Initial Research Magazines (Any Genre)

The main task that I have been given is to create a music magazine of a particular genre, consisting of a front cover, contents page and double page spread.
In order to to do this i will need to complete three things:

1: Research and Planning
2: Production
3: Evaluation

Rock Sound Magazine
Front Page
This magazines genre is rock/indie/pop-punk. It profiles a different variety of new and old bands, and tries to advertise to both mainstream and independant music audiences. Both male and female people will buy this magazine, and both of them will read it. They would be underacheivers and radicals, hedonists and be around an E and a C2 on the Jicnar Scale. The black and grey colouring of the magazines look very stylish, and indicate that this magazine is aiming out to an older teenage audience, so about 16+ whereas other magazines, like Kerrang! aim at a lower age.

Content
Rocksound uses a large image to cover two pages with a smaller article. The effect of using this large image is so that the reader gains instant interest by being able to directly focus on a large image. This is therefore more successful than using smaller images and as the article continues onto another page, the reader will be more likely to continue reading. For the image, the individuals are all wearing similar colour clothing which identifies them as a group. The magazine then uses yellow title boxes in the corners as to make them stand out as the section within the magazine on band 'exposure', this stands out to the reader and draws them even further into looking at the page and reading the article. The image also presents the main/lead person in the band to be percieved as the person in the centre as he is the person with the most animated expression, while the others look closer to being contempt. This ensures that the reader is focusing more upon one individual that the article may focus on.

Mix Mag

Front Cover
Mix Mag is a specifically designed magazine for dance music. It is aimed at students, who obviously like to get out and have a good time. Both male and female would buy this, although it does look slightly girly. It features things like Ibiza trips and free CDs to entice the audience further.
Content
This is an example of the kind of pages MixMag has in its content. This is titled 'This months must-have tunes!' Having that kind of title automaticaly entices the reader, especially as it would of been why they would of brought the magazine in the first place. This kind of title is good for an audience who has maybe just brought a new music player, or phone and would like to know what good, dance music there is for him/her purchase. The rest of the page shows example of a top ten chart, having the songs put down in chronological order, putting a small review of each tune underneath a picture of the artist who created the song. It then has a small section dedicated to one of the dance music industrys top artists, writing for MixMag exclusively. By that he has divised his own chart list. This is a very good feature as people will obviously be interested to read this anyway, as it features a good artist, but to know what music he finds good lets the audience feel closer to him, and it also ensures the reader will carry on reading it.

Q Magazine

Front Cover
Q magazine has a very, very varied take on music. Featuring Lily Allen to U2 it covers all sorts of music. The front cover is very simple, but it makes it stylish and appeal to the audience. It would appeal to both male and females, and it would aim at people around 17+. I dont think it appeals to a younger audience as it looks simple, and not very creative, and young people like there magazines to be filled with imagination.

Content

This is a double page spread featuring the band The Gaslight Anthem'. The way they are stood in the picture suggests they are very carefree, and happy to stand up to what they belive in, which is probably one of the themes of the piece about them anyway. I dont think that teenagers aged around 13+ would read this, unless they know of the band and are real fans of them. I think this because the page isnt very exciting, and magazines like Kerrang! have set a high bar for pages to be exciting and appealing to age groups like that. I think that the obvious older audience wouldnt be interested in what the page looks like in general, just aslong as it is simple and easy to read, which this double page spread is. It has simple, yet complimenting colours and how the picture is placed next to the text is very unoriginal, and chronological, so therefore easy to read.

Kerrang! Magazine

Front Cover
This magazine has a genre of rock and mainly 'emo' music. Although sometimes other kinds of music is profiled in the magazine, it is usually of those two genres. It is aimed at both male and female people, aged around 13 to 25, depending on what the magazine is covering. They would be underacheivers and radicals, hedonists and be around an E and a C2 on the Jicnar Scale. I think that this cover appeals to the audience because it has a sans serif font, which doesnt imply style and class, and makes it less intimidating for the readers. The main sell is the band LOSTPROPHETS, and the picture for them is large and takes up most of the cover, this entices fans of the band and it makes it more appealing, as it indicates there will not be alot of writing to read, and that is good for the audience of this magazine.

Content

This is an example of the content Kerrang magazine have in their magazine. It is of an album review of the band 'Five Finger Death Punch'. Prior to that it also has small album reviews on less well known bands on the side. On the review for FFDP it has a small interview from someone in the band. I think this is a good page as it lets the audience know which albums they think are good and not good, and as the reader will probably trust kerrang! they will go by what they say, and therefore create a sense of loyalty to the magazine. So if that reader needs to know about an album in the future, or about a band, then they will look to kerrang for the answers they give. It is a very simply laid out page, and it looks very neat. Although it wont exactly entice the reader, it gives them a chance to focus on the text, as there is alot to read.

