Masthead Font

The feedback I got from the focus group was that they preferred the RIOT! font for the masthead. When I begin designing the cover I'll be able to see if the font works or not.

Rough Sketch

This is the rough sketch I have done for my cover. I took inspiration from the feedback I received from my Facebook group.

Designing Cover

I've been looking at Clash and Kerrang! as my two magazines, and from audience research I have decided that I'll use a similar layout to Clash but with the bright colours of Kerrang! 


As my photoshoot will be taking place in Perry Woods I decided to research any magazines that use models in woods on their cover. My sister introduced me to 'Lula' magazine, a hipster fashion magazine. They have a couple of covers where the models are in woods:

This should help me when creating my cover.

Font

Considering using RIOT! font for my masthead. I'll run this past my target audience later as I have the font on my laptop at home.

Location

I made a prezi for my location and risk assessment.


My friend Steph and I scouted the location on Tuesday 13th December at around 1pm.

Location on Prezi

Props

There aren't many props I want/need, but if I were to incorporate any into the shoot I would probably choose:


An acoustic guitar

My Dad has two acoustic guitars and will let me borrow one for the shoot.

I may also include a microphone

I have a microphone at home so I can use that one.

As I'm planning on making the shoot more editorial - more fashion magazine-esque, like 'Lula' magazine, but with the hipster, vintage feel - props may not be required, although the acoustic guitar may work.

Costumes

I'm not too fussy when it comes to the clothes as long as they're in the style of my target audience. This provides a wide range of clothing choices. I have yet to talk to my models about what clothes they own in this style, and I'll also be looking through my own wardrobe to see what I have, but here are the examples of what I'm looking for.

Fair isle or patterned jumpers, jumper dresses and cardigans such as:

I know that one of my models, Cassie, has a lot of jumpers in this style and she also dresses in a lot of Topman clothes. I chose her because her style suits the magazine and its audience.

Shorts coupled with tights, like in the image above, fit my audience's style. Patterned tights/leggings also work, as well as knee-high socks, such as:

Shoes wise, I'm looking for boots, brogues or converses, such as:

Also, Drop Dead is a clothing line that's favourited by my audience, especially because it's the clothing brand of Bring Me The Horizon vocalist Oli Sykes:

For jewellery, I'm looking for vintage, kooky and slightly edgy jewellery:

Overall, there is definitely an emphasis on knit wear and the look is quite vintage and kitsch, with edgy connotations from the rock influence.  

I'll most probably make another blog post on costumes when I've conferred with my models on what clothing they have.

Focus Group Feedback

I set up a focus group on Facebook and invited 11 friends to join who I knew liked alternative rock music and photography. 


I asked them what they liked and didn't like about Clash magazine and Kerrang! magazine.


Feedback for Clash: 

Feedback for Kerrang!:

From Clash magazine I can deduce that the bold title is liked and I should aim to include a clear, bold title on my own magazine. The cover photograph for the splash is also liked, however the muted colour isn't. 

From Kerrang! magazine I can deduce that the bold font and colours are liked, however the magazine cover is too busy and the title not legible. 

I was originally planning on having a cover more similar to Clash magazine than that of Kerrang!. I can still use the 'hipster' photography style, however, I'm not going to desaturate the colour, at least not a lot. I've also found that the style of Clash is preferred by girls rather than boys. In this sense, my magazine is going to have a more female-oriented audience, with fashion and photography. 

However, my focus group obviously prefer the bands featured in Kerrang! magazine. As a result, I would like my magazine to have a similar style and layout to Clash magazine (minus the muted colour), with photography and fashion, but with the music featured in Kerrang!. 

Models

Just sorted out my two models, my friends Anna Turner and Cassia Herbert. I'm thinking about taking the photos in some woods, so I'll need to scout the location soon.


Cassie:

Anna:

Prezi

I've made a prezi outlining the interests of my target audience:

Target Audience Research on Prezi

Photos

Two of the things I've noticed that the photos I've been reblogging from blogs in my audience is that they mainly focus around hairstyles or nature, such as:

As a result, I think the photos I'll be taking will need to be outside, and that particular attention will have to be paid to the hairstyles of my models.

Facebook

I've set up a facebook group, adding my closest friends outside of college who I know are interested in the genre of music of my magazine. People in college are a lot easier to get hold of when I need feedback on work, whereas my friends from high school can be a lot harder to contact, which is why I've set up this group.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/300405836665812/

Groups

I already have 2 followers on my tumblr. 

