Double page spread mood board

The typical conventions of a double page spread are a large image,   a quote,the feature of the articles name somewhere on the page, a 'stand’ which is a small explanation at the beginning of the article explaining what it is about. Text, images, headline,by-lines, colour scheme, drop capital and quotes. These features will usually always be on a double page spread.

-        

Mood Board - contents page

This is a mood board of different contents pages taken from magazine with the same or similar genres to mine. They all have most of the typical contents page conventions. The conventions of contents pages are, one main image; this is usually linking to the feature article in your magazine. Other smaller images ,page numbers on the images, telling the audience where they will find the article about the person in the images, the name of the magazine somewhere on the page, the main title ‘Contents’. Subheadings such as ‘news’, ‘features’ ,subscription and contact information, editors letter and the same house style as the rest of the magazine.
By researching other contents pages and learning more about the conventions I am able to use them in my own contents page.

Initial title block design

There are my four initial title block designs, I will be using one of these for my music magazine depending on the results of my poll.

Design 1Design 2Design 3

Design 4

Magazine proposal

This is my magazine proposal. After my plan I did a focus group who gave me feedback about my plan and what they thought should change. This helped me put together my proposal.

Title block analysis

I have analysed different title blocks from popular music magazines. By analysing these title blocks I can try and figure out what I want my title block to look like and what stands out to the audience.

Title Block Analysis

	The colours in the title block are red and white, similar to the mainstream tabloid magazines such as the Sun. You can tell that the genre of the magazine isn’t going to be something like rock because the colours are quite bright, not black or dark colours it is most likely going to be hip hop or R&B because of the bright colours.  Rolling stone is usually associated with the old but popular and iconic band ‘’the rolling stones’’ which means the title of the magazine is related with iconic music.
	The colours in this title block are red and white like the popular tabloid magazines such as the sun. They tell you that the magazine is going to be mainstream and the genre will most likely be something like hip hop or R&B. The title of the magazine is NME, which is quite short and snappy; this might mean that the magazine is going to be the same, short snappy articles and nothing too serious. It also says under the title block ‘’new musical express’’ which is obviously what NME stands for, this tells us that the music featured in NME will be new and maybe not the traditional mainstream artists.
	.The title of this magazine is KERRANG! The title automatically gives off a punk/rock type of vibe. Along with the name of the title it is also in black which again suggests that the genre is going to be rock, they also use a exclamation mark at the end of the word KERRANG which implies that the title is being shouted, a lot like rock music. The target audience for this magazine would be people that are interested in rock music, the title shows this with the colour, the bold capital font and the exclamation mark

Magazine Proposal - character profile

This is a character profile for the ideal person from my target audience. I gathered information from my survey and focus group and was able to put together a character profile for someone who would purchase my magazine.

Magazine Proposal - Character profile.

My ideal character profile is a girl called Ronnie-Ann Barthram who is 16 from east London. She currently attends college and her interests include listening to music, meeting new people, going out with her friends and art. She studies media, history, English and biology in college. Her favourite subject is media and she is extremely interested in the music industry. She hopes to be a journalist or musician when she’s older. My magazine would be ideal for Ronnie as she is interested in music and mainly R&B. She enjoys listening to mainstream artists as well as discovering new unsigned ones too. She fits in to my lifestyle categories because she is young, she doesn’t take life too seriously and wants to have fun while still aiming high. She could be classed as an egoist, but many other lifestyle categories are included in my target audience such as trendies, rebels, groupies, cynics and cowboys. Ronnie’s social class would be from C2 – E, this fits in with my target audience because these are the kind of people that would maybe be interested in reading an R&B magazine.

Focus group

The feedback that I got from my focus group helped me to make final decisions on what I wanted my magazine to be like. I got an idea about what my target audience felt about some of my ideas for example the price and how often it would be released. This helped me to change some things so that my audience would be happier with my final magazine.

Magazine Plan

This is the first plan I have made for my magazine, I have gathered information from my survey and put together a brief plan of what I would like my magazine to be about.  

Survey Results

I made a survey to ask people what they would want to find in a music magazine. This really helped me in creating my own magazine as I found out what is popular and what isn’t. 

Music magazine survey results

Because of the results of this question I am going to consider doing an R&B magazine because this is the most popular genre. Indie and Rock were also quite popular. I know not too do genres like Reggae, Jazz or pop because they aren’t very popular.

From this question I know that I shouldn’t release my magazine too much because not many people regularly buy music magazines, this helps me with planning my magazine because I now know how often I should release it.

This response helps me and now I know I shouldn't price my magazine too highly, most people are willing to pay £2.00-£2.50 for their music magazine therefore I will price my magazine between £2.00 and £2.50

From this question I have learnt what peoples favourite music magazine is, this means I can look at these magazines and see what people like about them and why they like them, then I can use these examples to help create my own magazine.

This question tells me how often people would like my music magazine to be released, knowing this I won’t release my magazine too often or not enough, I know exactly what the audience wants.

This question tells me that the audience do like free gifts with their magazine, this helps me plan my magazine, now I know the audience likes free gifts and this means I will give free gifts with my magazine and this way my audience will be happier and will keep buying my magazine.

This question is extremely helpful to me whilst creating my magazine. I know exactly what people like to find, so I can feature these things in my own magazine.

This question helps me when planning my magazine as it tells me what artists the audience would like to see in my magazine so I can include what they want to see.

This final question tells me how people would like to access my magazine, so that I can make it possible for them to find it on social networking sites and magazine websites swell as a print magazine.

Star image analysis - Jenifer Lopez

I have analysed Jennifer Lopez on the front cover of different magazines. Doing this helps me understand how celebrities are portrayed on the front of different magazines. This will help me when creating my own magazine as I will be able to portray my model in a way that will link with my target audience and genre. 

The Changing Face of Jennifer Lopez

How is Jennifer Lopez represented in each of these magazine covers? Create a denotation/connotation chart exploring all elements of mise-en-scene and camera shots.

Magazine 1

Institutional Research

I have carried out some research in to different magazine publishing companies. This will help me when deciding who I would want to publish my music magazine.