Conventions of a Contents Page

On this photo that i have chosen to be on my magazine front cover, I had a play around with it on photoshop, I made her skin softer, the brightness and contrast higher and more bolder and i also changed the whole background to black and white. I really like this black and white design because I think it suits the rock look, and the photo doesn't look as plain. I may use this as my last and final front cover photo. As this was only a darft, It is not as neat as I would like it to be, but if I do use this as my final front cover, I will neaten it up and experiment more things i can do with it on photoshop.

This is my mock up for my magazine front cover. As I looked at what type of music my magazines genre will be, I chose to use the band the XX's picture on the front. Their type of music is indie/alternative. I stuck to my scheduled colour scheme with the blacks,whites,reds and yellows. The only thing that didn't work was the yellow font on the black and white background. So i am going to make to make the yellow font bigger and bolder so then you are able to see it. I liked the black and white background on the photo, so I am going to use that on my actual front cover magazine. The red worked really well with all of the colours and stood out a lot and that's why I chose the main titles to be in red so they stood out. On my mock I included all of the basic elements to any magazine such as the barcode, price, date etc so it it was realistic. With the main titles font, I made sure that it had a rock look to it to suit the genre, and I looked back at my other fonts on my Prezi presentation and looked at what font themes I had looked at. To improve next time, I think I am going to use better and more interesting fonts for the side headings because I think it looks really plain and boring, i want something that catches peoples eyesight. Another thing is make sure that with the yellow colours I am using that you can see the writing on top of the photograph. I also don’t like the way that the main cover title is placed and I think it looks out of proportion, so I am going to keep having a few mess abouts with the way that the main title is going to be put.

On these photographs I took pictures of every type of shot I could, so i could experiment and see what I liked best and what is going to suit to my matgazine. I also tried different types of lighting, to see what went well and looked good. I have carefully looked at the rock/indie type fashion, so I knew exactly what I was going to dress my model up in. I thought that leather jackets were very rock looking, and it gives off the look of rebelliouness. I also put a bandanna on her head because I thought it looked very indie and matched the type of fashion I was looking at on my Prezi. With the bandanna, I tied a bow on the side of her head so it looked girly, to show people that she has a slight innocent side to her. Out of the photos I took, I decided on one that I liked best and the one that I am using for my magazine front cover. The newspaper background I gave again gives off the rock look, and even more so with is tearing off the walls and looking quite raggish.

Mood Board!

Dynamic Mood Board on Prezi

From all of the research I have done on the NME magazines, I put together a mood board, showing all of my initial ideas. I looked at different artists that could feauture in my magazine, based on my genre of music for my magazine. I looked at a lot of different fonts and i do like a lot of the fonts, but i think i know which one i am going to use. I have decided on a definate colour scheme which is red,black,white and maybe yellow. I got this idea from other rock magazines because that usually tends to be the colour theme. I also looked at some photographs from the NME Awards 2012, so i could get a sense of fashion, and what to dress my model up in. Most of the singers/artists has a similar fashion sense, like a rock chick kind of look, but it was also quite girly still. I only looked at female photographs because I am using a female model. From this mood board, I have collected a lot more ideas for my magazine, and it has gave me a real insight.

Focus Group Conversation

What have I found from this reader profile?

Looking at the NME reader profile, I found out that the readers like to be very well informed on things, so on my double page I am going to make it very informative to appeal to my audience. There was a mood board at the top of the reader profile full of pictures that the readers like. There were things such as Converse, Jack Daniels, Festivals, Pepsi, Xbox’s etc. I thought that it would be a good idea to include one of those objects in my magazine as a prize from a competition because my music magazines genre is the same as NME’s. Most of the things that the NME readers like are very modern things. Also, there was high percentage that the audience liked to dress nice and look appealing, so my artist/band on the front of my magazine is going to be wearing modern clothes from shops such as Topshop, Topman, H and M because those shops were included on the reader profile as what appealed to them. The average age for people buying this magazine is 24 year olds, so my magazine cannot be boring colours, it has to be bright and appealing in order for me to catch their eye sight. I want to keep my colour cheme similar to NME's because again it's the same music genre and it is appealing to the audience that I am wanteing to appeal too. On the contents page of tmy magazine, I am going to include pictures of festivals, as that is what was on the reader profile and it appeals to the audience. In order to sell my magazine succesfully, i need to appeal to my target audience.

