Step to step process of First front cover draft

This is a step to step process power-point of the creation of my first draft of my music magazine. This features screen dumps from every stage of the process along with a detailed explanation of how I created it.

Fifth Front Cover Draft

This is my fifth draft. As you can tell, this is extremely similar to my first draft and most of my other drafts have consisted of experimentation with different themes and looks for my music magazine, but as I haven't found this to have worked. I have gone back to my original draft as I feel this looks the most professional and it represents my genre perfectly, especially with the background. The main changes I have made from my first draft to this is some of the font sizing and positioning of the headline and features. This shows I am capable of putting a lot of effort into my first draft and shows that as I work hard on drafts, not as many will be required in the future. Obviously, this one is still a draft so when I get some peer feedback for this I was make some changes to it before submitting my final draft.

Fourth Front Cover Draft

This the fourth draft of my music magazine. The significant difference from my last draft is that I reassembled the background previously used in my first and second draft. Like mentioned earlier, I did this because I felt the background was part of the magazine in a way that it contributed to the colour scheme and less features are needed if a great background is used as this the magazine much more depth, along with distinctively showing what genre of music my magazine is just by looking at it. I feel that adding more features will overwhelm the magazine cover and make it look very crowded and busy. Whereas the use of the background and less features makes the magazine very simple and elegant, which is what I'm aiming for with my magazine. The other significance is the new masthead, I added this in just for a test to see if this looked any better than the less. But now I have decided to change it back to my old masthead as I feel this masthead doesn't match the genre of music magazine as it looks more Rock/Punk due to the distorting design of it, rather than country.

Third Front Cover Draft

This is the third draft of my music magazine. The most significant difference I have made with this draft from my previous ones is the omission of the background. Since my first draft, I have used a background of a countryside that fits in with the photograph of the model and it distinctively showed what genre of music the magazine is based on. With this draft, I was curious to see what it would look like if I removed it and replaced it with a plain, white backdrop. I did this, and overall I am not particularly pleased with the outcome. The main reason being that the headline and features do not match. This is because the colours were mostly inspired by the background and not the model (with the exception of the light red from her lipstick) as I chose the outfit to compliment the backdrop I would be adding later on, as her outfit is very simple with not much colour. I know now, that a white background should only be used if the model's outfit or look contains at least 3 colours as they can be used for the colour scheme. Other changes I made to this draft was the sizing of the headline and features, I made them bigger than the previous draft but smaller than the first draft. I also changed the headline quote back to middle alignment as I felt this looked better and complimented the rest of the headline. 

Second Front Cover Draft

This is my second draft of my music magazine. The most significant difference I have made with this draft was my experimentation with different images to use for the main image for my music magazine. I chose this image as it is completely different to my other image in my previous draft. As this one is a medium-long shot and the previous one was a close up. Other differences I mad to this draft was making some of the featureless smaller as I felt they took up too much space in the previous draft. Overall, this draft has made me realize that using a medium-long shot was a bad idea as it gives the cover too much empty space and it just looks messy. Making the text smaller didn't help this either as it contributes to leaving more empty space. When making my third draft, I will change the photo back to the previous one to avoid the problem of too much empty space.

First Front Cover Draft

This is my first draft. Overall, I am extremely pleased with it as it conveys exactly what I visioned earlier on the the process of pre-production. For improvements for my next drafts, I feel that I could have spaced out my features a lot more and possibly rearrange them so they aren't interfering with the main image.

I took inspiration from this cover of Rolling Stone in many different ways;
The first being that I used a similar type of positioning for the masthead. I made sure it was at the top middle of the page with a bit being covered up by the model's head. I felt this compliments the cover the most as it fits in well with the page while a different position of the masthead would only make it look out of place.
I also used a similar idea as the small "The 2012 Hot List" feature. I liked this so much on the Rolling Stone magazine cover that I decided to create my own on Photoshop and put it on my magazine cover. Even though Rolling Stone is not a country magazine, I still felt this feature was just as appropriate to have on my magazine cover.

Country album covers: Inspiration and analysis

To further research into my chosen genre of country music for my magazine. I decided to choose a variety of album covers from current and established country artists. I analyse them briefly and pick out any conventions I have picked up that all of these covers share, which will help when I come to having my photo shoot for my double page spread.

Acoustic reader profile

Even though I have stated my target audience many times in the process of creating my magazine. I decided to take this one step further and create a reader profile for my music magazine. This way you can tell what age and gender readers are, as well as some facts on the average reader for Acoustic.

