Final media production with modifications

Above are the three final media products for the main portfolio task. I have modified each of them very slightly from the previous posts to produce the highest standard of work that I can hope to achieve.

I noticed in the previous images I failed to realise that I had not eliminated the red eye in the girl's eyes that was obtained from the camera. By failing to remove the red eye on the pictorials it made them look both amateur and unprofessional as this would not be expected of a real life magazine. Due to all the new technology available to me I was able to modify the images using a photo editing programme, Picasa. This specific image editor is designed for quick and basic fixes of photos that need re-touching a small amount. As I had already done the majority of the editing on a more complex programme such as photoshop, Picasa was the perfect choice.

On the front cover of my magazine the bands title is situated across the centre of the page over the image of the band. I noticed that the small, black font that I used was not as noticeable as I had hoped. I considered using a different colour to make it more eye catching, however taking into account the range of brightly coloured dresses, the white background and the three conventional colour coding scheme which my magazine follows throughout, I found it hard to come up with suitable colour that wouldn't clash, nor would it fade into the background. As the font I used for this is downloaded I could not make adaptions to it on the college computer which offers me a range of graphics programmes to work with. I therefore had to make use of the limited graphics programmes available to me at home. Taking this into consideration I simply opted to make the font bigger and across a wider space of the magazine cover, to make it more noticeable.

Moreover, when taking a closer look at my double page spread I noted that I had not thought the layout of my main and sub headline through properly. Because previously the text was over where the fold in the magazine would be, therefore making it likely to be illegible when thinking about reading it realistically. So as you can see above I have now changed the layout in the text to leave a definite gap at either side of the centre fold, to eliminate all possibilities of being unable to read it and still creating the feel that it is an all in one page.

Overall, each of these simple but effective modifications make a significant difference in trying to create a final media production to the best of my ability.

Evaluation of main task

After extensive research into a wide variety of different magazine genres ranging from dance magazines such as Rave to heavy metal related magazines such as Kerrang, also music magazines that cover everything that’s important, trend-setting, and newsworthy to young adults for example ‘Rolling Stones’. Once I had conducted my research I found no current evidence of a magazine which focuses solely on mainstream pop-music. This inspired me to design and create a new and upcoming magazine which does focus on the pop-culture side of the music industry along with an accompanying double page spread and contents page.


My music magazine ‘TNT’ uses many conventions that would be expected of a magazine, which I found after my in depth research. For the front cover these may consist of such things as: a masthead, a slogan, a main headline , sub headlines featuring other articles, a main image, possibly other images, plugs, a barcode, price and date. My front cover uses all these conventional aspects to their full potential. For example I have used images of music groups, the plug is offering i tunes vouchers and the smaller images are of famous bands that would appeal to my target audience. One thing I did notice about the conventional aspects of a variety of magazine mastheads is that part of it is often covered over to portray the recognisability of the product. However my music magazine challenges this convention in the sense that the entire masthead is clearly visible. The reason I chose to do this is because my music magazine is new and upcoming therefore people need to make themselves familiar with the magazine so they need to be able to see the masthead as well as possible, although this would be a convention I would consider for future issues of ‘TNT’. In comparison to a real life media product such as a double page spread, I have tried to make the double page in my magazine as a realistic as possible in the way that it intertwines the main image on one side with the main body text which dominates the other page by overlapping them slightly onto each others page to eliminate the sense of being two separate pages. I realised that the conventions which can be expected of a contents page are such things as; different content categories, which my magazine features to the right hand side consisting of five main categories which are especially related to music.


The particular issue of my music magazine which I have designed and created represents young adult females. As people who enjoy pop music are generally more females than men. However in future issues I would want my magazine to not focus entirely on one gender to create a fair and equal representation to appeal to both genders. But I would say that overall my magazine is aimed more at females as it uses very bright and stereotypically ‘girl’ colours such as yellows and purples. The girls which I have featured as the band on the front cover are very stereotypical of the celebrity appearance that inspires girls to desire to look like them, that is being tall, thin no imperfections etc. I opted to dress them in bright and eye catching colours which will draw in the female reader as they enjoy fashion and lookout for celebrities who they might aspire to be like. The particular way in which the girls are posed is meant to appear attractive, fun and not too seductive. I found that all the girls who featured on music magazine covers were all looked very seductive and showing a lot of flesh. My magazine challenges this idea as I find that girls who are made to look seductive or sexually attractive on front covers may intimidate females and discourage them from buying it. Therefore I made sure that my girls looked attractive but in a fun loving way to represent the female social group.


