What kind of Media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Monday, 27 January 2014
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Evaluation Questions 4-5
Who would be the audience for your media product?
How did you attract/address your audience?
How did you attract/address your audience?
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing media products?
Saturday, 18 January 2014
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Evaluation Question 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the full product?
This course has helped me a lot to understand the process that magazine owners go through to produce a good quality music magazine every month or even week. This timeline aided me in chronologically listing the most important steps from the preliminary task, to finally being able to create a finished front page, contents page and double page spread. By studying other magazines, and the various codes and conventions of magazines, I was able to use, combine and challenge those codes, creating an eye-catching set of pages with bold fonts, colours and pictures. I did have to change a few things though, during construction. I ended up using a different type of don’t page picture than I planned, a different background for the double page spread, (very) different contents page.
Friday, 10 January 2014
PLANNING - Eval. Q7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the full product?
Friday, 6 September 2013
Compared pre-established school magazines
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
Completed my school magazine
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Music Magazine front cover analysis
Friday, 20 September 2013
Market research
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
Analysis of Kerrang! Magazine
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Survey results analysis
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
Representation of Magazines
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Contents and Double Page Research
Friday, 4 October 2013
Flat Plan for Kerrang!
Friday, 11 October 2013
Thinking of a Concept
Friday, 18 October 2013
Music Magazine name/Logo ideas
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Rate Card for my magazine
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Flat Plan for my magazine
Friday, 8 November 2013
Article first draft
Typography
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread mock-ups
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread photo shoots
Thursday, 21 November 2013 - Thursday, 12 December 2013
Construction
Friday, 13 December 2013
FINAL Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread
This course has helped me a lot to understand the process that magazine owners go through to produce a good quality music magazine every month or even week. This timeline aided me in chronologically listing the most important steps from the preliminary task, to finally being able to create a finished front page, contents page and double page spread. By studying other magazines, and the various codes and conventions of magazines, I was able to use, combine and challenge those codes, creating an eye-catching set of pages with bold fonts, colours and pictures. I did have to change a few things though, during construction. I ended up using a different type of don’t page picture than I planned, a different background for the double page spread, (very) different contents page.
Friday, 6 September 2013
Compared pre-established school magazines
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
Completed my school magazine
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Music Magazine front cover analysis
Friday, 20 September 2013
Market research
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
Analysis of Kerrang! Magazine
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Survey results analysis
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
Representation of Magazines
Thursday, 3 October 2013
Contents and Double Page Research
Friday, 4 October 2013
Flat Plan for Kerrang!
Friday, 11 October 2013
Thinking of a Concept
Friday, 18 October 2013
Music Magazine name/Logo ideas
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Rate Card for my magazine
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Flat Plan for my magazine
Friday, 8 November 2013
Article first draft
Typography
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread mock-ups
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread photo shoots
Thursday, 21 November 2013 - Thursday, 12 December 2013
Construction
Friday, 13 December 2013
FINAL Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread
This course has helped me a lot to understand the process that magazine owners go through to produce a good quality music magazine every month or even week. This timeline aided me in chronologically listing the most important steps from the preliminary task, to finally being able to create a finished front page, contents page and double page spread. By studying other magazines, and the various codes and conventions of magazines, I was able to use, combine and challenge those codes, creating an eye-catching set of pages with bold fonts, colours and pictures. I did have to change a few things though, during construction. I ended up using a different type of don’t page picture than I planned, a different background for the double page spread, (very) different contents page.
PLANNING - Eval. Q6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Pages
Pages is Word Processor designed specifically for the Apple iMac. I used this software to design and put together my double page spread, as it allowed me to have a lot more control over the text used on the page than Photoshop did.
It also helped when positioning various objects on the page. Despite having to first make sure the object didn’t cause ‘wrapping’ (the software automatically tries to fit everything else around the thing you have selected), Pages allows you to have many different layers of objects, with full control over everything you have on the page.
Pages is also able to use fonts that you have downloaded externally, which helped a lot for me when making my double page spread.
