Music Magazine Evaluation.

For my music magazine's main musical theme and genre I decided to go with a sort of pop punky theme, a genre increasingly popular with teenagers today. I believed it would be easy to convey a pop punk/pop rock theme in my magazine and this therefore meant that the typical black/red/white format of rock magazines wouldn't do. So I instead settled on a blue, to really set it apart from other magazines, allowing it to catch the audiences eye.

Forms and conventions in magazines.

As mentioned, I decided to go with a colour scheme consisting of light blue back grounds and black writing to stand out, or alternatively a vice versa situation where blue writing is placed on a light black background, again to stand out on the page.I think this is in contrast to most magazines seen today that employ an almost cliché red/black/white colour scheme, like NME for example. I feel this is too easy to do, and therefore, I just wouldn't do it. Of course, it would be easy to create my magazine with a completely unconventional colour scheme, that unfortunately did not look like a music magazine, which is the very reason I incorpated a set of three music notes and a bar of muisc from a song too give it the music feeling the magazine needed, and also used pictures to convey this message, using photo's of guitars and singers. All this adds up to an unconventional style of magazine, but one that still looks like a music magazine.

House Style:

 Throught the making of my magazine I tried to maintain the same fonts for things that appear on more than one page, an example being the name of the magazine on the front cover, which is copied across to the contents page, keeping the notes and music bar, but adding "contents" onto the appropriate page, for obvious reasons. This creates a sense of symmetry in the magazine and makes it easier on the eye for the reader, who aren't faceed with reading a title in a hard to read font every other page, but instead reading the same font, with a different title. The font itself is a rather random font that could well be assosciated with the don't-care attitude of pop punk bands by being "scribbled", giving an almost messy look, which I believed was appropriate. I also thought it was important to keep the same colour scheme for every page for the same reason of not confusing the reader with an amalgamation of random colours.

I used a sort of "grid system" with my magazine, especially the contents page, although it's more of a system where the page is set into horizontal thirds, or so I see it. I have my contents as such down the left, as the typical person is known to read from left too right, so this is important.I then fill the space in the middle with an image of the front cover, and a note and picture of the "editor" of the magazine. Then the right hand side of the screen, last seen by the typical reader, is two stories that are in the magazine, leading the viewer to want to read more.

The images I used are meant to emulate photos I have seen before and drwn inspiration from, especially the front cover picture which particularly drew influence from a photo I saw that uses a similar pose. It conveys the carefree attitude of most pop punk bands today and does it quite well. Unfortunately I was not able to get any female influence in regards to photo's, and it would've been interesting to have a photo of a female band member, or even a full female band to go on my magazine,something I'd definitely change if I had chance. I do believe however that it does not make too major an impact on the magazine and believe it still has a pop pnk vibe to it as a whole.

I try to express an almost "excitable" feeling when it comes to writing on the front cover or contents page, using exclamation marks effectively to convey this. I beleive this makes the reader more excited as such too carry on reading the magazine, and this is important as the front cover is the first thing a potential buyer of the magazine will see. I also labelled it as essential, suggesting to the potential buyer that they need to read the magazine, as it is essential if they are interested in the genre it covers.

I used a specific font website for  my main fonts called dafont.com, which is an incredibly affluent user driven website of all types of different fonts, numbering over 10,000 in number. All fonts are created by users and this means there is absolutely no chance that a suitable font can't be found, as there is absolutely something there for everyone, and I found this website incredibly useful.



 Publishing my magazine:


I believe IPC would potentially publish my music magazine, although the colour scheme may well turn out to be too unconventional for such a big brand. However, IPC produce over 80 different media brands, some of which are indeed different too others, so I do beleive they woulld be more willing than others.And it would be ahuge success for a music magazine to be published by IPC, as the brands it already prints reach over two thirds of the UK's women, and almost 50% of men as well, so it would definitely be noticed. Other music brands printed by the company include the popular magazine NME, and also Uncut magazine, which also deals with music. The reason I believe IPC would be nterested

Audience:

Drawing from an early questionaire I created, I found that about 65% of my reader base would be male, with an age range between 17-19. Unfortunately, this questionaire was lost on an old computer, so I was unable to upload and have to instead remember my results. Obviously this is a problem and leads to unreliable data, and is again something I would change if I had time, and would be more careful about. My results did show however that 90% of readers would buy the music magazine purely because they enjoy the genre of pop punk, and believe that whilst unconventional, the colour scheme and house style of the magazine,a s a whole, does it a favour in setting it apart from the rest of magazines that stick to conventions, which is "boring and unimaginative".

 

 

Gathering information and use of technology:

 

Throughout the making of my magazine I have used digital cameras that connect to the pc via leads, computers themselves, programs such as editing software and a large amount of time on the internet, using such sites as search engines, or engine in my case as I only use Google. Font websites (such as Dafont.com previously mentioned) The use of the internet played a large part in forming my magazine, whether it be researching examples of music magazines or drawing influience from sites and magazines and photos and even articles, all helping me to complete my own magazine. Pictures I saw influenced the poses I "arranged" my actors into, and this helped create an authentic sense of pictures, since I am in no way a photographer, so can only learn and try to emulate professionals. Another incredibly crucial, if not essential piece of technology I used was image editing software, in particular Adoe Photoshop CS3 and CS4 (essentially the same). Without this programs multitude of features, a magazine like this would be incredibly hard to create. I did however have to learn how to use Photoshop as I was going along, so I'll be the first to saw that the cutting out of the actor pioctured on the front page is less than perfect. Unfortunately, there isn't much I can do as there is no way to undo the save. Hopefully though it still works as the main image of my front cover, and I do believe Photoshop became easier to use, which I used to my advantage when it came to editing my photo's and creating effects. Clearly then the most important piece of technology I used was the computer. There isn't one point in the course where I didn't have to use a computer, be it attaching a USB lead from the camera to the USB ports to upload my photo's, blogging my progress or researching, say, house styles of popular music magazines. There was no problem in this though as I am skilled with computers and actually found it a more enjoyable experience than using the typical pen and paper approach that other lessons seem to always take. This again worked to my advantage, especially when it comes to the aforementioned difficulties with Photoshop, as it meant that I was easily able to advance on the learning curve quickly.

