Time management

It's getting close to Christmas. I am going to take a break from updating for at least 2 weeks to enjoy the Christmas holiday. Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Contents page draft 1

Here is my first daft for my contents page. I made the font for my front cover masthead the same as the contents title here because I wanted to keep some consistency in the look and feel of the magazine.

As for the images, I have used three. Two of them are intended to be photos of musicians that relate to one of the headlines. One of the images is an IPhone because one of the competitions is winning an IPhone and I wanted to have proof of there being a prize. 

The main colours used are red, black and white, similar to NME, however I have also made the numbers different colours to add some variety. I have laid the contents out in a list in page number order because of the survey results as people find it easier to track down articles like that. 

Time management- the contents

Now that I have created a suitable version of my front cover, I have decided to start work on the contents page. A first draft will be completed and expect a post soon enough.

Magazine cover draft 6

In this draft, I have made some minor alterations. This is to do with the cover lines in that the "Razzy Pat" one has been altered in that i removed some of the information to fit between the model's hand and shoulder. I have added a Muse cover line to make the page look more filled up. The "exclusive interview" puff has been moved to it's side so it looks more interesting and because some magazines do this, particularly rock magazines. Lastly, i have removed one of my images. It was the one with the anonymous mask. I removed it simply because it has no reason to be there.

Magazine cover draft 5

This is the 5th draft of my front cover. The latest changes include many of the sell lines being moved around and having the colours changed. The bottom ones are in white and the top ones are in black. I did this so that the text stands out on the different coloured backgrounds. If you're wondering why some of the other things written on the magazine are in different colours, it is because they are meant to be puffs. Puffs are sentences that are supposed to make the magazine look better than it is. To make it stand out and make the audience buy it. They might say things like, "best thing ever" or something along those lines. The reason why they are different colours is to stand out and grab the readers attention. I have also added one more headline, to make the cover look more crowded and more interesting. There have been some editing changes like the masthead looks a bit better connected to he head of the main model.

Magazine cover draft 4

The adjustments I made to the cover this time were the color of the skyline and the bottom line from yellow and orange to red. The reason I did that is to be consistent in the color choices of the magazine. from a previous post I made, the primary colours I decided that my magazine will include are red, white and black. While there isn't any white on the cover there is red and black making it more consistent and looking like the contents page and front cover look like they are from the same magazine.

Other changes include the model's head being edited over the masthead, to make him more important and thats he's the main story. The main cover line is more snappier with its sentences and has more explanation marks.

I've came a long way since the start of making this front cover. I feel that this is the best I could do with it.

Magazine cover draft 3

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This is the 3rd draft of my front cover. I made a few changes for this one. Firstly I have changed the size of the yellow box. I did this because it took up a lot of space of the page. Looking back it looks rather ugly and doesn't make the cover look busy. I've also altered the name from La noise to just noise, why? To help make the masthead bigger as it's harder to make something that's long, bigger without it going off the pages. I have tried experimenting on Photoshop. The main headline has once again changed in appearance. I have changed it from red to yellow, because yellow is probably the best colour that can contrast with his blue shirt. Other changes include the placement of the slogan, which is above the masthead on the skyline and is much clearer to see. The photos have been moved to the left and are next to each other. All the additional storylines are on the bottom yellow line along with "win an IPhone" etc. The bar code, date and price have shrank and have been moved to the top right. Overall, This draft is much more improved and I feel like its getting better.

Magazine cover draft 2

Draft 1                                                                                   Draft 2

I have got feedback for my first draft. What my lecturer said was the images are good, but the masthead is too small, some essential information was missing (such as the date and price), the cover lines don't stand out on a dark background and some of the fonts are too gimmicky and don't fit with the genre of music magazines magazine. So I have listened to it and I have tried to fix it. I have went back onto photoshop and changed a lot from my last draft. 

Firstly, what I kept the same is the background image, because he didn't say there was anything wrong with the images, so if it isn't broken don't fix it. Same goes for the other photos, except I have changed the placement of them since it did look disorganised and made the cover look like a mess. So what I did was I created a yellow banner across the bottom of page, this was to organize the magazine  in terms of the layout and to make the text more readable since it didn't look eye-catching and just blended into the background. The other things i kept the same was the tag line is still in the same position, most of the cover lines remain the same and the skyline is exactly the same.

