Flatplan

DPS right hand page

DPS left hand page

Contents page

Front cover

Time management schedule

Week 1
-find two music magazines to analyse
-start to analyse the different music magazines' front cover, contents page and double page spread.

Week 2
- finish analysing music magazines
-start to brainstorm possible genres for magazine
-think of name for magazine once found suitable genre
-create questionnaire to help make decisions about magazine, such as colours, names etc.

Week 3
- analyse results of questionnaire
-start a flat plan of cover, contents and DPS
-begin to plan the sort of pictures I plan on taking

InTune editorial profile

An insight into the undiscovered world of festival music, including gig dates, interviews and alternative fashion. Target readership - typically 'cool' teens to young adults both male and female who enjoy going to raves, are chilled out and interested in attending big events.

NME double page spread analysis

Immediately drawn to left page, covered in pictures of Mighty Boosh, center one of Noel Fielding on floor with top up, eyes wide open.

Dressed up in all pictures, looks fun and entertaining. Pictures are bizarre so you would read the article to find out what they are doing!

Every picture has been put at a canted angle - as if it's been put together in a rush, no effort - creates image of being unorganised, rather use the time to do better things - and to find out what those things are you have to read on.

Right hand page, massive title, with the 'Mighty Boosh' signature symbol inside the O's - instantly recognisable.

Quotes in bold randomly on page to lure you in. Some smaller writing in capitals to stand out more.

Page has theme of black, white and blue.

Whole DPS looks fun - wants to reflect contents of article.

NME contents analysis

Drawn to Dizzee in the middle first of all, in the center of the page, he's looking at the audience, head slightly tilted , hand near face in a gesture.
Buildings behind him. Biggest writing on page 'Dizzee became PM material'. This is luring and creates enigma so we want to read on and find out more as it comes across as a suprising idea - we all know Dizzee.
Band index in small down left hand side, alphabetical order so easy to follow.
Short descriptions of what's inside, listed under different heading to also make it simple to follow.
'NME' at the top, same design - brand identity.
Keeping with black and red colour scheme to go with front cover - easier to recognise as NME and that they are together.
Advertisement box at the bottom, in yellow writing which goes against colour scheme, stands out more.
Arrow at bottom right hand corner as an extra.

NME front cover analysis

Cover image of Noel Fielding crowd surfing, all in black, big smile, young people having fun - gives effect that he's 'mad' so article will also be like this.
His arms are lighter, probably from the flash suggesting it is an ammature shot taken from a gig.
'NME' is in the top left, noticeably in red, covered slightly by Noels hand - which shows it must be recognisable.
Coverlines in circles, looks slapped on like stickers.
Sets theme of craziness, like a gig/party should be
Tickertape at the bottom is in the conventional place

Kerrang double page spread analysis

Starts off with two pages of pictures of 'frontman Matt Tuck'. Both dark, close up shots/mid shots with focus on face as its the lightest thing on the page compared to everything else. He's looking at the audience, one straight on, he has a smouldering look and he has his arms behind head, looks relaxed.

The article page stays with the dark theme, big picture of Matt Tuck in action, a green light behind him.

The writings very small, no lures until last page - even then, theres only a box in the top corner of 'lessons learned' perhaps as an inspiration for those who look up to him.

Kerrang contents analysis

'Contents' is written in big writing at the top in the same colour and style as some writing on the cover so it links together.
This writing is carried on as the headings on black backgrounds so they stand out, the rest of the page's background is white.
Main picture is of someone dressed up as superman, looking to the audience. Its bright and eye catching - makes you want to find out why he is dressed up. Has a fun look about him.
Other icons around main picture, some action shots, mainly close up or mid shots. Shadow effect around them looks like they are almost buttons, coming off the page. Most are dark pics so there is emphasis of facial features where the light is, two have colour from behind them.
Quotation underneath 'contents' to make people laugh and want to read more things like that.
small picture of cover next to small paragraph of writing - not eye catching.

Kerrang front cover analysis

The mast head is in the same place in every issue, making it recognisable.
Photo image of band, center page, lead singer closer up, clear he's lead.
Coverline with picture "Foo Fighters, is it all over?" creates enigma - you want to find out.
Freebees - stickers, posters - get your moneys worth - bribe?
Bled off page.
Barcode at bottom right - out of the way - not important/not noticeable.
Band looking at audience, makes you feel they are looking at just you.
Coverlines and pictures unevenly put on page, overlapping, messy, reflects relaxed 'personality' of magazine, introducing their 'mode of address'.
Little snippet of information on bottom strip/ticker tape, not detailed - and on top strip.
On coverline "..." to encourage you to read on.
Exclamation marks make it more exciting.

Questionnaire and results

Questionnaire.

1. What is your name?

2. What is your gender? Male/Female

3. How old are you?

4. Which do you prefer?
Punk

Rock

Ska

Hip-hop

Pop

Drum and Bass

RnB

Other (please state) ...............................................

5. What colour do you like more and would like to see on a magazine?

Red

Yellow

Blue

Orange

Pink

Black

Grey

6. Name one thing you would like to see in a magazine

Gig listings

Quizzes

Interviews

7. Do you read music magazines? Yes/No

If yes, please state why ..........................................................................................................................

8. How much is a reasonable price for a music magazine? .....................................................................

9. Do you prefer pictures in a contents page to no pictures? Yes/No

10. What do you look for to read about in a double page spread? .......................................................................................................................................................................

........................................................................................................................................................................

