Looking Back at your Preliminary Task, What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I have learnt the important of house-style between my preliminary task and the finished product. A house-style helps to build a brand, with which customer loyalty is attached. If there's no way to distinguish a brand, then the customer loyalty had nowhere to be placed, and the magazine receives no benefit even if it's a good magazine. A logo is also vitally important in creating the magazine's brand for customer loyalty to be attached to, the audience need reference points to know almost without noticing that they are picking up the same brand of magazine time and time again.

Colour is also heavily important. In my preliminary task, the colours used were very limiting and similar. Helped with my audience research, my final product used a colour scheme which was more bold, and had more of an impact on the audience.

I have also learnt how important it is to follow industry standards when creating the magazine. The standards and conventions manage to create a route for the audiences eye, which in the case of my magazine when from focal image to masthead to content, to ease the flow of information to the audience, and creating small questions in their heads, making them want to find out more by reading on.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

Much of what I have learnt about technologies is regarding its use in the feedback process of a project. Using programs such as Skype to have an in-depth conversation allowed me to gain a full understanding of what my audience thought of my designs, and recording the conversation enabled me to have a reference to check back on when I was revising the designs to suit my target audience.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

Attracting the audience was achieved through the use of standard industry conventions, addressing the audience was achieved by tailoring content to suit my target audience.

Using standard conventions such as focal point imagery, and mastheads, the target audience are attracted to the magazine. First to the image, which helps to provoke questions, which encourages them to read the masthead to get a brief overview, but not enough to satisfy what the audience want to know completely. Leaving the audience wanting more after the image and masthead then convinces them to read through the content and text on the page, and this is where addressing the audience correctly becomes important.

Bearing my target audience in mind, I wanted to create text that was easy to absorb, in an attempt to not allow for any possible frustration when reading, which may cause a viewer to stop reading the article, or the whole magazine. Having simple, easy and interesting text allows a smooth flow through the text, which ultimately satisfies the user.

Who Would Be Your Audience For Your Media Product?

Discovered through my primary research. My typical audience would be between 16 and 21 years old, with a taste for indie music and a student. Although because the indie social group is so general, the audience is expanded.

My research has also told me that the typical audience for my magazine would be interested in live music events, possibly showing connotations with an adventurous or outgoing nature. My target audience would probably be more conformed to society than readers of some other magazines. Heavy Metal and Hip Hop cultures are trying to fight against the mainstream and achieve a breakdown in convention and conformity, whereas Indie is a much more accepted social group, which has become fully integrated into society and accepted, and in many cases endorsed as an alternative to seemingly anti-conformist genres such as Heavy Metal and Hip Hop.

What Kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think my product could be distributed in indie or mainstream music shops, such as HMV and Virgin on the high-street, as the magazine represents a seemingly agreeable culture, compared with a death metal based magazine, with a culture attached that some would find offensive.

Because of the non-offensive, agreeable connotations, the magazine may even have a place in high street shops alongside magazines such as Kerrang and NME.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

From very early on, I had a good idea of the type of social group I was trying to represent. From carrying out primary research, I found out the majority of my readers would fall into a few different categories, and I knew this meant I had to tailor my magazine to suit.

Late teenagers/ early twenties: The style of writing in the magazine should be quite informal, and nearing on chatty. This will help the teenagers at least connect and engage with the text more than if they were reading a high-class newspaper article.

Indie music: This is probably the most important thing I found out. The Indie culture is broad, and its definition is not set in stone. Representing the Indie social group in my magazine meant trying to portray a bit of diversity, including the light, and the dark in the same publication. I did this mainly through my colour scheme, with the bold white and orange colouring working with the dark grey gradients used in the backgrounds, to create a medium between the two sides.

I feel that this balance, diversity and versatility in layout and colour represent the seemingly undefined social group that is Indie, by representing the musical style from which the social group derived.

In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Overall, my media product uses, or at least uses elements of products in the real music magazine industry. My logo design is based loosely around the NME logo, using the idea of having a logo that could stand out and be recognised regardless of any other activity on the page, and if necessary partial obscurity.

My magazine also makes use of focal imagery. This is the best way of catching the interest of the audience. Before any text is read, the audience is already asking themselves questions about the image's placement on the page, this will make the audience more likely to read on, to find out.

My magazine has build up a fairly strong house style, with a grey, white and orange colour scheme throughout, and reoccurring font styles and sizes to give continuity to the pages. The masthead, although varying slightly in size, keeps its position and prominence on the page, to allow the audience to always have a reference to know what the page is about from first glance.

I have developed conventions in my work mainly through the boldness of the masthead throughout the designs. In most of my second hand research the masthead was slightly hidden, and the eye was drawn later on. In my magazine I wanted the audience to see the focal image, then be drawn straight to the masthead, containing the title, to gain as much of an understanding of the story before they read any blocks of text on the page.

