Original images for my contents

I then edited the image and it ended up like this.
I like the light reflection as it makes the mood of the picture more mellow and relaxed it has made the picture look better. I then cropped the image getting rid of the other background. I feel this is the type of form and convention that the audience would usually expect however mine has a USP (unique selling point) which differentiates it from its competitors.

Here is the original image of the contents this has had nothing done to it. It looks dark and not appealing to my audience. This is the second attempted image for my new contents page.

Finished front cover of TRACKS

Here is the completed image of the front cover of TRACKS I hope you like it as much as me.

First image of my front cover of TRACKS

Here is the first image of my front cover I had already come up with the idea of the title of the magazine Tracks and I thought CD's all have tracks on and it would look good with light reflecting of the underside of lots of CD's

WELCOME

Planning, Research and Production
My Brief: Produce a front cover, double page spread and a contents page for a music magazine.
Research:
Audience
I looked into target audiences and how magazines target their certain audiences using straplins and cover images tomake people want to buy the magazine. To target a certain audience you need to decide what type of person you want reading your magazine what gender,age,status(married), income,life-style,religion,colour, language spoken and type of music listened (rock,pop,classic etc). For my magazine I plan to target a male and female audience between 15 and 35 which is quite a wide age span, I am also targeting a rock audience who speak English. Segmentation is a group of people who share the same charecteristics.
Front Cover and Mast Heads
A magazine is a certain piece of media that is specified to a certain audience. It is called segmentation. I researched into front covers by first buying a music magazine called Q and Mojo and looking at how an established magazine looks and how it is laid out then I also looked on Google at front covers of a variety of different type of magazines to see how each one attracts their audience and to see how they use the best of what they have.
I had to research into Forms and Conventions looking at where certain magazines place their mastheads and how they use this to make the brand of the magazine stand out. I also looked at the types of cover images they used and also the cover lines by looking at these I could try and get some ideas from the magazine. On the magazine cover there are also things like plugs and splashes which advertise things inside the magazine like free posters or DVD’s or a chance to win a new set of drums etc. This is a good way of making your magazine more popular as people like being given free things so will mainly choose your magazine over others that don’t have advertisments. This is a good way to sell the magazine as not only the people who want to read the magazine will buy it some people who want the free item may buy the magazine and this may help to promote the magazine.
Different magazines layout their specific magazines in certain ways. For example NME always has a picture of an artist or band on their front cover this is s that people know who the band are and if they like the band they usually by the magazine. They also make their Mast Head very revealing and big so it stands out when next to all the other magazines.
Mast head is one of the most important parts of a magazine front cover as it tells people what magazine they are buying.
I then looked at different institutions and looked at how magazines published themselves and also the different prices that vary from every magazineand how they market their magazines to the public wether through TV or radio or just word of mouth. I also need to look at how certain magazines publish their works and how they get to become published.
Then I researched into how a magazine represents the subjects/people they are adressing. They must make sure that when they are talking about a subject that they don’t make it dull if it drags on. They must keep to the subject they are meant to be selling.

Mast heads

Typography is a very important aspect of the project as it is involved in the front cover, double page spread and the contents page. The reason typography is so important is it is one of the main components that determines how appealing the magazine is to the target audience by influencing people so they pick up my magazine from the magazine rack instead of another competitive brand. However, when you have effective typography it can make the front cover very appealing and eye catching but it can also be very repelling if there is a poor choice of colours and fonts, furthermore it could turn people off if you make it too bright and vibrant.


