Unfortunately my video's also wouldn't upload so this is it all. There were some interviews of my peers and me talking to the camera about what went wrong and what could have been better and peoples personal opinions.

Question 7

Question 6

For the technological side of this I used a Nikon camera and for editing I used PaintShopPro along with some editing sites on the Internet for example http://www.picmonkey.com/ and http://www.befunky.com/ so this gave me a range of effects and touching up devices. Then for the layout I used publisher to help me make sure I have the rule of thirds. 

Editing isn't new to me really, I used to enjoy editing but I had absolutely no idea how to make a picture look vintage or old in any way without it looking cheesy. So I did some research on what other people suggested and started to reduce the saturation and try lots of things out, although it reached a point where I didn't want to mess up or lose something which may have looked more vintage, so I saved every version...

Publisher is new to me, I've never needed to use it so I found it difficult at points when trying to get rid of the grids and realising that my computer didn't have the right fonts was quite confusing.

No guidelines = happy :D
Obviously I had more serious issues like the fact that I'd never used a decent camera before and so when my mum lent me hers I stood there for ages with the lens cap on saying 'Why isn't this working' so things like that time time to get the hang of as well as things like slideshare, I'd never used that so it scared me but I made it through as I did eventually with my issues with publisher and editing.

Question 5

The bold and bright image, I made the rabbit more noticeable by making him slightly more brown through editing. Big, bold coloured title - only bold colour used. Intriguing the audience with an unknown band while drawing them in more to find out about already famous bands with sell lines. Making certain words more bold using yellow or white. Used a colour pattern - kept a consistent colour for the band name and sticking to mainly black and whit fonts with the occasional pale blue font. I tried many different fonts...
POLLUTION This was my final font as it looked like the writing of an 80's film which gives the connotation and reference of the 80's

POLLUTION

POLLUTION

POLLUTION

POLLUTION

POLLUTION Too death metal

POLLUTION High school musical

POLLUTION - bold but boring

Consistency:
Grey/blue background

Slight adaptions to title every time and background – be original not famous

Weird lighting, either loads of light to be very bright all over or lots of lights placed to make the person look dark or the surroundings look dark as an emphasis

Audience Profile - Question 4

Gender: Female

Age: 16-25

Favourite bands: Angels and Airwaves, Good Charlotte, Biffy Clyro, You Me At Six, Taking Back Sunday, Greenday, etc.

Favourite drink: Rockstar or Relentless

Favourite car: Lamborghini

Favourite place: Most likely america as that's where rock originates really with some British aspects

Favourite colour: Reds, purples, blacks.

What she wears: Like above, leather jacket, ripped jeans or holed tights, high healed boots or docs, etc.

Passions: Guitar

Favourite films: Anything action, for example, fast and furious, or superhero films.

Body type: Slender typically

Smoke? Typically

Drink? Typically

This is what you might expect to be the audience and although it may be right in a sense of people who listen to that music may be that person but in reality teens don't tend to buy magazines any more  figures show that it is rather unlikely for a female teen to buy any music magazine really, the only actually high female percentage who buy magazines are the ones who are quite young and buy pop magazines.

Gender: Male
Age: 35-60
Favourite bands: Anything rock or from their kind of time, it can actually be rather varied, but still quite similar to the 'expected audience'
Favourite drink: Some form of beer or maybe even tea.
Favourite place: Could still be american but this person has probably given up any ideas of going there again or at all and is quite settled.
Favourite colour: Blacks, browns, reds, purples.
What he wears: Mainly black, would try to wear jeans or something 'new' like skinny jeans but most of the time sticks to trousers and a t-shirt or shirt. Also does wear leather jacket.
Passions: An instrument like guitar, bass or drums, possibly used to sing.
Favourite films: Anything action once again.
Smoke? Possibly
Drink? At the weekends but not excessively

This is what actually IS the audience, it turned out that someone as old and miserable looking as this is actually the main buyer of music magazines. Personally I'm not entirely sure why this is, it could be because they need a time fill and want to keep up with things and have the money, where as teens have plenty to do, use the internet to find out about bands and don't have money, resulting in fewer teens buying them.

But this is why I tried to make my magazine more vintage, seeing as middle aged men tend to like the magazines and because of their time of rock then it'd make more sense to set it more how they'd like by making it look like their time of rock and alternative rock. But by also adding some of the things I have such as a less sexualised and animalistic view on women it should appeal to more women and the new upcoming bands instead of constantly the already famous might appeal to teens more.

Question 2

The model is female, young - teen, sexualised with the animal, very attractive, wears dark and leather has dark hair, is slim. This could show that the audience are like her, want to look like her or want to look at her. People seem to say that they want more 'real' models but do we really? I think people maybe want something that may appear slightly more real but still something nice to look at.

