I think I've kept fairly up to date throughout the production, although some parts were rushed in order to to reach deadlines. My blog was always pretty behind, as I'd do a task first then update my blog about it, slightly after. Also, I did a lot of work out of lessons, as it would have limited my time seriously if I'd only done work within lessons.
When doing my research I was constantly behind, generally because of the length of my analysis and the detail I went into. By the time I had to do my proposal pitch, I hadn't finished all my contents research therefore couldn't include conventions for it, although it was required. I did receive feedback not to forget about the contents, but it was just because I hadn't finished the research! But I eventually got up to date, and had a good solid idea of conventions and forms used in music magazines.
For my audience research, I managed to get that finished for my presentation, although it was rushed. I'd collected my research and got brief conclusions for the presentation, but I had to carry on my more in-depth analysis afterwards.
My planning was all done separately for cover, contents and DPS, so when we were were set the schedule when we were beginning creation, with deadlines of when drafts and finals were in, I had to build in time for planning. I was set about a week's worth of lessons to each piece of my product, but I managed to get everything in on time, some drafts even went in early, so my time management was great during this part of the production.
I'm now completed before the final deadline for our blogs, before our access is removed, so all I have left to do for a deadline is transform my evaluation into a presentation and wait for feedback on a certain evaluation question which is a bit ambiguous (therefore I'm not sure how to answer).
Friday, 12 December 2008
My Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I think that although my product is generally conventional, as I was worried about it's credibility, there is one unconventional twist about it.
My genre challenges the real media products, as most music magazines are focused on rock music, whereas I chose to surround mine on popular, chart, mainstream music. I did this because I believed that it is still the most common interest of people in Britain, and I thought it deserved to have a magazine purely dedicated to it, rather than mainstream music lovers having to flick carefully through magazines like Q and Clash for small features on their favourite artists.
My genre is present in every element of my product, and has changed the way I've used codes, as obviously with such a different genre it means my reader is somewhat far from the average music magazine reader. Those who read Clash and Spin are predominantly male, and mine has evolved to become aimed at female readers mainly. Typical music magazine readers are often characterised by the gig-goer stereotype, constantly listening to their iPod, plays an instrument, tried to be in a band at one stage or another, but I don't believe such an obsession with music is required to have a genuine interest in it, enough to buy a magazine about it anyway.
That is the main way my magazine challenges real products, and really the rest of the features are quite conventional, but I consider them to be slightly developed in the way they have been manipulated in order to appeal to my unstereotypical reader.
My language is basically conventional, but I think the style of sarcasm and other humour used is more out there as it is slightly blunter than that of Q, and very opinionated therefore acting as a source of personal identity. This was to represent the strongness of the genre, often considered as not "real" music which was the theme I was trying to prove throughout my product, especially through the name.
The smaller features of language are all very conventional for that of a music magazine, in the forms of the features listed in the contents, the generally straightforward denotations, the Q&A style of my interview and the way artist's names are used. So the format of all of my language is the same as most media texts, but the style in which it is written is slightly developed in a sense.
A specific feature which challenges the convention of another topic closely linked in with musical entertainment is the way I've chosen to have another section on a range of topics. This borderlines on teenage magazines, which I think is really something different and unusual.
My images all the way through my product are very conventional through the concept of them. The simple poses, minimalist look, shot distance, plain backgrounds and facial expressions of them all add to there conventionality. The way I've edited them with high contrast and high brightness is unusual, but I think it's an example of how I've manipulated a convention to fit in with my genre and style, as I think they look more lively and fun, connoting that music isn't serious, it's for leisure.
For my colours I have stuck to the conventional amount, and used black and white, so is typical on paper. But I think the bright colours I've used means there's never really any darkness like on a lot of magazines, but again is an example of how it's been twisted to fit to my female audience. It isn't that neutral anywhere, but is very fresh and lively as the bright colours I've used both have very energetic connotations as I've explained. So in some consideration, they've just been developed in order to match my unconventional genre and readers.
The layouts I've used have also been conventional, but with an edge. The cover for instance, has the masthead on the opposite side. A tiny difference, yet I think it's very noticeable and slides my product out of level with other similar magazines. The contents again, pretty typical columns of text and images, but over 2 pages and again my DPS shows the twist of 2 images. All these are not major, so I wouldn't consider them to be challenging that of a real magazine, but I think the fact these small changes run throughout as part of my house style means they're like a signifier proving my magazine is different, if only by a small margin.
My fonts are something I demanded on keeping plain, as I always noticed it never ever varied on real products when doing my research. It's vital they are plain as without this simple element the magazine loses credibility instantly because it would be indistinguishable as one of its own kind next to similar products.
Overall, my magazine has enough conventions to be counted as a music magazine, but I think the variations and edge it has to it distinguish it from real media products in a positive way.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As a main theme of my magazine was to represent the strength of the genre, I feel I’m representing the fans of that genre as real, strong people, a contrast to the representation of them often portrayed by other media and social groups. For example, people who like mainstream chart music may be considered as mindless drones by some die hard rock music fans, just because their attitude to music is less serious, but I think my magazine counters this. Through my strong connotations of the title, the shock language and sometimes offensive humour I think I represent chart music lovers to be individuals and a force to be reckoned with, which I think is effectively positive.
