Preliminary Task My School Magazine
(Little Heath Knowledge)
The task that I had to approach was to create a magazine for my school. This included creating a front cover and a contents page. First of all i had to do 4 sketches of what my school magazine could look at, the more i done the more i thought about who my target audience is. I feel that my school magazine relates to existing examples of other school magazines because it contains every day issues that occur in schools in general. I approached this task by doing a variety of sketches to determined what would be the best front cover idea I could come up with and how I could develop it further to have the essentials that a school magazine needs.
Problems that I had to over come when I was creating my school magazine was things like using the layers effectively, without making the front cover look too complex and confused at the same time. I also had resized the font to make it so that the headline stood out a lot further than it did before. The way in which I done this was bye making all the other fonts on the page smaller and slightly enlarging the title. Another issue that I faced when creating my school magazine was that when I eventually got the images on my front cover they did not blend into the theme of my front cover. So to try and change this I done special effects on all the images to try and make them all have a reddish colour glow to it so it fits in with the colour scheme however on some of the images it made the image look weird and unnatural. So the ways in which I over came this was by lowering the capacity of some of the images which made them fainter and clearer to see.
I feel that using Photoshop gave me a chance to explore different things such as layout, layers, and font and colour pallets. This was good for me because it gave me an opportunity to develop my work more and more.
"Magazine Research"
When I was researching into how other magazines presents there front cover and what techniques they used. The first magazine I researched was Vibe magazine. I found out that the owner of the magazine is a man called Kenny Rodriguez. I also researched into finding out who the target audience is, this is a hip hop magazine which means firstly that it straight away appeals to people that are big fan of hip hop music. Also I think that this magazine has a target audience of teenager girls and boys but also people that are around the ages of 19-20’s. The reason why I think this is because that the colour scheme has a grown up theme It is not babyish, or just focused to one type of colour like Pink which would indicate to me that t he magazine would be aimed at a girl. The magazine Vibe influenced me because it made me think a lot closely about the 3 main colors I want to use n my magazine. The reason for this was because the vibe front cover had only 2 main colors which said enough as to who the target audience was. So when I was designing my front cover I took this into account. Here i done a large amount of research into music magazines and annotated them all...
This magazine helped me because it instantly made me think about "Who is the target audience?"i feel that, that was a key point that i had to think about because it made me want to make my target audience very clear when creating my magazine.
I liked how this magazine has a female taking centre stage in this magazine, i also like the huge amount of pink used because it makes it so clear who the magazine is aimed at, i will take this in to account when creating my magazine.
Emap, IMPC, Conde,
BBC worldwide,National Magazine Company & Future
In order to have a large amount of understating when it comes to the magazine industry I done a series of research into the 6 different magazine companies that there are. The type of research I done was things such as production & marketing, facts and figures, influences and the individual companies as a whole.
In order to have a large amount of understating when it comes to the magazine industry I done a series of research into the 6 different magazine companies that there are. The type of research I done was things such as production & marketing, facts and figures, influences and the individual companies as a whole.
BBC worldwide
Are mostly government funded
BBC worldwide is the UKs third largest consumer magazine company.
They have offices throughout the world.
In the past they have published: Radio times Good food and the top gear magazine.
Conde'
Conde' produce magazines like : Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair, GQ and Tatler.
The company was launched in 1907.
They produce hand bag size magazines that appeal to many women including busy business woman and the traditional housewife.
The company was one of the first internet publishers in 1995.
They have a US pariet company which controls UK subsidiary of the conde' company.
National Magazine company
They are nicknamed-"NatMag"
They are based in London
They were established in 1901
They produce magazines like: Bazaar, country living, Cosmo, men’s health, good house keeping, reveal, real people and many others.
IPC
This company is the leading UK magazine publisher.
They are an international publishing company.
They were founded in 1963 and are based in London
They own over 80 magazines including : NME, now, woman, nuts, world soccer, in style and many more.
They sell over 350 million copies each year.
They are owned by Time Inc. who are part of the Timewarner company.
Future
They were founded in 1985
They are based in bath.
They produce: games, films and music magazines.
Their top 5 music magazines are: Xbox 360 official, Total films, T3, classic rock and official play station.
They have over 100 magazines and over 70 websites.
They have official titles for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo
EMAP
The company was formed in 1947
They have both UK and US offices
They own their own media companies such as CAP and planet retail.
They produce omega, computer and video games and magazines.
My Magazine "OLD SKOOL"
The task that i was given was to create a front cover, contents page and double page feature for a music magazine which was a genre of my choice. In order for me to do this i had to undergo a series of tasks which would help me in creating my magazine.
"KEY POINTS THAT I HAD TO THINK ABOUT"
Who is my magazine aimed at?
What shall i call the magazine?
Who am i going to take photos of?
Who/what will be on the front cover?
What will the genre of my magazine be?
What are my three main colors i am going to use?
The target audience that I decided to aim my magazine at was first of all hip hop music lovers. The way in which I tried to do this was putting rhetorical questions on my front cover which had a lot of talk about hip hop and the hip hop culture, which would instantly say to the audience that the music magazine is to do with hip hop music. I also tried to make my target audience for teenagers aged 16-19 but both genders. The ways I tried to do this was by using images of both males and females and by using a blend of masculine and feminine colors to try and attract both of them.My Hip hop music magazine was a challenge for me to do I found some things a lot harder to do than others. I came to grips with the layering method pretty quick but on the other hand there were a lot of minor details that I needed to add to my magazine to finish it off to give it that professional look which I found difficult. The reason why I think I found it so hard was because as I had already built a foundation and placed pictures and text in a certain place so that it looked good, it was hard to add things around that without making the front cover look over crowded and unprofessional. The ways that I over came this was by changing font sizes and taking certain bits out all together. The language that I used in this front cover was a lot of slang words to try and focus more on my target audience. I also used a large amount of buzz words such as exclusive.