They're followers of my main blog but it's early days yet. One of them is sinfulwhispers, a blog I'm using as an example of my audience. It's a personal blog run by Ren, a girl I've grown to be friends with thanks to tumblr. I'm considering using her as a potential model for my magazine, as she has the right look. I've also been considering my friends Cassie and Anna, as they too have the right look for my magazine.

Set up a tumblr

I have a set up a tumblr to conduct audience research and get feedback on my work.


http://just-like-wild-fire.tumblr.com/

I chose the URL name 'just-like-wild-fire' because it's a lyric from 'Crash' by You Me At Six, a band that's favourited by my audience.

Prezi

Also going to make a Prezi on the research I have acquired on my target audience.

Tumblr 2

Considering creating a tumblelog on tumblr (a branch-off blog from my main blog) centred around the photography and interests of my target audience, where I can also post ideas and carry out audience research.

Tumblr

These blogs are examples of my audience:

• iamj0shfranceschi - blogs a mixture of hipster photography and bands, primarily You Me At Six, but also includes film and TV.
• thev0iceinsidemyhead - although this blog hasn't updated in 2 months, it's still a good example of photography and likes a range of music - from You Me At Six to Mumford & Sons to Lostprophets. 
• sinfulwhispers - blogs a variety of photography, music, film, TV and humour. 
• meetyouatthecemeterygates - blogs mainly hipster photography.

Time Plan

This is the basic structure of my time plan.

Initial Magazine Research

• Target audience buy Kerrang! magazine only when a band, or bands, they like are featured, resulting in them generally ignoring the rest of the magazine and focusing only on the features they want to read. This recent issue of Kerrang! I know was a particular favourite among my audience as the splash featured Josh Franceschi and Oli Sykes from You Me At Six and Bring Me The Horizon respectively, two bands that are well-liked among my target audience. 
• Also included a special subscription to the magazine whereby you would get a t-shirt from Josh Franceschi's clothing range (Down But Not Out) if you subscribed to the magazine. These two features attracted many people from my target audience.
• Bold, bright, block colours which connotes a more youthful feel, and also appeals to a more male-oriented audience.  The sans serif font also connotes the youthful, male feel. Kerrang's tag line of 'live life loud' coupled with the bold font and colours would appeal to its audience who's genre of music is rock. 
• Expect to see: interviews, reviews and posters as the main features. 
• Bands attract the readers and not the writing, so all articles are focussed on a band. Very rarely does an article not predominantly feature a band. 
• The magazine relies on attracting readers by featuring a large number of bands. This is why, on this particular issue of Kerrang!, there are fourteen bands mentioned on the cover, even though there are only half-page articles focussed on many of them. For example, in the 'news' section of this issue there is only a half-page article on The Prodigy, even though they're featured on the cover as a headline.
• Kerrang's publisher Bauer Media Group, a large German publishing company who publish a number of other magazines, including Q, and hold stakes in British music television. Having such a large company for a publisher allows Kerrang! to use cross media convergence via TV, radio and the internet, and are able to publish in other countries. 

Two bands favourited by my audience.
Block colours.
Sans serif.

• Clash magazine is a favourite of the hipster audience. 
• Features more 'indie' bands, such as The Arctic Monkeys and Bon Iver, it also features bands such as The Prodigy, found in this issue of Clash and the above issue of Kerrang!. 
• Unlike Kerrang!, Clash has a heavy focus on hipster photography and designs, such as Lomography. This can be seen clearly on the front cover, with muted colours and the photograph of the splash being the predominant feature. This contrasts to the busy, colourful cover of Kerrang!. In the audience research I have conducted so far, I found that the cover of Clash is preferred by my audience because of the photography and design, but they prefer the bands found in Kerrang!
• Like Kerrang!, it features a string of bands as a running head at the bottom - attracts more readers.
• Unlike Kerrang!, also features fashion, something my audience would be interested in.
• Clash magazine is its own publisher - cannot reach as wide an audience as Kerrang!.
• Clash readers are interested in music, film, photography, fashion, art and literature.
• Both magazines use a writing style that is informal and natural.
• Muted colours connote sophistication while the design connotes eccentricity.  

Muted colour.
Splash is main attraction.
Eccentric.

