Magazine First Draft

This is my first draft of my magazine. The text is placeholder text as I didnt save my article and lost it. This will be complete in the next couple of days so my magazine will be more complete.

New Media

Evaluation 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Coverlines

"This is the Beginning" Alysha Hackett Exclusive

This will be my main coverline and will be a quote from my featured article about Alysha Hackett. This will encourage readers to want to read the magazine as it will get them excited for the future of the artists and keep them updated with whats going on in their life and whats going to happen next.

Kiss Land Tour

The Weeknd's "Kiss Land" Tour of the UK has just finished. This heading will be a section about our journalists being at a few of the shows and seeing how he has developed as an artist over the last year. From barely selling out a 3,000 capacity venue in December 2012 to selling out Two nights at the 02 Arena!

Albums Of The Month

This section of my magazine will be the Top 10 albums of the month but instead of sticking to the mainstream and having the album ratings being based on sales, we will have 3 judges who will rank the albums in top 5. This way it will give upcoming artists a chance to be put on our chart and push start their career.

Kanye Vs Drake

This section of my magazine will see two of the biggest artists in the game right now fight it out for 3 rounds. Rymes, Flow and Sales. This section will be a bit of friendly competition between the artists and will just give the readers a few stats and facts about the two artists.

 

Equipment

Camera and Lighting

For the images of my magazine I took my model, Tegan Grainger, otherwise known as Alysha Hackett, to the media classroom where I can have my photo shoot. I used a white screen as this will fully make the model the main focus of the image and will highlight all the colours she is wearing. 

I used a Canon 550d SLR for my photo shoot as it captures high quality pictures with little to no blurriness. The pictures needed to be sharp as the magazine will simply not look as professional if the images are not clear. The white screen is very effective because it is clean and simple and just brings all the audience's attention toward the model. White screens also have an advantage when it comes to editing the selected image as there is no other colours to play around with so I can enhance the image. The lights enabled me to change the way my images appeared and allowed to me to create the best possible pictures for my magazine. The lights also allowed me to create a small shadow which made it easier to edit my model for the final images. Combining the lights, white screen and the SLR allowed me to create extremely high quality pictures which can make my magazine look professional and classy.

 

Computer Software:

I am currently using InDesign to make my magazine instead of using Photoshop as In Design is a much more professional editing software and it is much easier to create magazines on the software. InDesign enables you to view the document as a magazine and you can use various different tools such as the master page which quickly and effectively adds the same text to all of the pages. This makes adding page numbers, websites and social networking links a lot easier as it prompts to audience to use these links as they will be on every page.
I also used Powerpoints, word documents and Prezis's a lot while planning my magazine and i aslo used Slideshare a lot while embeding documents. Because I have used these programs before it made it easier for me to get tasks done quickly instead of wasting time trying to find out different tools to use.

Box Out Text

Alysha Hackett talks about the biggest and greatest Hip-Hop Stars of today:

Lil Wayne: "I have always respected what Wayne does, and Wayne to me is definitely one of the greatest in the game. Wayne is fucking dope"

Nicki Minaj: "She was my latest inspiration as an artist. She has made her music mainstream while still maintaining her dirty, raw bars at heart. She does an excellent job of getting her music heard and looks gorgeous while doing it."

Eminem: "This guy is my fucking idol! No one has ever been able to destroy the mic as much as Em. He is a lyrical genius and has the sickest flow in the game today. Hands down, the best ever. Legend!"

Contents Page Ideas

This are my ideas that I am looking to include in my Magazine. I have included main artists that I will want to talk about and have exclusive interviews with. I have also included charts and "Top Songs" to inspire the reader to listen to more songs and see if our favourite song is similar to theirs. Reviews on new albums will also be published on the mag and it will go into detail about the best songs on the album and the ones which we think didnt bang as much as the others

Contact Sheet

This is the contact sheet for my photoshoot. The main objective of this shoot was to get images for my front cover of my magazine and for my double page spread. I wanted to use a white background to really emphasise the model and make her stand out. I used various props such as a hoodie and a snapback to add a more hip-hop feel to my model. I wanted to use three different backgrounds to mix up the pictures in the magazine. The arty/grafitty background is my favourite as it is very urban  and links in with my genre of magazine extremely well.