Behind the Scenes: Front cover photoshoot

This is my completed behind the scenes video for my front cover photoshoot for my music magazine. One of my friends volunteered to film it and she did using my Flip Ultra HD camcorder. I edited this footage using Adobe Premiere Pro, editing was a short process as a whole as I only created titles, sped up and slowed down footage, put a song in the backgound, added transitions and also added a few little effects here and there.

The song I used in the background is "Summerlong" by Kathleen Edwards, one of the artists that inspired to theme and genre of my music magazine (see below for fully study of her). Ultimately, the song was too long to use with my footage as the song is originally 4 minutes and 5 seconds long. To make this song fit with the footage without having to change the song completely, I sped up the song by another 2% which changed the duration to a good 3 minutes and 44 seconds which fit with the footage perfectly. By only speeding it up by 2% was also effective in the sense as it still sounded very similar to the original and wasn't unrecognizable like the song is when you speed it up over another 5%.

The video took a good 30 minutes to encode before publishing. Once this was complete, I watched my video only to notice that the logo of my music magazine had not appeared on the first title, instead it just says "logo". As I didn't have time to solve this issue and encode the video again, I decided to deal with this issue and just address it like I am now.

This is what the logo should have looked like:

This is also the masthead I'm planning to use for my music magazine.

Overall, I am very pleased with my behind the scenes video, aside from that one small problem. I took inspiration from the Vogue behind the scenes video shown earlier in the sense that there were titles at the beginning with the artist's name and footage with music in the background. As for improvements I would have liked to take the inspiration even further by interviewing my artist and interweaving that with the behind the scenes footage, as this was done in the Vogue behind the scenes video.

Front cover images

This prezi contains all of the images I took for the front page of my magazine. I have split them in 3 categories to make them easier to analyse; best, worst and other. 

The pictures in the "best" category are all images that I consider to be the best. This is due to the great angles, good focus and good quality of lighting. These are all pictures that I may use for my front cover.

The pictures in the "worst" category are all images I consider to be the worst. This is due to bad lighting, blurriness and bad angles. It is very rare that I may use any of these images for my front cover.

The pictures in the "other" category are all images that are not good nor bad. They are good images but not good enough to be considered "the best". Overall, these images do have very good lighting and focus, but some of their angles mean that it will be unlikely that I will use any of these images.

Behind the scenes video inspiration

The video above is my inspiration for my behind the scenes video of my photo-shoot for my magazine front cover. I will be editing the videos my camera operator took and editing them in the same style, with captions, change of speed duration and music playing in the background, which suits the genre of music my magazine is based around.

Country music genre

Even though I specified my main music genre for my magazine a while back, I thought I'd explain it in some more detail:

It began in the rural regions of the Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from southeastern American folk music, Western cowboy. Blues mode has been used extensively throughout its recorded history. Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas.

The first main country artist was Jimmie Rodgers, who rose to fame in the 1920s. He was a spark which eventually set off a big popularity in country music. The "Golden Age" of Country music was considered to be the 60's, 70's and 80's. With artists like Lynn Anderson and Dolly Parton. "Country Pop" was also established during this time as a new sub-genre of country music, this is the most popular country sub-genre today with classic and modern artists like The Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and Hunter Hayes.

Nashville, Tennessee, is considered to be the "birthplace" and "capital" of the country music genre as many of the big country artists were discovered there and it is the home of most country music record labels. The city also holds the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Pictures:
Top middle: Stereotype of country music
Top right: Nashville skyline
Middle right: Country music hall of fame

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music

Kathleen Edwards

The image above is of Canadian country and folk artist, Kathleen Edwards. Aside from Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, she is my other source of inspiration due to her unique style of music and appearance. Unlike Taylor and Carrie, Kathleen is a much less mainstream artist as she is not very well known, incredibly underrated in my opinion. Her music is also very different as it ranges from alternative country to folk, whereas most country music singers just stick with the trademark country or pop. This shows Kathleen is much more divergent as she isn't afraid to explore other genres of music to build up her repertoire. Kathleen's anti-mainstream music, unique style and diversity has helped her become one of my favourite artists. Kathleen has four albums out to date (with the latest released in 2012). and has a recording career of over 10 years. Compared to the other two country artists that I mentioned, Kathleen is much more mature with her music which means it appeals to late teens as well as middle-aged women.

