Magazine name ideas

Draft Proposal

Draft Proposal

Outline of production:

The magazine in which I have decided to create is a music magazine focusing on the Indie genre of music. This is because whilst doing research it became apparent that many successful magazines also focus on Indie and I feel that it is a genre that can really be played around with in the making of a magazine. Also in response to a survey I carried out the most common answer to a question asking what was their preferred genre of magazine, Indie ranked number one, portraying that it is in higher demand than the rest and I feel as if it is growing and becoming more popular. The main magazine I have looked at for inspiration is Q magazine, this is because I really like the style and layout of the magazine and have some very good ideas which I can recreate in my own magazine, however I also looked at some other similar magazines such as NME, Rollingstones and Kerrang. 

Purpose of the magazine:

The main purpose of my magazine is to entertain and inform. I want to inform the readers of all things music, from the latest rumours and gossip to next years date for all big festivals such as Reading but at the same time I want to do this in a fun and interesting way which will not bore the reader and stop them from reading. Another key factor of my magazines will be interviews of artists, this is key in a music magazine as it's what the audience want to see and read, finding out about the artists they love through interviews. I want the magazine to be extremely honest with the audience, for example if we feel as if a new album from an artists is particularly poor we will say that, because there is no point lying about your opinions and we believe the audience would prefer a more upfront feel.

Target Audience:

For my primary target audience I'm looking at the ages 16 to 21 with a mix of both boys and girls. This tends to be the age groups which are most involved in the music industry and wanting to know everything about the artists they like. These are also the types of people that go to music festivals where a lot of indie artists go to therefore we hope to attract these types of people. Furthermore we believe that people of this age would either have some sort of part time jobs or some kind of disposable income maybe through pocket money or elsewhere to be able to afford to pay around £3 a month for an issue of our magazine.

Business model:

I have chosen to make the magazine a monthly release. This will allow more time to gather better content for the magazine and add quality to it also it may not appeal that much to my target audience if it is £3 every week as they may have other priorities or maybe just don't want to read a whole magazine that often. I will however also offer a yearly subscription which will save the consumers quite a bit of money rather than going and buying them separately each month. On top of this I will be offering 10% discount off the subscription price for students only, I feel this is a very good offer which would attract people of this age group more and give them more motivation to buy and read our magazine.

Audience - Uses and Gratifications

Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe. This relates through music and they types of genres a person listens to and enjoys. For example a person into Rock is more likely to buy a rock magazine than a hip-hop one.

Entertainment - Magazines are generally used for entertainment for the audience. They can be used to help people escape from every day life and also can be used for educational purposes. They want people to enjoy reading the magazine and want to read it rather than feel that they have to, this is why entertainment is crucial in making a magazine good no matter what type it is.

Information – Although having to be entertaining most magazines are also very informative at the same time. Each different magazine will have specific information targeted at the wants and needs of their audience. In terms of music magazines informative information could range from latest news about an artists to the date of the reading festival next year, anything music’s based and informative will be used in the magazine.

Integration and social interaction – Social interaction allows people to share their own opinions and views on the things they have read in the magazines. This is a good way of magazines getting their sales up through word of mouth, if someone buys and likes a magazine there is a high chance of them telling people about it and recommending that they buy it.

Production blog Eleven

Production blog Ten

Production blog Nine

Production blog Eight

Production blog seven

Production blog six

In todays lesson I finished my double page spread analysis. Once again I wrote about key codes and conventions, similar to what I done for the front cover and contents pave analysis as this will then help me when creating my own magazine and show me how most magazines work and what tends to be in every magazine and what isn't included. Next lesson I am going to complete the codes and conventions prezi.

Production blog five

In todays lesson I started to complete the analysis of three magazine front covers. The magazine front covers I have chosen to analyse are Rollingstones, Q and NME, I spoke about many different things including key codes and conventions of a magazine front cover e.g Mastheads and sellines. I then moved on to the contents page analysis where I chose to do kerrang and two Q contents pages. And like the front cover analysis I spoke about key codes and conventions. Next lesson I will be moving onto my double page spread analysis.

