Media blog: March 2010

AS MEDIA STUDIES
Foundation Portfolio evaluation
I was given the brief to create a front page, contents page and double page spread for a new music magazine. All of the images and text had to be original and created by me, with a minimum of four images. I had to consider, genre, audience, mise-en-scene, camera angles to create a unique idea.

I began researching a variation of different music magazine genres and wrote about them on my blog. This helped me to decide the genre of my music magazine would be Indie rock and that I would target it at a male audience from teenagers to males in there 20’s. My music magazine will appeal to a specific social group ‘indies’. I began by asking my self simple questions for example how my artist would appeal to this genre, what type of font I intended to use and I began to think of suitable names. I came up with the name ‘Ziccc’ this is because it sounds like the suffix of music.

I first took a variation of photos from a real band gig, I took close ups, medium shots, long shots, wide shots and low angle shots. The location was in a small bar in which there was a stage for the performers. The band had props which would look affective for my magazine such as a guitar, drums and microphones. The way the band members dressed fitted the genre of my magazine perfectly as they wore, skinny jeans, and tight tops and had fairly long hair. I wanted a wide range of photos from the same source so that I was not limited when I came to editing and producing. I also took some photos of an outside location with a brick wall as the background, again I took a variation of shots of my model against this location for the same reason. I thought this location would look effective for the double page spread as I could edit it and make it suit the style of my magazine.

I researched codes and conventions and published them on my blog. I created these codes and conventions from all of the research I had done in comparing different music magazines. I also created a set of codes and conventions for a fashion magazine. By researching a normal magazine compared to a music magazine, it allowed me to see the classic conventions of all magazines, and also how I should approach the task differently, and make sure my ideas were unique which is essential for a music magazine.

Music magazines always have a main artists featured on the front cover, this is why I have one main image on the front of my magazine. The name of this artist is always displayed in large letters which is why I made this font the largest on the page. The font is always bold which connotes this rebellious image that music can represent. There is always a competition or a free gift hence my free CD. They usually contrast bright and dark colours and stick to three main colours. I stuck to red black and white as I think that the red stands out from the black and white, red also connotes danger and rebellion. I included a date, price and barcode as this is essential on a front cover. The artist is usually looking straight into the camera, it shows confidence and boldness so in my main image my model is looking directly into the camera. There is also other cover line stories on the front page to give the main stories that the magazine will contain. I included four of these.

The third left is usually where the bar code is situated and the graphology of the mast head of the magazine has to be highly recognisable. This is because the distributers need to be able to recognise the magazine from others and need the barcode for the price. The dateline is the date and year of this magazine. The selling line is what sells the magazine mine being ‘your only guide to gigs and tours’. My main cover line is also a screamer as it is the largest text on the page and is there to catch the audiences attention. I tried to keep my colour scheme fairly minimal, because I wanted it to look professional. I mainly stuck to red, black, white and browns.

My front cover follows the conventions of a real media product. I have a title which my photograph overlaps. Having researched many magazines I noticed this was a technique commonly used and made my front page look professional. All of these are essential on a front page as they inform the reader. I also included a logo for the magazine which is a photograph I cropped on Photoshop and changed to black and white. My contents page Includes a ‘features’ section in which I included references to pages about my headline on the front page. I included a ‘contents’ section where I only stated page numbers with key features on as I could not possible list the full magazine as I plan for it to have over a 100 pages.

I researched and wrote about three different contents pages. I realised that each content pages was fairly minimalistic. They usually include a features section of some kind. On two of the contents pages there was a collage of images, I took this idea and cropped four different models from different photographs and edited them all in black and white and placed them at the top of my contents page this looked affective. The mast head ‘contents’ is always placed towards the top of the page, before the text. It will always be in a bold font so it is highly recognisable. I noticed that the contents pages were broken up with subheading and these would be in bold fonts and would be a different colour from the main text. On my content page I created subheadings and changed the colour of the font, and put them in black boxes this looked effective because it looked professional and was helpful. There is always the title of the page and a brief synopsis of what this page includes.

Having researched 3 different double page spreads, I gathered a clear perception of what was essential. There is always a main image which takes up one whole side of the double page and sometimes overlaps onto the second. There is usually a mast head and an article about the artist. I also had to consider footers on my double page spread. As this is essential to tell the reader the page number. I kept the same font I featured on the front page because I wanted to show consistency throughout my magazine.

I created a mood board of mastheads on Microsoft word so that I could compare different fonts and styles. I realised that each mast head is completely unique in the sense of the font and name. I created a questionnaire in which I got feedback on my front page, contents page and double page spread. I got four different people to answer my questionnaire. This was useful because I asked a group of people in the same social group as my target audience and this helped me to make appropriate changes and improve my initial ideas. I created a mock-up of the front cover, contents page and double page spread. This was a simple plan of the structure and layout. This helped me to follow the codes and conventions I mentioned previously.

The preliminary task in which I created a front cover for a college magazine and planned a contents page also for a college magazine was helpful because I knew what research I needed to carry out and how to plan correctly. It also allowed me to practise developing my skills so that when I applied them to this task I could improve them. I have learnt that there is a strict set of codes and conventions that must be followed to ensure my magazine is a success. I have learnt how to edit photos on programmes such as Photoshop in an effective way. By planning my ideas first it helped me to develop them further.

I had to consider five key aspects when creating my magazine. The first was language. This was extremely important because this was the over all image, camera shots and textual language, this needed to be impressive to sell the product. I had to create an institution, by creating a company name. The ideology, the purpose of this magazine which was to sell and be successful to its audience. The audience was a key point because I needed a clear distinguished audience to target my magazine at. I chose this specific audience because it is a well known social group of this time era. The last key element was representation, how I put colours together to connote and symbolise different ideas.

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