Initial Proposal Presentation (Planning)

[UPDATE] I have decided to choose IPC Media to attribute as my publisher for my own music genre of magazine overall based on the research that I've gained throughout planning my draft ideas and outcomes for my front, contents and DPS pages obtained. On the video, I've introduced a different type of publisher but as for my final choice - I chose IPC Media as based on my Final Proposal Presentation, I've mentioned that this type of publisher would be suitable and relevant to use when linking back to producing indie/rock magazine types and IPC Media contains a lot of female readers/audiences as I wanted to mostly focus on female audiences for chosen my target audiences because they're into listening to pop types of music as it's overrated and annoying - having to listen to it again and again. It's time for a change of music taste.

My Magazine Proposal

Magazine Proposal

Genre: Indie/rock

Ideas for title of Publication

Solo: Solo career

Tune: tuning a guitar is seen to be a part of being a rock artist within the Music Industry because it’s an important musical instrument (for authenticity)

Upbeat: hard upbeat music when playing the guitar for a long term period

Final Choice: I chose on the masthead titled ‘Extreme’ because it represents the true definition of my genre of music, which is indie/rock as they tend to have hard core and loud music played in such a long period of time. Also, Extreme is another word of saying ‘a highest degree’ as in something is supreme and great. This signifies that my magazine would have great expectations from its main target audiences and it would include other supreme and ‘great’ labelled artists that are well-known for being in the indie/rock music industry, such as, Paramore and Johnny Marr as well; so this would be able to encourage the audiences to read the magazine as it would bring them up-to-date information, stories, news and music to them.

Content

(Featured Artists)

Paramore, Tokyo Hotel, Ed Sheeran, Green day, Johnny Marr & Aero Smith.

(The Regulars)

1.    Top 10 songs of the month

The top 10 songs/track of the month listed in no alphabetical order as the main target audiences would be able to get up-do-date with the most popular tracks of the month by a particular indie or rock artist in the industry.

2.    Album Reviews

The album reviews would have the opportunity to mention and promote a particular artist for their new current album that’s only been out a few hours ago. This way, the audiences would read the review and would want to start listening to the album if the reviewer had a way of persuading the audiences to listen to it, when they say they would recommend the album towards the indie/rock style of music.

3.    Main feature model interview

The target audiences would ask to tweet o post their set of questions to the band/musician/artist about any topic involving their career or personal lives. Then the most popular tweets or relevant posts would get selected for the artist to answer.

4.    News & Discoveries

This topic would be about reviews, relevant images and new information context about different particular of artists that are famously well-known for their own style of genre music and also for those new comers and unknown artists that just signed in the Music Industry. This topic would not only include featured artists from the UK but also from all over the world as it allows to ‘discover’ different sound and style of music from each individual artist in order for them to become well-known and gain popularity by gaining their own fans. From the magazines point of view, I think that it’s a great way for the unknown artists to feature on my magazine because you never know, one day they may start getting fame and it will all be because of magazines giving them chances to feature in order to let the fans know, from the magazine itself, about these new featured artists as they would listen to your sound of music and like it as we would be able to review it, as well. After, fans can give us suggestions on which artist we could feature on to the next issue of our magazine obtained.

5.    Adverts

I would be able to give some advertisements for a new movie or even give discounts from fast food such as, KFC or Burger King because it would be able to entertain the audiences and be able to get a cheap price for a meal so they would continue to purchase the magazine for an even more discount token in the future.

Audience

For my main target audiences, it would mostly be girls aged 16 + years old compared to boys because I have found a similar genre of my own magazine, which is NME magazine as it include indie/rock featured artists as it links back to my own genre as it’s the same. 

Magazine Newsstand (Planning)

On this main task, I've found out that most of the popular and well-known type of magazines are usually placed in front of the newsstand on this particular shop, which I've observed in Tesco. As you can see, magazines such as Glamour, Heat and Ok! are placed in the middle and bottom row selection for the audiences and readers to take notice of. 

From the first bottom half of the collection in the magazine newsstand, you can see that the types of magazines included in the front are Ok!, Cycling and KERRANG and behind these piles of magazine are other magazines such as, Match-day, Gardening, eatwell and Homeworkers. This signifies that the purpose in piling these magazines is due to how popular each of the magazines are to their own set of target audiences obtained. Also, this tell us that many people are willing to purchase those type of magazines that are placed in front rather than the ones who are placed behind because they may not sell so much compared to the magazines in front. However, some people may only be interested in purchasing Gardening, eatwell or match-day magazines especially those who are interested in them.

Evaluation of My College Magazine Outlet

First of all, the types of sub tasks that went well on my magazine were that my chosen photograph for my front cover and contents page. I was not confident of how to handle the camera as I only know the basics features of a camera so I felt like I still need more practice and try different angles and find a good quality lighting for my front cover image because that’s what the main subjective and point for my music genre of magazine would be. But since I quite like the feel and expression that my chosen photograph for my college magazine as it’s suitable for the type of magazine and it would be able to attract its main target audiences. Also, I think that I now am more comfortable in using InDesign software as before, I didn’t know what the tools are for and what they can do and so on. I wrote down the names of the tools, such as the texts, images, paint tools, eraser etc. on my notebook so I won’t keep on asking questions to my teacher as it’s taking the initiative. This way, I wouldn't be able to waste my time management and be able to finish it just in time to hand it in; which I completed the front cover of the magazine and its content page early. So then I have used my spare time to go back and see what text or images I could use in order to match the target audience’s preference and make them interested onto my college magazine.

The other elements that went well for my main task was my image manipulation because I have used Photoshop software for my front cover, and I used certain effects for my chosen image to be included on my front cover image appearance and adjusted the high and low levels of brightness of the chosen image and its contrast tones. This was because I wanted it the image to appear brighter than it looks so it would bring the image into more life rather than not using any effects at all – as it may seem dull and unappealing to the target audiences. The background became brighter when the effect have added in which it appears more appealing and the upgraded its image quality quite a bit. Finally, I also like the way I have came up with my masthead of my college magazine as it titled “LSChronicle” which the ‘LSC’ was the abbreviation of my college name as it stands for Leyton Sixth Form College and I added the capital C to be included as ‘Chronicle’ because I thought it was a creative thing to do. The font colour schemes for my masthead and sub heading which is red, black and yellow also blends well together as I was contented and felt like the target audiences would be able to take interest from it.

However, there are weaknesses that I would want to improve in the future. One of them was that I need to layout my elements such as images, texts and masthead, the date, bar codes around my front colour magazine because the music genre that I chose was to go for indie/rock type and they tend to have the type of magazine front covers that appears lots of elements and appear busy. So comparing to my college magazine, I still need to include more relevant text that would interest my target audiences for my indie/rock type of music genre magazine. The texts to include could be things like, for example, Paramore is back with a mini album hence the fact that the group is known to have an indie/rock type of song selling albums to their fans. Also, I would include catchy cover lines such as ‘enter a competition’ or ‘win a prize’ in order to catch the audience’s attention and be able to be entertained about it. Also, my contents page needs to have more context and elements as my college contents page appears “boring” and “needs to improve more” as feedback obtained from my classmates. 

They reviewed it as, ‘it needs more time to improve it and the background colour schemes doesn't seem appropriate for a college magazine as the colour pink seemed girly and only targets girls, not including boys. This would come as bias and would not gather as many main target audiences for the magazine as it would lose its value. So this time, I would start including other important key features that needed to conclude on a magazine in order to attract its own target audiences, globally. For me, I also need to improve choosing the right font styles for my mast head, texts, cover lines and captions because I don’t think I chose an appropriate font style for my college magazine as it doesn't blend and work well together with the colour scheme chosen as well. I need to then improve my journalism techniques because my context doesn't say much text information and I need to write more than that in order to appeal and gather more audiences as it don't look professional – leaving gaps in between texts; it would only bore the reader and be off hook from the type of magazine they’re reading.

The main 3 key points for development when producing a music magazine:

• ·         Obtaining appropriate and appealing images for front covers and contents page, linking to the type of genre music an individual had chosen
• ·         Reasonable House Style & Ethos
• ·         Photoshop and InDesign software users (the two are the most sensible software’s to produce a music magazine)

NME Magazine - Contents Page Analysis

NME magazine concludes a content page as it's a unique page because you would normally see a contents page, constructing you on what pages are with certain topics that are relevant to the type of music genre for the magazine, which was indie/rock. But for NME Magazine, some magazines, they liked to just go direct and tell us more information about Johnny Marr and how he won the award in further detail. For those fans who support Johnny Marr would be able to get interested and are eager to read on compared to other audiences who doesn't know the identity of the featured artist for the issue of NME Magazine.

 A contents page is what you always see onto the next page of any type of magazine's front cover as it's a quicker and helpful way to find pages concerning a topic that you are interested in so you would just skip the front pages until you find the page that you're looking for. The main key on a contents page are images, features, sometimes adverts to promote and other regular bits of information entitled on a contents page outlet but it always have to relate something to the type of music genre you're doing or else it wouldn't make sense to include Taylor Swift to promote her latest single out whilst the magazine it's based on Hip hop artists; as readers would be confused and misunderstands a certain point of view that's something irrelevant.

The contents page for my NME Magazine includes texts placed at the left hand side of the page as it contains numbers next to the text which helps the readers find the page they're looking for instead of having to flip every page just to find the right topic they're looking for. The colour schemes that the contents page used links us back to the front cover because they didn't change the concept of their own colour which establishes to the audience that they belong to the same brand or company name. The font styles and sizes used for both of the subheading, enititled 'Contents' is placed at the top left corner of the page as its left aligned are big and bold as it will be able to catch the readers attention illustrating that it is the contents page. A small introduction is written above the sub heading, as it's introducing us  a little information about the main story of this issue's magazine. Also, the images used are medium shot of Johnny Marr placed at the right hand side of the page which then again, tells us that this is the main artist featured and it's linking it back to what it says on the front cover as Johnny Marr winning an award. Finally, there's also other featured artists mentioned on the contents page such as paramore, a band well known for their indie/rock kind of music genre styles having a a new single album out soon as audiences who are fans, updating them their latest tracks which is what this type of magazine is trying to sell upon on; it's engaging more wider target audiences for their most favourite artists. 

Sample images for my College Magazine Outlet

I had one of my colleagues model for my College Magazine and this was the four main photographs that I took from a digital camera whilst having a nice and simple white/beige background. You can see she's holding a notebook and is well prepared for college which signifies that she's a student from Leyton Sixth Form College, hence the student ID card being worn around her neck. 

NME Magazine - Front Cover Analysis

The type of genre magazine that I have chosen is Indie/rock because their appearances and style of music are always something to cherish, as they’re sometimes underrated against other well-known genres, such as, POP, R&B, Country, Classical and so on.

NME includes different types of elements on their cover, in order to make sure they attract the appropriate target audiences to its genre. The masthead for this chosen magazine entitles ‘NME’, as it appears to be an abbreviation for New Musical Express which gives the magazine a different feeling of approach; whether I’d be interesting or not. Also, the font style and size of the Masthead are capitalised, bold red which appears to be clear and neat to the readers so they know what the title of the magazine it is and as for the colour red, it makes the Masthead stand out from the magazine as its placed at the top left corner, which is a typical thing to do for any type of magazine to publish. The red used could mean dangerous and it may freak you out as the writer was intending to give that kind of feeling and reaction to its own appropriate target audiences.

The type of image chosen for this issue of NME magazine features a British-musician and is famously known for his indie pop/rock music in the making. As you can see, the image is a full image shot (far view) and the artist is looking at us; trying to engage and interact us with the target audiences. His style of clothes are all black from head to toe because people who are a fan of indie/rock music tend to dressed and favours the colour black more as it represents their own set style of genre – as it stands out from the other types of music genre in the music industry. Along with that, he’s also holing a red & black guitar strapped around his shoulder which establishes that he is an artist by the way he holds the guitar and stand, professionally.

The strap line under the masthead, titles his name, Johnny from ‘Johnny Be God’. The sub heading makes us curious in why they used the word ‘God’ almost as if they’re praising that he’s the God or Father of Indie/rock music genre. His full name are then revealed underneath the subheading, in a funky black and bold but smaller in font size this time because it’s telling us that we already know his name by having him on front page but as for some newcomers to the genre, they won’t be able to know who he is.

The front cover of NME magazine features other latest updates, placed the right third of the magazine  for example, at the right hand side reads Plus and underneath it includes,  ‘ACID IS BACK’ in bold red letter which illustrates us that a known type of group are back in the genre industry; advertising their comeback with a new album ahead. This would be able to interest its own audiences if they’re a fan of the indie group, ACID and be able to engage with the magazine along the next few pages to read more about it. However, the main update of the front cover was Johnny Marr winning the Godlike Genius award which it would surprise its own supporting fans in the indie/rock world. Also, the strap line for the magazine ‘JOHNNY BE GOD’ illustrates us a hint about what the whole issue of the magazine would be about, filling up the font covers with intensions.

