Construction

I set up a new document on InDesign and made the bleed 10mm so I could position certain elements of my page closer to the edge of the page and it is clearer for me to see. I then started to lay out the text on the page using the rectangle tool to indicate where the pictures and text were all going to be, making sure everything was on a separate layer so I could place objects behind text easily. I transferred my masthead onto the page from the InDesign document I had created it on and placed it at the top of the page. I made some of the other text and placed them in the places I had visioned for them to go.

I then went to my blog and checked my survey results to decide which bands I would use on my front page according to which bands I found were most popular from my survey.

I then placed these band names at the bottom of my page in the ‘PLUS’ section because these bands appeared to be popular with my target audience so will ensure my magazine sells enough.

After that I drew some circles to act as bullet point to divide the band names. I used the ellipse tool and then coloured these circles in black so I could place everything correctly before deciding on the final colours.

I then drew another rectangle in the bottom right corner for the barcode. I drew two more smaller rectangles and made sure they were on a separate layer so they could be placed on top and wrote the price and issue in them.

I then went onto Google and found an appropriate barcode for my magazine. I saved the image to my documents and then dragged it into the rectangle and used to ‘fit frame proportionally’ option to ensure it was an appropriate size for my magazine.

Next I decided I wanted the bottom section to be a different colour so I changed the ‘PLUS’ and the dots to red and changed the band names to white.

I then changed the background of this to black and adjusted the layer order so my text was on top of the black background.

Then I selected the ellipse tool and drew a circle ready to be my puff.

Then I typed the text in for my puff, made the writing white and changed the circle colour to red so the text becomes reversed out and is clear and easy to read.

I then adjusted the angle of the puff and moved it further into the top right corner and added the text and rectangle for my section about Bon Jovi’s album.

Then I added in the text to go with the main cover line and adjusted it to a suitable size so that all text was visible and clear.

I changed some of the fonts to keep to a maximum of three different fonts on the page and coloured the Bon Jovi section in red to stand out against other elements on the page.

Then I moved onto editing the central image for my front cover. Firstly I opened the image up in Photoshop and adjusted the brightness and contrast levels so the picture was lighter and more visible.

After this I began to airbrush the photo using the spot healing tool and got rid of any blemishes on the faces of my models.

I then used the quick selection tool to select just my models and none of the background.

Once I had deleted the majority of the background I used the eraser tool to get rid of any of it that was remaining.

I then selected the brush tool and made it as large as I could, making sure the models were on a layer on top of the background layer.

I then made sure the brush was black and coloured the background in black using the brush tool. After looking back at my front cover, I later decided to move the two outside models further in so that the image could be taller on my front cover. I did this by using the quick selection tool and just dragging them into the desired position.

After placing my edited image into a rectangle that stretched across my whole front cover I Adjusted the colour of my mast head and some of the cover lines and rearranged things so they were in a more suitable place.

After editing the other pictures and placing them onto my front cover I then moved onto my contents page. I wanted my title of ‘contents’ to look exactly the same as my title of my magazine so I copy and pasted that onto my contents page document and just changed the word to ‘contents’ to ensure that they were both identical.

I then moved the title into position and used the rectangle tool again to set out where each element, mainly the pictures, would go on my page.

After this I added the page number and set out two columns for my page numbers and titles. I created my first page using the rectangle tool then the text tool and adjusted the size and font to what I wanted.

I wanted all the page numbers to be exactly the same so I copied and pasted the first one and just changed the page number and text for each page.

I then switched to preview view so I could see better how the page would look and adjusted the spacing between each page so it looked neat and tidy.

After that I went along each page number and underlined it with red and changed the colour of the font to red to make it stand out better.

I then moved the relevant page numbers into the spaces where the pictures to accompany those features will go and rearranged all the other page numbers again so it looked neat and even.

Next I drew a circle using the ellipse tool to use as puffs to go over some of the pictures.

I then coloured the circles in black and made the text white instead of black so it became reversed out and clear to read.

I then decided I wanted two of them to be square so I simply made the rectangle that was already around the text black and changed the text to white.

I then edited the picture I intended to use on my double page spread. I opened it in Photoshop and adjusted the levels of brightness, saturation, exposure and contrast and also the fill light to make all features of their faces visible because the original image was very dark.

I then air brushed the photograph by using the spot healing tool on each persons face individually to remove any blemishes or imperfections.