Planning
Equipment
The equipment I used to take the photos are my mobile phone which has a 5 megapixel cameras well as my laptop were I kept the images for this I also needed the cable to move the photos from my phone to my camera. I also used a lamp to change the lighting in some of the pictures.
I didn’t use any models for the pictures as I felt that I didn’t need any as all the pictures I wanted didn’t require any people in them.
Most of the pictures were taken from my home and also my school boarding house all of them were taken from inside as I didn’t want the weather to affect any of the pictures except in one of the shots.
Front cover
For my front cover I plan to take a picture of lots of CD’s and use that as my main image this will represent the idea of Tracks on a CD hopefully. For my Mast head I plan to have a black background then have TRACKS written in CAPITALS and in bold and written in Bondoni MT Black. I will have the font in red then another tracks overlapping in white as this stands out and looks good over the black behind. For the main cover line I plan to have the band name SyStEm written like this as it stands out. I will also have it written twice overlapping each other in red and orange as they go well together. I will also have another picture in the top right with a white border around it. I also want a date line with the date, price and issue number underneath the mast head.
Contents
For my contents I want a fairly colourful main image behind all the writing. I want and editors comment section which I will probably put on the bottom left hand side with a black background and white font this will have a snippet of the new SyStEm exclusive. I want a small bit talking about the magazine Tracks as well under the editors comments. I also want a section saying all the new tunes out which will probably go bottom left that will have white font as well. Then I will have page numbers for certain pages in the magazine which will go top right. The Mast head saying contents will be in yellow in the top left side of the page.
Double page spread
I am using an idea I saw in the music magazine Q which is to create the UK’s Top 10 album chart. I will use 10 images as album covers and have the no 1 on the whole of the left hand side of the page with writing about the band and it’s rating underneath the picture. On the other side will be the other 9 albums with the image rating then a couple of lines about the album and artists. I will have a white background. At the bottom of each page will be the name tracks, page number date and also the website for the magazine
Production
Front Cover
I used digital imaging suite to crop and alter my images of CD’s I only altered my favourite image of the CD’s. I then inserted them onto publisher as my main image and covered the whole page using it. I then created the mast head and drew a black rectangle and put it in the top left hand side of the page. Then I made two text boxes one with white font and used Bondoni MT Black font. I put it over the black box. Then with the other text box I used the same font style however I used red font. I then overlapped the red and put it on top of the white Tracks sign. After that I created a red box and put that under the title tracks and inserted the price date and issue number in the red box they all had white font.
Next I inserted an image of a figure in the top left however it didn’t look good so I changed it and used another picture I took of a front cover of a book. I used my lamp to change the lighting effect in the picture and then I used the digital imaging suite to crop and alter the image then I inserted it into the top right hand side of the page and put a white border around the picture. Underneath that I inserted a small yellow box then I inserted a test box saying PLUS! In black font then underneath that I have made three test boxes saying SyStEm in white font then under that NEON in yellow then under that V8 in white.
For my main cover line I have written SyStEm in yellow and red so that red is at the bottom and yellow at the top then yellow at the bottom and red and the top and so on. I have also made System so that it goes capital letter, no capital, capital, no capital, capital, and no capital and then rotated it slightly as it looked better and I have also seen main cover lines rotated in the music magazine NME. The I created 2 splashes one with a white background saying New album “Rock ‘N’ Rolla” in red and black alternate fonts so its red, black ,red, black etc. The other text box I made an orange back ground and writing saying how their single became no 1 in the UK. Both the text boxes has been aligned with the main cover line so they have been slightly rotated. Finally I created another black rectangle and put it horizontally across the very bottom of the page and created a text box and put it across the rectangle and wrote Top 20 upcoming ROCK TRACKS as well as www.tracks.co.uk and this concluded my front cover.