The main target audience intended for my music magazine are mainly young adult females although I am not ruling males out entirely, because it all depends the person’s love of pop music. I would say this particular issue of TNT is targeted at females due to the number of aspects such as the colours I used like yellows and purples which I maintained throughout my magazine, the shapes I included, for instance love hearts and moreover the gossip style content featured on the front for example ‘why the pop princesses are not all sugar and spice’, these features are stereotypically the representation of femininity, which will help to address my audience. I took a great deal of time when first designing my music magazine how I was to attract its target audience of young adults which more realistically according to the stereotype would attract more females than males. I therefore decided I would feature an all girl band which is also new on the scene but have already been a big hit with pop music lovers to persuade them to want to but it. If a person likes the act that features on the front they are more likely to purchase it. I used bright and bold colours that would not only draw in potential readers but used specific colours such as orange, yellow and purple which are stereotypically more attractive to females. I also chose these particular colours to represent the music genre itself as pop is generally very up-beat and catchy. The main picture on the front cover of my magazine are a girl band called ‘The Sweetest Thing’ the music they produce I would say is more appealing to the female population which is why I opted to have them as my main feature. To attract a female audience the magazine must maintain a positive outlook, I therefore decided to position my girl band in a ‘cheeky/attractive’ way, as opposed to a ‘seductive/attractive’ way as this could be seen as intimidating to some females and in addition to this some may feel offended that women are exposed in this light and discourage them from buying TNT.


If I was to suggest a media institution that would consider distributing and publishing my magazine ‘TNT’ I would say Emap. This institute is one of the many of the recognisable music magazines. For example they are the publishers of the kerrang magazine, the UK's premier multi-platform music destination and is the worlds biggest selling weekly rock magazine. Other music magazines within the Emap performance stable are; Sneak, Smash Hits, Mixmag, Q and Mojo. These cover a wide spectrum of tastes and age groups but all stand by a reputation of quality and passion which I would be more than happy for them to represent my music magazine,because it shows the credibility and success of the publisher. Considering that they cover a wide spectrum of tastes they do not have a magazine which focuses solely on the pop music genre aimed at young adult females, which means there is a gap within their target market. Therefore this would be the perfect publishing/distribution institute for my new music magazine to fit into and be represented by. Emap Performance also has a variety of websites supporting the music magazines and radio stations, which would be very good for the future of magazine when it has been out a while and has a large stable audience a website would be a great way for the readers of today’s modern society who enjoy surfing the net and therefore maybe would attract more readers and also give existing readers a chance to keep up to date with the latest pop music new and so forth.


From the process of constructing my media product I have learn a lot of new aspects of technology that I never knew before. It has given me the ability to use programs such as Microsoft Publisher and Photo-shop much more confidently. For example I now know all the elements of publisher wish overall allowed me to design my magazine much more creatively and effectively especially with the double page spread as it had specific layout guidelines etc which suited my design perfectly. Also the drop cap tool which enabled me to have the opportunity to make my double page spread much more realistic in relation to a real media product (however taking into account the style and layout of my spread I opted not to use this advantage). Also this production has introduced me to the many elements of Photo-Shop, which is a very creative and helpful image editor to make required changes to your pictures to show them off to there full potential. This includes background changes which I found particularly handy as the location where I took my shots was not suitable for the image I wanted. However this was not a problem as I wished to eliminate my background in exchange for a totally white background, to represent the simplicity of pop focused magazine and also to emphasise all the features on the front. All this technology has helped me in achieving an end product which uses all the conventions of a music magazine and in general has given me the knowledge and confidence to be able to use these sort of technologies in the future.


