Original Photographs

 Main Cover Photographs -            

  

Contents Photographs -

Double Page Spread Photographs -

This was the photograph i used for my double page spread, I flip rotated this image so that I had the model facing the opposite way with enough white space to allow me to place my text on the right hand side. In each of my photographs I adjusted the levels of brightness to make them more appealing and suitable for a magazine, i chose the most playful images to make it appeal to my "playful unique indie female audience" and also chose studio photographs with allowed me with enough white space to add any text that was needed for my cover lines. Clothing was important in all of these photographs as my models needed to correctly catch the attention of indie fans through representing this in my own imagery. The use of props that I had used in my imagery also suggested that my audience would be unique and exciting as these are not usually seen as everyday music props.

Research - Planning of cast, props, setting and location

whilst doing some basic research on the layout of magazine covers, i realised that the majority of the time, studio set up is used for the imagery. i looked at several magazine covers and noticed this was used, to gain more white space for the use of texts around the Silohet of the model's body.
Generally magazine covers also use no more than 3 colour's for the text, and usually have them corrosponding with the subheadings or pull quotes. I will therefore not use more than 3 colours for my font's and use a studio set up with one main model featured for my music magazine, in which my model on my main cover will be the feature of my double page article spread in the same way as my NME research of My Chemical Romance.

Analysing chat magazine's double page spread

Looking at this double page spread, you can see that it is a true life story this is shown at the top of the page and is written from a mothers perspective starting off with a red drop cap making it easy to follow. The use of columns have been used so that it is showing a more structured look, with several different shocking pull quotes to intreage the viewer. The colour scheme for this article is red,white and yellow which are usually assosiated as eye catching colours. Many of these articles in chat magazine include quotes with arrows to justify the purpose of the imagery. An added photograph above the pull quote of the person who wrote the article is included to make it seem more personal and make others feel good about their own lives. This magazine is purely based on the theme of human interest of other people's lives. The use of imagery shown adds another dimention to the story, showing an image of the victim portraying a kind and caring personality, laid beside a photograph of the perpetrator being seen as a yob through the use of his facial expressions in comparison to the victim.

My mood board for my target audience of my own magazine

My own female audience profile for NME readers - Here i have created my own mood board, for my target audience of a female alternative of an indie magazine. To get idea's for a mood board i looked at a male mood board for NME and used alternative idea's that females would be interested in. This was because the majority of readers for NME are male, and i had decided to base my own indie magazine more towards a female audience. Below i have shown a mood board in which i found in my own research of a male NME audience profile. Of course they would be very similar in some aspects as some images are not only targetted for a male audience, and females from my own audience will often be interested in the same things. To get research based on an audience profile, i also asked a member of my class who is female and reads NME what she is interested in and used those idea's to incorporate in my own mood board. This was proven from my research of NME anyway, as the majority of readers found music an important part of their lives, and attended upcoming gigs, so i automatically knew to include this in my mood board.

NME audience profiling for males research -
This was part of my research of a general NME audience profile mood board, i found this and tried to look at similar interests for females.

analysing chat magazine's contents page

In this contents page the colours used are very playful and exciting because they do not use one specific colour or font scheme, this contents page includes personal stories which show humor and suggests that this magazine has a less serious approch on the contents page. The way in which language is used in this contents page suggests its aimed more towards a working class audience through the use of slang in the featured articles and only costing 80p per issue. Many of the featured articles also show that they are family houswife related. This also suggests it targets a female audience around the ages 20-45 because featured stories include wrinkles, kids, fashion and girl power which are all connotations of female interests. This can also be suggested through the use of imagery and that it is domantly showing more female images, than male and that all feature stories names below are all female names. All of these real life stories are also spoken from a female perspective, and the colours used in this contents page are pink and purple which are seen as feminine colours. The orgainisation of this contents page seems rather structured in order, where all of the features are in a listing, making it easy to find each story with a corrosponding page number. This contents page advertises, that you can win £25 for sending publications with pictures, and also that you can earn cash for your story. This is a good way to attract the attention as there is a great opportunity to win money in more than one way. Looking at the header of the features of "inside" the magazine has used the same font as the title of the front magazine "chat" with added quotations and arrows similar to the front cover.

Initial ideas for my own music magazine

Demographic - 18 / 25 year olds, usually a male target audience for the indie style magazine NME, however i am going to aim mine more towards a female audience, the social class for these females would be B1,C1 and possibly C2 middle class as many may currently be sixth form students working their way up to a higher social class, however many may also be class E based on casual/ low paid employment, with a marital status of being single due to a young age.

Psychographic profile - aspirers who want the luxury life style and reformers as many of the audience readers from NME are politically motivated.

Lifestyle subsets - leaning towards yuppies as 18 - 25 year olds will be single with a high disposable income. I then looked at what i was going to call my magazine and wanted to give it a name that would represent my genre more recognisable. I done some research and thought that i would find out what the definition of "indie" meant, when i researched this i found that it is an abbreviation for "independent" and is slang for f**k. Fans of indie music, or "indians" as they like to be called, are passionate about everything, they discover a life changing band.This was quite interesting as i wanted to create a music magazine targetted at females that was similar to NME. NME is also a distributed magazine where readers are politically motivated and feel music is an important part of their lives.

An overview of the industry

IPC Media produces over 85 iconic media brands, with our print brands alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 44% of UK men – almost 27 million UK adults – while our online brands collectively reach 20 million users every month.IPC's diverse print and digital portfolio offers something for everyone, with a focus on three core audiences: men, mass market women and upmarket women.IPC's men's portfolio (IPC Inspire) comprises a wealth of leisure brands including Country Life, Horse & Hound, Rugby World and Decanter, as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts, Mousebreaker and NME. IPC's a mass market women's division (IPC Connect) comprises famous women's weeklies including Look, Now, Chat and Woman; TV entertainment brands including What's on TV, TVTimes and TV & Satellite Week and, online, the goodtoknow network amd upmarket women's division (IPC Southbank) comprises luxury fashion brands including Marie Claire and InStyle, lifestyle brands including woman&home and essentials and home interest brands including Ideal Home, Livingetc and housetohome. You can clearly see from reading this data that IPC is the biggest mass media production mainly targetting males and females from middle class backgrounds.

within the idustry there is smaller companies such as Bauer. Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations. Bauer distribuites many womens and mens entertainment magazines such as closer,Grazia, heat , kerrang, Q, mojo, and empire and Bauer Media produces market-leading men’s lifestyle magazines with a 33% share of the sector, this is quite an advantage because they will not always take full control over your magazine.

My review for an NME style magazine

Download - Loud 
4

Rihanna - The Fetish for Red
The new image of the insanely hot 22 year old Rihanna, influences others fetishes to change their image. Ri – Ri has most recently transformed her image with a red Barnet, giving her a fiery new attitude, where somewhere along society Ri-Ri has influenced this transformation upon others. Is this the case? Or could this be the catwalks new fashion trend this season that is influencing top notch celebs as well as society. Shops have reported that 70% of red hair dyes are being sold and many stores are selling out. Ri – Ri had said “I don’t like the edgy clothes anymore!” and supposedly wanted to take that edginess to new extremes through a different hairstyle. I wonder what may be her next fiery transformation. Carla Smith

Analysing NME double page spread

Looking at this double spread article, the type of music fit’s the audience ages, in comparison to the band. A drop cap has been used to make the article appear more structured to show where the article starts and finishes. A pull quote has been used to attract the viewer to part of the article, the pull quote in this article is quite interesting as it’s associated with “youth rebellion” and connotes the middle image. A timeline of pictures of the lead singer over the years has been included to show his change of image over the years, to fit his target audience, with a bottom line time line, of the history/facts of previous albums. This double page spread is a band/artist feature, giving an article of a band including interviews. The colours in this are very minimalistic and consistent only using orange and black throughout the double page spread, to not distract any attention away from the purpose of the article focused on “my chemical romance”
which is also the main image on the front cover. I noticed that the house style throughout this article was very similar in order to keep consistency throughout. This double page spread included Bold relevant titles at the top of the page of pull quotes, subheadings or introductions to the article, Large colourful pictures of the featured band and gig audience, bright colours, and text that is always in columns.

Analysing Blender Magazine

Blender magazine is an American based music magazine that focuses upon the sub-genre of pop music. This is aimed at a younger teen audience as they have used a colour of orange in the catchy title Blender to create a connotation of fun and brightness making this title cover stand out predominantly against the white back ground. This looks as though this magazine is aimed more towards a male audience as they have many featured magazine covers from my research of women provigitavely dressed and in minimal clothing which is usually used in order to attract male attention. Looking at this magazine cover you can also see that this may be aimed more towards a male audience just by looking at the body positioning and facial expressions the model is showing almost seen as being seductive and used as being sexual objects.Blender magazine, published by Alpha Media Group, is a fast growing music magazine, which covers all genres of music from rock and pop, to hip-hop, country and R&B. Alpha media group is known for most successful modern men's lifestyle magazines in America Subscribers are young and ambitious with disposable income to spend on music, electronics, entertainment, clothes, new cars, travel, and much more. Blender connects with its readers and delivers in-depth articles, insightful reviews and broad entertainment coverage. It's fast, funny and informative. Blender reflects the eclectic musical tastes of today's generation in a witty and irreverent style .From my research I found that the public profile for blender would be based on the Ages 18-34 of around 75% of the population, their median household income would be $53,000, and 64% of them would be college graduate in which 67% would later on be employed. Only 26% of the population would be reading this magazine and 67% would be men. This is because some articles in this are featured to be aimed towards women for example recent gossip on celebrities. Blender always uses the same front cover title font however change the colour of it based on the image and colour scheme of other features.Usually in which the subheadings will match the colour of the magazine title. Looking at the colour fonts of this magazine blender usually uses only two different colours, and generally the master head title is always the same to show recognition of the magazine. The general presentation of this magazine is structured in columns to make it easier to read in a flowing sequence. Pull quotes have been used on the cover from celebrities to attract the viewer to read the double paged spread on the article.

Analysis of NME contents page

I have chosen to analyse an NME contents page as this is closely relates to my chosen area of music genre of indie however my magazine will be aimed towards a female audience as NME is aimed more towards a male audience and 73% of the audience are males who read this magazine . NME uses only black font for the contents page, several different scatter photographs with a corresponding number for each feature, many of these photographs are sub headed with a pull quote from the featured artist or band given in the interview, which are all divided up around the main image, into separate categories making it appeal more professionally. It used numbers with a bold font in a corner of all of the featured pictures, which makes it easier to find the featured articles. This contents page has also included a column of added featured articles which are less important in a separate category. This contents page of NME is laid out very similar to the way a newspaper would be laid out using similar fonts, columns and newspaper pages instead of glossy pages which would on the other hand be more expensive. This is also because the magazine promotes itself as a serious music journalistic magazine. This is evidently shown in NME’s own breakdown of readers, from the audience readers being middle class, educated and 80% of readers being serious about music. NME have used an advertisement in the bottom right hand corner based on saving 36% a year on the full price if you pay £74.99, this will automatically catch the reader’s attention as the colour used to advertise this is red, and readers believe they will be saving money.

Analysing Fashion,Music,Style

FASHION.MUSIC.STYLE is a publication that promotes reviews and inspires new talent in the fashion and music industries. They feature unsigned bands alongside established artists, interviews, fashion shoots, events and reviews. The theme of this music magazine is indie based with elements of punk, rock, ska and electro. Think: humorous, witty, tongue in cheek, fun, fresh, exciting, shocking, innovative, stylish, bizarre and engaging. Each issue gives away a FREE CD featuring two tracks from each band/artist in a regular Five Unsigned feature PLUS bonus tracks. The A5 publication is available to purchase from selected stores worldwide Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan costing £3 in the United Kingdom. Whereas an issue in Europe would cost £5 and the rest of the word £6.00. This is a new fashion and music bi-monthly magazine at Punk Fashion Music Style. The aim is to promote unsigned bands and upcoming designers and fashion folk. This magazine is aimed at a young target audience as the covers feature young models in their teens. However the fact that each of the magazines covers are creative and art based may make this magazine aim more towards young students. They have advertised a free cd with each magazine cover to attract the attention of young viewers and used brightly coloured graphic fonts to make this more appealing. The band that are featured on this front cover is the Klaxons, HMV describes Klaxons as "acid-rave sci-fi punk-funk, in which they are described as one of acts being referred to as New Rave, Though the band's sound is rock-based, they draw upon some less common influences. Looking at this magazine it looks very similar to NME, in which the audience could also be similar. From my research of NME I found that approximately 34% are working full time, 18% are working part time and 26% of these are full time students. The audience would be 73% male and 27% female. However looking at fashion music style you can clearly recognize that fashion is quite an important aspect for this magazine, due to the key term fashion and style being dominantly mentioned quite a lot and being placed at the top of the magazine. This magazine has more of a journalistic feel to it as this is a more creative magazine, and the layout is very similar to NME as they both appear to be using the same genre of music. looking at a coulple of magazine covers, from fashion, music , style the master head of the magazine generally stays the same to make the magazine recognisable each time.

Analysis of vibe magazine

This is a magazine which is currently aimed at a younger male target audience because the featured artists are Keri Hilson, Ashanti, 50 cent and Nelly many of these artists are listened to by a younger target audience. You would not associate people who read rock music with reading this magazine as this music is generally targeting people who are interested in r’n’b music as this magazine focus more narrowly on rap music, This is shown because of the r’n’b singer usher featured on the front page of this magazine wearing props of jewellery to show a gangster like personality. At the moment vibe currently has 800, 00 readers and it is £3, 99 per magazine. Vibe is a music and entertainment magazine founded by producer Quincy Jones. The magazine also devoted several pages to photo spreads displaying high-end designer clothing as well as sportswear by urban labels such as Roca wear and Fubu.Vibe made a consistent effort to feature models of all ethnicities in these pages The publication predominantly features R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers.Looking at the of the name of this magazine the colour theme is blue red and white, which red is quite a catchy colour for a title drawing immediate attention. Looking at the titles on this magazine cover you automatically see that the main focus is the model on this cover who is ushering with the added catchy title “usher the king is back” with his name printed next to the image. The usage of different colours shows that they are trying to use different predominant colours to attract the viewer to the most important parts of the cover for example the black font is very bold and eye-catching against a lighter background making it more visible to read in comparison to the white fonts. The font which is used in red on this magazine cover looks like the type of font which is usually used for graffiti by young youths.

This is then using ideology of black youths, as in they expect a Black youth to be dressed with a ‘hoody’ and expect them to be against the law in some way. Does the media therefore act as a source of encouragement creating an excuse for the Black community for the way they act and encouraging them by showing role models who encourage this gangster like behaviour? I also found in my research that this may be encouraged by this magazine through the definition of “swagger” this means ideally that it is shown from how the person handles a situation, the attitude they have, and that it can also be shown in the person's walk.