Institution

The main publishers of music magazines in the UK are Bauer, IPC and Future PLC. Bauer is a huge media group which is a worldwide empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries reaching over 22 million UK consumers every week. IPC or now known as Time Inc. UK are also one of the UK’s leading magazines publishers. IPC publish NME, which is a very popular magazine in my target audience. Future PLC offer a lot of magazines in several genres such as Technology, Games and Music. Future PLC has a wide range of rock/indie magazines but is not as popular as the likes of NME or Kerrang. But the company has over popular magazines, which have the same or similar target audience to mine.

Overall Bauer would be the best publishing company for my magazine as it caters for a very large audience, which is also the same as my target audience. The main advantage of using such a big company is their experience by doing other indie magazines such as Kerrang and Q. They would also be better to market my magazine better to my audience than I would be able to do independently. The others could of also worked but Future PLC don’t have a lot of experience with dealing with indie/rock magazines and IPC don’t have a market the size of Bauer.

Impact Of Technology

As stated by Peter Fraser, 'A broader version of conventional literacy, which enables, all visual, aural and digital forms, seeking to enable people to become thoughtful producers and interpreters of media'. From looking at this quote, I can see that there have been technological and institutional advances, within the magazine media industry, which have allowed companies to produce a product best suited for their audience. 

The first program I used that was new to me was blogger. I found I had to use this program on a weekly and sometimes even a daily basis during the planning stages of my coursework because this is where I upload all my work. It was very easy to use and is better than making a paper portfolio because it is possible to include, text, images and moving images in a way that looks professional and can be access easily online by anyone. However, I would not say it was always very reliable as I had some problems with loosing my work when drafts did not save or publish.  

The Internet was always going to be the most powerful tool through this project and without it I think I would of really struggled with the planning and presentation side of the coursework. The internet allowed me to access information about everything, get existing products to analyse for free to gain inspiration and also allowed me to use sites such as; blogger, Surveymonkey and social networking sites to share my surveys. The internet really was essential for everything I did and it allowed me to become a producer, not just a consumer, of media texts which supports what Gauntlett argued in 2001 because blogger let me reach a real audience with my work.

I also found being able to use SurveyMonkey really useful for my primary target audience. This site was also new to me and I found it really hepful because it allowed me to create many surveys and post them on many social sites to get answers and feedback from the public. This helped a lot when I came to create my final products as I knew my target audience and had a better understanding of how to reach out to them and represent them.

When taking photographs to use on my products I used a Digital SLR 5D Camera which I had very little experience with. I did not mange to take high quality photos at first as I did not know to use the manual settings and apature properly. Eventually after three lessons from my teachers and a lot of practice I became more and more familiar with it and manage to get a selection of images that looked professional enough to use, though as I said earlier this is still a skill I want to improve on.

I also used a lot of editing programs to create my products, the main one I used was Photoshop. I had used this at GCSE but felt I did not have a lot of knowledge that went beyond the basics so knew, especially after completing my prelim task, that I needed to learn a lot more about; adding images, creating documents, cropping images, erasing unwanted objects, adding text, adjusting images and working on layer effects. The more I used it the more I got used to it. I looked at websites online to find out more of the fundamentals and shortcuts. I think now I am a lot more confident with this software and I think my final work shows this because the editing all look professional.

Illustrator was another program I attempted to use, I used it when experimenting with creating texts for my masthead but in the end decided to go with a more simple design than the ones I tried using Illustrator. What I did learn about this program was it works with Photoshop and is quite similar to use.

InDesign was a very useful program that I used for finishing off my products once I had edited my images in Photoshop. I had never used it before so learned from my teachers and from watching online tutorials. What I liked about the program was how professional it could make my text layout look especially on my double page spread. I think I am now a lot more confident about using this software that was again similar in some ways to Photoshop.

Finally, I used the 5D again to film myself doing this evaluation this taught me how to put it onto film setting and use blue screen. The final evaluation edit will be edited in imovie, a program I have used before and know how to blue screen on as I did this during my GCSE. I will then post my video on YouTube or Vimeo and link it to blog which is another example of why the internet has been essential to this project.

Overall Technology has come along so much that it was my main asset throughout. With the access to all these tools such as the internet and photoshop I was able to make pieces at a professional level and share it with friends via the internet.

Flat Plans

 Cover:

The cover on the left way first attempt of creating a cover which would appeal and attract to my target audience. The left one lacked some of the basic common codes of music magazine cover. So I chosen the right hand side one as template to create my final cover as it includes a lot of the common codes and conventions and would trait to my target audience. The template is also easy to follow.

Contents: 

The contents page on the right is the one I decided to use for my final product as their is more room for content plus their are images that will attract my target audience as they are in places where people will instantly look/ The left one lacked content and had a lot of 'dead space' around the photo. I also think the one right lacked some sort of layout and when I was going to put text over my image it would be difficult to see and would lack the professionalism I wanted.

Double Page Spread:

This was my first design of creating a double page spread. I was happy with this first design as I looked at many examples online. I was going to use this for my final product as the layout was simple and effect.

I created another design and preferred this one. I still had a image of the main protagonist which takes up about 50% of the double page spread and also include a lot of room for content. The reason why I liked this  one more is that it spilt up the text more as it wasn't just a block of writing it also had a photo and it was into columns.

Primary Audience Research

Primary Audience Research

My first question I asked on my survey was the gender question. I asked this because it would help me have some of sight of what target audience I will be promoting my Music magazine too. In my survey around 75% of people who answered was male. 

My second question on my survey was 'what is your age?' As you can see by my results that the highest selected answer was a younger audience. This works well because they are all in my sort of age group and interests will be the same in this age group.  but the age group of 18-24 will be the one I prioritise.

My third question asked them if they read music magazines recently. Over 60% of people said that they do. This means that there is still a market for physical music magazines instead of my first theory of teenagers reading magazines online or even getting the lasting music gossip and news from other sources.

As you can see in this question you still have the 37% of people who don't read music magazines at all but the 63% who do mainly buy monthly magazines instead of weekly. Weekly magazines are still very popular as no one in my survey buys a magazines daily and thats something I suspected.

Finding out the genre of magazines people are interesting in was very import and so i could see how popular my genre was ( Indie / alternative ). As you can see not a lot of people who answered my survey are strongly interested in my genre. I wouldn't say this is the end of the road because there is still some interest there and Im going to try and change many peoples minds on this genre.

By a clear mile White was a clear winner as everyone who answered my survey selected this. I will take this on board when I'm doing my own magazine.

When asking this question, I had a theory that alot of people will select this price to be very low as maybe thats what they ant to pay, but looking at my results you can see that people have been really honest and paying around £3-35 was an acceptable price to pay but no more.

When asking this question I was hoping to see a balanced answer, I almost got this excluding images. I think that my cover will include most of these things.

About 50%  of people have a fairly low household income but are still set to pay high for a magazine. So I may change my prices a bit when I come to do it. As I want my magazine to be affordable but yet sophisticated.

Im not to concerned about this question or answers as I want to my magazine to try and appeal to all sexuality's although I will take this on board and acknowledge this.

Researching Photographic Lighting

The first video I have watched and chosen to learn more known lodge on about photographic lighting is this one about the egg. This tutorial explains many different techniques on how lighting is effective when taking photos. Lighting is important factor on making a good photo this is because too much or even too little light can make such a huge difference.  

The first major point they talk about is how the light creates shadows. He paced an egg in a centre of a table and panned a light source around it. As he did this the shadow would change shape and depth.

From this tutorial I have learned where to position the model or the item and also how to include light depending on where the model or the item is placed.  I also watched some other videos that showed me how a model should be placed corresponding to the lighting. This has allowed me to understand how to make more of a professional style photo.

Contents Page Analysis

This contents page shows a picture of a drum using his drum kit. There is also smaller images of drum kits and as the the title of this contents page is 'Drummer' its clearly about drumming. The main colours used on this contents page is Red, Black and White. The black represent danger, serious and powerful which a drummer could also be associated with. The images are all positioned central or down the right hand side of the contents page, which the the text runs down the opposite side of the contents page. The fonts used work well with the contents page as  they are strong and in a style which suits musicians.







     
This contents page is from Q which is an indie/ alternative music magazine. This is a very tidy and organised layout at first glance. The target audience for this cover would be around 13-43 and probably a higher social class due to the way this is laid out. The contents page doest include the masthead but thats not such a surprise as many contents pages doesn't. Instead this contents page has loads of sub-headings. There is one main image which catches your eye almost straight away. The main image is a popular artist which 99% of people will recognise and might influence them to read the article about her. This is another image below it to try and create more visual effects and to add colour this artist probably isn't as well known but still might capture the audience the main image didn't.

Representation – Selling Through Stereotypes

Media produces use stereotypes to sell a product, I’m going to show you how stereotypes effect your decision into buying a product.

Gender

In 1975, feminist critic Laura Mulvey said females are summarized “As erotic objects of desire for the characters within the story, and as erotic objects of desire for the spectator.” Females are very commonly used as sex appealing objects to the audience for a long time. These does appeal to both genders but when you have a female model such as Katy Perry semi naked on the front of a magazine cover it most probably catch the attention of males. But also this would catch the attention to females who are the secondary target audience. Females the age of the model or younger will be interested as they want to been seen attractive as well. But since 1975 men have been used in the same way. Men have been used in the same way woman have been used as you can see Justin Bieber is the main image of this magazine cover and he is topless which is supposed to attract women.

Youth

In 1904 Stanley Hall wrote that a theory known as the Storm & Stress Model. In this he suggested that the common mood for teenagers is being depressed, And that a lot of criminal activity happens from people between the ages of 12 and 24. He also suggested that the 'youth' need an extreme amount of excitement and that excitement usually contains 'alcohol, drugs and sex'. Bill Osgerby said that “We do not have to search too hard to find negative representations of youth in postwar Britain." Most of the youth will read more 'Rebellious' Magazine's if they deem themselves as rebellious. Unlike straight A students who would be represented in a different way. As you can see on this magazine cover the two statements apply as their is a close up of a youth, smoking and making inappropriate gestures. He is also wearing all black clothes and this brings out his 'Rebellious side'. This connotes the depression and how the youth always need excitement as the the story on this cover is 'David Cameron...Be Very Afraid'.

Race

On this topic Sarita Malik argues: “Many feel that Black and Asian audiences are still not sufficiently catered for and that insensitivity towards issues of race and ethnicity still exist. The reality of a lived multiculturalism is not represented in the British media." This is because the Music magazine industry does not cater fairly to all the races n the UK. When i was googling music magazine covers it was hard to find one which had someone who wasn't white on it. Top of the Pops, Kerrang and NME support Malik statement as these are all music magazine companies but yet don't cater fairly as most of there models are white. Even though this is true Malik statement might be slowly becoming outdated as Companies such as XXL and others are now including more models which are not white.

Sexuality

The next magazine I'm looking at is about sexuality. This cover "Chooses aspect of gay male behaviour (SELECTION), inflates it into the defining male characteristic of male homosexuality (MAGNIFICATION), then establish it as the most easily recognizable image (REDUCTION).” This is shown through his clothing choice. He is wearing all black clothing and black makeup which shows us he has a 'gothic' fashion sense which is normally related to homosexual males.

 National/Regional Identity

Theorist Andrew Higson writes; “Identity is generally understood to be the shared identity of naturalized inhabitants of a particular political-geographic space – this can be a particular nation or region. This is shown quite obviously in this magazine cover by Kerrang as the main use of the Union Jack flag. Also all over this magazine cover they use the main colours of the union jack (Red, Blue and White). This is also represented through some of the text as well such as 'cool britannia' which also portrays this theme.

 

Class

My last magazine cover is represented through the theories of class and social grades. It is argued that the middle class of the population has the best deal in terms of representation as the middle class have the biggest impact the the social media. This magazines cover is middle/higher class as the choice of clothing of the main image portrays a higher social class and looks in control. The content is layer out in a very formal way and this also makes the magazine cover more of a higher class.