Evaluation: Question 7: Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

I think that the main piece of progression as far as this project is concerned is the wide variety of programs I can now use, and use to a high standard, for example below you can see both of my front covers, the preliminary task was completed on Scribus, an open source platform and the main project - the music magazine, was executed on InDesign by Adobe, this meant I could build up my knowledge on the open source platform because at the time it was free and shared many things with InDesign in what I felt was an easier format, but then moving onto the main task in the project meant I could use those skills and improve my knowledge and skill on InDesign. I thought this was a bold move as the rest of my class wouldn't entertain the idea, but I thought it's the best way I felt to progress and get the work done, you can see from both of the covers below that the music magazine (CRDNL - right) looks a lot more professional in design terms than the preliminary college magazine task (Courtyard - left). I also think that my thought process was a little more aiming towards a visually appealing magazine than one that is practical in a college with the college magazine, it shares very few key techniques a magazine needs with the music magazine and no matter how much I look at it I always feel there is something missing from the college magazine, but I feel that as I progressed through the unit and came to design my music magazine front cover all of these problems were addressed.





















Moving onto the contents pages to the left and the right you can see that although the college magazine contents I feel looks better, it again like the front cover looks like there is something missing, there are gaps and it looks unprofessional, whereas I feel my music magazine could pass off to be a real music magazine contents page that is sold in a shop. I feel that the only problem with it is the use of colour for the background, I think it's too bright, and may have needed to be dimmed down a little in photoshop, but again I feel I have progressed a considerable amount from one contents page to the next, using more techniques, codes and conventions in my music magazine contents page than in the preliminary task.

Lastly I feel that I have also progressed in using the internet, with the ability to now use sites like Blogger, Slideshare and Prezi I feel that I can now use the internet for something slightly more useful than taking photos of my dinner on instagram and moaning about my life on twitter. I can now say I would feel completely comfortable setting up my own blog on a subject of my choice, and could use it for work related tasks as well (for example I set up another blog for my AS Law class as part of a group task). I can also see now that all of these methods, particularly Blogger would be a good way in the future to connect with customers if I was to create a business. Overall I would say this whole project was a great success, and I could now say I was a lot more comfortable with technology and may consider website and magazine design in the future as a career.

Evaluation: Question 6: What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? from benmaccers

Evaluation: Question 3: What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

There are two methods of distribution and publishing that my magazine could undergo, one would be digital publishing and distribution. This portion of the market is quite hazy and unclear as no one and no single company have made a considerable amount of money through a method of receiving a digital magazine like you would print, just obviously in a digital format, this is because this method faces the problems that 'How do you charge for something that people can get elsewhere but in a slightly different, more efficient and cheaper method?' and 'What am I giving to the audience/customer that they couldn't normally get with a webpage?'. Both of these issues are what is stopping someone getting a high circulation and high sales from the online magazine method. Instead many businesses like The Times newspaper and The New York Times have a pay-wall for their online website content, this has proven effective as both newspapers are still the most popular news websites in the world, and continue to make a large amount of profit from something that isn't advertising or print newspapers.

Bauer Media Group Factfile

• Operates in 15 countries worldwide
• Headquarters are in Hamburg, Germany
• Employ 6,400 people worldwide
• Serve the USA, Russia, Europe and Asia
• A worldwide circulation that amounts to 38 million people a week
• Had a pre-tax profit of £228 million in 2012, a fall from 2011 (£246 million)
• Turnover of around €2 Billion
• Produces over 570 newspapers, 300 digital products and 50 radio and TV stations worldwide
• Produces 3 music magazines here in the UK: Kerrang!, Q magazines and MOJO magazine, all three are hugely popular and achieve a circulation of over 45,000 an issue, with MOJO and Q achieving over 80,000 copies an issue in circulation.