Looking back at the work from my preliminary task I have made considerable improvements in many different aspects. For example I can now identify conventions of magazines much easier now and this shows in the final media product of the main task in comparison to the preliminary one. As my first college magazine uses too many colours which I now know is not a common convention of real media products. I think my first production looks quite amateur, whereas my main task production looks a lot more realistic as I have made sure to cover all the basic conventions of magazines, which is just one of the things I have learnt since completing the first task. Also as I mentioned previously about the use of technology, when doing the preliminary task I was not very familiar with the different software and still experimenting with different program functions to see what is the best to meet the requirements. I think this gave me a good insight in to the technology available and this enabled me to complete my main task to a much better standard after more practice. I have also done a lot less of in-depth research in my first task which in the long run did not prepare me enough for when it came to designing the real thing. I learnt form this though and have done a lot of extensive research into the music magazine industry and have gained knowledge about many different media institutions. This allowed me to create my magazine much easier as I was prepared with the knowledge I gained from the research. When comparing the work of my first and second task it shows how much improvements I have made and I feel the preliminary task was very good and a necessary task to enable me to really prepare fully for the second task as I now knew what was expected and gained much knowledge which helped me dramatically when it came down to completing the main task.

I have included a poll vote for my magazine to obtain some valuable audience feed back. The majority vote has answered as what should be expected. However in one poll it is fifty-fifty, I don't mind this though because you could say that my magazine is a mixture of both the answers to question four. Therefore overall I am pleased with the results.

In conclusion I believe that my front cover, double page spread and contents page of a new pop music magazine has the potential to sell on the shelf and be a big success in the magazine industry as there is a big market in pop music and I think my magazine will only help to make this even larger.

Contents Page

For the foundation portfolio main task, along with the front page and double page spread of a new music magazine I also have been asked to create a contents page for the magazine. Below is my final product of the contents page.


I have chosen to display my TNT logo in the left hand corner. This is to keep a similar layout style of the front cover. Moreover the conventional colours that are displayed on the cover, fonts and white background are also kept the same to keep a familiar feel throughout the magazine. The title 'contents' is accompanied by the month of which it has been published to show that it is a monthly published magazine. I have decided to place this upon a black background that appears in the shape of half a CD. This is representative of the music industry and reinforces the nature of the magazine.

The contents have separated into five different categories which are listed down the right hand side. The categories I chose to include consist of those which you might expect to find in a music magazine such as 'interviews' and 'featured bands'. I noticed during my research that most types of magazines in general have an 'on the cover' category and also a 'regulars' to show that make the most popular article more accessible and to show that it is a regular magazine as people in general do not like change and this enforces the familiarity of the magazine. The articles featured in the contents reflect greatly upon the January ‘New Year’ issue, for example ‘winter blues survival guide’ and ‘new year fresh start’. I made sure to include articles such as these to reinforce the special edition issue.

As it is a specific music magazine I have also dedicated a column to artist reviews. I found this was a convention of some music magazines when doing my research and I have specifically listed only pop artists and songs to reinforce that my magazine is solely pop. To emphasize the main article I have included a different posed picture of the girl band which features on the front cover. I have used three pictures of ‘The Sweetest Thing’ one in each page I have created to illustrate that they are the main feature of this particular issue. In the contents page they appear sat down with their legs crossed, I chose this picture to fit into the space provided and portray them as sweet and relaxed. It is situated below the ‘review’ column and is indicated by a '+ Exclusive Review’ as non of the other artists who feature in the review column have their picture displayed this illustrates the importance and exclusiveness of the band. In addition when readers see the plus sign it will lead them to believe they are getting more than their moneys worth, , which may encourage them to buy the magazine again.

I also found it a convention to include a type of plug; this was mostly in the form of a subscription offer. I opted to advertise a travel issue subscription to show that my magazine is versatile and accessible in all areas. To emphasize this I used the explosion bubbles and the colours of the masthead in 'special offer' to represent my music magazine at large. The black and red text is only used to display the masthead logo in the top corner and it is the only piece of text which is boxed by a double line, therefore makes it stand out from the rest of the page. Moreover I included a smaller size version of my music magazine to show the reader what they would be getting which makes the reader feel more at ease if they can see what they are paying for. I realized that by including a yearly subscription offer this will bring in a regular audience and would be an opportunity for the company to make additional sales and therefore is essential that the readers know about the subscription offer. Which is the reason for the way it being displayed in this particular way. Also by advertising at discount price the audience is more likely to want to subscribe to the magazine.

Moreover I also noted that when researching the contents page of NME they included a small story, which is where I imagined the magazine promoted a highlight event of that particular week in every issue. This was suggested by the headline, 'The moment that...' after the three dots any story can be placed in that space. This inspired me to create my own centre story titled 'the weird and wonderful world of...' this gives an insight into the main events of a particular star which would be featured their each week. I wanted my magazine to steer away from the plasticity and the artificial outlook that pop culture seems to portray, this headline gives my magazine the chance to represent pop artists which are different to ‘the norm’. The artist which features in my contents page in this issue is ‘Fierce’ to represent the nature of ‘Fierce’ I opted to display a picture of her wearing a pink and black eye mask with pink feathers, this is not what might be expected of a pop artist whilst it still reflects on the femininity by use of the colour pink which is what my magazine maintains the whole way throughout.

Overall I have tried my best to make my contents page look as realistic and authentic as possible, whilst still representing my chosen music genre, in order for my magazine to achieve its goal of attracting as many target readers as possible.

Double Page Spread

This is my double page spread that would feature in my new music magazine TNT. This is the main feature/article in the magazine, indicated by the front cover.


Pop girl band 'The Sweetest Thing' are the main band featured in this particular interview. They are a new girl band who are fresh on the scene within the music industry. Which is why I chose to use them as the main focus as TNT is also a new magazine on the scene, therefore I thought this girl group would reinforce this factor.


The aim of a double page spread is to try and make it look as one page as a whole and not two separate pages. However I have found that the main body text usually dominates one side and the pictorial dominants the other, but with slight overlaps and a particular layout to eliminate the fact that there are two pages.


In my double page spread the image is dominant of the left hand side. I have positioned the girls at all different levels, this was done for a number of different reasons. Firstly to represent their individuality as a group, to illustrate that they are all different. Secondly for layout purposes, the first two figures are in line to the texts and the extended leg of the end female across the next page helps maintain the all in one effect of the double page. The text toward the top of the page also overlaps both pages for this effect. The main body text is situated to the right, although it does not intersect with the other page the text is made to curve around the pictorial. It is set out in the conventional way of columns which can be expected of magazine publications, these columns are also set out like the three band members, in different height order to maintain a similar style. You would find a smaller text which tells the reader who is who, and may also find a small caption accompanying the image which often makes light of the photo which I have included.


In conclusion I think my final product has the authenticity and realism in relation to other music magazines and the conventions of other magazines to have the potential to work successfully as a double page spread.


The actual content of main article takes the form of a group interview between the girls. A conventional text style of magazine articles is to drop cap the first letter of the text. I did try this out when creating my double page however taking into consideration the layout format of an interview this did not look suitable, so I therefore decided not include this. I have however used different coloured fonts for each particular part o the interview. For example one colour for the girls name, a different colour for the question being asked and a different colour again for the given answer. This clearly distincts each part of the interview so the reader can read it with ease.



I have made sure that all the questions in the interview reflect on what the headlines include for example 'scandals, splits & success' I came up with at least one question for each area. Generally the questions are quite open to enable a multiple response or I have made the girls answer in such a way that it influences another band member to respond.

I tried to use creative language in my main and sub headlines to make it sound catchy and interesting, resulting in making the reader want to engage in it. I included hyperbolic language such as alliteration. For example 'Make belief to mainstream', 'whirl wind' and 'Scandals, splits & success', this exaggerative language is often found in magazine articles to make it sound fun, light hearted, entertaining and overall a good read. The language is also very informal as it needs to appeal to the intended target audience, which in my magazines case is young adults, from all walks of life, that are simply lovers of the pop music genre. As my girlband are new and fresh on the music scene and have made it big already, which the main headline reflects. I tried to make the introduction short and sweet, with an informal and chatty style by using phrases such as 'we catch up with'.

More often than not you would expect a pull quote to feature within the article. I have placed the pull quote within a love heart shape of candy love heart sweets. As the bands name is 'The Sweetest Thing' I thought it appropriate to use the sweety love heart to represent and reflect upon the band. Also to reinforce there femininity and girly nature and to tie in with the 'i' which is dotted as a love heart on the front cover. I designed my double page on Microsoft Publisher which allowed me more freedom when completing the design process. For example I was able to edit my image using wrap points. This meant that my text would be made to flow around the image instead of the image taking up it's own space, this enabled my double spread to look authentic as possible in relation to what might be expected of other magazines. Moreover publisher also allowed me to create a specific page design that I required to fit the criteria.

In conclusion I think my final product has the authenticity and realism in relation to other music magazines and the conventions of other magazines to have the potential to work successfully as a double page spread.

Final Front Cover

This is my final piece for the foundation portfolio main task, this was to design and create my very own new music magazine. After extensive research I was successfully able to create a new music magazine which I have tried to make as individual as possible compared to other music magazines currently on the market.

My music magazine TNT, represents the pop culture music genre and has a target audience of young adults who are lovers of the pop music industry. The idea is to feature not only new and upcoming bands but also mainstream bands and artists. It is a very in depth music review magazine featuring reviews of an artists full body of work, songs, albums and both best and worst play lists, exclusive interviews and also more light hearted articles which make for a good read(when viewing the contents page this will give an insight to the range of pop based topics the magazine covers).


I decided to use the masthead 'TNT' this stands for a type of dynamite/explosive, which connotates as something with a big impact and a long lasting effect, ideally this is the effect that I wish my magazine to have. The simplicity of using letters makes it more of a statement which will hopefully be more memorable and recognisable in the long run. I wanted to make it look bold and stand out against the white background whilst still representing the colourful nature of pop music. Therefore my original idea was to use bright colours like aqua blues and bright purples, however I also wanted to represent the idea behind the masthead of being explosive leading to my decision of using colours such as reds and blacks. I realised after I had designed my masthead that it looks very similar to the 'NME' masthead so I thought about changing the colours around using black letters with a red outline. But this defeated the object of making it bright to represent the pop industry, for that reason I opted to stick with the original colours of red for the lettering as this colour is bright, bold and represents explosives.


The slogan which I decided to use is 'It will blow your mind'. This is a creative use of a play on words, as dynamite blows things up which relates to my masthead. Or it could be interpreted as the music and general content blowing your mind which is usually thought of as a positive effect something has on someone, which I definitely want my magazine to do. Unfortunately the font I have used is not very legible on display. However in its original state the bold and slanted text represents it being 'blown away', which again reinforces the slogan in itself.

To ensure that my main pictorial of the girl band remain the dominant focus of my front cover I have placed all other text around them. For example the text to the right is particularly made to curve round her body. Apart from the bands name, which I have written across their bodies in the centre of page to represent that they are the main focus of that issues of the magazine. I depicted a curly font and replaced the dot for the 'i' with a love heart, this portrays their feminist and girly nature of the band. I chose to dress the girls in bright and outstanding outfits to attract the readers eye and also to reperesent the bright and bubbly personality/nature of the girls in general. They each have a chocolate loveheart lollipop which are acting as microphones to represent the music side of things. I opted for this particular prop because it also reflects on the bands name 'The Sweetest Thing' and the shape reinforces the represenation of femininity. In addtion to this I gave each girl a particluar coloured centre to reflect on their outfits and gave the centre feamle a diffent colour to represent that she is the band leader.

Once I had conducted my research I noted that the usual conventions of music magazines are that the font colours are reduced to a minimum of three. I wanted to use coloured fonts that were similar to the coloured dresses that the three girls were wearing. I therefore chose to use purple, yellow and black, as I wanted to stay clear of orange as I was afraid it may contrast with the red masthead. The governing text colours are the black and purple as these are bold and clear colours to use to enable the reader to be able to see the magazine easily. The yellow I have used to highlight particular words or phrases that are particularly important to make them stand out. For example I used yellow for 'hottest' as this colour represents something warm or the sun. Also I repeatedly circled the main headline of the cover to ensure that it captures the most attention and is immediately associated as being the main story. In addition by using language such as 'exclusive' this says to the reader that this article is only available in this particular magazine which persuades them to buy it.