Results

I asked my focus group of 15 people to fill out my questionnaire to help me research and make decisions about my music magazine. There were 5 boys and 10 girls who completed them for me, all ages between 15 – 19.
From looking at my results, the majority of people asked tended to be into/prefer similar things. My target audiences preferred music genre was ‘Drum and Bass’ music, being the clear winner, closely followed by ‘R&B’ music. Also, three colours – black especially, red and blue stood out by a long way as the colours they would like to see on a magazine. When asked what they would want from a magazine, the three options which were gig listings, quizzes and interviews, came out as pretty equal with quizzes just slightly falling behind.
I also found that only four people out of the fifteen currently read music magazines so hopefully I can change that by asking more questions about why they don’t read music magazines if that is the case. One reason for this could be the pricing of the magazine which the majority of my sample said they thought that £2.00 is a reasonable price to pay. They added to that by saying they prefer pictures in a contents page – which would maybe interest them and entice them more than having no pictures and just words. If I were to create a questionnaire again for the same reason I think I would ask more questions in detail and maybe before I started making it, think more about what I want to gain from my results and what would be most helpful for what research I needed. I would also try to ask an equal amount of males and females as mu current sample shows evidence of gender bias.

Creating my double page spread

ARTICLE PAGE (DPS)
I found writing the article was hard, as I didn't know how to estimate how long it should be so that it fits in the space i had. Half of it was pure writing to introduce you to "The Big Chill" and give you the information side of it, but then i decided that for the right half i would do it in a question-answer format so that the readers are still learning about the festival but are doing it in a more fun way, and its different - meaning the readers won't lose interest from just reading line after line as if they were in school and requires less concentration. The lures were particularly hard to place on it, because i had already written the article i had to try and re-arrange the words to make space for them which took a really long time and was very frustrating. I was quite used to using photoShop by then so creating the boxes was pretty simple, i just had to move some of the layers around so that you could see the smaller black box. Once i had put the text on, i merged the boxes and the writing together so i could move it all at once, and rotate them so they were at a canted angle. I wanted this to make them look like they had just been slapped on, no effort, so that it wasn't too formal, matching my mode of address. I then wrote out the Q's and answers, highlighting the Q's so they stand out and the readers will be drawn to them and i adds a bi of colour what would normally be quite boring look at. I made the highlighted sections and the lures blue so that it would tie in with the blue sky on the cover, as the picture on the cover was of the Big Chill and so was the article.

PICTURE PAGE
The picture page was fairly simple to create, I only had to open some pictures and arrange them onto a page. They were arranged so that the top two went: portrait-landscape, and the bottom two went: Landscape-portrait, so that the page overall looked levelled out. I added black borders around the edges of the smaller pictures so that the readers could recognise they were separate pictures, it made them stand out a bit more and it generally made them look nicer. I think i used a good range of pictures, to show the readers as many different elements of the festival as i could, and give them a sense of what goes on there.

Creating my contents page

My contents page uses many pictures which takes up most of the space, i decided to do this because i found that people tended to look at pictures before reading text so by doing it this way, more people who pick up the magazine will find it easier and quicker to look at whats inside, before buying. One down side to this is that i found it difficult coming up with different idea's for pictures, and also actually finding somewhere/someone to take the pictures of. I planned out what the pictures would be, and how i would get them but as time went on i realised that they would be too difficult so i changed my plans to pictures that would be easier to create. I wanted my contents page to link with my cover so i used the brand identity in the same place, to make it clear it was the same magazine, i also used red and black which is my colour scheme, as i used it on this, my cover and i also incorporated it into my DPS. To start with, where the title 'contents' is, there was far too much red empty space underneath so i thought it would be a good idea, to link it even more with my cover to have a 'catchphrase' that i would use in every weeks issue. When creating it, I originally had black writing but it didnt look very interesting so once again i went against the black on white convention and changed the writing to white. I would also have the picture page on the left and article on the right as people tend to read left to right and will see the pictures first, to persuade them to read the rest.

Creating my front cover

My main image on my front cover which was the background was a picture from when i went to the Big Chill of people outside a DJ stage. It focuses on a man dressed as a cowboy as he is right in the center. I originally chose a picture of inside the club tent from the same festival but decided it was too dark and the main focus was in the wrong place for me to put everything else on it. Instead i used that picture on my DPS picture page. The picture i have used is more colourful and i think it would draw more people's attention to it as it stands out and the cowboy creates a sense of fun which will reflect on the mood of the magazine. Althought the colours of the picture used were better, I foundit difficult to place the coverlines on to it, as there wasn't a correct colour where all of the letters would show up - white was too light against the sky and clack was too alike to the peoples clothes and shadows. To make it easier i put most of the coverlines onto a background to make them readable, but left the ones that were ok on the background.
To begin with, the ripped effect bit was blue, the same blue as the sky but i thought it looked too bland so i changed it to a pink/red which i then did to the box in the corner so it made it brighter and was also evened out.
The placing of objects and text have also been moved around and do not follow my layout plans because when i actually put everything together, my layout hadnt considered the colourings and contrasts. On the bar across the top, with my magazines name, i have reverses the classic white page - black writing, to make it look more interesting and different.
I was also trying to get used to using PhotoShop at this time as I had not used it much before this, so i found it hard getting the hang of it but after experimenting with it for a while it became easier.

Intro

Our task was to create parts of a new music magazine. This involves creating a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread (DPS). We have researched other music magazines by analysing those specific parts of them and have also made a questionnaire to do some further research. We then formed a mock layout of our pages to give us a rough idea of how we will space out and arrange items on the pages.
As we are creating a DPS, we have also written a sample of two paragraphs which will be in the article to show our mode of address.I decided to name my new magazine ‘InTune’ and that I was going to have a sort of catchphrase underneath the title in every issue which is “Tuning the world”. I then thought of having as a recognisable symbol for my magazine a picture of the world wearing headphones as this represents my magazine name and catchphrase perfectly. My target audience are teenagers around 15 – 19, both male and female.