Main Task: Magazines

My task is to create a music magazine cover within my specific choice of genre. I will also be looking to create a contents page and double page spread in order to explain more about my chosen music genre.

I have decided that the music cover I would like to produce would be based on many of the rock magazines in circulation today, for example; Hush, Rock and Uncut, these will be some of the influences I would like to research in helping me make a professional cover.

Key Dates for the project:

January 8th - Research and planning.

February 12th - Media production deadline

March 5th - Evaluation Deadline

Magazine 1: "Q",

Audience: The magazine has targeted a more radical audience of 15-30 which is what i will be trying to persue when creating my own.

Main Contents: Indie bands, Metal, Rock, Interviews, Gig reviews.

Brand identity: This is a more radical targeted magazine, downmarket less sophisticated audience. Aimed at students who consisder themselves trendy and reject the mainstream music genre.

Magazine 2 ''MixMag''

Audience: The magazine has targeted a much more mainstream audience here that of which is of a wider age range aswell. However, I will not be trying to convey this particular style when creating my own magazine.

Main contents: R&B artists, pop, new wave, urban genres. interviews, artist thoughts.

Brand identity: This is a more upmarket publication for people who like music in general and is for the vast mainstream audience of today who seek the more comercialised pop acts. I feel the magazine is targeted for a younger audience as the artists/groups shown within the magazine and of course on the cover show a typical representation of todays teen society.

Magazine 3 '' BBC Music''

Audience: I feel that this magazine is targeted at a traditionalist audience that would like to uphold dominatnt ideology perhaps. The cover tells me that the targeted age range would be the older generation as todays teen culture is steriotypically far more radical and challenges domionant ideology in order to look 'cool'.

Main Contents: I far more detailed and in depth discussion of classical music including choir promotions and interviews with the composers.

Brand identity: I beleive this is an upmarket sophisticated publication for people that take classical music seriously. I can see this from looking at the cover and seeing that it incorperates a serif font which indicates class and perhaps upper class.

College Magazine Evaluation

My magazine cover uses the conventions of real media products and displays them to my pleasing. I have tried to incorporate many of my favourite elements of real magazines into my own and have twisted them slightly in order for them to suit my preference. In terms of development I have taken the microelements from other magazines and applied them using my own tools and style. I believe this challenges many forms of real media products as my cover displays a unique and understanding style.

In psychographic terms the audience for my magazine would have to be; aspirers and individualists aged 16 – 21 being both male and female. However I also believe that other groups such as traditionalists may find my cover attractive as I have used a much more sophisticated approach to creating a college magazine than other people targeting the same audience. For example, I have chosen to use a serif font for the masthead instead of the obvious choice being sans serif as in my opinion this conveys a more professional look and feel.

In order to address my audience I have chosen to go for a rather mixed style of traditional and unique editing. I have done this by incorporating my favourite aspects of each style and coordinated them in colour and positioning which in effect portrays a calm, approachable feel.

From constructing this product I have learnt that in order to gain an attractive style that appeals to a wide audience can really only be achieved when using modern technologies such as Photoshop and Quark express. Both of these can be used in order to change the appearance of a subject effectively creating a better and more assuring product. For example many of todays top magazines use software such as Photoshop in which they can airbrush people to give the aspect of perfection coinciding with believability. This proves how important technology of today has become and the effect it has on making a successful media product.

College magazine cover page

This is my magazine cover, here i have incorperated an image of a friend and photoshopped it to produce a much more professional look and feel to it.

College mag contents page

This is my final magazine contents page. I have taken numerous elements from my research into other mags and put forth a selection of my favourite in order to make this.

College Magazine Planning

My magazine is going to be produced for a male audience aged 16-21.
I have chosen to bese my magazine soley around a younger males lifestyle and will try to conote:

- Energetic
- Self confidence
- Gagetry
- Healthy etc.

The magazine will consist of a variety of psychographics in order to attract a wider range of potential audience.

For my cover i am going to compose a range of different images on Photoshop and choose one that i beleive suits my personality best.

Time to start Shooting!

These are the magazines we have chosen to compare:

http://uusu.org/files/ufouriaaprilweb.jpg

http://www.campuslifemagazine.ca/images/campus_life_magazine_cover_spring2008_large.gif

http://www.gerasimodesign.com/magazineCover2Linkin.jpg

1) From looking at the three magazines we have discussed and decided that they all have the same target audience which is the student catagory. The use of language is very discreet with all of them, however the Campus magazine includes numerous straplines which we think makes the magazines appear more professional. The mastheads of all the covers are in Sans Serif format which makes the impression that the magazine is quite modern. As for the colour throughout each of the magazines, we can see that they are all very bold and two of them are very warm in saturation. In contrast to these, the campus cover is far more believable as it has been shot using an array of 'cool' colours.

2) Out of the three magazines we have decided that the Campus magazine is the most genuine looking and therefore we would most likely read this. We have chosen this cover because of how the coverlines attracts our attention.

3) We have chosen to analize the Global music magazine.

The kind of person who would read this magazine would clear be a wide range of people as it has included very different genres of music on the cover.

The psychographic area this magazine falls under is clearly the Radical category as we can see that it appears to be quite rebelious as the cover model is dressed to suite more of a 'Rock' style.

The magazine itself is suited to a unisex audience as it is soley about music, however the rebelious appeal of the magazine could relate more towards the male audience.

One final point we would like to make is that the magazine is very eyecatching and if seen on a shelf, it would obviously stick out and draw in lots of attention.