Are mostly government funded
BBC worldwide is the UKs third largest consumer magazine company.
They have offices throughout the world.
In the past they have published: Radio times Good food and the top gear magazine.
Conde'
Conde' produce magazines like : Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair, GQ and Tatler.
The company was launched in 1907.
They produce hand bag size magazines that appeal to many women including busy business woman and the traditional housewife.
The company was one of the first internet publishers in 1995.
They have a US pariet company which controls UK subsidiary of the conde' company.
National Magazine company
They are nicknamed-"NatMag"
They are based in London
They were established in 1901
They produce magazines like: Bazaar, country living, Cosmo, men’s health, good house keeping, reveal, real people and many others.
IPC
This company is the leading UK magazine publisher.
They are an international publishing company.
They were founded in 1963 and are based in London
They own over 80 magazines including : NME, now, woman, nuts, world soccer, in style and many more.
They sell over 350 million copies each year.
They are owned by Time Inc. who are part of the Timewarner company.
Future
They were founded in 1985
They are based in bath.
They produce: games, films and music magazines.
Their top 5 music magazines are: Xbox 360 official, Total films, T3, classic rock and official play station.
They have over 100 magazines and over 70 websites.
They have official titles for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo
EMAP
The company was formed in 1947
They have both UK and US offices
They own their own media companies such as CAP and planet retail.
They produce omega, computer and video games and magazines.
My Magazine "OLD SKOOL"
The task that i was given was to create a front cover, contents page and double page feature for a music magazine which was a genre of my choice. In order for me to do this i had to undergo a series of tasks which would help me in creating my magazine.
"KEY POINTS THAT I HAD TO THINK ABOUT"
Who is my magazine aimed at?
What shall i call the magazine?
Who am i going to take photos of?
Who/what will be on the front cover?
What will the genre of my magazine be?
What are my three main colors i am going to use?
The target audience that I decided to aim my magazine at was first of all hip hop music lovers. The way in which I tried to do this was putting rhetorical questions on my front cover which had a lot of talk about hip hop and the hip hop culture, which would instantly say to the audience that the music magazine is to do with hip hop music. I also tried to make my target audience for teenagers aged 16-19 but both genders. The ways I tried to do this was by using images of both males and females and by using a blend of masculine and feminine colors to try and attract both of them.My Hip hop music magazine was a challenge for me to do I found some things a lot harder to do than others. I came to grips with the layering method pretty quick but on the other hand there were a lot of minor details that I needed to add to my magazine to finish it off to give it that professional look which I found difficult. The reason why I think I found it so hard was because as I had already built a foundation and placed pictures and text in a certain place so that it looked good, it was hard to add things around that without making the front cover look over crowded and unprofessional. The ways that I over came this was by changing font sizes and taking certain bits out all together. The language that I used in this front cover was a lot of slang words to try and focus more on my target audience. I also used a large amount of buzz words such as exclusive.
Difficulties
Difficulties that I had to over come was mainly with my double page feature. When creating this I was not aware that It had to be on Microsoft Publisher instead of Photo Shop. At first I had created it on Photo Shop then had to recreate it by doing it again on Microsoft Publisher. This was defiantly the biggest difficulty that I had and over came. J Another difficulty that I had while creating my music magazine was that I had a lot of things on my front cover some people thought too much stuff!
So in order to over come this I had to remove some unnecessary items and pictures that I had originally put on the front cover and replace them will the essentials such as barcode, price, issue and date.
Audience feedback
In order to see what people think of my magazine I created a questionnaire . The way in which I done this was by thinking of 20 questions that I could ask a variety of people ( not just my target audience). One of the 2 questions that I felt had a big impact on how people answered my questionnaire was age and gender I think this because when I compared my results I found out that the older generation that filled out my questionnaire was not a big fan of my magazine however the younger generation had a lot more positive feedback.
Social Groups
I think that my media product represents particular social groups by the way in which i used certain dialect. For example the title of my magazine is 'Old skool' the way that it is written is on purpose as hip hop music originated from 'Old Skool Tunez'. I felt that this was appropriate as it appeals more to hip hop lovers. Not only did i want to appeal to an male audience, i also wanted to attract the female audience also. The way in which i tried to this was by having the main pictures of 3 girls. The social group that i wanted to represent was Hip Hop and i do feel that my media product does do this. I tried to represent this by using certain colours. Throughout my magazine you will see that i have used a large amount of Black but with a bright colours from:
Ø fluorescent pink
Ø fluorescent yellow
Ø fluorescent green
Ø fluorescent blue
Mise-en-scene:
When time had come for me to do my photo shot for my music magazine I had a lot that I had to take in to account. Mise-en-scene enabled me to do this in a lot more depth. The main things that was vital that I thought about in order to reach out to my target audience a lot more closely was:
Ø what they were wearing
Ø Where I took the photos
Ø what kind of make up they had on
Ø If I should use any extra equipment such as props etc
Ø What will the lighting me like
Ø Daylight/ Nighttime
Ø What is in the background
Ø How will this represent my genre
I found that by doing this made it a lot easier to put my magazine together as the pictures fit in with what I was trying to show (an old skool hip hop environment)
Facebook
Finally I uploaded my magazine front cover onto facebook. The reason for this was to get further feedback from people on what they think of my magazine. I think that this is good for me because I feel that I would be able to receive a lot more honest feedback from this as people can be totally honest about the opinion, and it would just mean that in the future I would be able to approach a similar task the same/differently depending on the feedback. Also the main feedback that I really want to know is if it is clear who my target audience is and I feel by putting my front cover on facebook I would be able to achieve this according to the results.