I then edited the picture of Evie because I decided to use this on my double page spread also. The image needed little adjustment because it was already light enough however I adjusted the contrast to make some of her features stand out more and used the spot healing tool to remove any imperfections from her face.

I did this for the rest of the images I was using and inserted the pictures onto my contents page by dragging them into the rectangles I drew for them I then selected the ‘fill frame proportionally’ option to fit the images into the rectangles quickly and keep them in proportion.

After this I set up the document for my double page spread, making a landscape document and dragging a ruler into the middle to indicate where the middle of my two pages would be.

I then inserted the headline and images and put tag lines over them, just using the rectangle and text tool for all of this. I then started to set columns up for my body text.

Then I inserted the text and made some quotes bigger for the pull quotes. I also shuffled the text around until it all fit neatly into the columns I had made.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Product?

I learnt a lot about the different technologies such as Photoshop and InDesign when I was creating my magazine. I learnt that these technologies are confusing to start with but then become very simple once you get the hang of them. If I hadn’t used Photoshop to edit my pictures they would not look professional or desirable enough to be features in a magazine. The spot healing tool is very quick and easy to use but makes a huge difference to the quality of image and makes airbrushing the photo’s very easy. Also on Photoshop I found it easy to cut out individual people from my pictures so I could rearrange where each person was if they weren’t in the exact place I desired in the original photograph. The quick selection tool made this very easy and essentially does a lot of the work for you, I learnt a lot about the different tools on Photoshop and the possibilities of using them.

InDesign made creating my magazine a lot less stressful than it could have been, using layers to put everything on and making sure everything is on a separate layer makes it much quicker when you want to put different elements on top of each other. The rulers that can be dragged out from the side of the document in InDesign also make it much easier to line everything up neatly and evenly. Below is a link to a video I made explaining what tools I used to create some aspects of my magazine. The video may take a few minutes to load…

http://prezi.com/nx1eqq1y2at6/evaluation-question/?auth_key=87328c110eaf5b36c5accc6e175c90478e28fbaf&kw=view-nx1eqq1y2at6&rc=ref-20552943

Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt in the Progressions From It To the Full Product?

http://prezi.com/a_nwta-6fjpb/evaluation-question/?auth_key=2e603b72a07c33528d60378eacf893d85f633625&kw=view-a_nwta-6fjpb&rc=ref-20552943

Music Magazine PDFs

Cover

Contents

Doublepagespread

Double Page Spread

Contents Page

Magazine Cover

 

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

My music magazine is of the rock music genre and I think I have followed the main magazine conventions for similar types of magazine to this. I have used to standard red, black and white colour scheme that appears on a lot of other music magazines with similar genres to mine because that means the audience will instantly recognise it for what it is and know that they will like it. Red, black and white are also good colours to use because they are very different so contrast against each other, when put together it is very easy to distinguish between each colour and so it makes my magazine neat and clear.

I have used quite plain fonts because this is a convention of rock music magazines, they rarely use fancy fonts for the main headings and subheadings. However rock magazines often use a serif font for the body text of articles because it is easier to read in large paragraphs so I have mirrored this on my double page spread and used a simple serif font. For the masthead of my double page spread and for the word ‘Tusk’ on my front cover I have used a more fancy serif font because I believe it looks authentic and like good quality, so makes the band seem like they are a good quality band. Sometimes more of the old school rock magazines will use serif fonts for headings for this reason. Most of the other headings are sans serif because this is accepted as normal for a magazine of any kind.

I have used mid shot pictures for the main images of Tusk and ‘Rock’s most famous duo’ because this shows their expressions closer up but also shows what they are wearing which is a big part of their cool image. This challenges the conventions for rock magazines because they often have full body images of the artists featured in them. I wanted to be different because my magazine is a high quality magazine and the artists featured in it are serious about their music so their facial expressions are an important part of portraying them like this.

I used a full length image for the ‘fashion’ section on my contents page because that part is obviously more about the clothes than anything else and the model is pulling the t-shirt out to the audience so this draws a lot of attention to the clothing and so is effective for it’s purpose. I believe this is common of music magazines and their fashion sections because they want to put emphasis on the clothes they are advertising.

I have used a puff on my front cover because they appear on a lot of magazines that have competitions and are very eye catching. I made the whole thing red because it stands out a lot against my black background and made the writing white to stand out against the red and the black. I believe reversed out text to be very common on rock music magazines because it is eye catching and dramatic so the audience are likely to recognise and read it.