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a photo manipulation programme made by Adobe. Where Pages gives you control over the text, Photoshop is able to edit photos in a lot more depth and detail. I used this to create my front page and contents page, because of it’s ability to handle lots of high-resolution images and text in multiple layers. I also used it when editing the various photos I used throughout my magazine.
Although I have experience with Photoshop before in Photography GCSE, I learnt more about positioning and layout in magazines, and how to transfer that knowledge into practice on the software.
DaFont
The majority of the different fonts I used were downloaded from DaFont. This website enabled me to find the (if not, very close to) perfect font I needed for each individual purpose. Also, the website has a preview option, so you can type in the text you’re planning on using, and then all the fonts are shown with the word/phrase you used. This helped me so I didn’t have to download a font, only to discover it wasn’t what I wanted
Other Websites
In order to present various completed tasks, I used a handful of other presentation websites, such as Prezi and Popplet. These are really useful because you down have to download anything or pay for a good quality finished product. They also gave me ideas on how to present other pieces of my work.
Pages
Pages is Word Processor designed specifically for the Apple iMac. I used this software to design and put together my double page spread, as it allowed me to have a lot more control over the text used on the page than Photoshop did.
It also helped when positioning various objects on the page. Despite having to first make sure the object didn’t cause ‘wrapping’ (the software automatically tries to fit everything else around the thing you have selected), Pages allows you to have many different layers of objects, with full control over everything you have on the page.
Pages is also able to use fonts that you have downloaded externally, which helped a lot for me when making my double page spread.
Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a photo manipulation programme made by Adobe. Where Pages gives you control over the text, Photoshop is able to edit photos in a lot more depth and detail. I used this to create my front page and contents page, because of it’s ability to handle lots of high-resolution images and text in multiple layers. I also used it when editing the various photos I used throughout my magazine.
Although I have experience with Photoshop before in Photography GCSE, I learnt more about positioning and layout in magazines, and how to transfer that knowledge into practice on the software.
DaFont
The majority of the different fonts I used were downloaded from DaFont. This website enabled me to find the (if not, very close to) perfect font I needed for each individual purpose. Also, the website has a preview option, so you can type in the text you’re planning on using, and then all the fonts are shown with the word/phrase you used. This helped me so I didn’t have to download a font, only to discover it wasn’t what I wanted
Other Websites
In order to present various completed tasks, I used a handful of other presentation websites, such as Prezi and Popplet. These are really useful because you down have to download anything or pay for a good quality finished product. They also gave me ideas on how to present other pieces of my work.
PLANNING - Eval. Q4-5
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The age of the target audience for my magazine is 15-27, with an average age of 18. Though predominantly male, the female readers still make up over a third of the total customers. The large age range is due to the fact that my magazine covers a wide range of rock sub-genres, so there is at least something for everyone to be interested in. Also, the layout and colours of the pages of my magazine suggests that it is mature, but not necessarily too formal, which would be relevant to the age range of my audience.
How did you attract/address your audience?
The main colours (red and black) are what you would associate rock music as a genre with, so it would be easily distinguished amongst a collection of other magazines. The layout is simple and easy to navigate, with the use of bold text where necessary to attract a wide range of people in my audience. The language I used in my magazine makes it easy for my audience to relate to it, because of the informal and almost colloquial nature of it. The image I used on the front cover was of a young and upcoming band, so my audience might be interested because they may not have heard of them.
The age of the target audience for my magazine is 15-27, with an average age of 18. Though predominantly male, the female readers still make up over a third of the total customers. The large age range is due to the fact that my magazine covers a wide range of rock sub-genres, so there is at least something for everyone to be interested in. Also, the layout and colours of the pages of my magazine suggests that it is mature, but not necessarily too formal, which would be relevant to the age range of my audience.
How did you attract/address your audience?
The main colours (red and black) are what you would associate rock music as a genre with, so it would be easily distinguished amongst a collection of other magazines. The layout is simple and easy to navigate, with the use of bold text where necessary to attract a wide range of people in my audience. The language I used in my magazine makes it easy for my audience to relate to it, because of the informal and almost colloquial nature of it. The image I used on the front cover was of a young and upcoming band, so my audience might be interested because they may not have heard of them.
PLANNING - Eval. Q3
What kind of Media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After doing some research into 3 major institutions - IPC Media, Bauer Media and Wenner Media - I have decided to choose Bauer Media.
I chose Bauer because they own such magazines as Kerrang! and Q, which were the inspirations for the type of magazine I wanted to create. These magazines collectively cover the genres of music I want to include in my magazine (albeit Kerrang! being more of an influence).
Because Bauer Media own these (very popular) magazine, I feel that choosing them would be good for my magazine, as they will know how to distribute it to its full potential, the circulation for Kerrang! is 42,077.. Following on from this, like Kerrang!, I have designed my magazine to be published weekly, so again, Bauer would be the best to push my magazine.
Also, because my magazine is weekly, it is quite cheap (£2.80), only a little more than Kerrang! In light of this, it will hopefully become almost, if not as popular as Kerrang! itself, which would be really good for a ‘new’ magazine.
The age range of my magazine goes a little further than Kerrang!’s, so letting Bauer distribute my magazine will bring in a wider audience for their other magazines.
After doing some research into 3 major institutions - IPC Media, Bauer Media and Wenner Media - I have decided to choose Bauer Media.
I chose Bauer because they own such magazines as Kerrang! and Q, which were the inspirations for the type of magazine I wanted to create. These magazines collectively cover the genres of music I want to include in my magazine (albeit Kerrang! being more of an influence).
Because Bauer Media own these (very popular) magazine, I feel that choosing them would be good for my magazine, as they will know how to distribute it to its full potential, the circulation for Kerrang! is 42,077.. Following on from this, like Kerrang!, I have designed my magazine to be published weekly, so again, Bauer would be the best to push my magazine.
Also, because my magazine is weekly, it is quite cheap (£2.80), only a little more than Kerrang! In light of this, it will hopefully become almost, if not as popular as Kerrang! itself, which would be really good for a ‘new’ magazine.
The age range of my magazine goes a little further than Kerrang!’s, so letting Bauer distribute my magazine will bring in a wider audience for their other magazines.
PLANNING - Eval. Q2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The main umbrella group my magazine is aimed at, is fans of the rock/alternative genre. Obviously there are many sub-genres within rock, so I have tried to encompass all of them within my magazine. I have done that my having my main stories about groups/band from different sub-genres of rock.
In terms of ages, I catered my magazine for a fairly young audience, the average age being 18. I made sure the language used in my magazine wasn’t too formal, hoping that my target audience would then relate to my magazine more.
Although my magazine’s reader base is largely male, I still wanted to include a question from a girl in my article, so my female audience could feel more involved.
The colours I used in my magazine represent a typical, almost stereotypical view of rock music; I used red and black as they are more often than not associated with rock in a musical context.
Although I included some big names in my magazine, I also made sure to have some real, upcoming bands. This way, my audience would always be introduced to new music, which would keep people interested in my magazine.
The main umbrella group my magazine is aimed at, is fans of the rock/alternative genre. Obviously there are many sub-genres within rock, so I have tried to encompass all of them within my magazine. I have done that my having my main stories about groups/band from different sub-genres of rock.
In terms of ages, I catered my magazine for a fairly young audience, the average age being 18. I made sure the language used in my magazine wasn’t too formal, hoping that my target audience would then relate to my magazine more.
Although my magazine’s reader base is largely male, I still wanted to include a question from a girl in my article, so my female audience could feel more involved.
The colours I used in my magazine represent a typical, almost stereotypical view of rock music; I used red and black as they are more often than not associated with rock in a musical context.
Although I included some big names in my magazine, I also made sure to have some real, upcoming bands. This way, my audience would always be introduced to new music, which would keep people interested in my magazine.
PLANNING - Eval. Q1
Use
Positioning – The positioning of the various elements on my front page was challenging. Of course, I had the masthead at the top, behind the main image, much like Kerrang! does, which follows the normal conventions of magazines. I also placed the posters at the bottom, and tilted them slightly, which is also quite common. For the story summaries, I decided to frame the models’ faces with the main story on the left side, and the other three on the right. This meant that the models are still the main focus of the cover.
On my contents page, I set it out quite differently to what is usually seen in music magazines. However, I still used things like an editor’s note and page numbers. I put the page numbers in the bottom right corner of every story, and put the editor’s note at the top, right of the masthead. I also set out the contents page so the stories go in order.
For the double page spread, I took inspiration from an NME spread I analyzed before making mine. I used a large image on the right side of the spread, with a large title residing in the top left. The text was quite small, and took up the bottom left. This is a fairly common layout, even if it does get shifted around sometimes.
Cover Image – The positioning of the image on the front page is very important. I took inspiration again from magazines like Kerrang!, which commonly have fairly close-up images of their main interviewee, which creates a lot of impact and draws the attention of the customer. I attempted to use the same technique, but because I have two people as my main story, fitting them in was more difficult. I overcame this by having the two models stand with one head above the other, which countered the problem of aligning the image with the page because it ran with the page orientation.
Text – I used different alignments of text on the front page to, like I said before, frame the models. I did this by having the text on the left aligned to the left, and the text on the right aligned to the right. This also meant that the edge of the text on each side backed onto the edge of the page.
On my contents page, all the text is aligned to the left, leading in to the respective picture on the right. The page numbers are put to the right, as that is where they are commonly found on many contents pages, no matter the design.
The text on my double page spread is again, largely put to the left, as is evident in the article text. The same goes for the text in the box-out. In the article itself, I had all the text white, but put the headers of each paragraph (they were questions in this case) in bold, so they provided natural breaks in the text, and made it obvious where each paragraph started.
Box Outs – I used a box-out on my double page spread. As they usually contain extra information about the story it is tied to, I decided to include miscellaneous information about the two people I interviewed, such as their hobbies.
Develop
Colour Scheme - While researching various magazines, I found that some, like Q Magazine, use a fairly consistent colour theme. Q uses white and red throughout their pages, so I decided to do the same thing. I chose red and black as my colours, as they represent the genre/s of music I wanted my magazine to cover. However, I tried to keep it quite subtle, so the reds and blacks are overall quite dull, compared to some of the other colours. I did this so my audience wouldn’t get bored of the repeated colours
((Contents Page - I can’t say how I developed the contents page of my magazine from other magazines, because it is really different. I could say that I observed how many other magazines’ contents pages are quite heavily text-based. So in light of that, I decided to go to the other extreme, and keep the amount of text as low as I could. I just included the main stories, which meant I could have pictures of the main focus of the contents page.))
Double Page Spread - My front page was inspired a fair amount by this NME spread with Lily Allen. I used the same layout, because it is very simple and easy to see what is where. I did, however, include a box-out, something that the NME spread didn’t do. I added it to include a little fact-file about the two interviewees. Whereas most titles use a single alignment - left, centre or right - I decided to have each line aligned differently. This made it a little more interesting to look at, as well as filling up some of the excess space there would have been, if I had used just one alignment.
Challenge
Front Cover - Many magazines put their headline in the centre of the page. This gives it impact and can be seen easily. However, I did manage to find some magazine covers that didn’t do this, so for my headline, I set it to the left (and made it larger than the other stories, so it was more obvious that it was a headline). I did this half out of necessity, because due to the lower model’s clothes, I couldn’t find a colour which worked across the black/grey of the background, the navy blue of the model’s jacket, and the white/blue of his t-shirt. If I had done, then there would have been too many different colours in one block of text.
Contents Page - My contents page is hugely different from any other magazine contents page I found.. I felt that other music magazine contents pages had too much on them, and were heavily text-based. Therefore, I decided to minimise the amount of text I used, which meant only showing the main stories, and utilising pictures to show what the story was about, accompanied by only a few words.
