Feedback 23/11/09

Good Leanne a good start - good research on conventions of music magazines

Now you should be analysing music magazines - look at covers, contents pages and feature articles and think about the following questions...

- Do they follow typical conventions of music magazines? If not why?

- Who is the target audience (GRASS) and how have they been made to appeal to them?

- Do they successfully make the audience want to read on? ( Cover and contents?)

- why do they work?

In research you need a little more on audience - who is you target audience (Demographic - GRASS and psychographic profiling - Young and Rubicon) Also how will your product appeal to its audience - use MAslow too.

Audience questionnaires are needed - to your target audience - and feedback on this - charts and graphs are always good!

Go onto the ABC website to find out audience/circulation figures for magazines too - is there a market out there for your product?

Now move onto planning this week - ( see the last two sheets on the 'before you blog' handout) Start your mood boards, rough mock up of pages, props list, shooting schedule etc....

Audience research

I have come up with a questionnaire and have asked ten people to fill it out so i know what my audience is interested in.

Here is an example of what my questionnaire looked like and what most people answered.

From this example of my questionairre you can't really read the answers but below are some charts to show which colours seemed most popular to use for a girly pop magazine and whether the magazine should be published weekly or monthly.

Genre of music magazines

Now i am going to talk about what makes a good music magazine and use examples.

All music magazines follow the same rule whether it is a rock magazine or a hip hop magazine. When producing a music magazine you have to think about the image that will go on the cover, it must fit the content and the target audience. The name of the magazine must also fit the target audience. Whilst thinking about all this you also have to make sure the colour scheme is also very important because you couldn't use bright colours such as pinks and yellows for a rock magazine you would use reds and blacks. These are good examples of the images and logos on music magazines;

Mode of address is important when producing magazines because it is the way a text creates a relationship with its audience. Direct address is most common as it is created when the model on the cover is inviting the reader in. Mode of address can also refer to the writing in a magazine

and how it addresses the reader this is done usually in a friendly informal way. Magazines use stars or celebrities as their model to increase sales and profit this is because stars are admired and are aspirational for the audience.

Magazine covers:
The front cover of a magazine is extremely important as it is the first thing the audience see so it is the main advertisement. It should be bright, interesting and eye-catching to entice the reader to buy the magazine. The colors should represent the style of music magazine you chose to do. The title needs to stand out from the rest of the cover so it becomes recognizable for your audience. A slogan is often used to explain the magazine and for it to stand out from it's rivals. The leading caption is featured on your main article and usually why the audience buys the magazine. This is a good example of a cover of a magazine as the color, image and fonts relate to the hip hop style;

Contents page:
Contents pages should be bright and colorful which encourages the reader to read on. The images on the page dominate the text. It consists of a list of contents usually under sections e.g gig guide, reviews, interview etc...
These are examples of contents pages;











Feature Articles:

The heading and subheadings on the double page spread of your magazine have to explain the story and catch the audiences interest. Also the artist you are interviewing or your main story is about usually has something to promote such as a new album, single, clothes line etc. Always refer to what they are promoting! The images should consist of one large image and a few smaller ones. The smaller ones are usually shot in a different location to the larger image. The writing should be clear and easy to follow and most importantly interesting as you don't want your audience to be bored and give up reading your magazine.

GRASS:
Now i have looked at the typical genre of music magazines and what they consist of. Now i am going to define my target audience my using the GRASS method.

G the gender of my music magazine is mainly female as it is girly pop/fashion.


R my magazine is targeted at any race.


A as it is a girly pop magazine my target age would be between thirteen and nineteen.


S my socio - economic status would be group E or D as it is mainly for teenagers.


S

examples of music magazines!

Before starting producing my magazine i am going to look at other music magazines for ideas.

These two magazines are good examples of what i should think about when producing my own magazine as they both apeal to their audience which is young people who are interested in music. The genre of this magazine 'Rollingstone' is pop music as it has pop artists on both covers. Girls are most likely to buy the second example because it has Zac efrom on it and the main story is about Zac Efron. When i start to produce my own magazine i need to

think about who would buy my magazine and why because this would then help me think of what main story to write about and the image itself. The image on the front of the cover is important because it tells the audience what is in the magazine and has to apeal to the audeince, if the magazine was for a certain streotype like 'girly girl' then it would most likely have an image of a pop group or a male artist just like the second example has. The postioning of the image is important also, alot of magazines now have the model over the top of the name of the magazine, usually well known magazines do this such as 'rollingstones'.

These two music magazines are totally different to the ones above as they are are layed out differently especially the second example. These magazines apeal to people who enjoy listening and reading about rock music. We know this as soon as we look at the image as they both have a male artist singing and playing an electric gutiar. When producing my magazine cover aswell as thinking about the postioning of everything on the cover i also need to think about the mis en scene and how i can make my model relate to the genre. As you can see the colouring of everthing is important because it has to capture the target audeinces eye for example on the second example the colours are mainly red and white and in bold which stands out! The main story is spread across the page and lager than the rest of the sub headings so that it is the frist thing the audeince read. I need to take all this information and board and make sure i think about them when starting my own magazine cover.

This is a good example of the contents page of a music magazine 'NME'. Instead of just listing on what is on each page 'NME' have inclded lots of colour to make it more interesting and images. When doing my contents page i will be using this one as an example, although it looks very busy this is what makes the whole magazine look apealing and without colour and it would be boring.

Preliminary Task

After doing my preliminary task i found that i could have done things to improve it. As you can see the background doesn't really go with the main story because the main story is about the girl on the picture being new bu the background she is on is someone else's art work. When i do my magazine i will think about what the magazine will be about and who the main story is about and then decide what background would work well with the story. When doing my photo-shoot i should have thought about what i am going to write on the magazine and then left enough room around my model for the titles. I am very pleased with my layout of the magazine as the headings are equally spread out which stops the cover from looking to busy. The colors i have chosen make the magazine look bright which when in the shop it would stand out and would hopefully be the first thing that the customers would see. The pose from the model works well with the college magazine as she has a book in her hand and stood in front of art work obviously done by a pupil.

This is my contents page which i designed myself. After looking at my design i found that it was very plain and when producing my contents page for my music magazine i will look at images that relate to the magazine and alot of color to make it look attractive. It doesn't look as busy as it should as there is no images and only indicates what is in the magazine but nothing about the actual stories. When producing my contents page i will think about the color, layout and pictures to make it look appealing and will research contents pages from music magazines so i have a good idea on what i should do.

Music Magazine

My name is Leanne Green and i have chosen to do a music magazine for my coursework project. I am going to create a new girly pop magazine which will appeal to teenagers 13+ who are interested in music.