For some reason my slideshare clip wouldn't work :( so unfortunately, this will have to do - Question 3

Question One

Overall I think I stuck to a lot of the conventions but challenged it slightly by adding my own twist by making it have a 60-90's style mixed with a current style. Also not having famous bands on the front all of the time, and instead having mostly upcoming bands, this would mean my audience would find out about new bands while finding information about currently big ones. So although I stuck to these conventions by using an animal and having a leather jacket and dark clothes and the placing of everything, I tried to challenge it in a way that would still sell the magazine, I didn't go as far as David Carson did with Raygun, he completely went against standard conventions and although that did draw some attention to his magazines, they weren't even identifiable because they would change every issue so if someone went to but it, they most likely wouldn't be able to find it. Raygun did explored many different designs in attempt to be different and quirky which was very successful but maybe the designs were just too strange and abstract, although it my be good to be different the audience is so niche and if the magazine is changed every time, it's impossible to keep up with unfortunately and this did cause it to go out of business which is quite sad, the idea of a magazine with just a random tomato on the front seems brilliant, I love the creativity and daring side to push the boundaries, and the confusion of the audience is amusing, I'd certainly buy that magazine, just to laugh and see something so artistic. Maybe if it was more subtly different, still being adventurous but to a reasonable amount then it wouldn't have died out, especially with the new need to be different and stand out and this is what I tried, maybe I could have been a bit more daring...

Comparison Four

Spin magazine isn't exactly a competitor as it is mainly pop but it does have a range, which sometimes involves rock, but I wanted to compare it to a magazine that's not a direct competitor to see if it still looks like a real magazine and to show why I didn't do this things this magazine did.

Spin magazine is using a variety of font sizes and although that can be effective it didn't work for mine, obviously I used a bigger font for my title and the name of the band and I did vary the font sizes but I wouldn't want one thing to seem more important than another other than the main topic because I feel that looks confusing and I did want mine to mainly look quite organised. Spin does this because it needs to look slightly rougher or more interesting as it just has a white background and nothing major is interesting about the image where as mine has quite a lot going on, it has the slightly coloured background and the shadow the animal and the images and black information bar at the bottom.

What I do like about Spin's magazine though is that they focused on the blue of the models eyes and used that in the sell lines and the simplicity of it is nice but wouldn't work for something more rocky and older looking. It wouldn't fit my target audience, Spin is for a younger more female audience.I also like how the text is wrapped around her body, I did try that on around the face of my model and the name of the band goes with the shape of the rabbits back so that things flow better.

School Magazine Textual Analysis 2 - I accidentally saved this as a draft instead of posting it ages ago... Oops.

I chose this school magazine to analyse because particularly liked it. One of the reasons being the background colour which is successful as it is simple but makes the images and the writing stand out but it still feels quite colourful/happy yet serious/bold.

The pink might be to appeal to a female audience as they are probably more likely to be interested in what it has to say etc. It is simple and straight to the point – but not a very interesting or drawing in title, maybe it could have a different colour? Or a different font to make it fit more with the style by being a bit more fun or exciting. The image is big to catch the eye and  be prominent on the page.

Exclusive pictures – mimicking  popular magazine such as ‘Heat’ this makes it seem more ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ and the word ‘exclusive’ implies that it’s special and cannot be seen anywhere else, making people wish to see it before they lose the chance

Mature kind of smile, it's serious but happy which reflects on how the school makes people feel, they enjoy it but still get work done. Also the folder which connotes smart, and maybe it's top show that it's cool to be doing work.

Comparison Three



Both mine and Q magazine have a grey-like background. I did think of going for a whit background as I was originally having a bold, rock magazine but as I changed it to a more vintage look I needed it to still be a pale colour but not quite as bright and plain as white. Also, the shadows on the panthers is like my shadow at the back of my models head, I thought it gave it more depth and life, therefore making it look more real.

Once again there's the animalistic style used for a female model, but Q used more vicious animals to show the 'beast' in 'sexy beast' which is almost a play on words really. Obviously my animals were limited unfortunately so I could not go as far as that but I didn't really want to anyway, because although I wanted to stick to the animals and females stereotype of magazines, I also wanted to fight it a bit by not making it such a prominent thing on my cover as I think that a woman can be appealing and look 'sexy' without some big scary animal and it can be something simple. That's also why I made sure my model was not wearing as little clothes as Q's model is, I thought that she could still be just as attractive with clothes on and that this might attract a bit more of a female audience who might not buy these magazines due to the sexist connotations. But to keep that appeal to the men buying the magazines she is wearing a crop top so a bit of her skin is on show and she is wearing fishnet style tights but with red tights underneath. The red represents that tough but sexy idea and is eye catching. Although these things can't be seen in the main image but in the images at the bottom and in the contents page it can, so it's like a bribe to people to buy the magazine if that's what they want to see.