College magazine/Music magazine comparison.

 

Finally we come to the comparison to my first two pages I did on my AS Media course, and this was my "college magazine" which actually just consists of the front cover and contents page of what would be my college magazine. I rushed these two pages as I was at that moment eager to start my music magazine, and I believe this shows quite clearly as there is no sense of order to the pages and no real house style either. I strongly believe taht my music magazine pages far outsrip these pages in terms of technical aspects and content, and this is definitely for the better. The lack of content and any form of structuring makes it appear to not even be a magazine, and is quite embarrassing actually. Hopefully this is in stark contrast too my main coursework Music Magazine Piece.

Two Different Magazines, Same Sort of Features

This is a front cover exploring magazine conventions. I've chosen this specific front cover from the NME magazines because of it's use of the rule of thirds, and I have placed lines over the page to show this.

The kicker and the graphic feature both occupy seperate corners of the bottom half of the front cover, the headline sits on the dividing line between middle and bottom and the anchorage text sits directly below it. Everything seems to have it's own place on the page which makes it accessible for consumers to see what they want, without everything being cramped together. This makes it easier on the consumer to see something they're interested in and more likely to buy the magazine as a result.

Fonts, for use in music magazine.

Here is a selection of the fonts that I chose carefully to create a retro effect, illustrated by the scribbled letters, going back to when magazines were first printed using ink. I chose to use these other some of the newer, more elaborate fonts because of this reason. 

For my photoshoot for my music magazine, I intend to place my models in front of a blue screen that I will later edit out. I have a few specific poses and props that I want to use, including a Gibson Les Paul guitar that will be featured in my double page sprea, a specific pose that the "singer" will be doing for the feature story of my front cover. The pose is based from this photo:

I showed my model this and asked him to emulate it. Here is the photo that I took and used for my feature story on the front cover:

In the original photo, tghe model's facial features are more prominent whereas in mine, I deliberately asked my model to cover his face with his hair, as it fit the article better.

Photoshoot.

Photo shot in front of a blue screen, zoomed in and used for the front cover

shot as the main image, and the blue screen edited out.



Same photoshoot, different "model" as such, this photo just used as

the shot for another story. Blue screen also edited out.

 Same photoshoot, but I ran out of people to use, so had to reuse the

guy in the centre and tie in the photos' stories on the magazine pages. I

acieved this by not taking out the blue screen this time and pretending

it was actually a stage curtain, and the other models were meeting a band member.

If I had more time, I would use different models to make the magazine better.

Better lighting would also have been used, if I had the time, which again would've

aided the magazine pages to become slightly more professional.

 This image was for the double page spread, and it was the same

storyline as such that was the main feature on the front cover page.

I took a photo of him with a guitar because I felt it could lend to the

interview that would go with the photo on the spread, and also keep

a musical theme going throughout the pages.

I also took a picture of the guitar by itself, but chose not to use it for my pages. 



Double page spread first draft.

Music magazine contents page.

For my contents page, I kept the blue writing on a black background or vice versa house style, and also used another star in the background. I used Photoshop's capabilities to create an exact replica of the title and the surrounding fatures, so they are in the exact same precision on this page as they are on the front cover, although I did change the word "magazine" for "contents" for obvious reasons. I would like to have time to edit the top right picture, as it's in front of a blue screen, but as I ran out of time I instead made it out to be a backstage, behind curtain scenario, which I hope works. I had a little empty space underneath contents which was perfect for a picture, but I couldn't think of anything suitable, which is why I saved my front cover as a JPEG. and used that to fill the space, which is something I would change if I had the chance.

Music magazine front cover.

As you can see, this front cover is a complete change to my preliminary task in terms of a proper house style, an image taken with a lot more care and attention to detail, plus a load of information taking up "dead space", which I thought was quite important, especially after looking at other magazines such as NME and Rolling Stone which always look to make full use of any spaces they happen to have. As I mentioned in my previous post, I aimed to keep a solid house style consisting of mainly blue and blacks, and my model's shirt also helped with the house style, conveniently being blue itself. On my preliminary task I used a font that I didn't feel suited my magazine, and it took me a while to find one that I liked but also, in my eyes, worked as a font for my magazine. the problem I did face was empty space below "Tune Up" and above "Magazine", and it took me a while to figure out what I should do, since I believed adding anything else relating to what's in the magazines would start to make it look like a contents page. I then came up with the simple idea of using a selection of music notes to take up the space above "Magazine", and then also thought of using a bar of music from a song I know, and cutting it into a suitable length. Thankfully, this seems to have worked, taking up space that needed to be filled, whilst letting the front cover do it's job of just being a front cover. The outline of a slightly darker star that's behind everything was added late, as I didn't like the idea of just a plain, flat colour for the background, and adding the star gives it a slight contrast, especially with the sharp lines. Finally, I wanted to keep the blue writing instead of just using black font, so i used the slightly opaque black boxes to frame my writing, so as to make it easy to read.

House style.

For my house style, I decided I'd like to use blue as a main colour, as it's actually quite unconventional, or must be since not one magazine I read happened to use it extensively at all. I hope, coupled with a soft black and idfferent tones of blue, that it works for a magazine. For text boxes, I also used a light, slightly opaque shade of black as I thought that using another colour could ruin the effect, and also make it hard to read the text. Hopefully, my ideas worked.