Audience survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BDQB5FT

Research blog

Research Blog

 

 

  In order to give myself a good idea of how I should be producing my blogs I have done research on past blogs to get a good idea of what they’re like. The blog I looked through is Alfie greens. I noticed that he has set it out very well by having three main headings: Production diary, Research and Planning and in each he goes in to go detail about what he is discussing. He also uses a good variety of media to visualise his ideas, these include photos, videos and even surveys.

 

 

        Alfie has set his blog out very well and it is clear where everything is and its all easy to access as he’s sectioned it down to separate things. It also looks very good because he’s followed the same colour scheme throughout the whole blog and it uses the same colours as his magazine also therefore it all goes together nicely and there is no colour clashes.

 

 

Here on the right side of Alfies blog he has all of his different labels. This is what he has used to categorise each different post into different sections. This makes it a lot easier for people to read his blog and get to where they want to go much more quicker rather than going through all his posts.

 

 

Throughout Alfies blog you can see it is not all text but he also includes youtube videos and soun cloud clips. This makes it alot less boring and more exciting for the viewer as they are not always having to read through text but sometimes only having to listen. It is also a more efficient and quick way of Alfie getting all his ideas and work onto his blog.

Here in one of Alfies production blogs we can see how he has included a screenshot. This is a screenshot of the work he is speaking about in the text, this is effective as the reader can then visualize what he is actually speaking about rather than just imagining it.

Analysing Alfies blog will be very beneficial as I now know what I can include in my blog to make it successful. The fact that he is not only providing the reader with text but also videos and soun clips is very good as it makes the blog stand out alot more and become less boring, these are things I will think about doing throughout the year.

Representation of a genre (indie)

Audience - Uses & Gratifications

Existing mastheads

Magazine codes and conventions

Production blog four

In todays lesson I finished up my magazine front cover and contents page. I did not make many changes as I was already happy with the result but just moved things about. After this I started doing my preliminary task evaluation. This is where I spoke about my magazine, how I made it and why I made it like that. I also spoke about differences in the design sketches and the final result, although there weren't many. Next lesson I will be starting to analyse three music magazine front covers.

Double page spread analysis

Preliminary task evaluation

For this preliminary task I had to design and create a school magazine. After thinking of a number of names, which you can see in another blog post, I can up with the name ‘The Haydon Mail’ which I got from the real life newspaper ‘The daily mail’. To create the magazine I used Adobe InDesign, which I was already confident in using, as it is the programme I used to create my film magazine in for GCSE.

For my front cover I chose to get a mid-close up of a Haydon sixth form student with the Haydon Stag behind her (on the door). The reason I chose a sixth form student is because it has a much more mature and sophisticated look than maybe a year 7. Also I spoke about sixth form within the contents page and on the front cover so it relates to the main image. I did not want to completely fill the page with sellines, which is why I have kept it fairly simple to keep up with the theme of sophistication, and not make it look too tacky. In addition to this the title ‘The Haydon Mail’ also relates to this because it is a variation of the formal newspapers’ name  ‘the daily mail’. The font used for this was Bookman old style; I went through many till deciding to choose this as my final one as I just prefer it and think it makes it look good. The main font colour is black but the T in the, the D in Haydon and also the M in mail are changed to the colours purple, yellow, and purple. This is because it then follows a colour scheme and links to the Haydon stag, which is placed to the right of the masthead, which is also purple and yellow. This colour scheme is used throughout. It is the colour of the circle, which the selline is in at the bottom right and purple, and yellow are also the border colours on the images in my contents page. I have also added the Haydon values puzzle onto my front cover as I believe this enhances the high quality and sophisticated look of the school which is being portrayed through the magazine and shows the expectations set from the school.

