08 Moving onto the music magazine

I looked at plans of magazine covers to find out in which order I will put the features of the magazine, to see what looks best, including artists my readers will be fans of. I moved around the features to get the best effect depending on the image used. The flat plans helped me orgabise and plan what my front cover would eventually look like, helping me to have a better designed layout.

I intend to complete the music magazine project, completing a front cover, contents page and double page spread.

My target audience, those who I hope will be interested are young sociable people with a keen interest in indie music. I did audience research by conducting a questionaire to fans of the genre which will help me decide what to add to the magazine, seeing what is at the heart of my readers. For more information into the type of people who will read my magazine see the readership profile which includes information which I found. This shows the target audience to be creative intependant thinking older teenagers with their own ideas and views. They are interested in looking good, taking a pride in their appearance by searching for unique items from vintage shops, yet still shopping at the stylish topshop and topman. They spend their time at gigs and searching for new bands to listen to. They also really value their friends and many have a part time job to fund their various social activities whilst still attending college or university.

I believe that the media institution that would distribute my finished magazine would be EMAP. IPC Ignite! is another successful publishing group, however this is the company that publish the NME so would probably not go for magazine of the similar genre that an NME reader would already be interested in as it would create competition for the NME and the publishing group would be no better off. http://www.ipcmedia.com/ On the other hand EMAP do not currently produce any magazines of the music variety so there would be a gap in the market for mine to be distributed throughout the United Kingdom on a once a weekly basis. http://www.emap.com/ another advantage of EMAP is that it would be good for smaller publications to a smaller audience as it could be more reliable and trustworthy to stand by you whereas, ipc being the larger company may exploit the magazine.

05 College mag evaluation

Here are images of my completed contents page on the left and front cover to the right. Overall I am pleased with my work but I believe they both have their strengths and weaknesses. For instance I find that my front cover directly addresses the audience as there is a strong image pointing towards the reader. It makes people relate to the title look forward. I think this is a suitable title as students should be heading towards the future but also crates a positive effect. This positive thought is further backed up with the bright colours which I used. However the background colur sometimes makes it difficult to read the text as they are quite similar so I would rethink my colour scheme if I was to produce it again. I think that the image being placed under the priory creates a good effect as it is central and to the point. The priory is also a major landmark of Guisbrough, where the college is based. If I had to have a criticism of this it would be that the background is a litte unoriginal as I could've got a less obvious image. I also like the way on the contents page that the images are placed behind the text as it adds an extra element to the page as it is more interesting with other things going on. I will use my experience of creating the college magazine to develop it and be stronger on my main music magazine project. One way would be that on the contents page I was unable to remove the white strip on the background of one of my images. However I now have the photoshop skills to enable me to use the eraser tool which I was unable to before so can use the more effectively on my music magazine.

06 Planning the music magazine

Analysing an existing magazine cover

Now that the contents page and front cover for the college magazine are complete it is time to move on to the music magazine. To find out who my readers for the music magazine would be i put together another questionaire with more music related questions that were specifically towards the genre I am interested in. From these results the readership profile was put together where i had an overall view of what my readers interests and beliefs were and the meaning that i wanted to develop in my own magazine. I made this information look more presentable by including pictures from the genre.

To help with the music magazine I also analysed existing magazine covers. I found out what all of the individual features on the front of the magazine meant such as the menu strip and the kicker. I studied a front cover of Kerrang to see what impression it gave off. I also covered many different elements of the cover and what effect this created to the reader. This was by exploring the written, technical, symbolic and overall features.
Once I was familiar with the terms I arranged many different versions of my front cover using a flat plan design. This was altered by replacing, resizing and moving around the different features and placing a variety of shots in the background. The flat plans show use of space and the positioning of magazine conventions.
I am also working on my house style which will run through the magazine and be a consistent feature. This includes fonts, logos, banners, colour scheme and design. All of these will influence how my audience view the magazine and decide whether it attracts them or not.