For print media, which is the most likely and most traditional method of publishing and distribution for my magazine I would choose Bauer Media Group. At the moment they publish Kerrang!, Q magazine and MOJO, which are their three music magazines. All three have different genres of music that they try to reach for an audience, and are all very successful magazines, more so than NME magazine, which is what makes Bauer more appealing from my point of view. 

Another thing that makes Bauer one of the best options for distribution of my magazine is that they already distribute 3 magazines successfully, one of them is genre specific, which is Kerrang!, and two that are on popular music, one aimed at an older population, MOJO but cheap(-er) and has stories more on Paul McCartney than Justin Bieber, and then Q, which is a high quality magazine, which is fairly up-market and expensive is also aimed at the slightly older population and mature audiences, it's a magazine that IS NOT aimed at teenagers and young adults, so anywhere from the ages of 30+. This shows that they have a gap in the market for the Indie genre, a perfect example of a big Indie band would be Arctic Monkeys, who have featured very rarely on any of the magazines because of the target audience and the genre of the magazine. It also means that Bauer are lacking in targetting the teenage audience, with the Indie genre becoming one of the most popular genres amongst teenagers it would make sense for Bauer to move into that sector, and I feel that my magazine would be perfect for this gap in the market.

Although Bauer would be a great choice it could also be a bad one. Where Bauer is one of the biggest publishers in the media industry for magazines and other forms of media there is the high chance that the magazine could lose it's personal image and become a lot more corporate and a profit maker rather than a passionate magazine, doing what it set out to do from the start. This is a minor issue and is something that can't be said about just Bauer, in every industry in the world it is a possibility for the small company to be swallowed up by the big giant, it's something that either happens or not depending on who the parent company is and how they are run, Bauer seem to keep all of their individual subsidiaries fairly tight both financially and from a production point of view, creating good, solid products.

Evaluation: Question 2: How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups? from benmaccers

Front Cover Alterations

I decided that after altering my contents page and double page spread that although individually all of the pieces looked good, the front cover didn't match the double page spread and contents page as well. The main issue was the colours used. I tried to use orange because at the start I felt that it is quite a versatile colour that I could use almost anywhere in the magazine, but as constructing both the contents page and double page spread went on I felt that instead of orange, I felt that a maroon/red colour would suit the magazine better.

This meant that the front cover didn't match the rest of the magazine, a simple colour alteration meant that the whole magazine matched each other with the colours, fonts and the way each page was set out and presented. The one thing that I didn't change was the small 'PLUS' section beneath the masthead on the left hand side, this is because I felt changing everything to one colour would make the front cover boring, it also meant that the particular coverline stood out over other things on the page that were less important

This slight adjustment meant that my magazine was now complete and ready for evaluation, the following posts will be the evaluation posts question by question.

Contents Page: The Complete Redesign

As well as the Double Page Spread I also thought that the contents page wasn't up to scratch, so I decided to redesign that as well, below are the old and new versions (old=left, new=right).


















I decided I didn't like the contents page of my magazine, it was too dark, and as I thought about it, how many magazines have a black interior and exterior background colour? none that are successful, I thought it was too dark and needed a bit of light. I felt that some of the tacky things needed to go, like the subscribe widget/section, and treat it more like a contents page, with everything that is of interest to the reader on the right hand side, not splitting apart the regulars and features, because it could give off the feeling that in my old design - the top half of the contents of my magazine is what you came here to read, the bottom half of the contents is all the rubbish that comes with it as a filler, which isn't true, so I decieded to keep them all together instead of splitting them apart, which may be seen as a problem as far as showing what I know about magazine design, but I also know what looks better, and in this case I went with what looks better and more presentable.

