1A Taylor Barnes: 2010

Introduction

The project that I have been focusing on is a brand new music magazine. I worked independently to create an alternative/country style magazine to be published in the music magazine market today.

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine follows typical conventions of a front cover whilst also challenge them to give a unique selling point. The title of my front cover really gives a main stylistic feature towards the page. It effectively creates the ‘brand image’ of my magazine due to the name ‘LAS’ indicates that it is a magazine for women with also having a secret message underneath. It can be easily recognisable as it is three bold letters - much like ‘NME’ - and can be remembered by the audience through the distinctive floral patterns running in between the letters. The secret message becomes clear underneath the title which clearly explains the content of the magazine and this is effectively stood out through it being in white italics contrasted with the dark back ground. My front cover also includes the typical convention of one main protagonist photographed in close up of head and shoulders in direct address. However, I have also included a prop - a guitar - with my artist, which establishes her as an artist whilst also help setting the entire genre of the magazine of pop/country. I have also incorporated a leading caption which dominates the page; it is in relation towards my main feature article. It really stands out from the page from the font size and style; also again with the pale colours against the dark background make the text clearly visible to the reader. Also by using the words ‘First Exclusive Interview’ really help anchor my audience into the story as they will want to read the artist first story before anyone else. My subheadings also help to further advertise my magazine; they are not placed over the artist so they do not distract from the image however they are bold enough to stand out on the side of the page. Each story has a hook with a famous celebrity, which would make the audience want to read further into the magazine. I included only one strap line onto my magazine; I did this to signify another popular artist which would intrigue the reader. Also by giving the strap line a rhetorical question it leaves the story on a cliff hanger that my audience will want answering. I managed to challenge one particular convention of colour; my background is dark with only light around the artist. I did this because I wanted only the most important things on the page to really stand out; such as headings image and leading caption.

I really liked the initial idea of this front cover as it stands out from most music magazines. The magazine manages to incorporate allot of typical conventions; for instance the main focus of this front cover which includes a leading caption that dominates the page. This fits in with the content of the magazine as it is a music magazine and has featured a well known female artist 'Taylor Swift'. The image is in direct address which helps to invite the reader into the magazine, this also represents the main advertisement for the magazine and as 'Taylor Swift' is a well admired celebrity this cleverly increase sales as audiences would want to read about her. However the Header of this magazine has been covered by the artist which is generally not a typical convention but this is because of the popularity of the magazine that its audience would know what the magazine was. This is something that I would not include in my magazine because it is new to the music magazine market. The text that is included on the cover of this magazine is its subheadings - all of the subheadings are placed at the right side of the magazine and do not cover the leading caption but are still very noticeable to the reader. Each subheading includes at least one famous musical artist, which again entices the reader into the magazine as they are also getting information about many other artists. This helps link into the theme of a music magazine as it is mainly based around the modern musical artist. The piece of text that is most visible to the reader is 'Taylor Swift' with a strap line underneath - 'Secrets of a Good Girl' this makes the reader want to open the magazine as they would want to know what this meant about the artist as it doesn't give away to much information for the reader to understand what it means straight away.

With my contents page I have mainly stayed with the typical conventions, but with including a slight twist on the page. My contents page is definitely colourful, it includes bright colours such as; pinks, purples, yellows and oranges. This also helps keep up with the ‘house-style’ colour of the magazine but including more warmer colours to brighten it up which helps to encourage the reader to read on through the rest of the magazine. My image certainly dominates the page as is it covers the whole page. I have included a picture of a guitar here to further establish the genre of the magazine and the fact that it is a music magazine, along with the colours as well really pushes forward the idea that this is a female magazine. I really like the way in which I have placed my title ‘contents’ on the page. The way in which it is split into two different sections really gives the page a stylistic edge and makes it automatically stand out as soon as the reader opens the page. This challenges typical conventions as very little magazines do this. I have again challenged the typical conventions through the way my list is presented on the page; there are no page numbers on each section. This is because I wanted the page to look unique and I thought numbers would ruin the overall style to the page.

I really like the idea of this contents page, the idea that strikes me the most is the title as it is bold bright and stands out from its contrasting background. Also in the way in which the letters have been placed, it is an interesting way which fits in with the style and makes the contents page more visually appealing to the reader. Although the colour scheme may not be colourful the double tone of the back ground contrasting with the text and the image all links together and make the contents page encouraging for the reader to read on. Another reason why I really like the idea of this contents page is the strong image dominates the page. The model whilst giving direct address, also shows her whole body on the page this is because of the way she is cleverly placed with her legs up it really makes a statement to the person and gives her personality. Also with the shoes that she is wearing make a stand out as a main feature to her outfit and our a main focus on the page. The list of contents also works very well with the genre of the page as they are placed on a slant to fit next to the model and not covering her, whilst the font of the text makes it interesting enough to still be seen by the reader.