Main Article Draft

Main Article Draft

Double Page Spread Article Introduction:

2013 just keeps getting better and better for the hottest UK talent star Gemma Malcolm as her new debut album “Listen Now” storms to Number 2 in the charts, just behind Eminem’s highly anticipated “The Marshall Mathers LP2”. We caught up with the 19 year old Hip-Hop sensation while she discusses her album, the music industry and her bright future ahead of her.

Full Article:

Meet Gemma Malcolm (as if you didn’t know). Her fast flowing rhymes and extremely clever word play has grabbed the Hip Hop world by the nuts. After five years of song writing and making beats on her father’s complimentary work laptop using low budget music studios, she’s finally soared on to everyone’s music library. Gemma kept a close relationship between her social life and her love of rap by using various different stories and complications that have emerged from her life so far and being able to express them through her Eight Bars. Miss Malcolm was born in Eastcote, Middlesex which is a small town in North West London. She went to Haydon School where she was excessively bullied and singled out for being different. “I hated school, but I loved English. It seemed to be the only thing I was good at." Gemma was a school dropout. She left school at the age of 16. "All they did was fuck with my head, but I wouldn't change a thing. Them fucking with my brain made me able to write how I do."

Draft Magazine Design

Costume and Prop Ideas

Colour Ideas

I have made various colour schemes to use during my magazine. My favourite colours are the Strong Red (1st One) and the Dark Blue (5th One). I think I like these two the best as they are extremely eye catching and stand out and that is what Hip-Hop is all about. Dark Blue represents knowledge, power, integrity and seriousness. Hip-Hop is about having power and being the best of the best so it links in well with a dark blue colour. Dark red is associated with willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath. I think it is very important that i only use one main colour along with Black, Grey and White for my magazine because if not, you have the risk of making the magazine Over The Top. I do like the idea of having the text the main colour as it ties in nicely with the cover page but also makes the headings stand out.

MastHeads

I have gathered together a selection of font ideas which i believe will be successful for my magazine, i have ensured i used a variety of different fotns so that when i come down to making my final magazine i have all different styles of ideas so that i can come up with the best house style font.

I gathered together my fonts from the website www.dafont.com by using this website i was presented with a wide choice of funky stylish ideas, once downloading them i put them onto my In Design document and tweaked them slightly. On some i made more Bold/Italic and others i pushed the letters closer together.

My music magazine's genre is Hip-Hop/Rap this is conveyed through the fonts in which i have selected, they are big and powerful compared to normal fonts such as Arial, they suggest a sense of dramatic and strong feel of the music

Music Magazine Survey Results

Weekly Update (28/11/2013)

In the last lesson, I began to create name ideas and masthead designs. I did this by simply creating a spider diagram; featuring four different sectors of words to use for my name ideas for the magazine. These included acronyms, phrases, connotative and compound words. I chose around 35 name ideas - I liked the name inD and Unsigned as I feel as though they represent the magazine very well and are a key signified of what the magazine stands for. I'm still undecided on which name to use as I was to be 100% sure on the name and I feel as though I'm not quite there yet. After I had created name ideas, I went onto DaFont and ReFont to select fonts that I like to use for the masthead. I downloaded these fonts and transferred them onto InDesign where I created a long list of the fonts and compared which one I like most. Again, I'm still quite undecided as I want the masthead to be to the best of my ability as it is one of the most important factors of a magazine as it can make or break it. 

In the next lesson, I plan on possibly choosing my final name and masthead design so that I can effectively move on to the next task, and select shots of what images I would like to feature in my magazine to help influence me. 

Prelimnary Video

Weekly Update (21/10/2013)

In todays lesson I began to write down what tasks havent been completed/not completed to a appropriate standard. I had 6 Tasks and managed to complete four of them. I finished my Preliminary Design Ideas as I originally only had completed my front cover design, however today I finished my contents page design and added ot to my blog.

Model Release

7

This is the model release for my photoshoot. I have chosen who I would like to participate in my Photoshoot and prior to taking photos of my model. I had to make sure that Tegan was happy with being photographed and understood that the images are for a school project. This release form also states that, if necessary, a re-photoshoot is needed that the model will take part in it. This concludes that Tegan, my model, is happy to take part in my photoshoot.