I feel my colour scheme is almost confrontational with most music magazines. The magazines I have studied either stick to a 'light' theme or a 'dark' theme, without much grey area. To appeal to my target audience, and the style of music they listen to, I wanted to create a medium, that's appealing to all music listeners, and in particular my target audience.

Final Design Feedback

To check if any more revisions ought to made, I thought I should be as thorough as possible with my final design feedback. I organised a small focus group to sit down and talk about my final designs.

The feedback was all positive, and the amendments had clearly been a success. The participants commented on how a house-style now flowed through the magazine, making the pages seamless, they liked the ease of information accessibility particularly with the contents page, and they were satisfied with the more revised version of the double page spread.

Overall, I do not think that the design needs any more work done to it, as all my focus group, who were in the questionnaire, and in my target audience agreed that my magazine designs were the sort of magazine that they would choose in a shop. I feel I have successfully catered to the needs of my target audience through my magazine designs.

Final Design: Double Page Spread

My revised version includes a large focal point, an image of the headline act, also featured as the best act on the spread. Having this focal point should sticks more to standard conventions of the music magazine industry. Also sticking with convention, the left-hand text has been put into columns, to make reading easier for the audience.

Final Design: Contents Page

Similarly to the front page design, the contents page didn't need too much alteration. To add a little more colour, and to project the house-style a little more, the house orange colour has been added in borders around the 4 main articles.

Final Design: Front Cover

This design did not need much alteration. In the first design, the date, issue number and price were not included by mistake. The date and issue number now appear in the masthead, and the price appears just above the barcode.

First Design Feedback

After creating my first set of digital designs, I showed them to several questionnaire participants for their feedback.

Overall the reaction was positive, but there were areas that could be improved. The colour shceme worked better than they had anticipated from the paper designs, bringing the style away from 'pop' and not getting quite to the darkness of rock and metal magazines.

The participants liked the use of imagery and focal points on the front cover, saying it automatically drew there eye in to the page, and made them want to read on to see why LadyHawke was on the front cover.

The main criticisms were with the double page spread. The participants liked the content, and loved the informal style of writing, as they said it helped them connect. The main problem they face was with the lack of a focal point on the page. The left hand side was a little too text heavy, like an illustrated essay, and some of the space could have been put to better use. When I revise the spread, I will be sure to introduce a focal point image to the spread, to encourage the audience to engage in the content.

First Design: Double Page Spread

First Design: Contents Page

First Design: Front Cover

First Digital Design

After taking all the feedback on board, I felt I was prepared to turn my sketches into the actual magazine. I used Fireworks 8 to create my magazine,using images taken at Hop Farm Festival to create my first set of digital magazine designs.

Creating my magazine front cover in Fireworks

Final Sketch Feedback

The feedback received about my final sketches were much more positive than the first. It seems that repositioning has made a large amount of difference in the balance, and overall harmony of the page. Using the same technique as last time, I again documented the feedback for reference.

Final Sketches

These sketches will hopefully be the final stage before I start creating work digitally. I have taken into account the feedback received from the last sketched and have moved the logo into a position where it is much less likely to be drowned out by the other content on the page. I also feel that the boldness of the colours in the logo will help to make it more prominent that it appears in the sketches at the moment.

Contents Page:

Double Page Spread:

Front Cover:

First Sketch Feedback

To get feedback on my first sketches, I used Skype conferencing to ask participants in my questionnaire about their views on my designs. I recorded the conversations to use as a reference when revising my designs.

The feedback I got was generally positive, the people asked seemed to respond well to the clean layout of the front page and position of most of the main features. The main point that was picked up on was the position of the logo, they felt it was at risk of being overshadowed by the rest of the content on the page. As seen with NME and Kerrang, the logo needs to be clearly visible on the page, so I will work this into my revisions.

First Sketches

Before I start creating my magazine in digitally I need to map out exactly what it will look like. The best way to do this is with a pen and paper, before I invest a lot of time into producing the digital version.

Front Cover:

Double Page:

Contents Page:

Key Components Of A Front Cover

I need to decide what features must be included in my Front Cover, using a mixture of Primary and Secondary research as well as my own knowledge.

Logo: As said before, must be highly visible, but not necessarily the first thing the audience see when they look at the front cover. Having the logo slightly obscured is not a problem, as long as the reader can see it, to associate the brand of "the BUZZ" with the magazine itself.

Masthead: Needs to be big and bold. It's a good idea to have it incorporate the logo, to give the logo an extra boost against the rest of the content on the page.

Focal Point imagery: This will be the first thing the reader should see when glancing at the magazine, therefore should do a good job of attracting positive attention, and where possible, intriguing the audience, making them want to find out what story the image is attached to, creating more interest in the story and the magazine.

Standard Information: Publication Date, Publication Number, Barcode (if applicable) should all be included on the front cover, most often these are put into the header or the footer of the page.

Main Storyline

For my double page spread, I need to produce a story that is current, and appealing to my target audience. From my questionnaire, it seems that most of my readers are involved with the indie scene, so my story has to reflect this.

Also from my primary research, I have fou

nd out that my target audience are largely interested in current events in music, and with the run-up to summer at hand, it seems suitable to base my story on a festival.

I will be writing about and reviewing the Hop Farm Festival in Kent. Because I’ve been, I have original pictures, and first-hand accounts of the festival to make my story as true to life as possible. I will give a brief overview of the whole festival, as well as pointing out notable acts, and giving my opinions on going to a smaller scale festival rather than the main festivals dominating the UK market (Reading, Glastonbury and Isle of Wight).

The artists featured at Hop Farm fit in well with the indie image I am trying to convey throughout my magazine, to engage the audience as much as possible.

Hop Farm Festival

Logo

My secondary research has put across the importance of having a strong logo. The logo needs vibrant colour, but a vibrant colour that can be placed on any cover, no matter what the colour scheme is. Because of this I have kept the bulk of my logo white, and this is likely to stand out against most possible front cover colour choices, as they are rarely plain white.

To add a bit of depth and boldness, I have added a fairly this outline in orange around the text, to make it wouldn't get lost on the page, as well as choosing a thick font with a tight kerning.

To save on having the logo having too much width in proportion to its height I have rotated the 'the' and placed it alongside the 'B', which also gives the logo a slightly more quirky edge, appealing to the indie teenage target audience.

Secondary Research: Summary

My secondary research has helped me discover a few vital rules and conventions of a music magazine.

Focal Point Imagery: these are going to be necessary I am going to grab the attention of the audience when they glance at a page. The picture needs to be striking, but not to the point of offense. A picture will register with a reader much faster than text, and can help persuade the reader to either stay on a particular page, or pick the magazine up off the shelf in the first place.

Logo: this needs to be strong and robust. It needs to be vivid and striking enough so it doesn't get lost on a busy page where there are many features crying out for the audiences attention. As a magazine grows, it's loyal fanbase does, and they need to know that the magazine they are looking at is from the brand they are loyal to.

Ease of access: here the content of a magazine can be compared to a website. The user must be able to extract the information they are looking for as quickly, and with as much ease as possible, or they will go somewhere else. If the contents page of a magazine is confrontational and overbearing, the reader is discouraged from reading on, or purchasing the magazine ever again. This can also be applied to any other page on content in the magazine, if the reader doesn't understand the page he/she is on in the first few seconds, they will be unimpressed and leave.

Secondary Research: Double Page Spread

As seen in Q, imagery is of vital importance in a successful double page spread. Using the image as an attention-grabbing focal point invited the audience to stay on the page and read on. Apart from the images, colours are basic, and must complement the text on the page. Text is split up into columns, with clear headings using different font sizes. As with the contents page, this is to maximize the ease in which the reader can get the information from the page.

Although being a slightly different genre, Kerrang also offers a good example of a double page spread. Here the photograph is the main focal point, placed to immediately grab the reader's interest and to draw them in to the rest of the content on the page.

Secondary Research: Contents Page

The main priority of a contents page is to help the viewer locate the information they are looking for elsewhere in the magazine. As with this example from MOJO, the page numbers and description need to be as clear as possible to the audience. This page is here more for functionality and to help the audience than anything else. When making my contents page, I will need to bear usability and functionality in mind.

The contents page of uncut is a good example of contents page functionality. Here, lots of information is organised in a way that makes the content in the rest of content of the magazine easy to find. The viewer doesn't want to have to work to find the articles and pages that interest him/her. Information needs to flow as smoothly as possible, and I need to keep this in mind when creating my magazine.

Secondary Research: Front Covers

To build upon my knowledge of what my magazine should contain, I will need to perform some secondary research, to investigate standards and conventions of the industry, and analyse which I should conform to, and which (if any) I should challenge or confront.

The most popular magazine comparable to my own is NME. This is partly aimed at the indie music scene and culture, and has gained outstanding popularity.

From this front cover, I can see that my logo will have to be bold and striking, to challenge the rest of the content on the page. The front page itself is very content heavy, and uses colours that are striking but complementary to eachother. The covers I have seen also almost always feature one main figure as a focal point on the page to draw the audiences eye in, then the text is positioned around the focal point to further engage them.

Another magazine cover worth looking at is Kerrang. Although slightly more leaned at the rock scene with it's dark, harsh colouring, the layout will be applicable to magazine I am going to be creating.