I also found within my research that music magazines have backgrounds to represent their particular music genre/style, for example dance magazines have very busy and bright background, whereas punk and heavy metal focused magazines have dark and bold backgrounds. My magazine employs a white, plain and simple background. This is to enable everything featured on the cover stand out even more to attract the readers eye. Also because the magazine is simply pop music I wanted the background to reflect this, which is why I stayed clear of making my cover too busy an over the top, but still made it bold and bright to represent the genre at hand.

One of the main aims of any magazine is to draw in the attention of potential customers which is why I have tried to make it as eye catching as possible. Another aspect to grab the readers audience are plugs, often advertising a free gift with the issue or a potential free gift with a competition. Therefore I opted to include a free CD with it being a special new year addition this features all the favourable songs from previous years which ties in well with the theme. The text in the right hand corner reads 'see in 2009 with a bang', this could suggest a bang as in fireworks which are expected of the new year or 'bang' which again relates to the title of my magazine, this is accompanied by a large arrow which navigate the readers attention to the free CD.

To carry out the new year theme all the content featured on the front cover is linked to this. For example the readers get a chance to read their most loved pop stars new year resolutions. If the artists featured are well known and the majority of the target audience like them then it more likely that they will be persuaded to purchase it. Which is why I also included images of already popular existing pop acts. The article featured along the bottom of my cover directly addresses the audience by asking 'who did you...', this immediately draws in the attention of the reader as they want to know the answer and therefore consume it. I used the 'apple' logo to represent the 'i tunes', competition my magazine is advertising as this logo will be notably recognisable to music lovers.

Overall I think that my magazine follows general conventions of music magazines, based on general layout, colours, fonts and content. I did note throughout the research process that many mastheads are slightly overlapped my an image to portray how recognisable. However I decided against this idea, I wanted my masthead to be clearly visible as it is a new music magazine therefore consumers need to know the masthead in order for hem to be able to recognise it in the future. Covering up lettering of the title would be an idea for a future issue once it has made its reputation.

In conclusion taking everything into account I believe that my new music magazine has the potential to be a success in the magazine industry and an influence to those who are greatly interested in the music industry itself.

Double Page Spread and Other Pictorials

This is the photo I have chosen to be my main photo on my double page spread.

(After)

(Before)

Again I used the exact same procedure for the editing using photoshop. At the moment it looks as if the two girls sat down are floating on thin air. I think this could work as it looks quite creative, however I am undecided on how I am going to finish it. I might have them sat on something else which I will edit it. I think it makes a change for them to be sat down which indicates a more relaxed approach and as my main article is a speacial interview with the band I wanted to opt for a more 'ordinary' look as if it were just a normal conversion with three normal girls instead of treating them 'special'.

Again the lollipops are representing microphones to relate bakc to the music theme. I was thinking about maybe sitting them on a giant sweet (edited in) or maybe a few loose sweets near their feet to reflect on the bands name.

I took various other photos all very differently posed so I had a variety to choose from so that I colud pick the best and most suited pictures;

Main Pictorials

This is the photo which will be featured as my image focus on the front cover of my magazine. (After)

(Before)

I found taking my photos very difficult as everyone had to be available, originally I was going to have a bigger group but there was just not a time when everyone could make it. So as soon as I had my chance I decided to take them. However I did not put enough thought into where I was going to take as I realized there was not a suitable background in the location where I took my photos. Although I knew that there would be various image editor programs that I would be able to use to create my desired picture.


After researching many music magazines I found that the majority have simple backgrounds, which is why I chose to use a plain white background. As my girl band are dressed very brightly they appear bolder and more eye-catching against the white background.


To edit my photo's I used photoshop. To change the background I found it very difficult and time consuming to be able to eliminate it completely without it effecting the girls bodies as you have to very precise that you do not cut out too much or not take away too much. However I think that judging from my final image I have been quite exact and it is not really noticeable that it has been edited which is the whole point.


As there band name is 'The Sweetest Thing', I wanted to use props that would reflect on this. So I used chocolate lollipops that also had colours to match the outfits. They are holding them as if to represent holding a microphone which reinforces the music theme. The middle girl in the yellow is the lead singer, this is shown by a number of things; She is situated in the middle with the other band members leaning in towards her and she is taller, also she has a different coloured lollipop to the other girls these things all com together to represent her lead figure.