Whats different? Well the yellow banner is the most obvious change as I have included a lot of content into that space like the images, the cover lines listing different musicians, the date, the price which I have included from my last and the bar code. 

The size of the masthead has been increased, taking up a larger chunk of the page. While the Ivo Botnick cover line is exactly the same in font and words, the position of it has been changed and the size has been increased to make it stand out much better than last time as I have realised it was too small. The main cover line has seen the most change as I have changed the wording, font and positioning. This is because Draft 1 was criticised for being too gimmicky with the fonts. I have changed the font from "enjoy the show" to Radio stars, i think it looks much more fitting, also the 3D is gone. I re-worded the story as well so it makes more sense.

Here is the marked draft beneath 

  

Time management

coming soon, The second draft. currently being worked in photoshop

Magazine cover draft 1

I have started to create my music magazine on Photoshop. Before the half term I organised my photos and planned my cover to the magazine. This is what I have created within 4 lessons. The reason this isn't a final product is because I might need to change certain things over time if there are any mistakes, bad decisions or lack of influences. I will be mentioning what i did to make this because it might help to look back on if i have to evaluate my final product.

I have included multiple photographs on the cover, this is a regular convention of rock magazines such as Kerrang, they make the cover look busy to show how much content there is inside by putting most of it on the front cover. For this cover I relied mostly on photos and text. I used various different fonts for each text box. Looking back, this wasn't a good idea as it makes the magazine have no consistency, as it doesn't know which font to stick to. Regardless I do like most of them, the masthead and cover line for IVO Botnick because it fits the effect I want. The masthead was intended to look rough and edgy as i think it makes it look like a rock magazine and the back to the future font was intended to look futuristic.  

The main cover line for Mortdog is in 3D, I made the text look like it was facing upwards, the reason it is like this is to imply that the musician is down on his luck and is facing up for help. I also listed out lots of music artists like in other magazines.

The big image that takes up the page is intended to be Mortdog. The photo I took is him holding his fingers in his ears. The reason I chosen this photo to be the main one is that it looks very effective. The aggressive looking expression makes him look like a rock star, like he's hardcore and cool. The fingers inside ears is to create a contrast. The magazine is called La' Noise and he's doing an action which many do to block out noise.          

Time management- front cover draft

With all the research and planning done, it is time for me to start creating the cover to my magazine.

Then I'll do the contents and DPS

It's almost done.

Price of magazine

I have decided that the price of my magazine will be £3.00. The reason I have decided with this price is that lots of magazines go for a price of up to £5. I find it annoying when something I read once or twice costs quite a lot of money, I feel that over £4 for any magazine is too expensive. Yes lots of magazines do this, but I want mine to be different. To have a price that reflects what the reader would want to pay for a magazine and not feel somewhat ripped off.

Another thing is that it is going to be £3. Not £2.99. I really am bothered by pricing being something pound and 99 pence. Because when you pay with cash, you always get 1p back. What can you do with a penny? Nothing. I am thinking for the costumers who buy magazines, as I have had issues with buying them in the past and I want to rectify these issues. I feel the consumers would appreciate it.

Document of a number of photographs for main task

After I had finished the photo-shoot, I quickly started deciding what photos to put in my magazine. I feel this post is important as its an element that is required to make magazines look interesting and appropriate. The link below leads you to an Animoto video explaining why I have chosen certain images.

https://animoto.com/play/O3shMCGdKCfqSzHRFsc27g

Down here are photos I didn't use because I either couldn't find a place to fit them in the magazine, they were too weird, the lighting wasn't great, or the other photos were better.

Colour samples

For my magazine I decided that the primary colours are going to be red, white and black. Yes, it is very similar to NME, but I think it is suitable for a rock magazine and is dark, but cool looking.
The reason its important to have a primary colour in your magazine is because you want every page too look like they came from the same magazine, if it isn't then it would end up looking like a random set of articles were thrown in together without any thought, that's why I am posting this.