Contents
I stated creating my contents by inserting a black and white background that fade white when coming down the page. I then inserted black, yellow and white borders along the left hand side if the page and at the bottom I had then make a rotated corner piece like I had seen in the magazine Mixmag. I then also made the corner piece in the top right. I then made a white rectangle and inserted it just below the top of the page on top of that I created a Text box and use black Sylfaen font in size 30 in bold saying “What’s been going on this month”. I then inserted 4 pictures all of which I took however one was the one I used in my front cover of the picture of the book then one of the picture I took outside.
With all of the picture I used digital imaging suite and cropped and altered the images making them lighter, using smart erase etc. Once I was happy with these images I inserted them onto the page on the right hand side and put a white border around each. For all of the pictures I created textboxes saying something about what Tracks got up to this month then so you could read this I had to put white boxes behind the textbox as I was using black font. I then created a black box and put it on the left had side in portrait up against the border and created another textbox on top. I then inserted 10 names of made up bands ad put them in white font then next to them on the left I put the numbers 1-10 and these were in red font to have a contrast so it stands out. Above that I inserted a textbox saying contents in yellow Rockwell extra bold as well as in bold and size 24 fonts. Next to that I put 2 small arrows as it looks good and I have seen it similar in Mixmag. However once I had done this I showed my target audience who didn’t like the look or layout so I asked them what they thought and started again using their ideas.
For the new contents I used the same image as I used on my front page of the image of the book and stretched it to cover the whole page. I then inserted a yellow, white and red border on the left of the page and also slightly lowered down from the top of the page. Above the top border I inserted a textbox saying Contents in yellow Rockwell extra bold as well as in bold and size 24 font. Next I inserted another textbox to the right of the sign saying contents and I put page numbers and things that could be found to do with those things. I put the page numbers in red and font in white as the contrast looks good. I then made a white rectangle and inserted it just below the top of the page on top of that I created a Text box and use black Sylfaen font in size 30 in bold saying “What’s been going on this month like I had in my first draft. Next I inserted a black rectangle in portrait on the right had side of the page. Above that I inserted the words Editors comments and the two arrows I had put in were it says contents. This had the same style only smaller font. In the rectangle I put a textbox with 2 sub headings about us and System exclusive. I put red font in for the about us and white font for system exclusive however I put the number telling people what page the exclusive is on in red. I then wrote something about the magazine then a quick snippet of writing about the exclusive. Under the writing I inserted a picture I had taken and that had bee cropped and altered under all the writing.
Finally I inserted 10 names of made up bands ad put them in white font then next to them on the left I put the numbers 1-10 and these were in black font to have a contrast so it stands out and A title above these written in white saying New Tunes.

Double page spread
For my double page spread I decide to create a charts page that held the top 10 charts of 2008 as that was a common theme in other music magazines for their double page spreads so it means that the target audience enjoy that type of layout so I will make it the same. I started creating my double page spread by inserting an image in the top left of the A3 sheet. I then inserted a black text box and inserted some text of the play list with names of bands. I used white font so it was visible and stood out against the black. I then inserted a name of the artist of the picture and used the background colours as the colours of the font. I then inserted the rating of the song along with the album name under the picture. I then inserted a sub heading on a quick intro into the paragraph on the artist of the picture. I will use a huge

School Front Cover

First attempt this is not as This is the first attempt good as
I would have liked however. I used an original image but I thought I could do better even on my first attempt, so I decide to create another front cover which I am very pleased with
however it was not my image. I did however manipulate the image.


This is the second attempt.

School Contents Page

This is my school contents page this was the finished outcome I wasn't that please however we had to meet the deadline and it was only a test to see if we could create a contents page I think this shows that I will need to do more reserach for the contents of the music magazine.

Starting Media Studies
At the begging of this year I had never studied Media Studies before so to get a further understanding of the subject my class were asked to produce practise work before starting our course work. Our topic for our course work is magazines so we were asked by are teacherto create a front cover for a school magazine. We went about this by firstly sitting down and plannig we were going to do and then we decided we would take bad pictueres of the school and good pictures to use for the frront cover. We took photos that would make the school look its best and worst. We then went back to the class room after completing our task and uploaded the photos onto the computers. We then edited some of our favorite images and this is what they looked like.
Good Image






Bad Image



WELCOME

BLOG: My blog has been created as I felt that I needed to share with people my media studies work of 2008-09 as hopefully it will help lots of people. You will be able to access things like my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. You will also be able to see images I took and other things that may help. Please reply with constructive criticism or the good points about my work.
Thank you