Evaluation of Magazine

My magazine cover is similar to other magazines. It would of been hard to of created a design which wouldn't of been similiar to one, or basically the same. We researched into many college magazines, and chose three covers to analyse properly, and use as our main inspiration. My magazine is a college magazine, which automatically puts itself in competition with other college magazines. It is a magazine which is aimed at a large percentage of young people who would be interested in buying it, so it has to be the better one out of all other college magazines. Our masthead is the colour magenta, and has a sans serif font. This is a friendly type of font, one which is used on the majority of magazines aimed at students or younger people. This is because it doesn't frighten them away, and encourages them to buy it. It is also right at the top of the page, the place where everyone will look for the name, so it would be quickly known through students. Our puff is probably similar to ones which are used on many magazines which have nothing to do with college. It says ' The best college magazine in the world'. Although its cliche, and is probably not true, it entices the interest of the audience, and makes them want to read it and feel as though it really is the best college magazine in the world. Our coverlines contained an interview with the Actress Samia Smith. This was the main coverline as she is a celebrity, of whom everyone will know or recognise. Having a celeb as our coverline is a good way of advertising, as it automatically gets the buyer interested and ready to spend money on our magazine. We used a variety of different colours on the fonts, as this would keep the reader always looking at something and interested. Our magazine doesn't really have a genre, apart from the fact it is a college magazine. So this in a way keeps it different to other magazines because they would tend to be more of one genre, as to appeal to one type of audience. But we have things like sport, gigs and soap news appearing in our magazine. So this challenged normal conventions of a magazine. We also had a competition for tickets to see a popular group. This is a good way to keep buyers interested, as it will be a group which they would of heard of, and probably liked. So this challenges other magazines to produce other competitions to maintain the buyers interest.

Our audience is someone who is aged from 16-17 years old and are mostly 1st years in college. To attract this age group we used friendly and colourful font, and not too much writing, as in the first years of college it could feel like you are bowed down with the wieght of too much information. So a magazine with little writing would appeal to them. They live in Worcester, or very near to. To attract these we put in things like latest gigs, dates that are important and events happening in and around Worcester. This would be a big selling point as it would provide information they may not be able to find elsewhere, and keep them sociable. They live with their parents, and have no children of their own. To attract this type of audience, we put a picture of a young girl on the cover, as this relates to this audience, as she would obviously be a young, child free girl, who lives with her mum and dad. This would indicate to people like her that the magazine would be full on things that would interest her, and in retaliation to that relate to them. They would be Acheivers, Aspirers and Hedonists. To get their interest we used things like competitions, and interviews with famous celebs. This is because this would appeal to what they belive in, and what they want to read about. The masthead would encourage them to read it, as they wouldnt feel imtimidated by the serif, bold title, but welcomed by the soft and friendly sans serif font. They're between C2 and B on the Jicnar scale and hope to reach B and A when they become fully independant. The competition for JLS tickets definatly appeal to this audience, as they would not be able to afford things such as this on their own. It also gives them an opportunity to do something for themselves, even if it is just entering a competition. They tend to study a wide range of subjects from Chemistry to Photography, and therefore have a wide range of interests. They are interested in general high street fashion and chart music and like to follow the lastest celebrities. They are very sociable and enjoy big events such as festivals. Using all the conventions of my magazine helped to attract this audience; the colourful font, the masthead, the coverlines, the main sell. All of it was similiar to other college magazines, but that means that it shall be popular with students if those other magazines have made it.


In this whole task i have used a variety of websites that i have never heard of before. The main one being http://www.blogger.com/. This website provided me with a way to keep my work in a managable manner, and it easily let me see what was needed to be done. Another website i'd never used before is http://www.dafont.com/. I thought this website was very good for providing me with an alternative to the standard photoshop fonts, and it let me know for future reference where to go if i want an exciting font. Before we came to do this project, I was aware of how to use a DLSR camera fairly confidently. But as we progressed i became increasingly confident with which settings to use, whether to use the flash or not, and how much exposure was needed for the perfect photograph. I used my own camera for this project, and it has enabled me with the confidence i may need for other tasks in future. I found it relativly easy to set the camera onto the right setting to take a mid close up shot of our model. I used the setting portrait, as this blurs out the background and softens the skin of the subject. Before the preliminary work, i hadnt ever used photoshop for more than a quick experiment. I only knew how to crop, and how to save work. Now I can add layers, remove red eyes, remove bad skin, change the opacity of a certain layer, add text and format it, and how to import different pictures while you are still working on a different one. I am confident i know enough about photoshop to use it on my own now. Before the task i was completely unaware of how to download fonts from the internet, and how to use them in photoshop. Now i know to use the site dafont.com for anything i feel should have a more interesting font. I also found out properly how to change the colours of the font, so that it fits in well with whatever i am doing, in this case my magazine. Quark express was a programme of which i had never heard of. So using it to create my contents page was a daunting task, especially as id just gotten used to photoshop. I quickly found my way around how to use it correctly, and i think that the contents page we created was very good. The thing i liked doing was selected an image, and taking away all the white space, so that the text could fit around the pictures shape. I thought this looked very proffesional and stylish, all of which appeals to our audience.

Contents Page

This is the contents page to our magazine, Range.

Magazine Front Cover

This is the front cover to our magazine, Range.