This cover seems to follow some of the conventions of the NME front cover. Both include a bold and striking masthead, that is still perfectly understandable, even if obscured slightly. Again, this cover makes use of a focal point image to attract the attention of the audience, with bold text surrounding it to keep interest. I will need to consider these points when creating my magazines, and stick to these basic conventions.

Preliminary Task Feedback

Getting feedback on my preliminary task allows me to see which parts I should take through with me to the main project, and which bits should be modified and removed.

I organised a small focus group consisting of friends and family, and showed them my Sixth Sense front cover and asked them for their feedback.

Overall, the focus group was happy with my work, commenting on how they liked the bold title and general layout of the front page. Points that weren’t as successful was the colour scheme, which was good fundamentally, but didn’t have enough range of colour, sticking too closely to similar shades of pink. They also commented that the layout of the content on the contents page could have been changed to look a bit more exciting.

I will bear all of this feedback in mind for when I create my final pages.

Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task, I have to create the front page and the contents page for a college magazine. I used “Sixth Sense”, as a play on words with Sixth Form. I decided to incorporate the school colours, lightening them up a little to make them work well as a magazine.

Preliminary Task: Front Cover

Preliminary Task: Contents Page

Target Audience (continued)

My primary research uncovered a little bit more about my target audience, and what they are expecting from a music magazine. Most of my target audience seem to enjoy indie music, therefore I will be leaning the style of my magazine to the indie culture, for example using a mixture of bright and dimmer colours to reflect the variation in the musical style, as opposed to a genre such as pop which would be all bright, or a genre such as metal where it would be mainly dark grimy colours.

Analysis Of Primary Research

After getting all the questionnaires handed back in, I needed to go through the results, looking out of any particular trends that will need to be considered when creating my magazine.

Question One: How often do you buy music magazines?

From this question I can see that the majority of my audience buy a music magazine about every 2 weeks. This means that my magazine should include content that is current, but will be relevant for the period of time between purchases. For example, a magazine published once a week will need to stay updated with much more current content than a magazine published monthly, that will need heavy content to tide the audience over until the next release of the magazine.

From this question, I will be making my magazine into a bi-weekly publication.

Question Two: Which genre of music do you prefer?

The answers to this question will give me an understanding about how the magazine should look, particular with colour plans. A pop based magazine would be much more likely to use bright vivid colours than a metal magazine, which would focus on blacks and reds.

My audience seem to largely prefer the indie genre of music, so I will be using this as a basis on how my magazine should be created. The indie genre of music is varied, but largely upbeat and cheery, with some bright colours. I will also need to include a darker edge, to reflect the other side of the indie music scene.

Question Three: What do you like reading about most in a music magazine?

This will form the basis for the story on my double page spread. From my first question, I know that I should keep my content quite current, but not to a huge extent. My audience prefer reading about coverage of music events, so this will probably be bought into account in my spread. I will also look at the other wants of my audience to form the rest of the content on the front page, to grab my audience's attention with features that interest them.

Question Four: How much money would you usually spend on a music magazine?

This helps me to understand my target audience a bit more, and find out what kind of quality they are expecting from their music magazine. The results show that the audience are looking for a mid-range price for their magazine, comparable to Kerrang and NME, currently on sale.

Primary Research

To get a good understanding of my audience and what they are looking for in a music magazine, both in terms of content and appearance, I will need to conduct some primary research.

I have already decided to target my magazine at teenagers, particularly college or university students. The most common, and most sensible method of primary research would be a questionnaire, as this gives accurate, and easily quantifiable results, which will help when analysing results, and tailoring the final product to suit the needs of the audience.

I will be handing out questionnaires to both college students and university students equally, to achieve a clear and fair overview of the needs and wants of my target audience.

Target Audience

The audience I have chosen to target with my magazine are teenagers of college or university age (16 – 21 years old). It will be easier to gather reliable primary research with this age group, because most of the people I have close to hand are of this age, so I can use the maximum amount of people in my primary research.

After my primary research I will have a much clearer understanding of what my audience is looking for in a music magazine, but knowing the age group I am targeting helps me to refine my questionnaire results to people who my magazine will be targeted at.

Music Magazines

There is a huge variety of music magazines on the UK market at the moment. The needs of all different types of audience are catered for, with a music magazine available to suit almost and taste in music, and preferred style of reading.

My magazine will have to be created to suit a particular demographic. All sectors of the music magazine industry are close to saturation, so it won’t make too much difference depending on which demographic I aim my magazine at.

Coursework Overview

Welcome to my AS Media Studies coursework blog.

Name: Dominic Lange

Candidate Number: 4095

Center Number: 58813

For my coursework I will be creating the front page, contents page and double page spread of a new music magazine.

All images and text used will be original, produced by the myself, with a minimum of four images.