I got my inspiration for my contents page from an older edition of FHM magazine, I felt that the coloured box with the front cover and the feature artist was a main feature I wanted to include in my magazine, and the coloured accent of the page number I wanted to be a coloured page number and page description title, with the actual description of the page in black. In my magazine I decieded to make a background by getting a standard image of crumpled, brown stained - white paper and making very opaque over a layer of white that would fit the page, that way it isn't just white and black but a bit of a variation - something different. I decided to go for the headline I did by taking an example from the FHM header lines, which are in groups of 4 or 5. There were a few things I thought suited the FHM contents, but on experimenting with my magazine I felt they didn't work, for example the row of images in the middle of the page, I felt I didn't have space for them, and the dotted lines that the individual pieces of writing on the contents page just didn't work with the font and the way I lay my magazine.

I'm now happy with my contents page after completely re-designing it, I'm happy with my front cover the way it first came out, with just a few things altered to make it perfect in my mind, and happy with my double page spread after completely redesigning it as well, overall I think they all fit together quite well, the fonts and the colours making them the linking factor, I feel after changing my contents page, and changing the background colour especially I have made it a lot better, the layout is a lot more clear, and easy to pick information from, it's a vast improvement from the old contents page, it just took time to get there.

Double Page Spread: The Complete Redesign

I looked at my double page spread and I wasn't happy with it, I felt it didn't match the rest of the magazine and it wasn't something I was happy with, the colours were dingy and horrible, nothing really fitted together and it was quite boring. I took some inspiration from a few NME and Q magazine double page spreads, such as the Pete Doherty feature, the Lady Gaga double page spread and a few other slight influences and eureka moments to get to where it is, I felt this double page spread came together a lot easier than the rest of the magazine.

I think straight away comparing the old double page spread to the new one you can see a clear difference, I made sure I changed the background colour by fiddling around with the contrast and brightness settings in Photoshop  I also applied a crispy paper effect to make the image look more old but using layers and the opacity settings on the layer bar. That was the first main improvement, I also saw a trend with other double page spreads that already exist, that either they have a black or white box to contrast the text so I decided I would use that to split the page up and make the text stand out more than it already did. I also added some colour (cardinal red) because black and grey with one teal accent in the text is probably the most boring thing, and it also seems to be a trend with magazines at the moment, it makes it look sophisticated but interesting to read.

I made sure I changed everything I thought was wrong with the old photo, text, accent in the middle of the text, headline, the tag line underneath the headline and the missing page number on the bottom right. I gave the pages a brighter feel, because the dark colours didn't reflect what I originally wanted from the double page spread which was to feel like it was from the 70's, especially the image, which I feel I sorted with the paper opaque effect - for this I took a photo of old, ratty and dirty paper, layed it over the top of the image, then played with the opacity until it was right, overall I think it was a success and worked very well.

Another thing I also thought would be a great addition was to edit a Ramones logo, with the three lions instead of the eagle that the Ramones have, also instead of their names, I put Tom's name in. I think that it added to the feel of the football firm age music, the old style music which is what Tom actually plays - he's a guitarist interested in anything from the 60's, 70's and 80's, and especially in the 70's and 80's men took to the streets for their football club, Milwall and West Ham is the main rivalry that springs to mind.

Overall I am very pleased with how everything turned out, and it is a vast improvement on the previous double page spread, and I think it will be the final double page spread, I think also that the final sweep of final touches to every element of this magazine has improved it greatly overall, I'm very happy with how it came out and I will evaluate it in a later post.

Contents Page Editing

(old on the left, the updated version on the right)
With my front cover I turned my attention to the contents page, I wasn't happy with the bottom left corner, I felt the social network logos and various other things to do with the contents page didn't really fit, instead I added in an image I took originally for my photography work but never got round to using it and turned it into the 'Miles Of The Month' regulars section. I also changed the advert in the bottom right corner for subscription to the magazine, I felt that it didn't fit in with the rest of the column so I reduced the font size of a lot of things and squeezed everything in.

Overall I think it is a big improvement on the previous version and I think this is the version I will use as my final contents page for the music magazine, I think the colour co-ordination of orange for regulars and red for features meant I could contrast different sections of the magazine, I also think that the contents compliments the front cover with the colours, fonts and everything else, I made sure that everything matched to keep the 'house style' the same.

Music Magazine: Coverline Analysis

In this post I will discuss the coverlines I have used. My first example would be the main coverline "TOM KANE - Hurricanes front man goes solo". This came from an idea from an old NME cover of The Last Of The Shadow Puppets, by which Alex Turner was leaving the duo band set up to go back to Arctic Monkeys, and I was watching a TV show on Hurricanes in the morning before coming to college, so there you go, inside the mind of myself!

The next coverline, which was the inspiration of band I went and saw - Little Comets - " 'Joanna Take Me Home' little comets tell all of their new album" is something I thought I could add a few little visual elements to, for example the plus sign and plus font, also the album cover, all add to the effect that I have tried to pass over to the viewer of the magazine. Overall I am quite pleased with the two coverlines I have covered, both adding to the effect of the magazine.

The last coverline that I have on the magazine is a coverline that goes with the Tom Kane feature coverline, "People can only take so many Gallagher hair cuts and drug addictions" this was an influence from NME, as they seem to be quite pro-Gallagher brother/Oasis (and now Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds etc.) which got me thinking, I didn't want my magazine to be like every single other magazine, I didn't want the same person on the front cover, and the same content that is in every single other music magazine even slightly related to this genre, so I picked something slightly out of the ordinary and chose to say something controversial  because ultimately controversy sells, people want to read controversial things, things that intrigue people and get people thinking, so what would be better than an attention grabbing, controversial coverline, because to most in the industry the Gallagher brothers are seen as like the Beatles reborn, so I thought it was time for a change, so I made something that was different to everything else.

Overall I am pleased with how everything went on the front cover, not just the coverlines, but the coverlines add something that images and names can't do, they also give something that could be seen as a selling point, as after a picture they're something that someone will instantly pick up on, and it will either attract the reader, or put them off, so it's capturing the buyers attention with the coverlines that make it an important selling point, I feel I have done this, and if it wasn't done well, I would have changed it, because after all it is the person I am.

Magazine Draft Pieces

Below are the different parts of my music magazine project, at the moment they're in their draft stage and will be developed as I change things and cut things out of it, but these are the basic layouts for the magazine, because I'm only planning on changing a few minor details.

 I am quite pleased with how my front cover of my magazine has turned out. This is the final version as the tweaks to the magazine front cover were made as I went along, I am happy with this completely, and I don't feel anything needs changing. I am very pleased on finding the Masthead font - 'Theano Didot' which is very similar to the font I wanted - 'Albion Didot' which the BMX magazine Albion BMX uses. Another thing I am quite pleased with is the footer at the bottom, I had that space free towards the end of creating it and I looked at other magazines to see what completes them, so I felt this was the thing that was missing, the orange vertical highlights fit in well with the rest of the magazine and also gives it a more professional look.

Overall I am very pleased with how the Front Cover turned out and is something I will be using as my final piece.

The contents page is something I feel where bits need changing, for example there is a huge space in the bottom left of the page which I think the social networks doesn't really fit, so I think I might need to extend the Tom Kane Feature paragraph or put another feature article in there to make sure the space is effectively filled, maybe even taking the Little Comets interview, which is the one of the main coverlines on the front cover and put it into the gap. Another thing I think I could change is the date, and the gap between the Contents Heading and the rest of the text, maybe add a volume number and other things. Overall it's a good start but could do with some more things.

My double page spread, which I feel is nearly complete is something I am fairly pleased with, more so than the contents page, but a lot less so than the front cover. I think the title for the page is set out well along with the text and the 'TOM KANE' in the top left hand corner of the page, I think I need to put another page footer on the bottom right page, because after all it is a DOUBLE page spread, and not just on one single page. I think after some fiddling around with the double page spread it will work out and match the standard of the front cover.If I did the double page spread again I think I would change the colour of the background, and make it lighter, because the grey isn't really a nice colour and doesn't really compliment anything else like the text of the subject of the image, I mentioned this in the analysis of the photography I took for this project.

