Preliminary Task: planning materials

Existing College Magazine Analysis

Link to cover annotation:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/alee_media/5102066770/

College Magazine Questionnaire Analysis 

When creating any media product it is vital that you research your audience first. One of the ways this is possible is by creating a questionnaire. For my college magazine, as a class, we created a questionnaire. These questions needed to be appropriate to the information you wanted to find out. It is also a good idea to make sure that none of the questions are “leading”.

The first question on the questionnaire is: “Do you think the college should have a college magazine?” This came back with 80% of the participants in the questionnaire thinking that the college should have a magazine. This has established that there is a definite market for the college magazine. The next question was directly linked to this asking: “Would you buy a college magazine?” The results of this were 45% saying No, 45% saying maybe and only 10% saying yes. This shows that the price of the magazine cannot be to much as majority of the people would not pay for the magazine and the rest are not even sure. This brings us to the next question what was: “How much would you pay for a college magazine?” 60% of the participants said that hey would pay 50p for the college magazine this further proves that the price of the magazine would need to be relatively low. A majority of the participants answered: “How often would you like the college magazine?” with Fortnightly.

Question 5 asked: “What would you like to see included in the magazine?” The options for this were:

Gossip Page

College Information

Course Information

Events Guide

Job Section

Sports Page

Horoscope

Problem Page

Competitions

And others……..

The first 5 options on the list were clearly the most popular options in the questionnaire. This made it easy to decide what the contents of my magazine would be.

When asked: “What would encourage you to read the college magazine?” A lot of the participants answered “bright and catchy”. This tells me that I need to make the cover very eye catching and interesting. The final question asked: “What would you like to see on the front cover of the college magazine?” A large majority of the replies were “college students” what shows that it would be a good idea to include pictures of students on the cover.

                                                       College Magazine Front Cover 

The title of my magazine is “Meh…”. This term is commonly used on the internet among young people to express a feeling of indifference or to show that they are not bothered/ overly impressed by something. I choose this title as I thought it expressed the general student’s feelings towards a lot of subjects such as politics, news and culture. To keep to the theme I made the colour scheme black and white as it keeps it rather neutral, but still manages to stand out. Another reason I use a black and white colour scheme is because it hides imperfections in editing and on the face of the person featured.

The “model” I used for my magazine was a friend that I thought fit very well (style wise) into the modern student stereotype. Again, to continue the theme I asked to look as if he was unimpressed with something and to look away as if not interested. I think he managed to achieve this. The wall that he is in front of is actually a separate picture that I added as the original picture had a unacceptable background. For the wall I added a stylised effect to it to make the magazine stand out more.

I added a small section at the bottom of the front cover so that the audience had a rough idea what was in the magazine before purchasing it. The price of the magazine is 50p, I decided on this from the feedback of the questionnaire as most people would not purchase the magazine if they would have to pay any more than this. The price is located on the bar code at the top right of the magazine.

                                                          

                                                      

Main Task Planning

Original images

Institutional data: Music Magazine

One of the most well-known music magazines ever made is NME with well over 400,000 readers picking up the magazine on a weekly basis. The magazine has been running for almost 60 years and was launched in 1952. The target audience that the NME is trying to reach is male’s ages between 17-30 years of age although; the average age of NME readers is 25. NME has succeeded in reaching this audience as 73% of the readers are males and only 27% of the readers being female.  A large majority of the NME readers fit into the ABC1 social statuses what are A Upper-Middle class, B Middle class and C1 Lower-Middle class, in fact a huge 73% of NME’s reads fit into these groups.  

Analysis of Kerrang Front Cover and Contents Page and Article (Kerrang)

The Kerrang magazine focuses on Rock music such as metal, punk, post-hardcore and tries to appeal to people who would class themselves in this genre stylistically. You can assume this a first glance of this magazine cover as just above the main headline it reads “Sex. Drugs. Violence.” The style of the text also suggest aggression and violence, this also goes for the title text of the magazine.

Moving onto the images, the magazine displays one dominant image across the page with 2 supporting images towards the bottom left corner. The main image is of a well know metal band, you can almost tell what music genre they fit into just from this image. Only black clothes, sun glasses, tattoos, various weapons being held; all this suggests aggression and is a representation of the music they play. This allows the audience to look at the cover and decide very quickly if the magazine is for them, or not.

The colours used on this particular issue of Kerrang are slightly unusual as it has a lot of bright yellow; I think this was done to counter the fact that the main image is mostly black. If they had continued this theme to the text and borders the magazine would have not been eye catch and would appear very dull. Despite this they did not use many different colours on the front cover, limiting their selves to just 4 different colours (excluding the images). This keeps it from looking messy and remains easy on the eyes.  Again the use of the colour red can suggest aggression.

