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.

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.

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.

My Personal Pages

If you are looking at my blog I would love it if you looked at both my personal website, where I have all my photos:

http://benmaccers.wix.com/photographer

and my flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben-maccers

both of these are very important for my photography work, and media work, so it would be great if you had a look

:)

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.

Music Magazine Research Task Two: Q Magazine Case Study

For my second research task I am going to research a front cover, contents page and double page spread from Q magazine, again this will feature a few pieces which feature the Arctic Monkeys to see the difference between the two magazines. Like the post below (NME magazine) I hope to find out the various codes and conventions and how both magazines use them and how each magazine presents the same artist/band.

Front Cover

This cover of Q magazine features quite a well designed cover, using quite a professional look, with the front cover photo taken quite clearly in a studio, whereas the NME front cover was taken outside, which gives the NME cover a more casual look, where as this cover is going for a more star studded effect, fitting in with the 'awards' theme.

the whole cover seems to be very tidy, which gives the cover a professional feel to it, this is a completely different stance on the same band from NME and Q, this could be down to the subject, whether the fact that being the awards edition they have given it a different feel compared to a regular feature of the Arctic Monkeys.

Contents Page

This contents page of Q shows another method of setting it out. Instead of the one page contents like in NME, where it is mostly words, with one image, the Q contents is over two pages, with some writing still, but the images guide the reader to the main features rather than having to scroll through various different lists of page numbers the information is presented to you with pictures. I find that this contents page more matches the NME cover, this is because this contents page is a lot less formal than the NME cover from a layout point of view. The conventions that Q magazine use are present here with the fonts and colours used, there is a lot of information here that fills the page but doesn't feel cluttered, all of the information present is easily accessable and nothing is hidden because of overcrowding in the page, overall I think if I was to do something like this for my magazine I would have achieved what I set out to do and what I expect of my work.

As far as the target audience for Q magazine is concerned I think that this is something that is easily appealing, as there isn't much reading to be done, and all the images relate to something that teenagers and young people would read. 

Double Page Spread

This double page spread of Lady Gaga is fairly typical of most Q magazine articles, I think that this article, like many others by Q is quite glamorous, whereas NME are a lot more casual, suiting the indie teenager that the magazine is aimed at, whereas Q is aimed at people who listen to popular music, and the glamour of the magazine is probably to make the reader feel like they are reading a quality product, and this matters when you are aiming the magazine at a vast majority of the population, whereas teenagers don't need glamour, they need something they can pick up, read for 5-10 minutes then put it down and come back to it later, which is where I suppose NME and Q differ.

In this double page spread there are several things that lead me to believe that this is a more glamorous article than most, one is the black and white photo of Lady Gaga with the more vintage hair style, and the necklace come dress front, the tasteful nudity in the photo could suggest vintage glamor as well. as far as the text goes the font is quite small, using the initials like in the NME magazine, this time it is in a more traditionally English font, giving it that extra effect of glamor and high class. The main feature of the whole double page spread and the only colour on the whole double page is the red L in the background of the text on the right hand side, this adds to the effect of the article, and also makes it more visually appealing, contrasting the black and white that would otherwise make the article quite boring. In the top left corner it has Lady Gaga's name like the NME article, this gives all the articles in the magazine some form of unity, and can be easily found when flicking through the magazine, because after all, Lady Gaga is a massive celebrity and will be a major selling point of the magazine. Overall I think that this glamorous effect that I get from this double page spread is another technique for creating bits of a magazine, it may be a good effect for me to use in my magazine as the simplicity of it is quite effective.

Music Magazine Research Task One: NME Magazine Case Study

For my first research task I am going to analyse NME Magazine's front cover, double page spread and contents page, the next post (the post above) will feature Q magazines . All of these posts will gain my understanding of what a magazine will do to draw readers in, how well it is presented and how the cover relates to the double page spread, or section of the magazine that it it trying to sell.

Front Cover

The front cover features the Arctic Monkeys, which is a theme I have tried to keep with both magazines because looking at two different magazines and the same artist can give me an understanding of how the two different magazines produce articles, contents pages and a cover to suit the artist/group.

In this front cover there are several techniques, there are the obvious conventions of the bar code, date, the masthead etc. But there are some things used in the cover that may make this cover stand out. The first thing that comes to mind is looking at the band and the way each of them are dressed, for example Alex Turner in particular, the lead singer (middle left) has been given quite a vintage look with the aviator sunglasses and the hair style, as well as all of them being given or them opting for the vintage short back and sides look with their hair swept back. The font used, the main coverline, the bands name, matches the look in the photo, it isn't to garish and isn't an outragous font, with obscure colours, it matches the rest of the page with a similar font to the rest of the coverlines and tag lines on the page.

The box at the top of the cover also with the style of the box and the fonts used within them are almost like a banner from a 1960's American bar, advertising the next band, which in a way the coverline is trying to do ''Blur Exclusive... another crack at America''. this fits in well with the theme of the whole page, the way that it all fits in would suggest that Arctic Monkeys are being represented in the magazine like they are going back to the roots of popular music, as if the magazine itself was going for a vintage cover look.

Contents Page

The contents page of NME is fairly simple, and fairly uniform every month, all of the smaller titles have the same black box with white writing inside, like a black highlight on the white page. the title itself has the same effect, with page numbers in red, coverlines in black with a slightly bigger and more bold font than the description of each article, the text isn't to big and doesn't jump out at you, giving every part of the magazine a fair chance over the rest. The image in the centre of the page related the cover to a part of the magazine, in this case page 45, I hope to achieve something like this with my magazine as it will make my magazine flow.

apart from the obvious conventions that NME have used there isn't a lot that is out of the norm. The only other things to note is the fact that they have a box at the bottom of the page in the centre that describes how to subscribe to NME magazine, of which I feel that this box is probably in the magazine frequently a lot as well, this is a good bit of self advertisement and keeps it on the mind of the reader whilst they read the magazine.

Double Page Spread

This double page spread in NME magazine, of the Arctic Monkeys is a fairly simple design, with the image on the left, stylised, artistic writing, which could have also been an image, with the text below having an Initial (larger capital letter to start the various paragraphs). 'The Joshua Code' relates back to the fact that at the time of this NME article Arctic Monkeys had either just recorded or were about to record in Joshua Tree, California, which was where Josh Homme was born, the lead singer of Queens Of The Stonage, and a producer for many of Arctic Monkeys songs, and the album Humbug.

In the top right hand corner of the page it has the band name, it is highly likely that this is a covention throughout the magazine, and is something I am tempted to use depending on what I do for my magazine and how I set it out. I feel that this is a nicely layed out intro page to an article, with the colours not being too 'in your face', the page isn't to cluttered but gives you all the information you need with simplicity in mind.