Deciding Genre and Audience

The two magazines I have chosen to initially research are 'Clash' and 'Kerrang!'. I have noticed that there is a contemporary subculture of my generation known as 'hispters'. These hipsters are usually associated with 'indie' acts and have taken an interest in a blogging website known as 'tumblr'. Having had a tumblr for over a year now, I began to notice that the blogs I followed, due to them having similar music taste to me, all seemed to be a part of a growing hipster subcategory whereby they were fans of alternative rock and metal acts, but were still interested in the fashion and photography of the general hipsters. I found that this subcategory read the rock magazine 'Kerrang!' but only when a band they liked was featured. I then began to research 'Clash' magazine, known for being a favourite of hipsters. This music magazine has begun to include a few heavier music acts, but still focuses on more mainstream bands and hip-hop artists. As Slate writer Brandon Stosuy noted, "Heavy metal has recently conquered a new frontier, making an unexpected crossover into the realm of hipsterdom". As a result, I have decided to focus my magazine on the subcategory of 'hipsterdom' who like alternative rock and metal, as this category is rapidly growng in size and is in abundance on the tumblr website, which now caters for 6.8 million weekly visits, its users focusing on fashion, photography, film and music.

Music Industry Glossary

http://prezi.com/dbxdgw5zpjb9/media-glossary/?auth_key=49c3eb570f291ce5bb5eb1201b1ff169846aa1f0

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We took inspiration from many magazines that we studied. The first magazine we looked at was a college magazine for our research, which was the 'King Ed's magazine':

We liked the use of bright colours, so when it came to deciding on the colours for the font, we chose the bright colours of green and purple. Originally, we were going to use a similar layout of the contents page for our contents, because we liked the idea of placing text in boxes against a neutral background. We thought it connoted a more fun and youthful feel to the magazine. However, when it came to actually designing our front cover and contents page, we deviated from a layout similar to that of 'King Ed's magazine'. 

One magazine we took inspiration from was 'Good Housekeeping':

We liked the use of dots - fillers - between coverlines and the reversed out text. We took these two features and incorporated them into our cover, also using the fillers in our contents page. We thought these two features improved the look of the magazine, making it more sophisticated. 

We also took inspiration from 'Stuff':

We used the idea of a running head on the bottom, using three white boxes. We too thought this connoted sophistication, which we thought was a good contrast against the youthful feel connoted by the bright colours. However, we tweaked the boxes - which were originally purple - and used smaller, faded boxes inside the main white ones. This was in keeping with the colour scheme of green and purple, whilst adding a fresh and young twist. 'Stuff' magazine also influenced the text inside the faded out circle. We felt that the cover would be too formal without it, however we added an arc of faded numbers behind the circle because without it we thought the text inside the circle seemed random, as though we hadn't intended to have the use of the circle. 

On the other hand, there are features of our magazine cover that challenge forms and conventions of other magazines. For example, most magazines have a colour scheme for each issue's cover, which we had, however we used contrasting colours. Green and purple don't traditionally go, especially neon green and lilac. We felt that by using contrasting colours the magazine was more noticeable and detracted some of the formality found in the serif font of the masthead and the white boxes. Also, the circle and our own interpretation of the running head provides a new twist. 

2. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Aspirers, achievers and radicals. Materialists, hedonists and post-modernists. B. 16-19. Male and female. Kids: 12-18, Decision Pending. 

3. How did you attract/address your audience?

We used bright colours such as the neon green and lilac to connote youth and fun. We didn't want the magazine to seem too formal, but then we also didn't want it to seem too childish. That's why we wanted features such as the bright colours against the white, serif font of the masthead to strike a balance between sophistication and youth. The audience of our magazine is of course college students aged roughly between sixteen and eighteen, so we wanted the magazine to be maturer than those aimed at high school students, but we didn't want the magazine to seem too serious and thereby put college students off. 

The white boxes at the bottom of the cover act as a kind of running head, with smaller boxes of green and purple inside. We wanted these boxes to connote a modern twist to the magazine after the formality of the serif masthead. We also wanted them to connote the more fun side to the magazine, by not only being quite modern and different but by advertising the more youthful sections of the magazine, such as music, film and sport. After the seriousness of the coverlines, we felt that the running head would appeal to students who wouldn't necessarily think of reading a college magazine. In this way, we hoped to attract both academic and hedonistic students.

We also thought that the style of the running head and the bright colours might attract more radicals as we thought the colours and style weren't typical of magazines; we had added our own twist to features we had taken inspiration from.