In my feature article I tried to make it as bright and bold as possible to really establish my character. I have followed the typical conventions to make sure to make the article as professional as possible. My headline dominates the page along with the subheading. I have used a quote from the article which is quite witty from the artist and really helps to show her personality. I have stood one paragraph one its own and put it in pink to contrast against the background so that it stands out from the page. This paragraph was all about promoting the artist, this is also pushed through my article right up until the end when I have put all the dates and names for her tours, album and single. Again I have used an image to dominate the page. On the right hand side of the page I fit to scale and image that would be used as a background then filtered it so that it would be transparent enough for text to be put on top of it. This gives my magazine an edge as establishes the character while style keeping in the house-style colours of pink and purple. I have kept to the conventions of placing the text clearly and in order so that it easy for the reader to follow. I have also not made the text overwhelming by breaking up the text with quotes from the artist which would keep the reader interested whilst still keeping in with the music genre. These are also known as text grabs, which are all conversational and funny which highlights the character of the artist.
I really liked the idea of this type of feature article I thought the layout was inventive and it really establishes the artist and the music genre of rock/pop. The headline immediately grabs the attention of its audience its big and bold and clear to read. It is also a quote from the artist which establishes her character. The text dominates almost half the side of one page and glides onto the other. This is the same for the image of the artist ‘Lilly Allen’ she is shot in a close up of her torso however, put on a huge scale to further dominate the page and make the readers not feel overwhelmed by text. The content is all clear and easy to see on one side of the page. It is in chronological order and so makes it easier for the audience to understand the text with having to think too hard. The colour scheme is slightly bland with whites, blacks and greys. But this is then contrasted with the red in the artist shirt which enables her to jump out of the page at the audience.

I based my artist around a familiar folk/county artist named Laura Marling. I really liked the simple style that Laura Marling has, with her guitar, clothes and body language. She also promotes a really alternative style to music which is what I wanted my artist to bring to the magazine.

Here are links to videos of what best describes the style of music that my magazine is promoting and what I hope is made clear through my cover, contents and feature article. There is both folk and alternative here and this is the style of music that I believe best describes my magazine.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The representations in my magazine are of a female artist. I have done this through the use of costume, props, facial expression and body language. I tried not to stereotype my artist as just a female artist because then that would lead to no personality and there would have been no truth behind the character. I tried to offer an alternative and challenging representation to my character my contradicting her fashion style to her music. Her style is more rock chick whereas her music is more country. I represented her this way so that my character could relate to my audience as most people have their own unique style which may not match up to their way of life but suits them for how they are. My typical social group would be men and women, but mostly women as my magazine as a whole only focuses on female artist/bands.

I used this picture as my front cover image. I thought this picture would be appropriate for the front cover because it clearly establishes who the artist is; as she invites my social group into the magazine through the use of direct address, it shows she is a young, cheerful girl with talent. This is shown by; the use of props used in the image. My artist is holding her guitar in full view of the shot, which creates connotations towards the audience that this is a country/alternative style music magazine and also that my character as an artist is a guitar player which quickly establishes her style of music. The costume used here is plain and simple, just a black top however she is wearing a rock chick look necklace with cross’ and jewels which gives my artist some unique style identity. This portrays to my audience that she has a varied personality. Her facial expression says a lot about the character; she is smiling and looking directly towards the audience this shows her personality as a cheerful person. This idea of her personality would drastically change if she was not smiling and so it is important to think about every aspect of body language she creates. For example in the way she is holding her guitar, the way she holds it is like she cares about it which highlights that she is serious and passionate about her music.

This image was used as the main image that dominates my feature article. I found this image very interesting as the artist is not using direct address however this is made up by the rest of the detail in the image. I thought this image would be more appealing to my audience as it says a lot about my character. Her personality and attitude is strongly shown here by the use of props and background. The artist is stood on a bridge over a frozen pond, this gives an atmospheric mood to the image as it is night and there is her shadow bouncing of the top of the ice. Again she is holding her guitar, however now she is playing it, which brings realism towards the character for the social group to relate to. Her costume says a lot about her, it carries on her rock style with the leather jacket and boots, but this is made feminine by her purple dress underneath. This costume was carefully picked so that it could relate to the difference between her music and fashion style; her music is very country and authentic whereas her fashion style juxtaposes this and is very rock chick. This highlights her nice personality and that she also has elements of attitude about her. Her facial expression is not really noticeable here; the audience will be able to make out that she has her eyes closed and slightly smiling which again repeats her cheerful personality like the previous picture. Her body language is the most attention-grabbing statement to this image. She is shot in full body, her stance emphasises her attitude as it gives connotations that she has fun when performing whilst it being so effortless to her.

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

During my research I found plenty of magazines that were similar to what I wanted to produce. British magazines like NME and Q where close to my idea/style of magazine. NME is published by IPC media in the United Kingdom. Other similar media products it produces are TV & Satellite week which like a music magazine produces a weekly print about the events on TV, whereas NME is printed weekly to update its audience about music charts. I believe IPC would be likely to take on my magazine as there is nothing like it in the music magazine industry, by its individuality to have a music magazine purely on women artist. I strongly think it would make a profit as female artist are not really acknowledged as much as male artist and so this magazine would introduce audiences to the prospect of female artist becoming more popular. It would also help the artist become more aware in the public eye which will give the magazine more sales because their fans would want to read about them. Here is a link for the homepage of IPC media: http://www.ipcmedia.com/

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience that I have tried to represent are: female age from 16-25 and can be of any race but I believe that most commonly caucasian audience would buy into this more. They can be of any socio-economic status. My secondary audience may contain males as they may want to buy a magazine based on female artist. I believe this is a good audience to target because studies show that more males buy music magazines than females this may be due to the fact that most magazines mainly cater for male audiences. And so introducing a female magazine would rise profits as there would be a magazine that females could relate to and want to buy. My audience feedback showed a positive attitude as the female audience felt like this is a magazine they would purchase because it is nothing they had seen before.

Here are some results taken by Magazine ABC, illustrating the recent audience circulation figures on music magazines;

Magazine|Company/Publishers|Percentage Gain/Loss

The Fly Channelfly Enterprises Ltd (7.5%)

Mojo Bauer Consumer Media (-2.0%)

Q Bauer Consumer Media (-8.0%)

Uncut IPC Media Ltd (-13.3%)

Classic Rock Future Publishing Ltd (1.5%)

Metal Hammer Future Publishing Ltd (-16.9%)

Kerrang! Bauer Consumer Media (-21.3%)

NME IPC Media Ltd (-20.6%)

World Magazine Development Hell LTD (-22.5%)

mixmag Development Hell LTD (-13.4%)

BBC News Music Magazine BBC Worldwide (-5.2%)

Classic FM – The Magazine Haymarket Consumer Media (-9.0%)

Gramophone Haymarket Consumer Media (-6.7%)

Rhythm Future Publishing Ltd (-8.2%)

From these results it is clear to see that music magazines have unpredictably had a massive decrease in sales over the past year. This may be because there is not enough variety throughout the magazines and something different needs to be on the shelves to sell and make profits. Also to keep up with the populating use of the internet to receive information and music ideas you could also get in magazines.

This website shows the chart updates each week, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles/ . There are a lot of female artist in the chart in varied genres of music. However overall there is a growing popularity for alternative/indie style music in the charts and this is most likely going to increase as the year progress’.

Q5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

I managed to attract my audience by firstly, my choice of name for the magazine; 'L.A.S'. I got the inspiration from the title of 'NME,’ I chose to do this because it looks unusual and the name L.AS. contributes to the theme of a female magazine. It stands for 'Lyrics of A Songwriter' but the abbreviated version stands out more on the front cover. The image on the front cover is key to establishing the genre. My artist is smiling and has her guitar next to her, this shows that it is a music magazine to the audience and that female artist is the main focus. Also the colour of the front cover is very feminine using light pink colours and pale purples indicates to the audience of a female magazine. The use of story lines on the front cover grasp the audience’s attention as they mention well known female artist of today and leave open questions such as ' Florence without her machine?' these create enigmas towards the audience and will make them want to read insidethe magazine for answers. Also using words such as 'exclusive interview', make the magazine seem like it has all the latest information first before any other and encourages the audience to buy the magazine. My contents page carries on with the feminine theme by the use of bright pink and purples inviting the reader further in the magazine. The list on the contents page helps whet the appetite of the audience as it includes the story lines on the front cover as well as more captions for them to be interested in, by adding more story lines I have increased audience awareness of the magazine. My double page spread creates audiences expectations of a magazine; I have included a big bold headline that captures the audience’s attention whilst creating a question as to why my artist has said this. My colours are strong and bold and give my artist a characteristic by the Gothic purples and pinks. The layout is also very interesting as my title is on a slant which stands out over the whole page and straight away draws attention to the audience as soon as they look at the page. Another interesting feature on my double page spread is that where my interview has been placed there is a faded picture of the artist on the back, I really like the idea of this on my feature article and I believe that it is really unique and brings a professional aspect towards my magazine.

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout my project I have learnt to use different programmes and equipments to help me in creating my final product. The following are the programmes and equipments I have used and learnt to become familiar with during my project.

Blog

Before I had to start researching and creating my product, I had to first make a blog. This is a site where I could log onto each week to keep on top of my research, progress and dynamics to my overall project. I created my blog by using www.blogger.com. This was a process that I was not familiar with and so it increased my awareness off uploading information onto the internet. Advantages towards using blogger, was that it was an effective way to record all my research and planning efficiently during my time of creating my product. However, I did find some disadvantages in using this programme; on some occasions when I tried to upload information such as; videos and images, it was hard to do and sometimes they would not upload at all, which can be time consuming and stressful.

Internet

During the process of making my product, I have used the internet frequently for my research. I have used websites such as; www.google.co.uk , www.youtube.com and www.dafont.com to receive my findings on music; music magazines and designs. There have been many strengths in using the internet throughout my project; firstly it has been very easy to use, I am used to using the internet and so I did not have to spend time getting used to working the programme. However, I new to the sight www.dafont.com , but it proved to be very helpful and quick to use. There were a lot of fonts to choose from for my magazine and they were all very easy to download. On the other hand the internet does have a few weaknesses like for instance; if I wanted to download videos for my research some websites would not let me due to copy right reasons. Also connection is unpredictable and if there is poor service it is time consuming and takes longer to look for research.

Camera

In my photo shoot for my final product I used an i85 Samsung digital camera to take my images. I took photos from the indoors and outdoors for the shoot. I found the camera to be very diverse; I learnt that I could manipulate the camera quality by changing the light in the background indoors. Also for the camera shots outside at night, the camera was also very effective as the flash lit up the surroundings making everything visible. Nevertheless the camera quality was still not magazine standard and lacked the professional camera quality that, for example, the canon EOS 450d would have.

Indesign

Indesign is a publishing programme that enabled me to combine text and images to make a magazine. Its state of the art technology in design and layout is a really efficient way to make a magazine single handily. I was completely new to this software and I was quite nervous about using it, but I found many advantages from using this programme such as; I could make each page look professional by changing size of text and images to fit the page correctly. I could also experiment with images and put them on diagonals to give the pages more character. I became very used to using boxes, saving and importing work onto the indesign page. There are not many disadvantages in using this programme except that it took me a while to get used to working everything confidently.

Photoshop

Photoshop is a graphics editing programme in which users can digitally edit any picture or photograph. This professional image-editing provides a large number of effects, filters and layers to manipulate and image. It has become the most popular image-editor in the world. Personally for me I found this programme very interesting to use. Again I was very new to this and had only briefly heard of it before and never really used it. It was a good way to edit all of my photos differently to suit the theme of the magazine and I could freely experiment for what edits would fit my magazine correctly. I learnt to apply colour filters to create and interesting final image that fitted my ‘house-style’ perfectly by changing some of my images to pink and purple colours. The only thing that I found hard was that it took a great deal of time to perfect the images so that they were professional enough for my magazine.

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that my final magazine is a major increase from my prelim task as: my composition of shots are more effective and smooth and I had more time to edit my photos so that they would look more professional as a leading magazine. This is through my use of editing on the models; my lighting is completely different; as on my prelim there is natural light with no effect at all. Whereas my final product has definition in its lighting and really emphasises the artist features on the front cover. My character is more believable and has more of an appeal to the audience as she is smiling and the context around her makes her seem like a genuine person. My title and font are much more appealing than that of the prelim task. This is because I downloaded the font from a professional site and took more time into making sure that it would fit into my genre and style of magazine. Whereas in the prelim task I just used a font from word and didn't take into consideration the affect on the genre. My use of actual text in my final product is also much more professional; there are a lot more believable headlines and storylines for the magazine which gives it a selling point. In contrast to the prelim task where the storylines are basic and have not much interest in comparison. My layout is a lot more interesting on the final project, as there is more colours involved and more different places in which the text is set to make the magazine visually appealing to the audience. However I do really like backgrounds on both of my products as they fit the style/genre well: my prelim task is supposed to be set in a college so with the library behind it, it really gives it a believable feel. And also with my final product the way in which the background is plane really helps to make the artist stand out from that page which will grab audience’s attention.

Conclusion

My personal opinion of my magazine is that I have kept to the conventions well and that I have made it look professional with the time I had taken to make sure the text and the images are in the right places and are all clear to the audience. I really like my artist, and feel like she has a believable personality that the audience can relate to and is interested in get to knowing as a popular artist in the modern day. My only concern or weakness is my contents page as I believe I did not interest my audience enough with the image, from my feedback I realised that it is unclear what the rest of the magazine represents due to the one picture, however this could bring originality to my magazine and the audience did enjoy the colours and believed them to be affective. Overall I am really impressed with my final magazine and believe that I have done a good job in creating realism throughout the magazine.