NME magazine placed their barcode, price and dateline in the corner spaces as strap lines are always included on any type of the magazine to try and attract its own audience’s purpose. The magazine uses a lot of varieties of font styles and sizes that are appropriate and appealing to its audiences, as it’s very artistic and contrast as the colour schemes used are mainly contrasting and bold colours, such as red and black; which gives off a serious and cold-blooded first impression. 

The background information of NME magazine is that they produce weekly magazine because they don’t want their audiences or fans to wait a period of time for the next issue to come out, as this way, they would be able to lose their main target audiences. I also found out that the quality of the paper inside the NME magazine are newspaper material; which means the writers and publishers of the magazine doesn't care about the paper quality and the whole appearance but the quantity inside it. For example, the main artist obtained, the text information collected and the layout structure of the pages intended. 

Overall, this type of magazines main target audiences are pointing towards the teen sample audiences who have interest in the indie/pop music genre of the magazine. The features in front of the magazine would be able to persuade and inspire the ‘fans’ who’s into indie/pop music to be someone like the artist – and then they would purchase the magazine too.

NME DPS Analysis

The double spread page of the NME Magazine features a whole page of the feature the main model on the left hand side of the page and on the right hand side of the pages, includes a brief text context about what context part that the magazine would be talking about based on the main feature of the model obtained. It also includes the main heading title of the page as it reads out, ‘Heaven Knows He’s Godlike Now’ which illustrates us that the context would be about Johnny Marr and his award trophy that he won as the title of ‘God in rock’. The main headline is also a complementary of the artist featured on the magazine because it used describing words like ‘heaven’ and ‘godlike’ as it represents that the artist is a goldmine and it’s well-known for this genre of music and his fans like and support him like that. The font style of type used for the main heading title looks fancy, bold and capitalised which suggests that it’s an important element to conclude or else the readers wouldn't know what the article text would be about. Underneath the main heading, it’s the sub-text as it introduce us a brief text about who Johnny Marr really is; especially for those who are interested in him and would like to find out more information about him. The font style used is also fancy but this time, the font size is small and is typed in small letters but it still looks appealing and is easy to read out for the audiences of this type of magazine.

The image used for this double spread page is simple yet effective because it gives a retro and a different feel compared to other typical images used for a DTP of a particular magazine. The type of pose that the main feature model is displaying to the audiences appears like he’s interacting with the audiences at the same time, he looks serious as to having his eyes directly staring at the camera – meaning to us. He’s also holding his own guitar on his hands straps around his shoulders, signifying that he really fits on his own genre of music and that is indie/rock types along with two other badges clipped onto his suit; it almost look like one of them is a compass badge and the other one is a drawing of a person standing up as its shaded in black. The camera shot of the image shown is a middle, low angle shot making the model feel under control and as he owns it.  Also, there’s another irrelevant image placed on the right hand side of the DTP which represents an image of Johnny Marr when he was much younger, a past image, looking mysteriously down at an old vintage type of guitar or either that, he looks like he’s also smoking a cigarette.

The main purpose of a DTP of the NME magazine is that it illustrates and updates the audiences for this type of magazine to read an exclusive interview or questionnaires of the main feature model for the issue’s magazine, which is Johnny Marr. NME main target audiences are mostly indie/rock fans who tend to support various artists within the relation of the music genre as it helps them find out if there’s any new singles or news about their favourite artist along in the indie/rock music industries. NME magazine uses quite a lot of quotes from the main feature model artist, Johnny Marr a he quotes, “NME is good at giving this award to the people I like” as it’s a way of thanking the NME magazine for featuring him on the issue. Johnny Marr was in a former group called ‘The Smiths’ as that’s where the fans had captured his heart in his own voice and music, and so he decided to go solo after performing as a group back in the days. The overall layout of the DTP of the issue looks well organize as the layout a put nicely and clearly for the main target audiences to read it easily. The font colour use are appropriate as it uses a mixture of black and gold, which illustrates the importance of the two double spread pages as the colour of gold is something important or to treasure for, so I think that’s what the writer’s trying to represent to us audiences by implying those font colours onto the DTP of this type of magazine.

Front Cover of my College Magazine

Contents Page of my College Magazine