Font moodboard

I have created another mood-board. This time it is on the fonts I will be using. The fonts already installed on the mac are rather uninteresting and aren't suitable for being on a magazine. So I looked on dafont, a website where you can download different fonts for free, here is a link to the website

http://www.dafont.com

Here is the mood-board, this is to show that I have looked into different fonts.

The reason why I chose these fonts in particular is because they stand out and look like they would belong in my magazine. Also fonts are important as they give the magazine a certain style and identity in how it looks, if all the fonts were exactly the same it would look boring.

The a bite font was chosen for the magazine title because it looks like its worn out and fading. This suggests that the magazine is long standing and has been used and viewed a lot. A brush No for similar reasons.

The back to the future 2002 looks very futuristic and ahead of our time. I will use it for one of my magazine personalities to make him appear cool and trendy.

The barcode font will be used for making a barcode on the front cover. this is to save finding an image online and editing it on Photoshop, The downside of that is the image will have a white background and will stand out.

Lemon/milk is for titles and cover lines, its bold and trendy which is what i think cover lines need.

Smoolthan bold proves good for a general font in writing the articles and smaller sentences. it's plain enough for that purpose, but stands out from fonts like "times new roman".

Time management- mood boards

Currently working on moodboards for the color scheme and fonts of my magazine.

Recce photoshoot plan

I have taken photos of the backgrounds for my photos for my music magazine. The reason I am making this post is because I feel I should show where the photos were taken from. I am going to take the photos from inside my house because the wallpaper provides some good and unique background.

These images are from my dad's house, they will provide a background for my photos, the first one is a brick wall inside of the kitchen, in order for the model to pose there a clock and a table had to be removed from the area, also there is light coming out the window so the blinds will be placed over it to block the light, then the kitchen light will provide a high key light to take the photo. The reason I want to use this as a place to shoot photos is because brick walls are local and when trying to take a photo outside, the natural light source can be unreliable and uncontrollable, so having this type of background inside my kitchen is handy to use.  

The next one is a wall on the top floor next to the stair case, it is a rick hazard as the stairs are next to this wall, however there is a banister on the opposite side of this wall so the photographer can stand next to that in order to be safe. This blue wallpaper provides a coulorful and interesting background as opposed to a colourless white studio. I personally feel like this is appropriate for a photo to be taken.  

The camera I will be using is my dad's digital camera.

 

Name of the magazine

After a lot of thought I have decided that I will call my magazine La'noise.
Here is how I came up with that name. For a music magazine name it has to relate to music in some way or form and I want it to be memorable and catchy. Strangely enough when I was thinking of what to call it all i could think of is a certain moment in the film Anchorman when the character Brick shouts "loud noises" I tried narrowing it down and then i got La' noise.

Group task

In a group we looked at a magazine made by an AS student from 2011. the front page, contents and the double-page spread. here is the evaluation.

 Firstly the front page,  it had a good mid shot of the model, the sky/sell line was good and for the most part it was readable, however it had issues. Firstly, the bar code placement, it was on it's side and because of this it was in front of the red banner, this made it look untidy. Second was the sub-heading which was red on a dark grey background, the masthead was red, but it was bold, bigger and had a different font so it was readable but small red writing on a grey background doesn't fit as it is almost hard to read. Granted it's rather irrelevant, but everything on a magazine cover should be readable no matter how insignificant it is. Other problems that we agreed on was that there were some headlines that were pointless and got in the way and that the date was mentioned twice.

Next was the contents page. We agreed that this was the best page that the student had put together. The way it was setup was neat and tidy, it was set as a list in page numbers which made it easy to navigate. There was a large photo of the model, which was decent however we noticed that she had taken the picture at home. We noticed this because there was a wire next to he wall. This could have easily been taken out on photoshop with the coloring tool, but it wasn't. another thing that we agreed on was that it was lacking in any other images other that the main one But then again not every contents page needs 7 images, but more variety could have been better. One problem that I stated was that the title of the magazine was used again in the contents page, I just felt that it was unnecessary and came off a repetitive as the reader already knows what it is called.

Finally, the double page spread. The double page spread was an interview. The way it was set up was pretty good The the text was highlighted differently for the different people speaking, but it could have had a "q" for the questions and a "a" for the answers, that way people who were colour blind could see it clearly. there were pull quotes and one main image. It was a bit repetitive that there was only one model in this magazine. one error we saw was that the text was over lapping each other.