Current Music Chart Analysis

I decided to identify the current UK top 10 chart for the week beginning the 9th of December. Before looking, I predicted that the top 10 would mostly be Pop with some R&B. But I discovered some things that I wasn't expecting at all. It shocked me to find an Indie/Folk song at No1, as this isn't very common at all. I was expecting a Pop song which explains within itself is that the contemporary music charts are dominated with Pop music. I do expect though that next week's No1 will be the single from the latest winner of The X Factor, which will be a Pop song. Another thing that surprised me on the chart was to find a Funk song at No2, this is just as uncommon as having an Indie or folk song this far up in the chart, as Pop dominates most of the charts. The last thing for me that was having a K-Pop song in the top 10. Obviously, Gangnam style has been wildly popular internationally, being the most viewed and most liked video on Youtube and holds the record for the first K-Pop song to reach No1 in the UK. This is even more uncommon as K-Pop music only seems to be popular in its native continent of Asia. As it is in a different language, it is unusual and rare for a K-Pop to get this popular.

I created a pie chart containing this information in Microsoft Excel to further prove my statement that pop dominates the current charts.

Masthead font styles

While in the process of choosing the font for my masthead of my music magazine, I looked at Dafont.com due to the large amount of fonts on the site. I chose a wide variety of fonts which are pictured above before choosing my final font. My idea for my masthead was a very western and distorted style which fitted perfectly with the genre of my magazine, country. Back while I was choosing the masthead, I had decided that the name of my magazine would be country, but I felt this was too specific and cliche for the genre. So I eventually went with 'Acoustic' as it is a characteristic of country music, which makes it relate to the genre without being too specific.

Conventions of a Double page spread

Before I began work on my actual double page spread for my music magazine. I decided to quickly analyse three current double page spreads that are of a similar design that I am aiming to create.

These are the three double page spreads that I chose:

Conventions of a Contents page

Before I began work on my actual contents page for my music magazine. I decided to quickly analyse three current contents pages that are of a similar design that I am aiming to create.

These are the three contents pages that I chose:

Test shots

Before I began the process of my photo-shoot, I decided to conduct a few test shots to allow myself to see what mistakes needed to be fixed and it also allowed me to get used to environment as I was going to be having a lengthy photo-shoot there.

With my test shots, I have explained my errors and stated what I will do to improve it by fixing the errors.

Music magazine double page spread digital mock-up

Music magazine contents digital mock-up

Music magazine cover digital mock-up

Price

 My music magazine will be a country music magazine, therefore as stated earlier it will appeal for the 14-25 females and males (mostly females), as this best suits the genre. From researching and creating my reader profile for Q magazine, I discovered that the majority of the readers and target audience were actually male. But as Q was the closest magazine to what I was aiming for at the time and  there wasn't any current country magazines to research this doesn't really affect anything. Especially as there aren't many country magazines out in this country. I'd like to think it of my idea being fresh and original. As my magazine will be a monthly magazine, it will be a little more expensive opposed to the weekly magazines as more effort and time has gone into it, making it more high quality. But at the same time, my magazine has to appeal to the younger part of my audience and the students opposed to the older part so it has to be affordable, so the price of my magazine will be £3.75.

Carrie Underwood

The image above is of American country artist, Carrie Underwood. Aside from Taylor Swift, she is another source of my inspiration due to the fact that she has a feminine yet casual image. As she is older in age to Taylor, she will appeal to my older readers like 20-25 as Taylor's music is more suited to teens while Carrie's appeals to a slightly older audience. Carrie rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of "American Idol". She has four albums out to date, the most recent out in May 2012. She is currently the 2nd best selling and most successful winner of "American Idol" behind season 1 winner, Kelly Clarkson, who only surpassed her recently.

Target Audience

I have finally decided that my main target audience for my magazine will be 14-25 females and males, mostly females. This includes high school, college and university students and other adults up to the age of 25. Socially, I would like my magazine to appeal to the ABC demographics due to the high quality of my magazine as it will be monthly. As this is a country and folk magazine, it is stated that this genre is more popular with females than males. I have chosen this age range as it will mostly be based on current artists and upcoming artists rather than classic artists. Although references to older artists will be mentioned at times to give my magazine diversity.

Final costume idea

From using my lookbook, I have chosen my final costume, hair and makeup for my model. This look will be worn on the day of the photoshoot and will be the one featured in my main images. I feel this look demonstrates the country and folk genre very well while still being feminine and wearable, which is key for my target audience.

Inspiration from a fellow blogger

While I was searching for photos to inspire me for my lighting ideas for the photo shoot, I came across this blog with fantastic pictures that captured my vision completely. For me, this blog as a whole is inspiration for my photos as well as the content and genre of my magazine.The majority of the pictures used in my lighting collage are from this blog. After more research I found out more about the blogger, Felicity, who wrote it and took the pictures for it. I loved the pictures so much I emailed her regarding any camera techniques and editing she could give me to achieve the same look that's in her photos. She emailed me back  quickly with a lot of helpful advice and techniques that I could use. I feel this has now advantaged me for when I do my location photo shoot in a few months and I now feel much more confident. 

