Brief

Candidate name

Bethany Quigley

 

Candidate number

 8486

 

Preliminary task

Using DTP and an image manipulation programme produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Addionally, candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demostrate their grasp of the programme.

 

Main task

The front cover, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.

 

Front cover

 

Contents page

 

Double page spread

Evaluation

After completing my final task for my AS Media portfolio I am now going to evaluate what I have produced, how and why I produced my music magazine. This is the evaluation stage of my task. I have answered seven questions concerning my music magazine, what I have learnt and looking back at my preliminary task. 

Each question is displayed on a different format to show that I have learnt many different techniques while producing this media product.

FINAL PIECE - double page spread

This is my final piece of my music magazines double page spread.

FINAL PIECE - contents page

This image shows my final contents page.

 

 

FINAL PIECE - front cover

This is my final piece - the front cover. I have made many improvements and changes over the construction of the cover. The style, design and colourings have drastically changed since my first draft.

 

+ research

On my DPS I decided to include social media as an aspect to include the audience in the interview. So I used twitter to tweet questions which would usually be asked in a Q&A on twitter:

1. What is the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into? #askellen #elemantq+a
2. What are the five things you can’t live without? #askellen #elemantq
3. What’s your motto or the advice you live by? #askellen
4. What is your favourite song ever? And why?  #askellen #elemantq+a
5. If you could go open up for any artist on tour right now who would it be? #askellen

Construction work - front cover, contents, dps

This powerpoint includes my further construction  work while I have been working and editing my magazine. 

Second draft - front cover

This is my second draft of my front cover of my music magazine - as you can see I have made a lot of improvements some of which were guided by the audience feedback I gained. I have kept the same main image as I like the image a lot (it was my favourite from the photoshoot) and plus the feedback did praise the image. 

Further changes will be made to my front cover as I will be using real-life music magazines and also my peers music magazine projects to gain inspiration and tips to achieve a professional music magazine which reach the standards of my target audience and also to the standard I want my magazine to be.

Audience feedback - first drafts

To gain audience feedback for the first draft of my front cover, contents page and double page spread I printed off the pages and showed them to a number of students who then commented on the page what needed fixing, their thoughts and what their dislikes were. 

This activity was important to carry out as I have learnt a lot from it and I can see where changes and improvements need to be made. 

I will continue to work on my magazine - improvements following these guidelines and comments will be made to ensure the magazine reaches my target audiences standards. 

Draft - DPS

This image shows my first draft for my double page spread which will feature in my magazine. I feel that this page still needs a lot of work and so I want to continue my research into music magazine double page spreads to ensure my dps follows the common conventions of a dps. I will gain audience feedback of this first draft to ensure the text is interesting for the readers. 

Draft - contents page

This is my first dfraft of my contents page - Ii worked on InDesign to complete this page and so I am still learning how to use the programme as I continue to edit and design the contents page. As this is my first draft I am willing to change features after I gain some audience feedback. 

Contents page construction

This powerpoint hightlights the construction of my contents page. Throughout the process of producing and designing my contents page I took pictures of what I was doing so that I could explain my decisions and reasoning's.

Front cover construction

Here I have completed further changes to my front cover - this powerpoint is describing the changes and additions I have made and why I have made them. 

+ research

Contents page research 

After much research on music magazine contents pages I gathered a lot of information, tips and inspiration which I would like to use when designing my contents page. Here are my findings;

Columns are very important on a contents page and so I must be able to follow a common construction of columns - the number of columns I wish to have and the spacing and positioning of those columns.

Furthermore, the page numbers on certain magazines are displayed quite differently to the font on the page - the use of different colours is common. From my research I have also found that so magazine chose to use shapes with page numbers within.

Font is also a factor I have found interesting while researching music magazine contents pages. I found two different examples of contents pages from two different music magazines; Q and NME. These magazine use very different fonts. Also, the masthead of the page is different as well.