Positioning – The positioning of the various elements on my front page was challenging. Of course, I had the masthead at the top, behind the main image, much like Kerrang! does, which follows the normal conventions of magazines. I also placed the posters at the bottom, and tilted them slightly, which is also quite common. For the story summaries, I decided to frame the models’ faces with the main story on the left side, and the other three on the right. This meant that the models are still the main focus of the cover.
On my contents page, I set it out quite differently to what is usually seen in music magazines. However, I still used things like an editor’s note and page numbers. I put the page numbers in the bottom right corner of every story, and put the editor’s note at the top, right of the masthead. I also set out the contents page so the stories go in order.
For the double page spread, I took inspiration from an NME spread I analyzed before making mine. I used a large image on the right side of the spread, with a large title residing in the top left. The text was quite small, and took up the bottom left. This is a fairly common layout, even if it does get shifted around sometimes.
Cover Image – The positioning of the image on the front page is very important. I took inspiration again from magazines like Kerrang!, which commonly have fairly close-up images of their main interviewee, which creates a lot of impact and draws the attention of the customer. I attempted to use the same technique, but because I have two people as my main story, fitting them in was more difficult. I overcame this by having the two models stand with one head above the other, which countered the problem of aligning the image with the page because it ran with the page orientation.
Text – I used different alignments of text on the front page to, like I said before, frame the models. I did this by having the text on the left aligned to the left, and the text on the right aligned to the right. This also meant that the edge of the text on each side backed onto the edge of the page.
On my contents page, all the text is aligned to the left, leading in to the respective picture on the right. The page numbers are put to the right, as that is where they are commonly found on many contents pages, no matter the design.
The text on my double page spread is again, largely put to the left, as is evident in the article text. The same goes for the text in the box-out. In the article itself, I had all the text white, but put the headers of each paragraph (they were questions in this case) in bold, so they provided natural breaks in the text, and made it obvious where each paragraph started.
Box Outs – I used a box-out on my double page spread. As they usually contain extra information about the story it is tied to, I decided to include miscellaneous information about the two people I interviewed, such as their hobbies.
Develop
Colour Scheme - While researching various magazines, I found that some, like Q Magazine, use a fairly consistent colour theme. Q uses white and red throughout their pages, so I decided to do the same thing. I chose red and black as my colours, as they represent the genre/s of music I wanted my magazine to cover. However, I tried to keep it quite subtle, so the reds and blacks are overall quite dull, compared to some of the other colours. I did this so my audience wouldn’t get bored of the repeated colours
((Contents Page - I can’t say how I developed the contents page of my magazine from other magazines, because it is really different. I could say that I observed how many other magazines’ contents pages are quite heavily text-based. So in light of that, I decided to go to the other extreme, and keep the amount of text as low as I could. I just included the main stories, which meant I could have pictures of the main focus of the contents page.))
Double Page Spread - My front page was inspired a fair amount by this NME spread with Lily Allen. I used the same layout, because it is very simple and easy to see what is where. I did, however, include a box-out, something that the NME spread didn’t do. I added it to include a little fact-file about the two interviewees. Whereas most titles use a single alignment - left, centre or right - I decided to have each line aligned differently. This made it a little more interesting to look at, as well as filling up some of the excess space there would have been, if I had used just one alignment.
Challenge
Front Cover - Many magazines put their headline in the centre of the page. This gives it impact and can be seen easily. However, I did manage to find some magazine covers that didn’t do this, so for my headline, I set it to the left (and made it larger than the other stories, so it was more obvious that it was a headline). I did this half out of necessity, because due to the lower model’s clothes, I couldn’t find a colour which worked across the black/grey of the background, the navy blue of the model’s jacket, and the white/blue of his t-shirt. If I had done, then there would have been too many different colours in one block of text.
Contents Page - My contents page is hugely different from any other magazine contents page I found.. I felt that other music magazine contents pages had too much on them, and were heavily text-based. Therefore, I decided to minimise the amount of text I used, which meant only showing the main stories, and utilising pictures to show what the story was about, accompanied by only a few words.
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