Thanks Felicity!

Check out Felicity's blog here, you won't regret it.

Lookbook: Costume

Initially, my main inspiration for my costume is the artist Taylor Swift, due to her feminine yet age appropriate style while still sticking well with her genre of music, country. The pictures above show her transition through the years and how her style has changed due to her age and her music. I will be using both of these styles to create one of my own for the cover star of my music magazine. Taylor currently has four albums, the first picture will show her debut from 2006 and the second will show her fourth and latest album from 2012.

Lookbook: Location

As my magazine’s main genre is country. I decided early on that the location will have to be things associated with “country”. This includes dirt roads, paths, fields, barns etc. The main inspiration for this location was Taylor Swift’s music video for “Tim McGraw” and “Safe and Sound”. After brainstorming, I decided the location for this shoot would be a field and a wood in my area.

Lookbook: Lighting

For lighting, I don’t have too many ideas as the majority of the light in my photo shoot will be natural. But I have thought of some ways to manipulate this lighting into what I want. Which is sun glare. Sun glare is when the sun distorts an image through the use of discolouration. I will use this to my advantage through the use of Photoshop as well as on the shoot where I will play with camera settings to achieve this.

I created this collage online using an application called Photovisi. Which explains the web address being at the bottom right corner. I found all of these images myself specifically to make this collage, and they are all saved separately onto my computer, the majority of them being from various blogs and Flickr accounts. I am just stating this to deprive any accusations of plagiarism. This applies to all of my collages and mood-boards shown.

Music Magazine Front cover draft

Music Magazine Contents draft

Music Magazine Double page spread draft

Uses and Gratifications Theory

The theory of Uses and Gratifications was created in 1974 when Blulmer and Katz brought up the subject on how the use of media caused gratification of the social or psychological needs of an individual. The 4 main areas in which the media does this are Personal Identity, Social Interaction, Diversion and Information.

There are many different ways that the public use the media for personal identity. Characters on TV shows or people in magazines act as models for behaviour therefore supporting the personal ethics and behaviour of an individual. For example, people who read a pop music magazine will begin to dress like and, to some amount, act like the people featured in the magazine. The media is also said to give people an understanding into themselves, this could be by reading an article about a family member passing away and learning how you are expected to react if this same incident occurs in your life.

The public can also use the media for social interaction. Television shows often have exaggerated versions of events likely to happen in real life, which can gains insight into the lives of other people giving the viewer a sense of social empathy with the characters. All forms of media stem questions and topics of debate; this means that they create informal topics for social interaction giving people something in common to talk about. Also, characters in long running television shows and bands and artists featured frequently in magazine interviews give the reader/watcher a feeling that they know them well and become almost ‘friends’.

Magazines and Television provide a change from daily routine. For most people they are a form of relaxation acting as a diversion from real life issues and problems that an individual faces. They show case the issues of other people so for a while you can forget about your own. They also provide emotional release such as crying or laughter, which some people don’t do enough of in daily life that can help to reduce their stress levels.

Lastly, the media can be used to provide information. The news tells people what is going on in the world from day to day and Magazines provide information about upcoming gigs, album reviews and artists, classic and contemporary. This makes the audience feel involved and up to date with what is happening.

Demographics/Grading system analysis

Demographics are key to the creation of a magazine. This system allows journalists and editors to create a specific target audience within that demographic.

Demographics arrange people into six categories or classes.

These are:

·         Age

·         Gender

·         Social Class

·         Location

·         Sexual Orientation

·         Religion

It is said that everybody fits into this Social Class system (above), which ideally places people based on their occupation and wealth.

This is also key to the creation of the magazine as it allows the editors to choose the price and quality of the magazine based on the class they have chosen. For example: Vogue won’t be aimed towards people of a lower class as it is expensive at £4.10 and the quality of the magazine proves this.

For example: The newspaper, ‘The Sun’ aims itself at the working classes, C1, C2, D and E. This is because the newspaper is very inexpensive and the people who read it value entertainment over information. Also, most of the Sun’s advertisements are coupons or special offers that can intentionally save the readers money. These things would not be offered to people of a higher social class so those offers are targeted towards the people of a lower social class.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Q Magazine Reader profile analysis

Q is a very popular music magazine published monthly in the UK.

The founders of the magazine Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were intimidated by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs (which was new technology at the time). Q was first published in October 1986; it set itself apart immediately from other music magazines due to the monthly publication and higher standards of photography and printing. In the early years, the magazine was sub-titled "The modern guide to music and more". Originally it was to be called Cue (as in the sense of cueing a record, ready to play), but the name was changed so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a snooker magazine. Another reason, cited in Q's 200th edition, is that a single-letter title would be more prominent on newsstands.

