Mock Magazine Front Cover - Photoshop Task

This is a mock magazine front cover I have made on Photoshop, this was to experiment with ideas and the photoshop tools. I
If I was to do this again, I would make the the puff to fit more into the colour scheme and add some tag lines and more about the inside of the magazine.

Using Photoshop - The Simpsons Movie Poster

This is my teaser poster for the Simpsons Movie using Adobe Photoshop, being my first time on photoshop I found parts of it quite straight forward and some parts challenging, in this activity I used the clone tool to copy the donuts and spread them about, I also used the eraser/lasso tool to cut around the donut next to the other image so the white background wouldnt be shown.

Magazine Institutions

A magazine institution are the companies that fund and create the music magazines that consumers read. 

The four main magazine institutions are: BBC - Emap – IPC Media - Bauer

IPC Media 

IPC Media (International Publishing Company) is a consumer magazine and a digital publisher founded in 1958 in the United Kingdom, it has a large portfolio and sells over 350 million copies each year. It supplies magazines and newspapers such as NME, Look, TV Times, Pick Me Up and Marie Claire. www.ipcmedia.com 

Bauer Media Group

Is a large German publishing company based in Hamburg, which operates in 15 countries worldwide. Since the company was founded in 1875, it has been privately-owned and under management by the Bauer family. The Music Magazine this publisher provides are Q, MOJO and KERRANG. All three are advertised on their website as being men's magazine.

Emap

Emap was the second largest magazine publisher in the UK with about 18% of the news-stand market by revenue (to IPC/Time Warner's 20%). However in July 2007, the company announced a strategic review. The result was that the company was split up and sold off in December. It's consumer magazines and radio arm, including Kiss and Magic, went to Bauer for £1.14 billion - making the German magazine publisher the largest in Britian. 

BBC

BBC magazine is the magazine publishing arm of the BBC worldwide. BBC provides a varied and wide range of magazines that target many different audiences. They focus their magazines on music, gardening, children’s popular TV programmes, cooking, cars and astrology.

The music magazines that the BBC has published include:
Its Hot - Top of The Pops - Classical Music Magazine
The BBC publishes many different genres of magazines as well as major websites through their digital channels as well. There are only a few magazines that are of the same genre. Top of the Pops attracts age ranges from 11 up to 15 years due to the content, music articles such as ‘Glee’ and ‘X Factor’





My Magazine - BBC Magazines would probably publish my magazine the best as my magazine is aimed for the Pop genre for the younger generations, which is what the BBC publishes shown above, with music articles on things like 'X Factor' and 'Glee'

Other Magazines Reader Profile Research

This reader profile of NME Magazine has helped me decide what type of a reader profile I wanted to create, I like the style of this reader profile as I'd like to recreate something like this with the collage of photos above the information of things to do with my audience, like a mood board.it is inspiration for what type of questions I needed to put on my survey and what I needed to know about my target audience to help me choose what article to put in my music magazine.

Survey Results

I created a survey to research what my target audience would like to see in a magazine and what they do in their spare time. I created this survey on www.surveymonkey.com then got two sets of groups to complete it, 10 participants from students around college where I printed off the survey and asked them to complete it and then I got 11 participants responses by putting a link on twitter asking people to complete my survey. I chose to complete it this way as students around college are around the age group my target audience is, and my target audience would most likely use social media sites like twitter. I put 10 main questions on my survey both open and closed to get the best possible responses from the survey. I used open and closed questions, collecting both qualitative and quantitative data to help identify how to appeal to the target audience of my chosen genre, pop.

Results

From my twitter sample the results I received were:

2. I found the average age was 15-19

Question 5 has helped me in order to be able to reach my target audience, this lets me know what they use more often, what social media sites everyone has. Also, from these results showing my target audience use a lot of social media sites, I'm going to use this as an aspect in my magazine, having social media links to our sites and having the artist talking about social media, this also means I have more than one way of approaching my target audience. 

From the college student sample the results were: 

1.