The contents page holds most of the same themes as the front cover most of the images are expressing anger or violence and it keeps the same colour scheme. The main sections of the magazine are written in yellow with a black box around them to make them stand out. This makes it possible for the reader to navigate the magazine with relative ease.   



This is one of the articles from the Kerrang magazine. It has one dominant image taking up a majority of the page. It continues the theme of being very image heavy just like the front cover and contents page. However, with this particular article the theme of aggression has been removed to fit the band that features genre and style. The colour scheme is very similar; using the same black and yellow as the contents page and front cover however the red has been removed as not to suggest and sort of violence or aggression.

The article is written in a very informal fashion as the target audience would themselves be rather informal. The first line “With a spring in their step and an attitude to match” shows that the article is going in a very informal, non-serious and fun way. This will appeal to both the audience and the band as judging by the picture the band isn’t too serious either and the readers will be young and not want to read through a serious, formal article.      

Front cover (Classic FM)

Classic FM is a music magazine focusing on the classical side of music. From the first look at this cover you can immediately market as it features a middle aged man.  Classic FM cover takes a completely different approach to its front cover. It tries to attract a more mature, sensible audience than Kerrang does. They keep the colour scheme simple with black and white and the odd splash of red. The headline for the magazine is in gold to suggest a mature, possibly higher class theme to the magazine. 

The magazine has a dominant image of Paul McCartney who is a very well-known face within this genre. Contrasting with the Kerrang image this one shows a relatively calm facial expression and is in no way threatening. This works well for this genre of magazine as it would usually be aimed at the older market and they would not want to deter them.

Contents Page (Q)

The Q magazine contents page is very structured and neat in comparison with the Kerrang contents page which is purposely untidy and unstructured to fit the mind set of their target audience. The structure is also very conformant in the sense that it is very similar to what you would expect a large majority of magazine contents pages to look like (Title top left, date top right, list of contents down the left hand side, pictures to the right etc.) The colours used are also very similar to a lot of other magazines using the same black, white and red design.  

Feature Article (ETC)

This feature article is very minimalistic compared to the Kerrang magazine. Only 2 images are used and a large majority of the page is taken up by text. Although the pictures are not dominant or large the positioning still draws the reader’s attention straight to the picture. The colours that are used are very neutral, mostly black and white with just a little bit of red to prevent the page looking dull. You can tell the target audience is different to that of the Kerrang article as the facial expression on the models does not express any sort of emotion, suggesting the magazine and band are very serious. You can also tell by the pull out quote that the band has a low tolerance to people; calling them stupid and lazy, whereas Kerrang readers wouldn’t expect to see direct insults within the magazine. 

Intial Ideas for my own Music Magazine

• Similar in style to Kerrang
• Colours: Blacks, reds, yellows and white
• 1 Dominant image for front cover
• 3 Images for contents page
• 2  Large images for feature article
• Informal written style

 Cast, Props, Setting, Location Report

The cast I will be using will be made up of 3 of my friends. Only one will feature of my friends. The reason I chose this particular friend for my main image is because he fits into the style that you would expect to see someone of the Rock genre. The props that I will be using are 2 different Guitars: one a black, Stratocaster electric guitar the other an acoustic guitar (possibly). I may also use a guitar amp. The setting of the photograph will hopefully be on a stage however, if I cannot gain access to a stage when it is needed, the image will be taken up against a green wall so I can easily edit the person out and attempt to make him look like he is on stage.   

Construction Planning

Front Cover Structure

The structure of the front cover will have one large image acting as a background with everything else ontop of it. There will be small sections off to the bottom right with brief information of what can be found inside. The barcode will be and the very bottom of the magazine to the leftand will contain the issue number and price within the white section of the barcode. The main magazine title (magazine name) will be at the top in the middle.  

Title Font Type/ Colour

I have narrowed my choice of title fonts down to these 8 fonts and two colours. I chose these fonts as I felt that they would be suitable for a music magazine of this type; none of them are just basic fonts that you would find in the generic music magazine and they all have their own, very unique characteristic to them.

The two colours I chose for the fonts is black and red. The reason for the use of these colours is because black would almost always be found on the attire of the bands that fit into the genre of the magazine and red is a suggestion of aggression and violence.



Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?                                                                       On the left we can see the front covers to both my preliminary task (top) and my main task (bottom). The main thing that separates the two covers is the amount of research I did for each one. On the preliminary task I did minimal research about other college magazines and target audience. This did not have a positive effect on the finished product. Although it is quite aesthetically pleasing the cover does not adhere to the normal conventions of a college magazine. The research used for the finished product helped me decide on the layout and style the magazine should be. Resulting in a more polished and appropriate magazine that reaches out to my  target audience.

