Mock of my Front cover



The masthead of my magazine is bold and bright so that it is easy to see on the shelf when it is full of other magazines. I chose a hot pink colour because it persuades girls to buy the magazine as this is my target audience; I did not choose a lighter pink because the deep pink demonstrates that the magazine is for younger girls. The first letter is in a different font and in white to make it stand out; it is pure white because this stands out against the pink background. My magazine is called 'Bounce' because it is a common word used at festivals to tell someone to dance which relates to the genre. It is a short and simple word so that the readers can easily see it and it is a word that is catchy because it is easy to say.

My magazine does not have a catchy tagline. The reason I have not included one and decided to break the usual conventions of a magazine is because I felt the masthead was very eye-catching and by adding a tagline this would make the cover look crowded, which may stop the target audience from buying it. If I was going to put a tagline I would have written it in smaller letters with a more formal font to display the idea that my magazine is better than any other music magazine in the market.



Final Magazine Cover Inspiration

Here are three different magazine covers that I tried to base mine around. This is because the main images are close-up, powerful photo's of well known people which I have tried to re-create using a picture of the famous DJ, DJ EZ. The masthead of the 'GQ' and 'Q' magazine are very bold and as they are in a primary colour they are the first thing that someone notices on the page, which will essentially create a brand name for the magazine company. I did try to make my masthead bold and unique, however I don't think I quite achieved what I was hoping for... a bold, bright masthead. I believe that the problem with the masthead is that as the first letter is in a different colour, it separates the letter from the word, therefore making it less eye-catching. Hopefully I will continue to advance in my skills with using the programme serif which will end up with me having a perfect magazine cover. (Well that is what I am praying for anyway!).

26th December 2015

Making my mood board for my magazine was the best piece of work that I have done since my last blog post, I feel that it really captures the atmosphere that I want my magazine to have and I have even incorporated some of my own images that I had taken at festivals last year.  so  far the research I have done for this magazine has been going well and I have found lots of inspiration from other magazines.

Analysis of quesitonnaire

After seeing the results of the questionnaires I can ensure that my dance magazine will suit the specifics of my target audience. Most people that took part in the magazine were women and this is because my target audience is women so to find out what they would like to see in the magazine I needed to target them.

Dance Magazine Questionnaires

This is an example of the way I set out my magazine questionnaire for my target audience. I used a simple design and open and closed questions to get the best responses possible from the people that took part in the survey. One of my main priorities was for the questionnaire to not be biased as this could result in skewed answers which seriously would not help me in the process of making my magazine! I feel that, to the participants, some of the questions may have been seen as  being irrelevant; this is because they would not of seen the point of saying where they get most of their money from so this may have affected the results.

Overall, I think this was a good survey to use as it is so simple that most participants would be able to understand how it works and what the questions mean. This task was good as it showed me the wide range of questions that need to be asked before considering how a magazine cover is going to look.

mood board for magazine

11th December 2015

In the past few lessons I have been learning about the parts to a magazine and how this attracts a certain target audience. Looking at other magazines has really given me inspiration for my own and has helped me to see what sort of features would attract my target audience. I am very excited to start making my magazine front cover as I now feel that I have the knowledge needed to create the best media product that I possibly can!

Target Audience

In this lesson our class looked at the importance of picking the right target audience. The target audience is a chosen group of people that you would like to aim your product at. You can pick your target market based on many different variables.

Cleverly, I have chosen my music magazine to represent the young people that listen to house music. This is because I feel that I can relate to this genre of music and there are a lot of young people that enjoy it. I will strategically aim my music magazine towards this target audience by making an iconic front cover, that will be eye-catching and look like no other music magazine to persuade the reader to buy our magazine over anyone else's. Females aged 16-22 are the most common people that listen to house music as it is typically featured in many festivals that you need to be a certain age for.

My magazine will appeal to young people that are girls as dance music portrays the image of teens being able to express themselves through the music that they love. The socio-economic group that my target audience will come form is group D as they will mostly still be living at home as unskilled or semi-skilled workers.

Ideal Entity

Sophie is a lively seventeen year old girl that enjoys going out with her friends and socialising with people of different ages. She is enthusiastic about dance music as she attends music festivals every year to watch her favourite DJ's such as Annie Mac and DJ EZ. She plans to stay living at home until she settles in a stable career so most of her money comes from her parents; however she currently has a weekend job at a local retailer to pay to go to the festivals that she loves. She feels that there are not any music magazine's that appeal to her as house music is an up-coming genre so she would like to see a magazine that is targeted towards her and her friends.