I used lots of colloquialisms in my article and even used a swear word because this language appears a lot in rock music magazines as it is associated with the bands and artists in this genre and a lot of their music contains explicit language like this. For example i used phrases such as ‘it’s fucking brilliant’ to make the article more readable and familiar to the audience, so it’s fun to read and not all serious and boring.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

The models that I have used on my front cover are all of a similar age and social group. They are all teenagers between the ages of 16 and 20 and are all from middle or working class backgrounds. The four models I have used for the central image are good looking and so the audience will aspire to be like them and look like them. There is a contrast between some of their facial expressions, three of them look happy and approachable whereas one of them looks serious and moody. It is stereotypical for there to always be one naughty and moody character in a band and so this fits that stereotype. It is also stereotypical for a rock band to look happy in their pictures because some of the music is happy and this represents that. Evie is blowing a kiss at the camera and this looks welcoming and makes the audience feel as though they can open the magazine. Also the fact that all the models are looking directly at the camera makes it seem as though they are looking at the person reading the magazine and this will encourage them to open it and read it.

All of the models in all of the images throughout my magazine all look neat and well presented, I think this is important because it shows a more middle class perspective and shows that not all teenagers are messy and dirty. My target audience is more middle class than working class and so this is appealing to them.

I think my magazine challenges a lot of stereotypes of teenagers because it shows them as successful, well together young people whereas a lot of people view them as a nuisance that don’t care about anything. So my representation of them is very positive. In my article I have mentioned that they appear to be very mature and will go far, this challenges the stereotype that musicians and young people are lazy and makes them sound like driven individuals.

I have used bands that are associated with younger people because that is their audience in my magazine however I have also used the name ‘Tusk’ for my made up band which makes them sound creative and different. There are a lot of bands round nowadays with unusual names so this fits in well with the current music industry and makes the band sound up to date.

I have tried to represent all the people in my magazine as confident by the way they are posed, the main band Tusk all look fearlessly at the camera in both pictures of them and I think this represents them in a confident way. I have also used to quote ‘we have arrived and we’re not going anywhere’ in bold on one of the pictures on my double page spread because I think this shows determination and drive which is a very attractive trait for young people to have and challenges the misconceptions that a lot of people have that all young people nowadays are lazy and have no ambition. Many of the quotes I have used from the band are confident things and positive things, showing their maturity and showing them as good role models. I have tried to make the article on my double page spread positive and show young people in a situation where they are working hard and making a living for themselves but also inspiring others to follow suit. I used some colloquial language to make the article accessible but also to make the band seem like normal teenagers, so the audience could be on the same level as them, it’s important to make sure the artists don’t seem too perfect and different to their fans. I think colloquialisms and slang are very stereotypical things for young people to use, many older people view their speech as bad and think they use slang all the time, whereas this isn’t the case they do use a lot of colloquial language so I have followed stereotypes in that way.

I have also made sure I made the band seem grateful for their opportunity and as though they aren’t taking it all for granted because it is often viewed that a lot of celebrities take their fame and fortune for granted and don’t realise how lucky they are. I think it is important to make sure my band don’t seem like that and don’t seem too cocky, but are confident in what they do so I have used quotes such as ‘I knew it would do well, it’s a great album’ to show their confidence in what they are doing but then contradicted by a comment from another member saying ‘I was nervous that people wouldn’t get it’ so it also shows they are not cocky and don’t expect everything to be handed to them.

Who Would be the Audience For Your Media Product?

The target audience for my music magazine is young adults, between the ages of 16 and 25 who have a strong interest in rock music. I am targeting both males and females. My target audience are predominantley middle class but also working class (NRS social grades B, C1 and C2) from large towns and cities.

They have a strong interest in music and most of them are interested in making and producing music as well as listening to it. A lot of them will be in small bands themselves or at least play an instrument like guitar, bass or drums. They will wear a lot of band merchandise and will be very defensive and passionate about the bands they like and dislike. They will have messy hair and wear skinny jeans and Vans, Doc Martens shoes or something similar.

Their main interest is music and they spend a lot of their leisure time listening to music and they attend gigs regularly and go to the big festivals such as Download and Reading.

The Survey that I produced on Survey Monkey showed that my target audience would like to see bands such as Skindred, Young Guns and Deaf Havana in a rock magazine so this is the type of music that is popular with them. It also showed that they liked the colours black, red and white for a music magazine and this shows that they are more likely to wear these colours and a lot of band merchandise is predominantly black or white so this may be why they chose those colours, because they associate them with the music that they listen to.

This is an example of my target audience: