Before beginning the production of my music magazine, it was important to research and plan my work using existing media products. When looking at current products, there seemed a clear division in the music magazine industry, such as quality, monthly magazines like Q, and popular weekly magazines such as Kerrang!
I decided to create a quality magazine and took Q as an inspirational product. My media product therefore uses current forms and conventions rather than challenging them. I am now going analyse how my product conforms with existing media by studying aspects of the magazine.
Title
When I first began thinking of a title, I brainstormed many ideas that sounded similar to those of existing magazines. I simply wrote down any possible names of a magazine, but then had to refine my ideas as I decided on a target audience. Once choosing the indie genre as my main focus for the magazine, I needed to think of a name suitable for that genre and matching the theme of the magazine. The three choices I like most were:
INK
Immerse
Uncut
I chose Uncut as my title over the other two possibilities as I felt Immerse was too long and INK didn't fit very well with the theme and genre of the magazine. Uncut was also relatively short, and I could imagine it being said during a conversation. It can also have a small link to the music industry and is a related word to some musical editing terms. I believe the title reflects the calm and sophisticated nature of the magazine rather than portraying the excitable impression like Kerrang!
Mise-en-scene of images
Although I chose the indie genre as my target audience, I wanted to appeal to a large market of people and therefore many other genres. I wanted to create a magazine that had aspects everyone could read and I felt Q magazine did this the best out of the magazines I studied. Magazines such as Kerrang! and Rock Sound appeal directly to particular genres of music, and their presentation reflects this. Most covers are very crammed with large pictures of rock bands.
After looking at various Q magazine covers featuring girls, I decided to use a girl as the model for my front cover, as I felt this could appeal to both men and women more than a male model would. The cover usually portrays one picture either a full body shot of a close up of the face, and I chose a close up shot for my front cover as it creates a bigger impact on anyone looking at the magazine. Usually, the models used on magazine covers are looking out directly at the veiwer, but my magazine challenged this as my model was looking in a different direction. The background of most magazine covers is usually a plain cover, as text is then easy to read over the top. I thought this was a good idea but using the gradient tool I faded my cover image slightly into the background, to make it look as though she was emerging from the black. This made the plain background slightly less dull and more involved in the front cover. The black coat my model was wearing also allowed this effect to work extremely well and highlight the face.
The images I used for both my contents page and double page spread I had to think about carefully, as I needed a larger, interesting image for the double page and smaller ones for the contents page. The clothing was important to reflect the genre of the magazine, so I chose casual clothes for my model such as jeans, boots and a trenchcoat, popular amongst the indie genre.
Title font and style
I believe my font for my magazine title fit well with the indie genre as it is quite fancy and stands out amongst other magazine title fonts. This works well as the rest of the fonts I used where not as extravagant in order to create the sophisticated feel to the magazine. I used a slight gradient on the font for the title, giving an indication of importance and making the title stand out against the black background.
Written content
It was important to study the written content of previous magazines as the mode of address and tone throughout the magazine varies. Some aspects of the magazine use sophisticated language, contrasting with the interviews which adopt a colloquial and conversational tone. These often include profanities and slang as quotes direct from the person being interviewed are included in the article. It was essential that my magazines written content fitted with current conventions.
Most content appearing on the front cover was small, snappy lines designed to intice readers into the magazine and display the main topics in the magazine. On the contents page, most writing included rhetorical questions and swift introductions to articles to give a reader an idea about what they will be reading, but not give away too much information. The double page spread of the magazine included the largest amount of written content which included both a high level of description along with a colloquial interview with the advertised artist.
Layout
My front cover used many aspects of current media in its design, for instance bold lines segregating text, larger cover lines to highlight importance, headlines, large bold masthead, straplines, stickers and a lure above the main headline. My layout was very similar to that of Q, as I adopted the blocky design of the front cover. My front cover could easily be divided into squares and rectangles unlike a copy of Kerrang!, which is much more manic in its appearance. My masthead appears at the top left of the page, similar to most magazines, and the headline overlaps the main cover image. Stickers and remaining coverlines then fill up the remaining areas of the cover. I used white and red colours for the text on the front cover as this stood out the best on the black background, and I used the colour picker tool to pick the red from the lips of my model.
My contents page was very similar to magazine I studied, as the page was clearly divided into columns and square sections. This is usually found in most magzines. I had a 'Features' section down the left hand side, once again segregated by the bold lines and in a larger text to show their importance. The features section included the articles advertised on the front cover. I also included a subscribe section to the contents page, as this is found in most magazines at the beginning so readers do not miss it. Other stories then appeared underneath my contents page picture and carried with them a small paragraph of text detailing information about the article, as these had not been previously explained on the front cover. My contents page image is iconic and is clearly another representation of the model on the front cover. For this reason, I decided not to include any text about the article covering the picture, but instead simply have the page number stamped onto the bottom right of the picture.
My double page spread was very similar to that found in almost all magazines. From the magazines I studied, a whole page or the majority of one page is taken up completely by a picture. I recreated this on my double page spread along with a small blurb covering the bottom half of the picture. The rest of my text was then organised into neat columns with occasional larger quotes, creating a professional look to the magazine.
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