Semiotic Analysis of a music magazine

Mock School Magazine Contents Page DONE

Clearly, this is a mock up of my contents page for the school magazine. I now realise how plain it is and it doesn't really have any interesting information on it whatsoever. However, it is ONLY a mock-up so in theory, this will be how the features are placed on the real school magazine. I have made the headline bold as it is an important part of the magazine because it allows the readers to skip to features they think they will enjoy the most.

In the real thing I think I will add a lot more colour to the contents page and quite a few pictures as well; this is because, after looking at magazine contents pages online, they usually have a few pictures to make the magazine more eye-catching; or even one main picture that the writing is based around.

These are two pictures that represent the magazine covers that I spoke about previously in the post. The left is one of which shows a contents page that is filled with writing and pictures making it very attractive to look at. The right is also eye-catching, however the creator has achieved this in a different way. The main picture if plain, yet mysterious, with a well-known actress in a strange situation which makes the reader wonder why. This will entice the reader to buy the magazine as they will want to know more about this feature. This is why, in my real school magazine, I think I may opt for one of these two layouts. This is because they are exciting and show professionalism, which is important when trying to get the attention of the target audience and potential advertisers.

27th November 2015

School Magazine Contents Page Inspiration

School Contents Page Annotations

School Magazine Final Front Cover

At last! After some hard work figuring out how to use the Serif software, I managed to create my very own magazine front cover! I have to say I am quite satisfied with how it turned out as I had no idea how to even use the programme at the start! It has taught me a lot about making a magazine however... I'm not too sure I would even consider buying a magazine with this as the front cover; mainly because I think it could still look a lot more professional. Hopefully my skills will get better over time so that the end product will be one that I can be so proud of making myself.

13th November 2015

Since my last diary post, I have looked at cover images on other school magazines and planned the photoshoot for my own magazine. In addition to this, I asked my model for my main image to take part in the photoshoot; we then shot the pictures. Finally, after taking various amount of photos I chose my final ones which I will use on my school magazine front cover. I have learnt that it is necessary to take as many photos as possible so that there is a large amount of content to analyse and choose from.

Final Photos

There we have it. The final photos that I have chosen to be on my school magazine's front cover! It took some time to work out what would work best to attract the right readers but I think I got there in the end. The pictures represent a fun and happy school as the picture on the right shows that Daniel is extremely happy to go to school! I think the most interesting part about the preliminary task is the fact that it taught me so many things I needed to know about the way a magazine cover is made and what the best features to use are when trying to attract a huge audience!

Finally, I really think that this task has taught me a huge amount as when I go on to make my magazine I will have learnt the basics on how to use the programmes such as Serif and simple editing software's online.

Photoshoot For My School Magazine

My photo-shoot went well as I took many pictures and in a range of different lightings. I did the photo-shoot at a time when the outside lighting was best as at first I tried taking the photos inside and the lighting was very dim and so the picture quality was not very good. 

 

 I took this first picture at around 5 o'clock in the evening when the lighting was very un-natural and dim. I chose my brother to be in his school clothes to portray that he was enthusiastic about school, however due to the way he is standing in this photo, this image has not been shown very well. The colours in this photo are not very bright due to the low-lighting so this would not be a good picture to use for my school magazine colour. My school magazine is targeted towards school students so not having bright colours may stop them from choosing this magazine out of all the others.

The pictures shown above are examples of good lighting as they were taken very early in the morning to emphasise the colours in the tie. I took these photos of my brother because my magazine is targeted towards older students that are in year 10 or 11 as they are just about to do their GCSE's. He is smiling in the photos to show to the readers that he is happy about school and wants to do well.

 

 What was the inspiration for my photo-shoot?

 

Personally, I believe that these two pictures were the inspiration for my pictures in the photo-shoot. This is because both magazines show mid-shots of men in stern positions creating the image of them being powerful. This draws the reader towards the magazine as it shows a sense of mystery within the from page leading the target audience to wonder what is inside; therefore, they will want to buy the magazine. I tried my hardest to imitate these pictures and adapting them to the needs of the magazine that I will be creating. However, the lighting was not the best as it was only natural lighting so I will need to consider this in my next photo-shoot.

 

Planning My School Magazine Photoshoot

As my magazine is aimed towards children that go to school aged 12 - 16 my photo-shoot's cover model will be a male and female of around the age of 14 to represent school children that are starting their GCSE's in year 10 and would like advise on how to do well in their exams. I have carefully chosen this age range as I feel these children will be able to relate to my school magazine when there is an image of another child of their age. I will do this by using my Canon camera; this is because it takes high quality photos, very quickly and I feel that this will benefit the quality of my whole magazine as readers will think it is more professional. This may be a process that takes a long time, but as I am passionate about producing the best product I can, I will ensure that I put my best efforts into gathering the brilliant photos to use for my magazine.