MoodBoard

Names and Masthead

Weekly Update (14/10/2013)

In todays lesson we were finsihing up all the work we had that low grades on in our coursework. I also finished my moodboard. I was really proud of how my moodboard turned out. it really summed up everything that i wanted my magazine to be. I didnt want to just have a powerpoint with a few pictures shwoing what my magazine would represent. I wamted to make it more media based. I used Adobe Premier to make my moodboard and i found it relatively simple. I have had past experience with other video editing softwear such as Sony Vegas Pro so i wasn't completely baffled by the software. I used a new Eminem Track called Berzerk in the background because it is a very hyper and exciting sound and i thought it would be appropriate to represent my magazine.

Magazine Name Ideas

Created my name ideas was a particually hard task for me at the start. I lacked ambition and wasn't aware of the name that i wanted to represent my whole magazine project. However, when I started thinking of a couple basic names to do with Hip-Hop, I then could not stop. Anything that came into my head that even slighty was relevent with my genre I wrote down.

I have picked out three favourites from my list. These being:

1) "Pen 2 Pad" I think this one is good because most rappers use a pen and paper to write down their music/lyrical inspirations. At first I wanted my magazine name to just be one word name but as i started writing down ideas, I began to like phrases/sentances that i can use as abriviations. I can use "Pen 2 Pad" as "P2P".

2) "Wired" I really like this one as there is various ways I can write it and using different fonts/designs to make it as unique as possible. The word Wired can link in with various hip-hop synonyms as it links in with the microphone on a stage venue and and a wire leading into 18 Watt Double Barrel Boombox blasting the artists track with amplified base for an even louder sound/

3) Personalsation - I am really fond of the idea of making the magazine seem personal to the reader so I like the idea of puting "My" or "Your" in the magazine name. I think using "Ur" will be better than using "Your" as when the title is abreviated it will come out sounding better as "U" instead of "Y". An idea for this are "UrLyrics" meaing the articles can be seen as some form or lyrics.

Key Concepts

Weekly Update 06/10/13

                   Part 1:                                                                                                       Part 2



















Alternately you can read here:

This week I started by updating various different blog posts that i have completed on the unit so far. I updated my proposal, my target audience and my evaluation for my preliminary task. The reason for updated these three posts in particular was either down to incomplete work or work to a standard which i believe to be not my best. Also this week i created my Proposal Feedback Video. I chose to do my feedback as a video instead of text as i feel it incorporates more media into the project rather than just reading a text comment. My Proposal feedback featured Demi, Gemma and Layla giving quick strengths, weaknesses and things I can look to improve. I uploaded the video on to Youtube and then following this, embedded it to my blog. I had numerous problems with Vimeo. I tried to use vimeo over Youtube but it wouldn't work on a various occasions. I wasted a fair bit of time trying to get Vimeo to work but from now on I am just going to use Youtube for video uploads.

Proposal Feedback

Double Page Spread Analysis

Double page spread analysis from davidcampbell1997

Contents Page Analysis

Contents page analysis from davidcampbell1997

Survey

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO TAKE PART IN MY SURVEY:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QZYJXX9


This is the link to my survey that I have created for my target audience to gain results about what they would like to feature in my music magazine. I have included questions such as what genre the participants think is most successful, what they think the main feature of a front page should be and what type of magazine name to use. I used a variety of multiple choice answers as well as standard questions where the participant selects one answer; this way I gained more information about what my magazine should include. I have 22 participants and aim to come to a conclusion with these results which will impact and improve my magazine. By sending out a survey to my target audience, I'm hoping to gain useful data that will give me the information I need to produce a successful magazine.

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

Front Cover:
For my front cover I wanted to use an olympic theme while also sticking to the school colour scheme. I used gold text to symbolise Gemma winning her Gold Medal at the Olympic games. As you will see on the front cover, everything about Gemma's success is put in gold to make the reader know that whenever they see gold text, the story will be about Gemma's triumph. This gives the audience a sense of repition and cosistency. The back image of Gemma with the football raised in one hand links in with the sport/compition theme of this weeks edition of the school magazine. Also, Tara in the bottom corner appears to be celebrating something which also links in with the compition theme. I use a vast amount of repition in the front cover to keep it simple but effective.