Music Magazine Photography

After visiting the college's photographic studio with Tom over several weeks I have all of the photography for my front cover, contents page and double page spread, and with some photoshop magic and some indesign work they will be intergrated perfectly into my pieces of work for this project, the images below are all taken by myself with the help of noone else, they will be my final pieces, this is after much trial and error in the studio at college, and after a great deal of time editing, and picking images till they are perfect for use. Overall I am quite impressed with how all of the images came out and will go through the process of creating my magazine cover, contents page and double page spread in indesign and other applications.

For the front cover I chose this low key (one flash black background photography) image which I feel left enough space for the masthead, coverlines and other codes and conventions of a magazine front cover. I felt that the black and white contrast of the image meant I could put in colour to create a house style colour scheme for my magazine. I also think that the image, with the one flash gun and the dark background gives it the mysterious effect, so a matching coverline could mean I lead the audience into the magazine to see who Tom is (Tom Kane for my magazine). Overall I am quite pleased with how this came out as it has left me open for development and ideas on the front cover, I don't feel I am constrained by anything with this image, maybe the choice of colour but I prefer the black and white older feel of the image.

For the contents page I'm not going to use much in the way of images because I am of the view that the contents page is all about the writing and being an information page, so the image above will only be small, maybe 1/5th of the page with writing surrounding it, I was going from the angle sort of like NME magazine, because their contents pages are quite wordy, but I feel that this is a good thing, and aren't wordy enough that the reader can't get their information. Seeing as this will only be a small, but key feature of my magazine I feel that it will fit in nicely with the colour scheme I am planning and the general layout of the page

For the double page spread I chose this image, then extended it's width and made the background the same colour all over, so it would be easy to put text over the image and also so the image fitted the page. I chose this image over the others because I feel so far the images have been fairly serious, so I thought that it made sense to have something a bit more fun - Tom covering his face with his shirt, I got the inspiration for this idea from a Q magazine front cover of Paul McCartney that was in circulation a few years ago, the image (below) I thought gave McCartney the image that he wasn't being serious because he didn't need to be, he has achieved everything he could have possibly done with the Beatles, and I wanted that sort of angle for the double page spread of Tom. I like the image but I feel if I was to re-shoot I would either make the background black or white as the grey colour doesn't really compliment text very well, either black or white, but overall I am quite pleased with how all my images came out and will be looking forward to designing all of the various parts of my magazine.

Music Magazine Proposal

For my magazine I am planning to base it on an indie genre, this would mean the magazine, if it went to market, would compete with other magazines such as NME and Q magazine, these magazines in particular because they will feature similar artists and have a similar sort of style about them, through the research I have done previously to starting this task I have found out that NME is a more casual magazine, something that you pick up every week and read, whereas Q magazine is a more formal affair, being a less frequent magazine, something that is special and you read as a special occasion.

I feel that there are gaps in this market, but ignoring the process of what there has already been and what hasn't been I am planning on making mine more formal and more modern than NME, but less formal and less serious than Q magazine, I feel that my own style will mean I can create something that is visually appealing but gets the message across.

I have played around with a few names for the music magazine, one of them being 'Cardinal Music Magazine' which I may shorten to 'CRDNL', that is the strongest idea as far as a name goes, and the colour scheme will be similar to something I did with my college magazine (look to a previous post on my blogger page), so I'm going to use colours like orange, teal and other in-betweeny colours, rather than the traditional, and overused reds and blues, I also think using Cardinal Red the colour is fairly cliche, as the colour isn't the only meaning for the word cardinal, and using that colour scheme would rather limit the magazine as far as my creativity would go.

The most obvious problems I can see so far would be fonts, this will be something I will have to look and search for until I find the perfect one, one I would like to use that has been previously use is the 'Albion Didot' font used in the BMX magazine, the Albion, it is used during the feature articles and some of the article titles/headlines, I feel I can use something similar for my masthead of the front cover of my magazine.

