connotates the magazine is sophisticated. The model wears dark jeans, a white printed tee and a denim jacket. The reason I chose to dress the model in these clothes is because they are stylish yet unique. This attracts young and stylish individuals to purchase the magazine. I used a guitar as a prop on my front cover image, this was to make the image relevant to music so the audience know that it is a music magazine. I took my photos in the green room in the media department as I could create good effects with the lighting and introduce different props into the image. I used male models because I think the magazine is targeted more at males rather than females. The shot I used for my front cover image was a medium shot, it conforms the conventions of a real music magazine. For my contents page image I used all three models in a medium shot to give a preview to the audience about what their specific page will be about. For the image I used a chair as a prop to create different levels within the image.
I thought the program Adobe Photoshop was difficult to use as it is very complex and there are many different tools which you can use to create different types of images and different effects. . I wanted to make the products follow the house style but make them unique at the same time, but it was difficult to do this because it was my first time producing a music magazine and at a good standard. I used blogger to upload my ideas and research but I don’t think it is a very reliable programme because I lost some work at the start of the project which I had to redo. This took a lot of time and made the project harder to do. I took my images for my magazine using a college camera which was a very good quality and high megapixel. I feel that I have progressed from the preliminary task as I have put more thought and experienced ideas into this project. I have used my Photoshop skills to better effect when editing photos and feel I have taken better quality photos. I have also used different effects I never knew how to use for the preliminary task such as outer glow effects which help the look of the magazine. I feel that I have put more thought into this task compared to the preliminary task as I knew what to include this time.
I feel that I have researched the music magazine industry in detail to help the production of my magazine and to understand the conventions which need to be included to produce a successful music magazine. The double page spread could have been improved by taking more images to give myself more variety to choose from. I think there are many improvements which could have been made to my production. I think my main downfall was creativity, as I struggled to come up with some good ideas at some stages of the production process. Photoshop still proved pretty hard to use as there are many tools to use which I didn’t use to their full potential.