Q magazine's contents page masthead is Q Contents while NME's masthead is NME THIS WEEK. I have found this interesting and so I want to experiment with the masthead of my contents page as Ii had originally believed the contents page must state CONTENTS as the heading. 

Draft - front cover

This is my first draft of the front cover.

I plan to make alot of changes to this draft as I feel the image, font and colour scheme I used does not show the professionalism of the magazine and so I will further research music magazine front covers to gain more inspiration.

The main colours within this draft are; white, black and red - I'm not too keen with using these colours together as I feel the give the magazine a dark and gothic feel which is not the kind of music genre or target audience I planned to aim this magazine at. 

+ research

I am deeply inspired by this magazine front cover - I feel the colour since blends well and attracts readers. The dark image is very attractive to me and I feel that the use of the eye contact is very good. I would like to recreate this magazine look on my front cover.

Also, I want to include a puff on my front cover - I have been researching puff's which can appear on a magazine front cover. I like how different shapes can be used for any puff and so I can design my own puff on photoshop using the different shapes. 

Front cover construction work

From this image you can see that I used photoshop to edit the image to a black and white scale - as previously planned in my planning. I also used the text tool on photoshop to add the masthead; the font here is KKKK. I chosen this font as I feel it is fun and goes with the black and white theme. 

Throughout the editing process of my front cover I played a lot with brightness, contrast and the different filters on photoshop. 

On this image I have added coverlines which I have copied from one of my flatplans. I like the layout of these coverlines however I do think many changes and additions to coverlines will be changed over the course of editing and producing the front cover. I went with the red masthead as it stands out against the dark background. 

+ research

I used my twitter account to learn of some real-life professional music magazine to gain an insight into what kind of coverlines and articles they produce. Twitter is a popular social media site, in doing research on this site I have gained extra auidence feedback by accessing other peoples tweets concerning music magazines.
 Furthermore, while on Twitter I looked up popular trends which lead me to a trend which read; "#askzoella" this trend means fans can ask direct questions to the celebrity / artist. I believe that this is a great way to include the audience and so I have decided that this would be a good feature to include on my double page spread.

Masthead ideas and plans

From researching music meanings I have found two potential masthead ideas; mezzo or elemant.

Mezzo comes from the word mezzo-soprano in music which is a popular tone of voice - used in pop and rock songs which is the genre of my music magazine. I feel this word would be clever and inspiring to have as the name of my magazine. 

Elemant is a word I have drafted coming from the word element, which is a key term used in the music industry. I created this word as I feel it is more professional and classic rather than just element. 

Audience feedback - photoshoot

My target audience need to be appealed to my magazine - images are the most important element of a magazine and so I thought it would be essential to gain feedback from my audience on the images I have taken and plan to include in my magazine. I used Padlet to display these images and use social media (facebook) to get my audience to chose what photos they liked best.

Created with Padlet

+ research

draft flat plans

To further prepare for constructing my music magazine I decided to create two front cover drafts with mock mastheads and coverlines - I experimented with photoshop as practice for editing the real image for my front cover. The images below show my mock flat plans and my analysis of them. 

Photoshop plan

flat plans

Moodboard

I have created this moodboard on a programme called 'animoto'. This moodboard helps to create a house style of my content and the images I would like to recreate in my music magazine. This task allows me to plan ahead of how I will communicate with the audience through my choice of colour and content.

Music magazine ideas - prezi

This prezi illustrates my ideas and planning for my music magazine. In completeing this prezi I have a clear idea about my magazine on what I want it to look like and other features I wish to include.

Ideal reader - reader profile

I have created this reader profile as I feel it is important to source potential companies with would be interested in advertising in my music magazine. This profile allows me to see what my target audience are interested in and so I can reach out to companies in which sell the product or service. 

Advertising in music magazine is most important due to the high selling rate of the magazines - money is obtained from this advertising and so profit will be made. 

Advertisements may also be of an interest to the reader as I will use the most common interests to advertise to my audience.

My ideal reader is based on the common traits and interests of a reader reading my music magazine.

Target audience research