I have considered the location on my photos carefully and decided that to gain the best quality pictures I will take a mid-shot photo for my central image. The person will have an excited, happy expression so that the target audience can relate to the cover model. This is because if the cover model is happy and just a regular school student, then the target audience will be more inclined to buying the magazine, as they feel they can relate to the articles inside. Mt photo-shoot will consist of photos of happy 14 year old school children, with the background of their classroom with other students working too. I will do this because I think it will create the atmosphere of happiness within the school environment which is what my target audience want to see in the magazine.

To use for my secondary photos and other photos in the magazine I will take pictures of students who have passed their exams, holding their results whilst smiling. This will shows that by following the steps that are included in the magazine all the students in our school will be able to ensure they get good grades that they are also happy with. Furthermore, by doing this my target audience will be drawn to the magazine.

Finally, my photo-shoot will consist of children during sporting activities such as football or netball. This is because it promotes a sense of belonging in the school and the target audience will want to read the magazine to find out how they can get involved with the range of activities that St Gregory's school provides. This will be taken during day-time when all the students are in mid-play to show how passionate and determined the students at school are.

School Magazine Mock Front Cover

                                                                                        

 

  Before creating our final school magazine cover we decided to try out the program Serif Page PlusX5 to get used to how it operates. The background cover that I have chosen relates to the colours of the school; the colours on the tie are blue, white and red. I put a puff on the cover in a different colour to make it stand out from the rest of the cover and draw attention to the magazine. I have put a cover-line in a bigger font to aid the reader in understanding how the central image relates to the articles inside .

 

When I do my final magazine cover I am going to make it look more professional by using common conventions. This will make my magazine look more appealing to my target audience of school students. I would also  make the Masthead stand out more by making it a different colour. All the colours used will be relevant to the school and my pictures will be of higher quality and better presented. Furthermore, I will add in more secondary images to make the magazine cover more exciting and stand out from the other magazine's. The cutting of the image will be more efficient as I did it quickly to save time, however when I do my final piece it will be precise and look more eye-catching.

Semiotic Analysis of Magazine Covers

Sketch Of School Magazine Cover

This is a rough sketch of how I would like the front cover of my school magazine to look. I have a main image of three school children with smiles to make the reader feel that the magazine has a positive vibe about school. In addition to this I have a large amount of text; this is because it will make the magazine cover look busy and this will persuade the target audience to buy the magazine.

To add to the large amounts of text I have many images to show the readers what they can expect to see inside the magazine; this will make them curious about the content, willing them to buy the product.

30th October 2015

In the past two weeks in my Media class, we have been researching and looking into the conventions of a magazine. I have found out that there are many common features on a magazine which different companies change to catch the attention of the target audience that they are trying to reach. After this, I looked at various different magazine covers for school magazines that I thought I could take ideas from and get inspiration from.

School Magazine Inspiration For My Front Cover

 

 Here are two magazines that I personally thought could be used as inspiration for my school magazine front cover. The Left magazine is very eye-catching as the picture is hand-drawn and this is not what the viewer would usually expect from a magazine front cover. In addition to the eye-catching main image, the masthead is in two different colours which effects the reader as they are primary colours, drawing them in and making them want to know what the magazine is about; especially after reading 'Rethinking Schools' as this is an exciting masthead for the magazine which will intrigue the reader. Finally, the main image is anchored by a cover line which reads 'Fighting for our schools', this gives a sense of curiosity for the reader as it is an unusual title making them wonder what has happened to the schools that need to be fought for.

so, moving on to the second magazine that I chose for inspiration, the one on the right. This is a less professional magazine and I believe it may have been made by a student or someone that does not have much experience with magazine making; this is why it is perfect as inspiration! It is easy to read with clear heading and plenty of text; I especially like the fact that the main image is of two (what look like) students in a happy pose holding props that relate to the content of the magazine. 

 

School Magazine Annotations

This school magazine does not have the same connotations as normal magazines; this could be because it is meant to be sold to a narrower target audience. It also does not have a price or bar-code, this is due to it not being sold in shops; it may be an on-line edition of the magazine or it could have the bar-code and price on the back of the magazine. As in most magazines there is a cover model, however it is not someone who is well known or famous, or even a photographic model. Similarly as in most magazines they have used a puff to try and persuade the target audience to buy it; this is in the form of a competition where the reader could win a prize.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the school magazine that is shown here is very basic and so would not attract many people from the target audience. In my opinion the magazine does not have many features that attract me to it, however this is largely because I do not think I am the target audience for the magazine. This research has been incredibly valuable as it shows that I need to make my cover photo as attractive as possible for the reader to actually want to buy it. I will defiantly consider putting a variety of fonts and colours as the school magazine shown above does not do this which means it is quite plain an boring and not eye-catching at all.



Magazine Annotations

Heat Magazine

Heat is a magazine about celebrity's and it's target audience are generally women aged 20 - 30; this is because the celebrity's highlighted in the magazine are in that age range. Heat magazine's tag line is 'This weeks hottest celebrity news', this is above the bold, red Masthead saying 'Heat'. They target their audience in various ways by using connotations of a magazine. As you can see their central image is a cover model who is well known. In addition to this the central image portrays her as upset and lost as her expression makes the reader think this. There is a bold cover-line next to the picture which allows us as the reader to understand that the main article is about Nikki's love life. The puff is in yellow which stands out against all the other colours of the magazine showing another article that has been written in the magazine. Furthermore, the theme of colours - yellow, blue and red - are used within all editions of the heat magazine which help the magazine to be easily recognisable in the sea of magazines that are on the shelves. Finally, the barcode and price have been clearly stated on the left side of the magazine; they do not ruin or distort the image.

Cosmopolitan Magazine

The cosmopolitan Magazine clearly shows that it is targeted towards women as all the main font is written in pink. This is because pink is usually associated with women so the target audience will be more likely to pick up the magazine. They have a puff that is yellow, which is different to the rest of the cover, and promotes a freebie of vouchers to persuade the target audience to buy the magazine. The central image is of a happy, young cover model that is the main story of the magazine. We can tell how the central image relates to the magazine because the cover-line next to it gives us information about what the article is about. The tagline is 'The world's No.1 women's magazine.' This depicts that the magazine is targeted to women. The article uses a direct mode of address to make the reader feel as though they are relating to them as a person, they do this by using the word 'YOU' in capital, bold writing that is a different colour from the rest.

Conclusion

In conclusion, after looking at other magazines I think it will be massively important for me to ensure that I have targeted my magazine to the target audience as this will be the main people that pick it up and if they don't like it, then the magazine will not do well! Firstly, I think the top feature that the readers will look at is the colour scheme, I mean, if the magazine is targeted towards teenage boys it would be a very bad idea to start making all the headline bright pink as they just won't pick up the magazine!

Conventions of a Magazine



The Prezi that I have embedded shows a detailed explanation of what the conventions of a magazine are and why companies decide to use them. The main conventions are an important part of a magazine because they have been specifically highlighted as part of the magazine that the target audience will consider when they are thinking of buying the magazine. Would you buy a magazine that has not got a bold masthead? I don't think so!

After doing plenty of research into what the conventions of a magazine are and why people use them I have decided that I will use most of them on my music magazine cover. This is because they help to make the magazine eye-catching for the target audience which will help the magazine become popular within the target audience that I choose. 

16th October 2015

This week has been a very exciting start to my Media project and I am curious as to how a magazine is made eye-catching so that the target audience is drawn towards it. In my Media lessons we have been looking at different types of magazines and what the features of them are.

What Is The Course About?

How Will This Course Help Me?

This media As coursework project is firstly designed to get us, as students, to plan and construct our very own media product using a variety of different types of skills; this includes being able to research the appropriate material to be able to create a media product that is of good quality and suits the target audience. Secondly, the course allows us students to use different programmes when making the media product and to also develop our skills and confidence in using these programmes.

The following blog post will contain my entire As Media coursework which will be assessed and moderated. I will show not only a (hopefully) professional-looking final piece, but I will also show how my work has progressed through the course.

Briefing

Preliminary Task: For this task, I will use Serif to produce a front page and a mock-up contents page for a school magazine. It must show a medium close-up image of a student with some text and a masthead.

Main Task: The front page, contents page and double page spread of a new music magazine. All the images and text must be original and produced by the student. There is a minimum of four images.

Starting my Media As Journey

 

 I am starting my As Media coursework which will be about magazines and their conventions. I will have three final pieces that will be a double-page spread, front cover and contents page; these will all be inspired by other magazines that I have seen and the target audience’s ideas.

I used to study Biology however I found it very challenging so I opted out and changed to another subject that I have always been enthusiastic about. Personally, I believe it is very important to learn how the media works as it plays such a large role in many people’s lives today; this will be a great opportunity for me to understand what is involved in the process of magazine making and how the magazines make their money.

Throughout my entire life I have always been a creative person, whether it was painting pictures and making animals out of clay when I was younger; to drawing huge art pieces as part of my GCSE art coursework so I think this is a perfect time for me to put my creativeness to good use, especially as I have a passion for what goes on in the media around the world.