2. Everyone that completed the survey was in college therefore aged 16-20

Potential Problems

Potential area where there might be a problem	How I will deal with this problem
Front cover images	Certain images will not fit into the theme of my magazine, being a mature girly theme to fit with my target audience, certain images like darkened and mysterious images won't fit, and the shape of the photo will have to be in the middle third where I want it, I'll deal with this problem by taking numerous shots and editing photos to the way I need them.
Article Inside Magazine	The article inside my magazine had to appeal to my target audience, it has to link well with the article itself and still go with the theme of the whole article,
Images to accompany article	I'll need to find images that go with the article in question, and make sure they go with the theme and style of my magazine, I'll avoid this problem by taking numerous shots from different angles and with different lighting to see which fits best with the colour scheme, theme and the article itself.

Proposal Form

Type of Magazine (fashion, music, etc)	Music
Name of Magazine	MBS (Music, Bands and Singers)
Audience (male/female)	Appeals to both genders but will probably have a majority of female readers
Audience (attitudes and interests)	My target audience would probably keep up to date with the recent charts, enjoy watching and attending award shows and probably use social media sites like Twitter and Instagram often.
Outlet (where it can be bought from?)	My magazine can be bought in newsagents, super markets, cd shops and the concerts where my target audience would attend.
Necessary Information	The price of my magazine would be around £1.99-£2.99, I will have a website shown in the magazine to show where the magazine can be accessed elsewhere other than just the hard copy of the magazine.
Selling Point	This magazine will be the only one like it at this price, and will also include exclusives and interviews that will appeal to my target audience.
Theme (article)	The theme of my article will be an interview type article with a simple layout, on one side a large image with a quote from the article across it, with a fact file of the artist, then the article on the other side, with pull quotes and a simple colour scheme.
Images Front Cover	It will only have one main image on the front cover and not be too cluttered, to give it a mature look to it.
Images Inside	I will use another smaller image on the contents page then I will use a large image on my double page spread.

Initial Proposal Form

Describe your idea for the brief: My idea is a music magazine mainly for pop and chart music, a double page spread of probably an interview type article, a simple but mature contents page and a front cover.

Genre/ sub genre: list similar texts which have inspired your thoughts The types of magazines that has inspired my for my magazine are magazines like Billboard as I like the layout of their front covers mainly,

Target audience: gender/ age/ characteristics/ behaviour My target audience will be around the ages of 15-25, teens to young adults most likely to be British and in some sort of education, like doing their GCSE’s or in college. The magazine will appeal to both genders but I can imagine the majority of readers to be female.

Major conventions I will use On my front cover, I will use a masthead in the top left third, as this is naturally where we read a piece of text first,

Conventions I may subvert/ change/ not use I'm not going to make my magazine over cluttered because I don’t want my magazine to look immature as that’s not really the target audience I am trying to attract.

Original images: what/ where/ what There will be only one main image on my front cover of an artist, hopefully my original images will look bright and

Potential difficulties/ Plan B: Possible problems are things like finding the right images for my target audience having to make changes to my theme. Also not

Magazine Construction #3

In this magazine it is clear who the target audience is just be a quick glance at the front cover, with the girly pink theme and the fashion ideas, it is clear that the target audience for this magazine is girls probably from the age 13 to about 17. The mast head on this cover is behind the images, showing it's a well established magazine however it has a distinguishing logo, that can we noticed well.  The mode of address for this magazine is indirect as the text isn't speaking directly to the audience and the poses aren't taken purposely for this magazine. For each celebrity in the main image there is a pull quote from their article showing good parts of the feature to intrigue the audience to read more into the article and buy it. There are a lot of celebrities included on the front cover shown by the main image, sub images and the 'also starring' part is mainly for impulse buyers, if they're browsing through magazines and there favorite celebrity is on it they're more likely to buy the magazine. This cover page is very cluttered and has a lot going on it, the essential information on the magazine being £3.99, showing the audience can possibly be a bit older, or have parents buy the magazine as this usual audience would probably be in education/unemployed. The website is also given in bright pink text under the bar code showing that this audience would be able to use the internet, often because of the magazine industry going down, the websites are given on the cover to show two ways of accessing the magazine, the date and issue number is also given. 