We took many photos for the cover but eventually decided on this one because we felt that this particular photo connoted the most natural feel. We didn't want the photo to seem manufactured, as though it had been taken in a studio or that the model had been styled specifically for the cover. We thought this photo was the most natural because, for example, the hair is windswept. The average college student isn't perfectly styled like in magazines, so we wanted to connote relatability and naturalness, thereby attracting a wide variety of students. 

4. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Firstly, I think it is easier to create a cover and contents using technology such as Photoshop and InDesign. For Photoshop and creating the cover, it's straightforward because all you need to do is open your chosen photo in Photoshop and use the tools to adjust it. It's much simpler than it would have been when magazines used to be a mixture of artist's drawings and printing press. Huge machines were used to create magazines and newspapers, and now magazines can be created on a computer and printed off just as easily. It was easy to edit our cover, apply text and images. The contents was even easier, as it only involved creating a layout which, although involved many individual components, was easy to create. The Digital SLR camera was also easy to use and it only took us a few minutes to take a number of photos of good quality.

These tools were very useful in that they allowed our cover and contents to be created quickly and easily. 

One effect that we particularly liked to use on both text and shapes was 'Drop Shadow'. This created a more professional look and also made text and shapes stand out from the background:

Another effect that we wouldn't have been able to do without Photoshop is the 'Magnetic Lasso Tool'. This allowed us to place text behind the cover photograph, emulating professional magazine covers:

I felt that blogging allowed me to keep track of our ideas as it's all in one place; we didn't need to rely on worksheets, notes and files. It made working in a pair easier as we could access research on each other's blogs easily. It also made research clear, easy to read and, most importantly, impossible to lose. 

I found that the technology didn't confuse me. I thought Photoshop and InDesign might, however I got to grips with them quickly and found that they were very easy to use. 

   

Cover and Contents

This is the cover for our college magazine: 'Venture'. We wanted the magazine to have a mature yet youthful feel, so we used serif font for the masthead and made it white to connote the mature feel we wanted. Then we used bright colours and sans serif font for the coverlines to connote the youthful feel we wanted as well. We wanted the coverlines to also connote the mature yet youthful atmosphere to the magazine by being a mixture of more academic stories, such as 'UCAS application: Is yours good enough?', while coverlines like 'new music and new artists' show that the magazine is about entertainment as well as academia. 

This is the contents layout for our college magazine. We looked at contents pages from numerous magazines and found a layout that we liked and wanted to take inspiration from. We wanted the layout to be more formal and ordered rather than scattered, again connoting the maturity we wanted our magazine to have. 

CarlaHughesASMedia: Photographs

CarlaHughesASMedia: Photographs: We took portrait pictures of students from just below their shoulders and up to be the cover of our student magazine . We took them in good ...

Photos

• DVD's
• CD's
• Sports balls

Magazine Names

When we researched college magazines, we found that the majority of them were either named after the school itself (e.g. King Ed's) or were centred around words associated with college (e.g. Campus). 
Our working title at this time is 'Venture' because it means to aspire and to take risks.

Discussions

On Monday we discussed the layout of our cover, including font, name and photographs. We also discussed what the contents page would look like, as well as the subject of our cover lines. 

We discussed what we liked about the magazine we researched and what we'd like to use as inspiration for our magazine from the research magazine. 

CarlaHughesASMedia: Possible coverlines

CarlaHughesASMedia: Possible coverlines: ‘EMA: Was it right to abolish it?’ ‘UCAS application: Is yours good enough?’ ‘Improve your CV’ ‘Film and Music reviews’ ‘Latest Sport’

CarlaHughesASMedia: Key Influences

CarlaHughesASMedia: Key Influences: Some of the key research findings that will influence our magazine are: · The use of the fonts as they’re both formal and youthful,...

CarlaHughesASMedia: Audience Profile

CarlaHughesASMedia: Audience Profile: The readers of the Worcester Sixth Form student magazine will be 16-19 year old, E-D, aspirers who's social values are to be hedonists. They...

CarlaHughesASMedia: College magazine research

CarlaHughesASMedia: College magazine research: This is an example college magazine of King Edward VI college in Stourbridge. On the cover, there isn't a splash, however there are five cov...

What I'm interested in

                                  Music

• Kings Of Leon
• Paramore
• The Temper Trap
• You Me At Six
• Bat For Lashes
• All-American Rejects

Films

• Mr Nobody
• Billy Elliot
• The Village
• Lord Of The Rings

Magazines

• Music magazines, e.g. NME
• Fashion magazines, e.g. Nylon