Music Magazine Research Task Four: Representation Of My Target Audience

In this research task I will discuss the representation of both musicians and the target audience for my magazine. For my magazine, focusing mainly on an 'indie' fan base and mainly indie musicians, this is because at college and in my friendship groups there isn't really any defining 'type' of person other than the people that fit the indie genre, also because indie music is some of my favorite type of music, favorite musicians being Bombay Bicycle Club, and more underground bands such as Little Comets and General Fiasco.

In the music magazine industry and in the media in general these types of people that I will be aiming my magazine at are not really represented well. There are very few music magazines and few publications out there at the moment that target this audience, so I think it will be a fairly unique magazine that I will be creating, I want to make it so anyone who I'm aiming it at, being mainly 16-30 year olds can just pick up the magazine and understand what the content is trying to explain, as with many of these specialist magazines, and more genre specific magazines, for music an example would be Kerrang, the audience will have to know the genre previously very well before they can just pick the magazine up, read it and understand it.

I want to make the magazine look aesthetically pleasing, and an alternative look on an already fairly samey music magazine industry, one of my favourite magazines as far as the style goes is 'The Albion' a free BMX magazine that makes it's money from advertising so it can pay for the printing costs, a relatively good idea, especially as they can charge more as more people pick it up and read it, because at the end of the day it is free, but I find that the design of the magazine is more formal than other BMX magazines, more wordy rather than pictures, but the pictures are still very serious and formal, I like the alternative thinking that goes into things like the front cover, logo, how articles are layed out, the thought process that went into the font which they use in the main articles (Albion Didot), so this magazine could be a sort of inspiration.

I also like the way that NME magazine is set out, after being influenced by many different genres of music and many years of different influences it has reached a sort of indie layout, with the pop influence from the 60's,70's,80's and 90's. Before they took the indie route for their magazine they used to mainly pop, covering all of the big bands from the above era's, such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nirvana etc.

I never regarded Rolling Stone as a real music magazine because it is very different to what I am planning to do for my magazine in the sense that I think Rolling Stone's covers and layout aren't very good, I'm planning on spending the time to make my magazine look legitimate, make it seem like an actual magazine, because after all that is the task.

Music Magazine Research Task Three: Genres Of Music

The genre of a magazine is very important to the way it is set out, so below are lists of popular genres and what genres music magazines are, I will also look at music I listen to, after looking at all of these I will make a decision as to what genre my magazine will fit into, it is very important that I don't pick something that has been overused, or that is present in today's media.

Popular music genres, with magazines that fit these genres next to them:

• Indie - NME
• Pop - Q, Mojo
• Rock - Kerrang
• Hip-Hop - Hip Hop Connection (American Magazine)
• Grime - Flavourmag (Urban London Music and Arts Magazine)
• Hip-Hop/R&B - Vibe Magazine
• Music in General - Rolling Stone Magazine (varies from month to month as to which artist they focus on, the magazine isn't devoted to 

all of these magazines have a layout and a design that mirrors what they are trying to represent, so for example NME has quite an indie feel to it, one that would match today's culture, with the clothing people wear, the people that feature in the magazine and other things such as the features they run and the way the codes and conventions are presented.

Music that I listen to:

• Indie - Bombay Bicycle Club, Little Comets, General Fiasco
• Grime - Skepta, JME, P Money
• Hip-Hop - Kanye West
• Rock - The Rolling Stones, The Beatles

 I think that I will make my magazine more of an indie theme, this is because I feel that there is a slight gap in the market, because although the content of NME is seen to be indie, the design wasn't originally to suit indie music, because when it was created it was more to do with popular music than anything else, and has recently changed. Whereas my magazine will be completely indie orientated, with a modern design that fits the genre, rather than optimized like NME's design has been.

IPC Media

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