Overall the task was fun to do and the students work was well done. However it could have been slightly better.

From what I have seen I can say this. I now know that when it ones round to making my magazine. I can't just use only myself as the model of the magazine, because that would get repetitive and would look really lazy in that it wouldn't look like i have tried to make it professional.
Secondly is that i need to take care in making it. I must not over lap text over each other and I have to make sure that the text is readable on the coloured background it is on top of.
This task was helpful, I got to see other works from other students it gave me some motivation in what the magazine should be like and what to look out for whilst making it.

Magazine institutions research

http://www.emap.com

Emap: Is a powerful industry business that owns fashion, health and construction. Their target audience from what I have seen is older people, 30 and above. They publish magazine which are business related. These include Draper, a business fashion magazine, H &V news, a construction magazine and many more such as health and architecture magazines. These publishers are not appropriate for me as they seem to be aiming for people in the business.

They do seem to be advancing as they do have their magazines available to look at on IPads, smart phones and laptops. They are successful with their health, construction and architecture magazines as they are considered to be very informative by their readers. Overall they are not for me as they are interested more in publishing informative magazines as opposed to magazines for entertainment purposes.

http://www.condenast.co.uk

 Conde Nast: Is a big publishing business in New York. Founded over 100 years ago, they are a very successful business as they have launched over 20 products. These include fashion and celebrity magazines such as QG, Glamour, and Vogue. They also publish design magazines like, House and Garden and World of interiors. They have published 15 magazines that are still going today. Some of the magazines aren't even physical and can only be seen online such as Johansens and Contract publishing. However they don't publish music magazines. Now the celebrity magazines do have articles on musicians but that doesn't make it a music magazine.

http://www.futureplc.com

Future PLC: Is a media company set in Bath, Somerset in London. Future PLC is known for publishing magazines relating to technology, photography, gaming,  films and music. They publish many popular magazines such as Total Guitar, The Official Xbox magazine, Game Master, Future music, Oral film and many more, They are one of the most successful media publishers in the UK.
They have been in business since 1985. Their target audience seems to be teens to people in their 20's, mostly aiming to men. I think this will be the ideal choice for a magazine publisher as they seem to be aiming to where I want to in target audience and have a very successful track record with music magazines.

However I have taken a look into their stock investments and it looks rather poor, so this means that it will be harder for them to invest in my magazine in being published.

http://www.timeincuk.com










IPC media: Now known as TimeincUK, have over 60 brands of magazines available in print or online on electronic devices. Their content ranges from Country life, what's on TV and the popular music magazine NME. This is an ok publisher to go to and they have over 130 million consumers buying their products. The magazines they publish are sometimes aimed for men and women from 15 and above. But they mostly target the adult market as they distribute TV guides, like What's on TV and TV times and housing magazines like Ideal home.


http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/

The Bauer media group is a publishing group. It's Europe's largest publishing company with 300 magazines in 15 countries. The company is from Hamburg, Germany. It was founded in 1875, making it one of the longest publishing companies. The company started in Germany but extended their publishing range to the UK in 1987 with Bella magazine.  They also have their own TV and radio stations. Bauer media is a division of the Bauer media group  They publish English magazines and radio stations. They publish over 50 magazine brands such as Kerrang and Mojo which are some of the largest music magazines. They also publish Empire magazine.

Time management- more research

Now I only have a few more weeks until I have to finish my research and planning. I am rather far behind as some work that was tasked long ago I haven't done yet. but I will try to get that done immediately.

coming up:

• Font moodboard
• Group task
• Institution research
• Colour samples
• Recce photoshoot
• Document of photographs taken
• Any others such as name and price of magazines

Photoshoot planning

I will be taking photos for my magazine during the half term. There I have a week off and can gather people and take photos of them. The people volunteering are Me, My Dad and my Dad's friend. The photos will be taken at my house as the walls can look like good backgrounds.

Photography

Before I take my photos for the main task I have decided to make this post to explain what is required from taking these photos.

For this preparation to my main task I need mid-shot and close-up photos. I think these are appropriate to see the models. I won't be taking any long shots because I want the photos to be very close.