Furthermore my contents page, this follows the same colour scheme as the front cover with the purple, yellow and black. It is crucial that the same colour scheme is followed throughout so that it looks good and doesn’t look like it should be two different magazines. The title ‘Contents’ also uses the Bookmans old style font to keep it similar to the front cover. The title is important as it lets the reader know what page they’re on and if they see that it’s the contents page then they will know that they can then find out more about the magazine and where abouts certain pages and articles are which makes it very convenient for the reader as they can find what they want straight away rather than having to flick through all the pages to find it. Each page number is fairly big which makes it stand out and becomes obvious to the reader what is on the page, which is helped by the brief summary placed below each page number. This gives the reader a brief idea of what is on that page or pages but does not give away too much, using exciting things in these summaries makes the reader more likely to want to read the full article. Also I have added two images into my contents page, firstly one of the main school building St. Nicks and one of the construction area where they are building a new sports hall. By using images it makes the contents page look a lot less boring rather than just having loads of writing so it mixes it up and becomes a bit more eye catching and appealing for the reader. Finally I have added the Haydon stag as the background but faded it out. This further enhanced the on going colour scheme and also makes it clear that it is a Haydon magazine and gives it that stamp and even though you can’t see the whole thing Haydon pupils will know what is it straight away.

My design sketches are near enough the exact same as my finished magazine with the only difference being that I got rid of two sellines from the sketched and didn’t include them on the actual front cover. Other than that everything is how I originally wanted it to be.

Front cover analysis

Contents page analysis

Magazine Sketches

Magazine sketches

 

 



 

 

 

Before I started to make my magazine on InDesign I sketched out the front cover and contents page to get a rough idea of what I would like my magazine to look like (above). I have made very little changes to the sketches apart from getting rid of a view sellines such as ‘mission statement’ and ‘subscribe’. My contents page is virtually the same with the two same images in the same place but the only difference is I added more writing.

Prelinimary task

Preliminary task evaluation from harveycoltman1

Final Magazine

 

Finished magazine and sketches

 

 

This is my finished magazine. As you can see it is very similar to the original sketches and what I wanted it to look like at the beginning. To make my magazine I used Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. In design was the main software used and Photoshop was used to cut out specific things such as the Haydon stag and the Haydon values. My magazine follows a colour scheme of black, purple and yellow, I have done this because the Haydon stag follows the same colour scheme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Production blog three

Now that I have finished my sketches and have a rough idea of what I want my magazine to looks like I was able to get the pictures onto the computer and start editing my magazine. To do so I used Adobe InDesign, a software I an familiar with and can use quite well as it was the software I used in my GCSE media studies. I also used photoshop to crop down photos out of their original background. I started by adding my title 'The Haydon Mail', I thought it would look good with the words 'the' and 'mail' significantly smaller than 'haydon' to make the word stand out, therefore this is what I done. I then tried out lots of different fonts till coming across bookman oldstyle and deciding to use that. Next up I added all my sellines where I wanted them to be knowing that they could be changed when I add my pictures depending on what it looks like. I finally added 3 images, firstly my main image which what of mu cover model (Ellie) stood by a door in the sixth form area which had the Haydon stag by it, this image took up the whole front cover. I then added the Haydon stag, this was placed just above the word 'mail' and to the right of 'Haydon', I thought this was affective as it shows that it is a Haydon product and obviously relates to the school. Finally I added the Haydon values puzzle pieces to the right of Ellie on the image and it is basically a selline. Next lesson my main aim is to touch up my front  cover, play around with fonts and colours until I like it and then move on to making my contents page.

Production blog two

Monday September 8th

In this lesson I carried on with my task of sketching out my designs for the front cover and contents page of my school magazine. I only had a few more things to sketch up on my front cover such as sellines and then I moved onto my contents page. This included two main images, one of the St Nicks school building and one of the new sports hall being built. Then the rest of the page will be full of page numbers and mini bios of what will be on them specific pages. Once this was complete I then went out to get my pictures. I used Ellie Davies as my cover model and the picture I wanted of her was a mid shot with a Haydon stag in the background, I managed to get this by her being stood next to a door with the stag on. I then also got my pictures of the building and the sports hall construction area. Next lesson I will be getting these images onto the computer and starting to edit my magazine.

Production blog one

Wednesday September 3rd

In Wednesdays lesson we firstly found out about the AS course (coursework side) and what we will be doing within the year and also what you can do at A2. We were then set our first task, which was to make a Haydon school magazine. We have to make the front cover and contents page only. During the lesson I started to sketch up my front cover and how i'd like it to look and next lesson I will be sketching up my contents page and then going out to take photo's for my magazine.