This magazine sticks to the black bar at the bottom like mine and the bar code in the right corner, but it is all slightly more organised, the name of the model and the sell lines are all completely straight and some things are very bold. This gives it a clean cut look where as I needed mine to look slightly more rough, but Q uses the animals to toughen it up.

Comparison Two

Originally I wanted to put the name behind the head of my model like a lot of magazines do but it turned out to be quite difficult and it would have covered too much of the title. I also think for my magazine the title is very important whereas ‘Kerrang!’ is very well known to the point where people don’t even need to see the name to know what magazine it is, it’s very distinguishable.

This magazine is actually almost the exact opposite side, the extra information or ‘sell lines’ are on the right side, the band name is slanted in the opposite direction, the bar code of in the left corner and the three images are on the right side. I do think this works as it still looks structured and the image is central like mine. Although the three images in the corner are straight, although the two side ones slightly point inwards. I did try this but because my images were different shapes it didn’t work as well, I thought that because my magazine was quite organised it needed something that looked a bit messy.

I also tried putting certain writing in bold coloured boxes to make them stand out more but because my magazine is more subtle with paler colours due to me trying to make it look slightly older or more vintage the bold colours don’t work and it worked better with no boxes.

Final Front Cover

I made a few small adjustmenst because it looked empty/seperate so I fitted some things together more.

Comparison to a competitor

Both titles at the top of the page in bold, red letters and both more to the left, mine is only slightly to the left to make the slogan flow nicely underneath whereas NME is completely to the left which is quite unconventional but typical of this magazine because of the small name but it does not usually have something so prominent and bold next to it. I did consider putting something else at the top but for my style magazine I think it made it look too messy and take some attention away from the title itself:

They also both have an animalistic idea to it, which is very typical of the representation of females in magazines; in NME her animal is dead because Scarlett is meant to be quite cute and sweet so this creates a contract as she also plays characters which show her to be someone quite powerful and misjudged. Whereas in mine, Leeha looks quite rough anyway in leather and dark clothes, meaning that having an animal such as a rabbit creates a more 'evil villain' with the pet or it could look quite innocent but still animalistic which would be the opposite of the NME magazine cover.

The band/person’s name is placed just under the person’s face, making the face more prominent and showing who it is, this makes it clear that the main topic is the person in the picture and intrigues people more and as this name is usually in the middle of the page and the biggest(or second biggest to the title) making it more eye catching/noticeable.

Bar codes in the bottom right corner which fits with the rule of thirds but the image in NME doesn't necessarily fit with that as the models face is slightly to the right, but because the image is also further down, her face is more in the middle which draws more attention, I couldn’t do this with my image as I wanted to keep the rabbit in the image and I would have ended up with a cap at the top of the page meaning I would have had to have something there which I didn’t want. So although the face isn’t in the middle, it is the middle of the top and seeing as the title is eye catching the face draws you to the title and the title draws you to the face so it could also make the title and face more memorable and it still makes the rabbit noticeable as it’s quite high up but not too central in the image that it’s all the audience would focus on.

There is also the extra information on the left side and the bottom bar. This looks ordered unlike some magazines which put them everywhere, I did try that but thought it looked cluttered and unorganised, although I did and up putting on thing of the right side to make it feel more even and less empty and use the idea of different coloured fonts, I know it’s only black and white but it’s still a variation and the simple colours fit with my theme or alternative rock which is quite typical to use blacks and whites with a main overall of black.



Double Page Spread

Contents Page

My Front Page

De-constructions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Risk Assessment

As it’s in my house there’s not many risk, the only real risk is the use of the instruments and their leads, I plan to wrap the leads around different body parts and connect all of the band members but I will ensure that this is not done tightly and that the leads are long enough so that any sudden movements of another band member will not cause an injury to someone. As the members with instruments are musicians they should be careful with them naturally as they don’t wish any harm to them so this also should not be a problem, especially not seeing as I’ll be moving the people around so they don’t walk into each other or into each others instruments.