Mast head: The masthead of this particular magazine isn't the same as an ordinary magazine. The logo of the magazine is used as the mast head on the front cover and here it only features as a small image in the top right hand corner. This means we can quickly see and identify it as we tend to read from left to right. The style of the masthead is in a speech bubble as if it gives the audience a voice that reflects their thoughts toward the magazine or the music genre, ‘we <3 pop’. The colour of the mast head is the typical colours of the logo, this stands out on the pop because of the contrasting colours and also because of the style. The date and issue number are not featured on the contents page of this magazine, this necessary information is featured on the front of the magazine instead. The page number is large and is situated in the bottom right hand corner.  On the context page their includes a letter from the editor giving a direct mode of address to the reader.  This gives the reader an insight into what will be in the issue of the magazine and also possibly an insight into what may be in upcoming issues. There is also  straplines and quotes that anchor all of the other images to the page. There are 15 images features on the contents page of this magazine. Aside From the main, larger  images  of artist Olly Murs they are all roughly the same size. The images show what article the reader can expect to find within the magazine. The images featured along the bottom of the page are of the free posters found in the magazine and this would interest the reader to buy the magazine as they will get the free posters inside. Most of the images are answered by a quote from the artist themselves. The layout of the magazine is quite formal considering the age range the magazine is targeted at. Unlike the front cover the contents page is set out neatly and is the opposite of crowded. The page seems to be both image and text led with a fairly equal amount of both featuring on the page.  The text relates to the images directly as the images are anchored by quotes picked out wither directly from the artists or from the articles featuring the artists.   There are 3 main colours used on the text on the contents page and these correspond to the colour scheme of the page around the outside. The images are all well-lit and help to set the light, fun tone of the magazine. The colour scheme is quite cold as this particular issue of the magazine is a winter/Christmas issue.

This  is one of my favourite layouts I have seen so far for a double page spread in a pop music magazine,This is an image of a double page spread from the magazine We Love Pop that I will be analysing. There are three columns of writing that make up this article for the double page spread though the article continues on an over leafing page.  There are two images on this double page, the main image is featured on the right hand side and takes up a whole page of the magazine There is another smaller picture of the artist on the left page.  The main headline for the article is a quote taken from the artist and made into a title, this gives the reader a brief overall idea of what will be featured within the article.   The large image on the right hand side of the article stands on its own with no text as it has the potential to be cut out from the magazine and be made into a poster. The smaller image on the left hand side of the article is showing the artist on the red carpet, this proves the artists credibility to the readers and also juxtaposes the main headline as red carpet events are seen as glamorous where people would be presenting themselves on their best behaviour. The font used in the article is of a standard size and is nothing out of the ordinary, it is black to make it stand out from the white background of the page. The interviewers questions are written in pink text to make them stand out and to make it easier for the reader to see which bit of the article is a questions, and what is a response to the questions given by the artist. There are also particular bits of the article that are highlighted in yellow. These are things that have been said by the artist and the magazine has deemed them important and has highlighted them, this attracts the readers eye and if the reader quickly skimmed the article the highlighted text would give them a brief overview of what is featured in the article.

Magazine Deconstruction #2

Magazine Deconstruction #1

My first deconstruction is of 'Q' Magazine, I have chosen this magazine, although it is not a pop magazine I thought it'd be good for moving my product on to have a look at the differences between music magazine genres. 

First the front cover of the magazine, it has the mode of address of very indirect shown mainly by the main image of the cover, the pose looks very approachable, which can reflect on the casual target audience and the type of artists inside the magazine. The mast head of magazine being 'Q' is in the top left third which is conveniently where we would naturally read a piece of text and is behind the cover line as this magazine is a well established magazine and needs the article to be the main attraction to impulse buyers. Also above the mast head is 'THE WORLD'S GREATEST MUSIC MAGAZINE' used as a persuasive item to buyers.  The essential information on the front cover has the issue number of 327, showing us that this is a successful magazine that has been going for a long time, the price is £3.99 showing the target audience for this magazine would be more mature alongside a slick look to the magazine with the high gloss quality finish it gives the magazine a more mature look, possible a collectors item as it could be kept and not damaged. The font and colour scheme of the front cover shows a basic, simple approach with simple bold font and a mature colour scheme of red, black and grey to appeal to their target audience.  The front cover shows us that the target audience for this magazine would most likely be older and more dedicated to the artists and magazine, possibly most of the audience with a subscription to the magazine.  

The contents page of this magazine has a very similar look to the cover page as it's a very basic layout. The mast head is the same as the front cover, in the top left third showing it's not the most important aspect of the cover page. The necessary information on the page is the date 'October 2013', it's on page 5 and just after a double page of a CHANEL advert. The form of address to this page is also indirect. Text on the page is very basic font, informative text to show the reader whats in the on each page, under each sub heading. The colour scheme of the font is black and red and extremely structured, the sub headings are primary red to stand out in capitals and are in columns and rows to show the organised aspect to the magazine. Images within the contents page are different sizes depending on how important the story/feature is in the magazine. Also, the composition of the page is very cluttered and full of important parts of the magazines, the main image bleeds into the title showing the importance of the main feature, being the kings of leon almost standing on the page gives an approachable look to the page. There also is an equal proportion of text and images showing the organised format. Splashed around the page are used to intrigue the readers to the rest of the magazines and special, new features, also the bright colours of yellow and blue attract the audience as it's a different colour comparing to the colour scheme.

This is an example of a double page spread from this magazine, two columns are used on each page of the double spread, with pull out quotes to intrigue the reader into the rest of the article by pulling out one of the more interesting parts of the article. The layout of this feature is very much text led with the small font even though there's a large image at the top, there's still more text. The images used in this feature are one at the bottom of the sugababes back in 2000, showing the difference, then at the top the three photo, photo set is very such a fact file captions with a splash showing what was going on in the captions. The images are of female celebrities  the sugababes both now in 2013 and back in 2000. The language in this article is basic black text with very small text, the first letter of each paragraph has a bigger first letter that almost looks like it has been drawn with ketchup to go with the theme of the article. 

Music Genre -Youtube Videos

My music magazine would most definitely include artists like Olly Murs as the mainly female audience would find him attractive, and being off a talent show like the Xfactor, many people will recognise who he is and what his music is already like. If my target audience saw a celebrity like him on the cover, the would be inclined to buy the magazine. His music is classed as upbeat and fun, therefore for the audience who like pop music.

My music magazine would also have a feature of upcoming artists like 5 seconds of summer, who are a pop/rock style of music, who have a fan base of a mixed gender who like a mixed variety of music of mainly chart music. 

Inspirational Magazines

First, I googled 'pop music magazines' to get an idea for my layout/style that I'd like to go with for my own magazine. Here are some images I found useful;

Billboard Magazine has inspired me as the front cover has quite a mature looking colour scheme and theme. I also like how the pose is very in the middle third. Also the mode of address for this magazine is very direct as the model is looking directly out at the audience. 

I have chose this magazine mainly because of the quite busy features and how the main sell lines are set out However, I don't like the colour scheme of this magazine as it makes it look immature, and not for my target audience.

Even though Vogue is not a music magazine  I like the theme of this magazine, as the colour scheme is slightly mature, with the white background and the headings standing out. 

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Hello and welcome to my AS Media blog, here I will be posting regularly while I am developing my final product of a music magazine.

The aims of my AS Media course are to:

• enhance candidates enjoyment and appreciation of the media and its role in their daily lives;
  
• develop critical understanding of the media through engagement with media products and concepts and through the creative application of practical skills;
  
• explore production processes, technologies and contexts;
  
• become independent in research skills and their application. 
  

Pop Music Magazine Initial Mood Board

This is my initial mood board for my target audience, of a pop music magazine