Sell Lines:
I use various senatances, especially in the front cover, which attracts the audiences attention. For example "See why Tara is so excited". The reader than sees this and then is enticed to open the magazine and see why Tara is celebratng. Also, I used Gemma to give a breif person profile, without giving away the majority of the story. I used "more on Page 8" so then the audience will have already read Gemma's profile and a bit of the story and then will want to carry on reading.

Contents Page:
For my Contents Page i used the same colour scheme as the front cover. Again this reminds the audience of what they are expecting to get from my magazine. I wrote the page numbers next to the description and title of each feature to allow the reader to skip to whichever feature interests them most. I included one main image on the contents page as I didn’t want to fill it up to much, I thought keeping it simple would look more professional as it’s only the contents page.

What would I do better?

Next time making a magazine I would ensure I don’t use an iPhone to take the images as they came out quite fuzzy and didn’t look as professional as they would if I used a professional camera. I’d use a wider variety of images on the contents page and include more of the page numbers so that they didn’t have to flick through the magazine finding what they wanted. The contents page in my opinion is the page which needs the most work and imoprovement.

Target Audience

Preliminay Task Final

Weekly Update 29/09/2013

Magazine Proposal

For my Music Magazine I want to focus on Rap/Hip-Hop. I feel this is an appropriate genre of music as it is really coming popular again. The hip-hop world has always been a controversial and interesting one and with new albums from Drake, Lil Wayne and Eminem all being released this year, there has never been a better time for a magazine like mine. With many upcoming Rap artists busting their way through the ranks of the music world, this magazine is an exciting and worthwhile investment. The audience that my magazine will be aimed towards will be 16+ as most of the albums/artists we will be reviewing will have some explicit content during their songs or interviews. My magazine is looking to be released on the 25^th of Every Month. This gives the journalists and editors enough time to produce and create the best magazine they possibly can. I feel a monthly magazine works better than weekly/fortnightly as it gives a bigger time period for more artists to release new tracks so we are always on top of the latest trends. The magazine will have four times more content and depth than a weekly mag will which will give the audience more intellectual and advance view on the world of Hip-Hop. Due to the more detail in artists and music the magazine will be charged at £5 each month which I believe to be more than reasonable for the quality of the magazine. The mag will be advertised on all of the major Hip-Hop stations in England which is appropriate for our magazine. We will also be promoting the magazine on Social Media sites such as Twitter and Facebook as they are used by more than 1/6 of the Globes Population.

My magazine will include articles such as:

·        Drakes Album Review

·        Eminem Album release information

·        New upcoming Artist

 

 

 

 

Weekly Update 22/09/2013

This week, I finished creating the material for my school magazine. My plan helped me tremendously and it looked like how I imagined it would.I like how my front page and contents page look, however i have found many things that I can improve on for next time. This was my first use of InDesign and i found it quite tricky at first to be completely honest. Although, the more i did on it, the easier it became and the less time things took to complete. This preliminary material will help me in the future with creating an improved magazine so in the end I am glad that I completed this task.
After I had created my preliminary material, I then moved on to the next task of producing a survey. I plan to gather information about what people would like to see on my magazine. I created 10 questions asking people what content/look of magazine they look for. I have also developed ideas on what I want my magazine to look like. I have now found my model and will need to set a date for a photo-shoot. Hopefully, the survey i have created will give me a better look at what my target audience, and the people in general, want.

Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Weekly Update 15/09/2013

While completing analysing 3 magazine covers homework it gave me inspiration for a couple of photo shoot ideas, I liked the plain white background with vibrant colours clothing on, it really made the model POP and stand out tremendously. However "Time" did an excellent cover shot of a close up of Steve Jobs which had very minimal text out it however the image made it very intriguing. Also, I need to find out how to upload a video from a mobile to Blogger, want these weekly updates to be more media based rather then just text.

Haydon Newsletter Design Cover

 

 

Haydon Newsletter front page design. Blue and White theme to link in with school colours, will be inspired more during making the magazine.