Monday 10 October 2011

Initial Plans for my Magazine

After researching the market place, i have made some initial plans for my magazine.
My magazine will be priced at £2.50, and will be published fortnightly, and will contain approximately 100 pages, this will include regular articles such as:
• Gig guide
• Up and coming Bands
• Competitions
• Track of the Week
• Fan Shoutouts
• Best Bands – a lookout for the best bands from a certain area.

It will also consist of feature articles including:
• Here and now – a look back on the greatest artists
• Exclusive interviews
• Gig reviews
• Record Collection – showing albums of the month.
• The Big Music Guide

Media Packs

Media packs are a way for us to see all of the information and planning that goes into a magazine, aswerll as their statistics, for example how many readers they have on average, or how many of their readers are of a certain gender. it also allows us to see their target audience, and what they do to appeal to their prospective readers.

This is the nme media pack for 2011, and here you can see about their readership, issues, NME Magazine & NME Radio
http://www.nme.com/mediapack/pdf/nme_media_information_full.pdf

Most magazines have an online media pack which is available to see by all customers and readers.

Researching the Market Place

In todays lesson we looked in depth at the magazines that we could be in competition with if we were to go to sale. Looking at other magazines gives us an idea what the customer wants to read, and also give us an idea on the price at which we should sell our magazine and how big the magazine should be.
The following are music magazines that i could take inspiration from:
Rock Sound magazine:



·         Price £3.40 approx. 113 pages avg.
·         Released Monthly
·         Published by Freeway Press Inc.
·         http://www.rocksound.tv/
·         Features of this issue:
o   Following Young Guns
o   You me at Six interview
o   10 most controversial album covers
o   Live & Loud: Enter Shikari


Q Music:

·         http://www.qthemusic.com/
·         Released Monthly
·         Published by Bauer Media Group
·         Magazines motto: “The modern guide to music and more”
Features of this issue.
o   Extensive review section
o   Compiling Lists – eg. 100 greatest albums
o   Has a different message on the spine which links to the main story in the magazine.
another main feature of Q magazine for the month of november is taht for the 25 days of november they will issue a different cover of a magazine as it is the magazines 25 year anniversairy.


Under The Radar magazine:

·         Released quarterly
·         Price – varies per issue.
·         Regulars:
o   Dedicated issues – some issues are based on a genre, band, or era of music.
o   Book, album & DVD reviews

Saturday 8 October 2011

Initial Ideas

The initial ideas for my magazine are that I will produce an Indie/Acoustic and light rock magazine, where I will feature unknown artists that I think could break into the industry.

My target audience will be mostly the younger music fans for example 16-30 year olds, or anyone who has a keen interest in the up and coming artists and gigs that they can go to in their local area. As this is one thing I will try and incorporate.

I wanted to produce my magazine like this, because I would like to see a magazine like this in the shops where unsigned or 'underground' musicians are recognised and are featured in magazines as opposed to hugely famous bands.

A lot of the sales from magazines such as NME and Kerrang come from the fans of the Feature band, but I think that a lot of people are now moving towards the unsigned artists, as the gigs are more intense and intimate, and the way that a lot of unsigned artists are now moving up and selling records to the mass consumer.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Evaluation of School Magazine

To produce our School magazine we had to follow the codes and conventions of magazines, the codes I followed were; using the barcode at the bottom right hand corner of the page, Having the masthead at the top of the page and having no writing covering the front cover stars face. I also used a consistent colour scheme and a vary of font and font sizes, that were not too different or that varied too much.

We used a variety of new technology and new media software when producing the magazine itself. This was a new experience for me, as i have not taken media before. Firstly we had to use high-tech cameras to take high-resolution pictures, which we could then manipulate to produce the desired effect. I enjoyed taking the photographs, as it is something I am interested in doing therefore I would say it is one if my strengths from this project, and I enjoyed learning about the different shot types. We used Photoshop to do this, which was a good way to manipulate the photos and produce a good front cover image for our magazines, Photoshop was fairly easy to use when I got used to it, therefore id say that this is something I could improve my skill on for the next part of the course. My front cover turned out well as I cropped the image, added a gradient background, and inserted text into the Photoshop file. I think I could have improved my cover lines by adding sub-lines, and added more detail onto the masthead, I could have also added buzz words, and editded the colours so they fitted together more.

We used Quark XPress to make our contents pages. I found this very difficult as I had troubles with the software itsself, and I found it hard to understand some of the procedures that were involved on the software, so I would say Quark XPress was one of my weaknesses, we used Quark to make the contents page, I decided to Change my initial ideas as my opinion of the simplicity of the layout changed whilst in production. I decided to put images down the central columns of the page, where I thought the readers eyes would be drawn to the images, and therefore the regulars are on the left hand side above the main story image, and the feature stories are on the right hand column. I decided to keep the background plain, and using different colored image and text to make the page aesthetically pleasing.

To improve my skills I will attempt to produce small tester products on the equipment, to enhance my skill.

Production of School Magazine Contents Page

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Production of School Magazine Front Cover

School Magazine - Front Cover:

In Todays lesson we produced the front cover of our music magazine.



We have used photoshop to produce our front covers and we will be using Quark XPress to produce our contents pages.

Compared to my Original Plan, the layout of my front cover has changed slightly, this is due to the angle that I had taken my photo. I altered where some of the Coverlines went, and tried to make it fit around the image in a clean, sharp way.

I stuck to my Colour Scheme by using Green, Gold & White, and I decided that a gradient effect would look nice behind my Image. I used Dark Writing on the light Surfaces, and Light Writing on the dark surfaces therefore making the writing stand out more. My Only Concern with the colouring, is in the Bottom -Right hand corner where the gold does not show up extremely well on the White keys of the Piano.