Survey analysis

I recently done a survey to see who my target audience are and what they like.

 

If you have noticed these are results written on paper that I have counted from the hand-out survey I have given to people from my collage. I did create a survey on survey monkey but I haven't got any responses from it, I did post a link on facebook for my friends to go and answer it, but nobody did that. So here are the results.

This question was for me know what people find the most interesting part of a music magazines is. I had a hard time thinking what the double page spread's main article should be, so I decided that the target audience should decide. By the looks of this table it seems that interviews are the most popular with readers, it has taken 2 thirds of this pie chart. From that I have decided that the DPS shall be an interview. 

From deconstructing contents pages and looking at some online I have noticed something, they are two types of way in setting it up. There is listing it in the order of page numbers, then there is separating it into different sections, for example a list of all the reviews, then the interviews, etc. I couldn't decide how to do mine so i decided to include that question in my survey. The response suggests that lists>sectioning. I just wanted my contents page to be understandable to follow and by the looks of things lists seem like the way to go.

I wanted to know what is the most popular music with the kids today. From the results both Rock and Pop music took a third of the chart each. I was going to make my magazine based on Rock anyway, but I needed to know whether it was still popular and relevant with the target audience.

All the people who took this survey are people in the 16-20 age range. The majority result was that they do not read music magazines very often. This could be down to them just not caring about what they have to offer, the price tag or they are not into music that much. In heinsight I should have asked why they don't read magazines.

From these results it seems that most of the people I asked just wanted the main model on the front cover, however there were some votes for multiple images on the front. One thing that is on rock magazines is that there are multiple images on the front of the cover. What I will do is that I will have one main magazine image on the front, then have some smaller images on there as well.



Time management- survey analysis

You will see analysis of my survey results very soon. sadly i haven't received much feedback online but I do have some printed surveys.

Organisation contacts

There is a photo studio available at Sunderland university and I have the e-mail address for the person who can allow me to take photos there and the collage can allow me to ten a camera;

Colin.young@sunderland.ac.uk

However, I am not going to be using this. The real reason I am making this post is to explain how I am going to be getting photographs for my magazine cover, contents and DPS. My Dad has a digital camera and is willing to have photos of him taken, there will be a few of me and one of my Dads friends is up to it. over the half term I will have them ready.

For the record I have given them consent forms for them to fill out to be in this project. they are beneath this sentence.

Survey for music magazine

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WDTZR7P

I have created a survey to try and find my target audience for my music magazine.
Click the link above to answer it.

I have also created a printed copy of my survey.

DPS flat plan and Rational

As you can see this is the flat plan to my double page spread. I feel as if I should go through explaining as I feel that its important to say what I am going to be doing for my DPS.

The first page will consist of one large image as that is often present in magazine articles, their is also a caption on the page, captions are used quite often in today's magazines, they either add some humour or ask a rhetorical question among other uses.

The set-up on the next page is where the written article is. In magazines, articles are in columns. I am unsure of what my article will be at this current stage but I will do a survey to get some answers.

Flat plan and Rationale

This is a rough plan of what my cover and contents page will look like to show that I have started to plan out how my cover and contents will look like.  The final product will be different, but this is the early stage and basis for what I will do. 

On the front cover I will have a close up photo. Why? Because many magazine covers have close ups on them and they can be eye-catching as the model is normally pulling a strange facial expression. There will be  cover lines around the space of the main model to advertise itself with interesting article titles. Like other rock magazines I will have other images on the front cover.

Time management - Music magazine

Now that the Preliminary task is over, I am going to start on planning out my music magazine. I will start with a flat plan and make a rational in my next post.

Collage magazine/ Preliminary task

evaluation

This is the front cover to my collage magazine. I designed it on Photoshop. The task was to create a front cover and contents page of it. Firstly I made a plan of what I was going to do. The requirements necessary for completing the preliminary task was a mid shot of a student on the front cover. that is me on the cover. I decided that I wouldn't be making a direct gaze and would just be looking down is because it represents what a regular student does and what the collage expects them to do. Whilst working on this I learned some new skills on Photoshop. these included cutting from other images such as the multi-coloured squares and the logo from some posters of Sunderland collage. I did this so it had the familiar and key elements of Sunderland Collage so it looks like a professionally made cover that fits with Sunderland Collage. The masthead says the student magazine, I decided to use that title as I think it should be aimed at the students. I decided to have a slogan in "if you don't know, now you know" because this magazine is meant to be informative, and I want it to advertise itself as that.