Moodboard

Research Methods

I think my research methods will be mainly based secondary because the Internet and books from a library can be very helpful as to finding out things about magazines and their audiences and the bands in the magazines etc. But they may be unreliable or not give enough information but with the use of books it’s unlikely for them to be unreliable and if I’m careful I will find the right information on the Internet by looking at official pages. I will also be using primary methods for when I’ve started my magazine layout, I will want the opinion of my possible audience to tell me what kind of things they like, so I will use questionnaires and maybe some interviews, these can help me make better decisions especially if I have a lot of options and I’m not sure which I like best. The only issue with this kind of research is people can lie but in this kind of questionnaire I doubt they would. I would also like to use some qualitative research such as a focus group because they are very good for exploration for when we don’t know what to expect or for fixing any problems, but whether I’d be able to actually do this I am currently unsure.

Investigate two music magazines currently on sale in Britain

Top of the Pops

Top of the pops is a British music chart television programme which this magazine has evolved from.  Top of the pops or TOTP which was made by the BBC and broadcast weekly from 1^st  January 1964 to 30^th July 2006. Top of the pops still publishes a monthly publication by BBC magazines. This features chart information, star gossip, fashion and beauty advice, quizzes, song lyrics and posters, although, this magazine was launched in 1995 and is famous for giving girl group The Spice Girls their nicknames.  It was the genre between smash hits and NME, but it was gradually changed with less music content and a demographic shift to young girls.

The magazine is noted for its bright colours and engaging pop stars which help to aim the target audience of young teenage girls. It includes the latest music gossip but aims to provide the target audience with the latest hot gossip from teenage heartthrobs such as One Direction and Justin Bieber and exclusive fashion ideas. The cover price is £2.99 and it has a readership of 331,000 people 87% being girls and 15% being boys with an age range of 11-15.

The house style of the magazine has a bubble type font which is pink making it look sweet and colourful which definitely appeals to young teens. This then continues throughout making it recognisable and repetitive.  The picture on the front cover always has the current teenage pop sensation, and in this case it’s ‘district 3’. The colours are very consistent and stick to be bold on each monthly publication. The title ‘Top of the Pops’ is legendary and iconic as the show was a hit in the early 21^st century. The font is always very fun and funky addressing the latest shocking hot gossip.  The front cover is smothered in celebrities, quizzes and fashion ideas which immediately grab out to young teens. The facial expressions of the celebrities is always warm, smiley and fun. At the top of the magazine next to the significant ‘BBC’ logo there is always content of what will be in the magazine something exciting and new or perhaps a quiz. The colour scheme will always be subtle but highlight key parts of the magazine.  The BBC aim to create an exciting modern fresh and trendy approach to teenage girls.

The target audience is definitely aimed at teens and the socio economic group would be ABC1 with an age group of 11-15. The only problem facing categorising this is that we do not know how much of readers are in each category, for example the majority could be in C1 rather than spaced out into each category.

Investigation of two magazines currently on sale in Britain

 

Q magazine

The founders of Q magazine are Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, Bauer Media Group produce it and it was first published in October 1986 at this time it was originally called Cue to imply a musical reference ‘ready to play’ but got mistaken as a snooker magazine. In 2006 Q published a reader survey called ‘100 greatest songs ever’ which was won by Oasis. In late 2008 Q adapted its image, by using a smaller amount of text to create an increased focus on subjects other than music. This led to criticism from much of the Q readership, but is yet to be seen if this change in attitude would affect sales.

The magazine has a widespread review section, with new releases in music, reissues, music gatherings, film and live concert reviews, as well as radio and television reviews. It uses a system of star-ratings from one to five stars. It also accumulates a list of around eight albums, which it classes as ‘the best new releases of the last three months’

The majority of the readers are in the ABC1 area rather than C2DE and it is much more popular in the age range of 15-34 rather than 35+ and over 2 times more men read it than women. The issue with this information is we do not know whether the high popularity within the ABC1 comes from each one or maybe is just from C1 and with the age it could mainly be 15 year olds or maybe scattered all around that big age range. But what we can gather from this is that the typical reader is slightly higher up in social class but probably fairly young as it’s not as popular in 35+ which would imply the audience is mainly teenagers and young adults.

The house style of this magazine is fairly consistent throughout for example the heading/title is the same in every magazine, maybe some slight adaptions made but it is unnoticeable and the background sticks to quite a pale colour such as white or grey for most of the issues with a few exceptions being made for certain artists to fit their genre or the main topic of the issue. The colour and font of the sell lines and tag lines stick to reds, blacks and whites of quite a bold font but once again they sometimes change to fit the artist or new background etc.

Q represents women as sexual items and in some they look quite animalistic which implies they are dominated and sexualised. Whereas the men are shown to be quite fierce or dominant even by not showing any particular facial expression because their face takes up most of the cover but with the women their bodies are on display or at least shown slightly in the image. This would mean that for the audience the female audience admire and aspire for the women in the magazines but have a desire for the men. Whereas the male audience would have a sexual desire for the women and aspire/respect the men. For example: