Mark Reeves As Media

My front cover conforms to the conventions of real media products in many ways, for instance as shown in my market research conventionally the masthead of a magazine is at the top of page with a skyline above advertising content in the magazine, My magazine includes both of these features as shown in the diagram.

My magazines masthead was designed in Adobe Photoshop, I used the font “Legrand” as it has a past history of being used on album covers and music logos which are the same as my genre, I wanted my masthead to be black as I wanted it to have a dark, grungy look to reflect the working class roots of the artists featured and the target audience. I complemented the black with a sky blue colour to create my house style, I made sure the colour flowed down the page for example some of the text in the skyline is in this colour then this carries down to the separator lines in between price/date/issue number then to the main headline background further down the page the same cyan colour is used in the punctuation in the quote then on the separator lines in-between the teasing content this made sure the page was well balanced just like magazines like Nme and Q(See Fig.2). My models head covers part of the masthead which is a conventional feature which is used in a lot of magazines as in Fig.3, Also on the magazines above you can see how my magazine has a similar position of barcode in the bottom right hand corner this is another convention used in pretty much all magazines. My model is making direct eye contact with at the person viewing it, this is another technique often used by the established brands of the music industry to try and get the magazine to catch people's eye while on the shelf so they buy it. For my main image on the front cover I have used a Medium close up which I took on a digital camera, For the photo-shoot I went to an old abandoned building to fit into my working class target audience, also my model wore clothes which relate to my genre and target audience such as, An Oasis T shirt (One of the biggest bands from the UK with working class roots and my chosen genre of rock), a 60's style blazer as well as having the stereotypical long rock hair this is done so people should be able to tell the genre of my magazine immediately, even at a quick glance.

My magazine has its cover lines in a conventional place (Right hand side of main image) so I don’t waste any space on the cover, that is way I offset my main image to the left therefore giving me room to fit in the main headline and cover lines. I have edited my main image in photoshop, I adjusted the brightness/contrast levels and cut the head of my model into a different layer so it could overlap my masthead, as well as resizing and adding blur to various parts such as the hand playing guitar. My image breaks a convention as the norm for music magazines is to have a studio shot with no instruments but I decided against this as I didn't feel it represented my genre well enough because if the photo is taken against a plain white background with no props it could be any genre of music therefore misleading people, were as with my magazine no mistakes can be made as my model represents the audience also my magazine has the types of bands featured written clearly at the bottom as teasing contents and even the name and font of magazine show that it is rock based due to the "Hindu Times" being a song by Oasis and the font "Legrand" being used by a lot of rock bands including Beady Eye. My magazine has a simple but effective design which uses lines which I crated with drawing tool in Adobe Photoshop this style carries over on all the pages of the magazine.

My contents page carries over my house style established on my front cover of black, cyan, white and grey by carrying it over it makes it consistent and look professional just like a real magazine. For my contents I took inspiration from Nme and Q contents pages. I made sure that I also used the same fonts from the front cover and recreated my masthead but made it smaller and placed it on an angle so it wasn’t just recreating my front cover. For the background of the contents page I used a photo I took of a building and the sky and then adjusted the transparency levels so it blends in, I did this because having it plain white looked to bland. My image has been heavily edited in Photoshop; I have adjusted the colour/brightness and contrast levels and then resized, flipped and placed the image on a slant then cropped it so it fitted it in the box I had already placed on my contents page. The graffiti in the background of the picture has been emphasized to get across the working class ideology of my magazine again.

The photo I have used advertising the main feature is of my model at the abandoned building again, this image my model isn’t looking directly at the camera as once the reader opens the cover they are already interested also the picture is taken against a graffiti covered rusty wall once again showing the working class roots of the magazine and. My contents listing is clear, concise and simple so the readers can easily navigate my magazine, Also I have kept the description for each feature short and simple as most people just want to get straight to the article. I have avoided the use of the word “page” as this goes against conventions of a music magazine contents page. I have included a message from the editor section which is often seen in the likes Mojo and Nme. I designed all of the contents in Adobe Photoshop. My layout consists of a the title of the main article in Bold using the light blue colour from my front page for the punctuation such as exclamation marks and the page numbers once again keeping the page balanced. My magazine follows the conventions of a contents page,

-Arranged in columns

-One main picture relating to a feature article.

-They have page numbers on the pictures which anchors them to the written contents.

-Name of the magazine is at the top, issue date and the word contents.

-Sometimes an editor’s letter.

-Contents divided into categories and headings used to identify each category.

My double page spread conforms to the conventions of a real music magazine by having one large photo taking up an entire page then the article on the other, my title goes over the page divide to make sure people realise the contents is related to achieve this I also have kept the blue, black and white colour scheme across both pages. My feature contains quotes which are very common in music magazines as they give the reader something to quickly read so they can get an impression of what the article is about and what the person featured is like. I have included a dropcap at the start of article as it is a convention of a music magazine and draws the reader in; also I have included a byline which is the name of the author of the article.

My target audience will be people aged from 15 to their mid 30's/early 40's and will feature articles on people such as Noel Gallagher, John Lennon and The Arctic Monkeys. It will be primarily aimed at people interested in Rock and Indie music so my magazine will have a similar feel to NME and Q. The socio-economic groups for my magazine will mainly be C2 (Lower skilled manual) and DE (Semi and unskilled manual) as working class people are more likely to be interested in the type of music my magazine will feature due to the working class backgrounds of bands such as Oasis and The Stone Roses.

My magazine is will be a weekly publication and cost about £2.50 as I feel this price is affordable for everyone my target audience such as teens still at school and people in full time jobs, I want my magazine to be printed weekly to make sure it is as up to date as possible, because if it was monthly things could happen after its been published and when people are reading it would be out of date.

My magazine could be published by Bauer media to rival IPC media’s “NME” as they have a similar type of genre and target audience all though my magazine has a more niche audience as it is heavily influenced by the Britpop movement of the 90’s which featured bands such as Oasis, Blur, Verve and Manic Street Preachers so therefore there is a gap in the market for my genre as currently there are no magazines which have this as their main influence.

Looking back at my preliminary task of designing a magazine for my college and even my first drafts of my music magazine, I feel my work has improved significantly as before it wasn’t structured very well and had very little thought put into the set out and colour scheme of the magazine. In my finished product I made sure I kept the magazine professional looking and smart by having a clear house style and layout which to some extent featured on every page as well as this I also included more conventions such as drop caps, editor letters, straplines and cover lines.