Deciding my Magazines Price

Today I thought about the pricing of my magazine, I researched my style model to see what the price was for my type of magazine.

Here my style model is £3.00 so I made my magazine £2.49 to make it a better price and to challenge the conventions.

Finishing my Templates

Today I finished my templates to make my magazine a lot easier to finish. I have saved these templates as a .psd file also just incase I need to make some changes to the template. Here are the three templates that I created (Front Cover, Contents Page and Double page spread):

Finding a suitable Colour scheme

I have been looking at colours to try and create a mixture of colours to make it fit with my genre (pop/jazz). I was looking for a smart, modern & simple colour scheme. I finalised my ideas with a Black, Orange and White (Gradient White-Grey).

Here is the outcome of this colour scheme:

I have already added a logo, masthead and subhead to give me a better Idea of what my magazine will look like with this magazine.












I also tried other colour scheme's to make sure that this was the colour scheme that is best.
Overall this is the best Colour scheme for my Audience I do believe, Im going to ask people for feedback on this colour scheme and See if it does fit to my audience. If they don't like it I'll find a better colour scheme for my final draft.

Creating My character Profiles

I have pictured what my audience will be and made two character profiles (Male & Female):

Name: Tom Jones
Age: 22
Occupation: University Student
Income: £3,000
Disposable Income: £500
Hobbies: Learning, Socialising & Gaming.
Music: Micheal Buble, Adele, Ed Sheeran etc.
Films: Mission Impossible, Rush Hour, Days of thunder etc.
TV: X-Factor, Soccer AM, The Simpsons etc.

Name: Catherine Robertson

Age: 38

Occupation: Bank Assistant
Income: £40,000
Disposable income: £300 Monthly

Hobbies: Shopping, Dining & Socialising.

Music: Micheal Buble, Ed Sheeran, James Arthur etc.

Films: The Shawshank redemption, Harry Potter etc.

TV: X-Factor, Come Dine with me, Hells Kitchen etc.

Deciding my Magazine title.

I thought about my magazine title today and I wanted to relate it to music.

 Here are the draft titles:

• Bass
• Chord
• Tune
• Loud
• Play

I decided to go with Chord, all of my drafts were short and catchy but I believe that Chord is more suitable for a music magazine because it still relates to music but has a more classy sound to it.

Finalising Music Magazine Font

Today I looked at fonts on a website called dafont.com and picked the following, Bebas, Gill Sans MT and Neou.

Planning for my Front Cover Photograph

I have been planning for my Front Cover Photograph; I took into consideration the Location, When it was going to take place, Who was going to be there, Camera Angle, Costume (Clothes), Resources needed and props. Here is the plan I that i created:

• Artist - Lewis Wilde
• Date & Time - Saturday 1st December at 1.00pm
• Location - Archway looking at Liver birds & Echo Arena & school hall
• Costumes - Suit
• Props - Sunglasses, Microphone, Piano
• Resources needed - Camera
• Camera Angle - Medium Close Up (Could be further back though)

I have also took a draft shot of my front cover photograph (I also edited it to give a better example):

Removing Backgrounds In photoshop

Today I removed a Photographs background using a Photo-Editing Software (Photoshop).
Here is evidence of me removing the background of the photograph:

I used the following tools; magic wand, rubber and blur to get to this stage with the photograph.

Common Conventions in a Music magazine.

I researched common conventions that are found in a music magazine and here is what I found:

Locations

Today I have been looking at Locations in Liverpool on Google because I am going there soon to try and focus on a location in liverpool and maybe use it to the best advantage (Culture or to represent where the magazine has been set).


Here are some of the Images I found:

If I use a location from Liverpool i will probably be using the Echo Arena or A location were the Liver birds are in sight. The Liver birds would be used to show where the magazine is set whereas the Echo arena could be used just to show that it is a music magazine.

Image for Pre-Liminary Contents Page

Deciding which Image to use for my Contents Page (Pre-Liminary)

I have been thinking about how I am going to be laying out my contents page and I have decided to but an Image in the background.

Here are some Images that I have been looking at:

I am deciding whether to use these, I am most likely to use the first image for the contents page because the student can be edited to be looking at the contents page. I am also most likely to use another image from here for my double spread probably the image with the other student.

Further Research

Today I researched further into institutions and looked at the online magazine monkey in more detail to make sure I had enough information for my assessment next month. I found that monkey was only distributed online. This magazine is also available via mobile phone online also so it can reach their audience wherever they are. Monkey is aimed at 16 to 30-year-old males. Monkey is published weekly and is free and earns its money through advertising. 

I also researched publishing magazines online and found I company that I believe to be free,

Here are the features that the company provide:

Finalising my Style Model

Finalising my Style Model

The style model that i finalised was Q it is a great magazine that reaches out to a good audience so it uses everything well. I will be trying to keep up to Q's standards to try to make my magazine professional. I have been looking at some issues published by Q to notice what type of magazine i need to be making. Here are some of the issues that i looked at:

Q thought that the older generation were being ignored in the music industry so they decided that there target audience was both genders over the age of 25. My target audience may be different and targeted to younger people but its still a good style model.

Researching Style Models

Researching Style Models

I have been researching different styles to decide which one is best suitable, here are the four style models i researched:

• Kerrang
• Mojo
• NME
• Q

Here are some examples of the magazines:

Q in my opinion creates better quality magazines and reaches out to my type of audience so this is most likely to be my style model.

Image for my Pre-Liminary front cover

Deciding which Image to use for my Pre-Liminary front cover

I took my Pre-Liminary images this week and I have been deciding which one is going to be my official image for my front cover.

Here are some of the Images that i composed:

I chose the bottom image because I thought that the pose of the student was well positioned, the reflection of building did give this image a dis-advantage but i have decided to remove the background and just have the student. The two other images may come in handy later on (contents page etc.).

Looking at Style Models (Pre-Liminary)

Today I looked at style models to pick up on some of the conventions included in a school magazine.
I have seen some conventions I would like to implement into my magazine to make my magazine more suitable for my audience.

Here are some of the Style models that I looked at:

I have taken onboard some of the conventions included in these style models I will be focusing on one student on the front cover of my magazine and hopefully be using the test effectively.

Finding a Suitable Location (Pre-Liminary)

Finding/Making a suitable location

I have been looking for a suitable location for my Pre-Liminary task, The task is for a school magazine so i decided to look around my school to consider any locations. I did use my school for the location but I may be using a Photo Editing Software to remove the background and use a gradient; the reason i have decided this is because the locations i got weren't what i wanted them to be and I wanted to focus on the student mainly and if the audience are struggling to recognise the role then the body text would help.

Here are some of the locations that have discarded:

The first location did say school but there was a lot of reflection so i decided to not use this.







The school library doesn't say that its a school it could just be a library.







I do believe that a gradient background is the best way to go for a school magazine anyway because i

could use a colour that may attract students to focus on that magazine.

Researching Institutions

Researching Institutions

I have been researching institutions to find a suitable institution to publish my magazine. I have been looking at IPC Media and Bauer Media, I chose IPC Media because they only have one music magazine so they do reach out to a wide audience when it comes to music but they still have experience with Publishing music magazines. IPC Media is the UK's leading consumer magazine publisher which engages with 26 million UK adults - almost two two thirds of UK women and 42% of UK Men. This is great information because this shows that the institution i am going with arent fixed to one gender. The institution also receives 25 million users globally online so if I wanted to take my magazine online I would have a strong institution by my side.The publishing division in my institution will be IPC inspire.

The Style Model I have chose is in the institution Bauer Media and is called Q so I am going to be looking at what I can do to make my magazine better and different (unique).

 

Photograph permission (Consent)

I was given a consent form to gain consent from Models that I use.

Here is a preview of the consent form:

Initial Audience Feedback

Initial Audience Feedback

I discussed my Initial shots in class with my classmates using a projector, We looked at the improvements that could have been made. I got some feedback on how to improve my composition and focus on using Mise En Scene within my shots.

When looking through my photographs I wanted to look at all the negative points so i could work on improving them next time. The rule of thirds also helped me to focus on improving my composition.

Here is a draft shot:

The shot does have positives but there are some negatives e.g. you can see outside and its raining also there is a bottle of coca cola on the table which should have been moved but i didnt realise at the time (this helps though because it will allow me to see my improvement over time).

Preparing for our Preliminary task

Preparing for our Preliminary task

I began to focus on the composition of my photographs (We looked at the rule of thirds). This should help me improve my photography so when i next take photographs there should be some improvement.

Here is the video that we watched to help us understand how to use the rule of thirds correctly:

Deciding my Brief

Deciding my Brief

I decided to do the print brief, I chose this last week by looking at examples of work and noticed that my school has great resources for this course so I can hopefully create high quality work. The Preliminary exercise is to use DTP and an image manipulation program to produce the front page of a school/collage magazine featuring a photograph of a student in a medium close-up plus some appropriately  laid-out text and a masthead. The course requires me to produce a DTP Mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate the 'grasp' of the program.The main task of this course is to create a front page, contents page and a double spread of a new music magazine.