Amy Smith AS Media studies: 2010

For this project of create my own music magazine, the process I made and choice I’ve chosen are all shown on my blog. The first stage and the first post that is up is the brief. I wrote the brief as a reminder of the project and to make sure I don’t go of track from the project. Also posted for a reminder for the project is the meaning of L.I.I.A.R which is language, institution ideology, audience and representation.

Soon I was able to start the research and thought of the very first few ideas I could of used for my magazine, I thought of the genre, age group, class and more. With only the few ideas I could think of I started to study the code and conventions from three different magazines, I looked at kerrange, Q magazine and MF magazine. This helped to look at the difference between different magazines. This also helped to create more ideas for my magazine, this gave me the idea to use the colours red black and white as these stand out to the audience, it helped me think about the layout I could use for the magazine and most importantly it helped me to think about how the magazine I create fits into the genre as well as the audience.

The next step to the project was planning. Firstly I thought about was what would be the name. for the magazine I wanted a name that was different and original, I thought of a few names that stuck to the genre of a rock magazine. I thought of a few like scrap and RISE but the name I liked best was Differentto. I thought this was a way to make the audience believe they were different and their own individuals shows their stereotype and selection of music. For this part of the magazine I also thought a little slogan to go with the title for the magazine, I thought that the saying “rock out with the different” added to the effect of being an individual to the stereotypes of rock music.

Next step to my planning, the layout for my magazine. I wanted to stick to the conventions of music magazines but also wanted to stick out by being different. I came across a magazine that stood out to most that I have studied from before. The magazine was for a tattoo ideas for people to buy. If I didn’t know it was a tattoo magazine I would of thought it was a good looking magazine and picked up straight away, I wanted my magazine to have this same effect so I decided to study the little parts of this magazine that stood out to me, like the mast head, the main image, the font they used for all of the cover lines.
I drew up some plans for my magazine, the front cover, contents page and the double page spread, I used the first few ideas that I have posted up on my blog but the IT draft has more ideas and improved in little ways. This shows the graphology of the magazine.

For the last part for my planning, I placed all of my final ideas into the next few post. I posted my title name and slogan, the new layout which I hoped to complete, the colour scheme which was still going to be red black and white. I posted the font I was to use in my music magazine and the only task now to plan out was my photo’s.
I decided that the band for the main story would only have three members as I thought this would be enough to put in the front cover. The ideas for the photos would connect with the name of the band I thought of. The name was revenge, another name I thought was great for the genre of the magazine. But I needed my photos to have a link with the band. The images show different characters within the band. I used an high angle on the male character, this makes him look tall and powerful, his facial expression shows the evil side to the band, telling the audience not to mess with this band. The other two characters have almost the same angle from the camera work. They are both straight on, this shows they are ordinary people and the poses shows that they are also fun to be around. The act within the photos look to be dressed as casual students, linking back to the age group of young adults. The photos show the attitudes of being around a school which also relates back to the name “ revenge”.
The planning for the photos continues by taking more for the double page spread. My idea for this page would to show the band around the corridors, being casual but with attitude. Also I took photos to show the interview that I would have had with the band.

Now that I had all my planning completed it was now time to create my product to the way I have researched and planned. I created all the pages on photoshop. I started this task with the front cover. For the main image I created the background to link in with genre of rock, I created this burst of hot flames around the main image. For the main image I cut and cropped the three members of the main cover story and place them together in front of the flames, making out that the band are jumping out at the audience in flames. The changes I made to this page was the cover lines and the mast head. I moved the mast head up to be seen by the audience, I believe that the font I chose for the title stands out as different which I really liked about the magazine. Also the line "Rock out with the different," really helps to show the steriotypes that would buy this magazine. It shows how the readers can listen to music in thier own indivdual way, letting them be themself's.

The context page had to be changed fully from my original plans, all the featured and regular story’s have been listed in one part of the page. I used a small photo of the lead singer to be the main image of the page with the page number in the corner to lead the reader to the page without having to read through the list for the page. Also I used many little images of people to help show the stereotype of people used for my magazine. Also in this page I have put up a little description of the magazine issue and the issues number up at the top of the page, to help make the page look full and packed with lots of things.

The double page spread took the most time to create as it takes up two pages. I used the image of the low angle looking up shot of the band. I used a different font for the band title, showing more features for the magazine and hope that the reader doesn’t get bored of the same font throughout the magazine. On the next page I resized some of the images I took for the interview and place them at the top of the page, I placed them like this to make them look like ordinary photos on a surface.
The story I created for this page talks of how they tour to the country Finland to record an album and celebrate the culture of this country. I used the topic of this country as it is named the country of rock. I also got to mention how the band have created a DVD of the celebrations of this culture, the tour itself and behind the scenes of the recording studio.
At the end of the story I have placed a message at the bottom saying “continue to next page” showing the reader that there is more to this story and that they haven’t finished reading yet.

I think the choices I made to relate back to my first few important ideas, the text comes out as intellectual but readable for young adults. The props and costumes relate back to the genre and stereotype of rock, goth/ emo. The magazine is inviting to people to read and I have followed to place the conventions of music magazine into my idea, especially the simplest things like the barcode, the price and much more.

I would say that preliminary exercise I was given first was a big help towards the final product of my music magazine. It showed me to edit my images, helped show how to use DTP and images manipulation programs on computers and shows me about running my blog to record my notes.