According to valid statistics*, the majority of Q’s readers are male, with the percentage for men being 66.2%. The statistics also show that 83.8% of the readers are 15-44 years of age. This shows Q’s ability to make the magazine appeal to a wide range of ages and social groups. Q does this by featuring currently popular artists like Adele and classic artists like Madonna and John Lennon, they even feature artists that are disbanded or deceased as some issues are dedicated to

them. For example; to celebrate John Lennon’s 70^th birthday a special cover and issue was dedicated to him. Also, Amy Winehouse had an issue dedicated to her after her death in 2011.

The typical front page of Q magazine always has to have the trademark masthead, a big red box with a bold white Q in it. It is always positioned in the top left of the magazine. The text is always very simple but viewable as it always seems to be in a bold font. The main image of the artist always dominates the front page as the majority of the time no other images are used on the front page. The headline also dominates the front page a lot more than the features due to its sheer size in comparison. In terms of colour, the scheme always revolves around the masthead, meaning all of the text is red, black and white. These are also very eye-catching and bright colours and this make the front cover stand out even more.

*(Sources: Q Wikipedia page, Bauer media magazines website)

Taylor Swift

These images above are of the artist, Taylor Swift. Because her iconic appeal, beauty and success she is perfect role models for my target audience as younger girls need positive role models to aspire to be like. Also, she will be my complete inspiration for my magazine as her genre of music is country and her records are country, she writes all of her songs as well. Plus, as a style icon she is my inspiration as I will be taking bits and pieces from her style over the years as show how it has grown. She has produced four albums to date. Her debut album was released in 2006 and her latest album in October 2012. I have noticed that her style has matured over the course of this. Just from her album covers you can see this. My main aim is to use a variety of things from all of her styles over the years.

Q magazine readership profile

Music magazine double page spread ICT mock-up

Music magazine contents ICT mock-up

Music magazine cover ICT mock-up

Focus group response

From conducting my focus group and the mixed discussion. I created some simple notes on what was said by my sample audience. These will help determine certain aspects to my music magazine. These are listed below:

• Some like Kerrang, NME, magazines of Indie genre
• The things that attract them the most are the features, free posters, exclusive content. Front cover has to be eye-catching
• Even, half of the group likes digital magazines, the other half don’t
• Preferred price to be £2 per week, price doesn't matter. If it’s more expensive then it has better content
• Customer needs input to the magazine as it helps them decide want they want to read.
• Essential features are reviews, free stuff, articles - tour, design, front cover,
• They think that some bands stick to one genre of music, it’s a bit generalised but has a significant difference
• They would change the price and the featutes - more reviews on upcoming bands etc
• You are who you are, people judge depending on what magazine you buy, your choice, magazine reflects you
• Subscriptions are good
• Pay more for monthly than weekly as it has more content

Mixed Group discussion

Focus Group recording

Focus group questions

Q1) What music magazines do you read? And what genre do they fit into?

Q2) What attracts you to buying a magazine?

Q3) Do you think digital downloads should replace paper magazines?

Q4) How important is the price of a magazine to you?

Q5) Do you think that buyers should have more input into what is featured in specific magazines?

Q6)  What features are essential to you to buy a magazine?

Q7)Do you think genres are too generalised?

Q8)What would you change about music magazines?

Q9) Do you think there is a stigma/stereotype to the people that buy music magazines? 

Questionnaire response

After conducting my questionnaire to 15 random people of my target audience, I put the results into separate pie charts so they would be easier to read and analyse. I have inserted these below. I plan to analyse them in the 2nd question of my final evaluation so forward to that if you want to see the detailed study of what these results have helped me decide for my music magazine.

Genre?

Colour scheme?

Most important element?

Price?

Release schedule?

Questionnaire

To get an idea of which audience in particular I wanted to target for my music magazine and how I wanted it to be, I designed this questionnaire for 15 people to answer it. These answers will determine the price, genre, release schedule, colour scheme and content of the magazine. Once I have the answers I will create some pie charts displaying the information.

Inspiration

This music video is the primary inspiration for my music magazine, especially the location. Due to the fact that it demonstrates the country genre very well and shows me the things I need for the mise-en-scene of a country shoot.

Inspiration

Compared to the other music video I posted. This one primarily demonstrates folk music, which is sub-genre of my magazine. The location, lighting and costume from this music video will be taken as inspiration due to the fact that folk gives the magazine a darker side while country is very much happy and cheerful. I did this because this initially gives the magazine much more depth as well as helping it attract a larger audience.

Initial ideas