Although I went into the preliminary task with basic Photoshop skills I feel that they have increased over the period of this project. The college magazine showcases little Photoshop skill only using a handful of functions on offer. However on my main task cover I experimented with previously unused tools what helped me create a stylistic main image. An example off this would be the emboss filter used, what allowed me to make the image seem as if it was sketched and painted rather than an actual picture. I also learnt about the full use of the blending options to make sure the image did not stand out too much or blend in too well. 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Above are the logos of four main programs that I used for this task: Photoshop, Blogger, Flicker and Microsoft word. Obviously, Photoshop was used for the creation of the magazines. It allows for various functions and techniques to be used to construct and edit the images that make up the final magazine. Photoshop is one of the most popular and user friendly Photo editing software’s available. Blogger was used to showcase my work so it can be marked. The blog is split into many sections for easy browsing and to find what criteria is needed. I used Flicker to annotate and evaluate certain pictures as it allows you to and annotations straight onto the image you have uploaded. Microsoft word was used to type up all the text you can see in the blog. It allowed me to format and spell check the work before putting it on the blog. I did not learn a tremedous amount about the technologies as I was already familar with them before hand. However, my knowledge of photoshop increased slighty as I learnt how some of the filters can be used to add a certain effect to an image.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The first thing a potential customer will notice about a magazine is the front cover. A lot can be told about what content is included within the magazine at first glance. I took this into consideration when creating my magazine. After some research I discovered that most music magazines continue the same style throughout the magazine so the customer can look at the magazine and immediately decide if it’s for them or not. With my magazine I was trying to attract primarily students or young people, between the ages of 14-24 who are interest in 90’s-current day, modern rock. (see section E: Target audience for reasons) To do this I had to do some research into the target audience and look at things such as fashion style, lifestyle and of course musical interest.

I made the front page of my magazine a very stylistic image to fit into the genre of music I was trying to cover. I made it stand out by putting it on a white background. The font I used on the front cover was similar to what I had seen on clothes, CD covers and other magazines of this genre. I set up a sample of fonts and chose the appropriate ones, although I have also included fonts that were not on the sample which I found at a later date.
The colour scheme was very important for the type of audience I was aiming for. The research that I did shows that the audience I’m aiming for like to wear black clothes, red accessories etc., this obviously is a generalisation although a majority of the research pointed to this. To coincide with this I made the colours on the front page and throughout the magazine very neutral for the most part. The front cover is primarily white with the image being black and other shades of grey. I added a Red bar at the top and some red text so that the cover was eye catching and the colour also showed up in my research. I kept this red bar throughout the magazine featuring it on every page for a brief summary of the page or just extra detail. It also help me keep consistency with style on all three images.

The bands that I feature in the magazine are of the genre of music that I was aiming the magazine at. I made the front cover feature one of the bands, Sum41, in large text. This is a very well-known band within certain sub-cultures. The band has been around since 1999 and is still playing today. This means the target age group of the magazine would have grown up listening to the music of the band and may still do today. I also include some new bands such as Veara and The Riverboat Gamblers as I know a lot of the sub-culture that I am aiming at like to be different and listen to fresh new bands.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Audience Moodboard

Hobbies: Xbox 360, Guitar

Events: Gigs (Eastpak Antidote Tour)

Music: Sum 41, Blink 182

Clothing: Band clothing, Burtons, Blue ink, River Island, Topman etc.

TV show: Chuck

Movie: Se7en

Food: Subway

Drink: Coca-cola, Budwiser

Personal items: iPhone/iPod

Car: Fiat Punto

Magazine/News paper: Kerrang

Target Audience Analysis

The target audience that I am aiming for with my magazine will be a young audience between the ages for 14-24, but primarily students. The magazine will be primarily modern rock music and anyone under this age may be shielded from this music from parents or guardians and anyone over this age will not have an interest in modern rock music as they would not have been exposed to it as much. The magazine will not be aimed at a specific sub-culture however there will be certain sub-cultures that will not be interested for example people who fit under the hip-hop/gangster/pop-fashion/chav subculture. The rationality will be within the UK as there is an abundant amount of my target audience available. The magazine will not be aimed at a specific gender or it will not be aimed at either married or divorced people. The reason for this is because I feel the target audience would be slightly rebellious and therefor reluctant to settle down and they would probably not be old enough to have been married or divorced. The social status I will be aiming for will be D, C1, C2 and B. People who fit into the ‘underclass’ social status would not be able to afford to spend money on magazines etc. and people about middle class will more than likely be more interested in to classical music, possibly opera.