Uses and Gratifications (Blulmer and Katz)

Uses and gratifications is a theory to find out why people want to see specific media outlets in media. For example why do people read magazines and TV Programmes? It is extremely important that magazines take into consideration the audiences wants and needs, as it is them buying the text and making the magazine money. It's the characteristics and statistical information that distinguishes a group of people, which usually includes age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, interests and more. Blulmer and Katz said that the users have a huge role in choosing exactly what they want to see in their media. It's all about finding out exactly what people desire to see in their TV programmes, their magazines and newspapers they read. This theory suggests that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs and that people use media to fulfil specific gratifications. Blulmer and Katz stated 4 main reasons why audiences may want to consume media text and they were Diversion, to escape from their everyday problems and routine, personal relationships, using media for their emotional needs and other interactions, personal identity, which means that the audience may want to read the media to find themselves reflected in the texts, so it relates to them, learning behaviour and values from the text, and last of all surveillance, to find out useful information such as weather, financial news and holiday bargains etc. Readers will buy my magazine for information about their favourite bands/artists and also for an escape from reality, from the real world. As I am basing my music magazine around the Indie gerne, my magazine would be more related to NME. The price of an NME magazine is £2.20, so i would say that my magazine would be aimed at D's, C2's and C1's. This is suggesting that this type of magazine is not really for the upper class, unlike the magazine Vouge that is £4.10. The magazine is this price because in them social grades, more people listen to indie music. Also more 73% of men read NME and only 27% of female read it. The taget audience range is men aged 17-30. I am going to use these NME statistics and interpret them into my magazine.

Brief

To design a front cover, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original; a minimum of four images must be used.

This is my drawn intial idea for my magazine.

College Magazine Evaluation

I tried to make my magazine look like the previous existing college magazine products I have looked at so mine fits all of the conventions of the real product. I used a big bold title, so it was eye catching and it stood out. They all had a student as their main image, either holding study books or taking part in a lesson, so I chose my photograph that I took of Abbie to use as my main image, holding a study book. They were all smiling, looking happy to be at their college, so I also took that convention. Some of them had taglines, some of them didn’t, but I used one anyway to add more effect. I made the cover lines stand out as much as possible on my magazine, because on some of the existing products I looked at, you couldn’t see the cover lines very well, and it wasn’t eye catching, so I changed that disadvantage to and advantage on my magazine. They all had a competition of some sort at the bottom of the page as well, so I included winning an IPhone 5 on the bottom of my magazine. Every magazine has a barcode, a price and a date line, so I included that in my magazine to look more realistic.

My magazine is stereotypically aimed at the Wyke College students, from ages 16-19 year olds’, as that is the age range that attends this college. My media product represents particular social groups, in this case students, because it has a student as the main image. The cover lines aim to my audience because the main cover line story is about a D student turning a A* student. This appeals to my audience because if people are attending college, they will want to be getting good grades, so they will read this story on how she did it. My other cover lines are about not knowing what to do when you leave college and new subjects that are being introduced to Wyke College. This will appeal to students because they could be in this position. This could also appeal to people who are not even attending the college yet, because the new subjects may be what people want to do, so It is drawing more attention to the college.

Specifically, the competition at the bottom of the page will appeal to my target audience because every young person at college will have a phone, and the IPhone 5 being the newest phone out will appeal to them. Again the cover lines will appeal to them because they may be in that situation or may want to be trying out new subjects. With the background being a part of the main image, it makes the audience that are reading the magazine feel a part of the picture in a way, which is why I specifically chose to take the photograph there. I got my ideas to do the magazine by producing a survey in class, asking questions, seeing what people want in their magazine. The results I got are at the bottom.

Using these notes that I collected from doing a survey, I tried to include them with my magazine, and with some, I think I have successfully done so.

I didn’t use photoshop for this assignment, on publisher, because I didn’t need too. No editing needed to be done or anything, so I designed it all on Publisher. 

These were my notes on what I gained from taking a survey around the college. I used these notes to take into mind when creating my own college magazine.

This is a LIIAR Analysis for a NME Magazine.

This is a LIIAR Analysis for a NME contents page.

This is my contents page mock up.

This is my front cover page mock up.