Whilst doing this I discovered that I can make the text 3D. I did this to all the cover lines because I wanted to make the front cover look appealing in terms of colours and fonts. I think the 3D gives the magazine a colourful and stylish look to it. Make it look at least interesting to them as if it was made by people that know them.

Anyways on to the photographs I took. For making this I was put into a group of 3 (including myself) we went around the collage and took pictures for our magazine, we didn't take many as the first few we took were not only poor quality, we also were recording as opposed to taking photos. we asked our lecturer what we were doing wrong and thankfully Neil sorted it out and then we went out to take the photos again. We just did what we had done before. We didn't take many photos so don't expect any unused photos post as I used every single one.

As for the design of the contents page I decided to go for a list like setup as I think that's the easiest way to navigate a magazine. I had more photos on this page because I feel that its more appropriate to have multiple images on the contents page, and less on the front.

                                                

Photoshop evaluation

Evaluation: 
Overall I think that I did ok for a first try. But I do think that if this was put in as my real magazine cover for my coursework I think this would get a very poor grade.

I'll talk about what I like first. I like the picture I found of Michael Jackson, even if its a picture and not a photo. I am proud of some of the edits I did such as the background colour change and thats it, everything else on this work doesn't look good at all.

What is mainly wrong with it is that it doesn't look like a professionally made cover at all. Then again this was just a practice session for me to get used to the software.

In terms of what I could have done better in, is that the fonts for the masthead and cover lines could have been more varied and I could have use different colours to make them stand out. As it is it is barely readable.

The cover in general looks rather bland, as it doesn't have a lot going for it. There isn't anything outstanding on there that looks interesting. However the purpose of this task was to for me to try out Photoshop and try to get used to it, I will try to improve on this and get better, I will use different fonts and colours appropriately, I will use a background that fits and I will try to use up time effectively.

Photoshop practice

After spending a media lesson experimenting with photoshop i have created this above.
What i did was search for a music artist on google, I found a image of Michael Jackson, saved it and then opened it onto photoshop. The problem i came across next was because when you open up an image on photoshop it creates another tab and I didn't know how to move it, my lecturer told me that I had to copy and paste it through to the tab with he background, there I could use  free transform, what you do is hold shift and you can alter the size and where it can be placed. I think this technique will be useful in the future, hopefully there I can try to fit multiple images on the front cover and contents page. in my opinion what I like about what I've done here is the image i took and he alterations I did. origionally the background was green but i changed it with the fill tool. I changed it to  blue because its a brighter and attractive to look at from my point of view. On the original image there was a red line on Jackson's lip, erased that with the rubber picked up what color was on the lips with the color tool and then used the paint brush tool. These were helpful and I know what to do with them. I didn't know how to change the text fonts , I wish i could have made it 3d or used a different colour, but I didn't know how to. The reason I didn't ask my lecturer is because I wanted to experiment around with it.

This task was very important, before now I didn't know how to use photoshop at all. but thanks to using it for one lesson i feel much more, comfitible. However I still have much to learn.

Time management- preliminary task

Now that the proposal forms have been filled out, its time I started trying to use photoshop, key word being try. I will be doing a task which will prepare me for the preliminary task.

Written essay

Proposal form 2

Proposal form 1

Time management- Proposal forms

The next post will be about filling in some forms for the magazine I will be creating. This is to explain what I will be doing in them and what my plans are.

DPS influences

I have looked up for different Double page spreads and these are the ones that have inspired me in some way. My magazine DPS will have some elements from all three of these.

A link below will show why I like them.

https://animoto.com/play/oXxcz9A3rxlRt2OXZTF3xA

Contents influences

Here are the contents pages that I like the design and layout of to try and create my own. The reason why I am mentioning this is because I want to make it clear of what elements will be borrowed for my own magazine contents page design.

The link below will lead you to an Animoto to video:
https://animoto.com/play/YcUZdNxMQ96V65Yir8SjFQ