Also, I think I represent females well. The bold colours again show they’re not a weak gender and the clothes my models wearing also represents how women don’t need to be shown sexually, they can have an impact in other ways. I think there’s quite an independent vibe because of the strength I’ve aimed for, so it represents women in their own right, not in connection to men. Generally as my cover artist is female, it shows authority. But it isn’t a tomboy style, because although the colours are bold and strong, one of them is still pink. However it is a hot pink and has much more feistier connotations than pastels.
Because my audience will mainly be old teenagers, I think a representation of them can be drawn from my product too. Because my product’s style is so clean and fresh, it puts a positive light on teenagers, as there’s no grunge and it’s very organised. So at first glance, it basically present’s the younger generation as goody two shoes, but then on closer inspection where the blunt sarcastic humour and bad language come in, it puts a rebellious spin on how teens are represented. Yet it still holds some dignity and maturity because the bad language is infrequent and the humour is sometimes quite clever.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would hope a publishing company like Bauer Publishing would take on my media product.
They already publish a few music magazines - Q, Kerrang and Mojo. I think as mine is unconventional in any selection of music magazines, there’s a gap for it in this area of their publishing. It also publishes only 1 teen magazine, therefore a music magazine aimed at that audience may be welcome.
Plus as they publish a massive range of women’s magazines, it means there’s an even better place for my music magazine as it’s aimed more at women. I think the unconventional style of my magazine would fit in with their publishing as they also publish Pop, a quirky fashion magazine, so showing they’ve experimented away from the norm before.
Also as it’s the same company that owns Big City radio stations, like Metro Radio and Kiss, it provide a complimentary link to my area of mainstream music and an intertextuality relation.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
When deciding on my target audience, my initial open ended criteria was “anyone older than 12 who felt stupid reading Top of The Pops” (which actually doesn’t exist anymore!) but I developed this to 15 – late 20s, both genders and interested in mainstream.
Throughout the production of my product I feel this has evolved more, and became more specific, especially with my audience feedback exercises and looking at the media packs for Clash and Spin.
Firstly, it’s developed to be more aimed at females than both genders, but I’m glad of this because of Clash and Spin readers beings predominantly male, making mine for a more alternative audience than existing media products. Also as I mentioned before, because my genre of music is more unusual for a music magazine, my audience is also more unusual.
Far from the typical male music magazine reader, characterised by the gig-goer stereotype, constantly listening to their iPod, plays an instrument and trying to be in bands at one stage or another, my female audience exists. My audience will probably have less of an obsession with music, and it will act as a leisurely part of their life, enhancing it rather than ruling it. They would still be interested mainly in mainstream music, but may just like a wide variation.
From my audience feedback questions I’ve learnt my audience is basically a normal girl, no one with an extreme lifestyle or anything, someone who often fits in with trends and likes mainstream elements of other things in life, but may have an individual streak in their fashion sense or personality making them a little edgier and stronger than a completely average girl. However, they are quite sophisticated and mature I think, and have a well rounded lifestyle equally split into different parts of life.
How did you attract/address your audience?
Generally, to attract females, I gave the whole style of my magazine a very neat organised feel, which I think is definitely more suited to females than males. I made sure everything matched perfectly, even the artist’s clothes fitted in well with the colour scheme. Also I think my reader’s overall attitude is made obvious in the presentation of my magazine. Obviously their sense of music is appealed to by the fact I used real artist’s from the mainstream genre to get this across.
The colour scheme is a large part of how I addressed my audience, as it’s very fresh and light, hopefully mirroring my reader’s sense of fashion and general lifestyle. There’s no darkness and a very optimistic look, representative of the stereotypes who may read my magazine. Also, the bright colours will be much more appealing to a female, especially the pink, and these colours may be popular in their clothes.
The light-hearted humour in the language is a reflection of how my reader’s view music, not seriously at all, but just in a casual leisurely way. I think this feature particularly is very telling of what kind of people I want reading my magazine. The DPS is less heavy with music info, again showing my readers don’t consider it a life supply, more of an enhancement. My quote in the contents also sends out this message, as it’s about partying with music, effectively a luxury of life.
My individual magazine feature, which consists of elements from other parts in culture, is also designed to attract my well-rounded readers who will have mainstream interests in other things like TV, films and comedy.
To appeal to my reader’s strong streak, I think the blunt and often offensive language will be on the same level as their own attitude. Also by the artist I used on the cover, it provides a possible role model for my kind of readers.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From each part of my audience feedback I’ve learned different things.
From my questions I asked to 2 other people, I’ve learned that my preferred readings have come across well, hopefully because of the way I’ve encoded my product and used recognised codes and conventions, plus making sure they co-ordinate with dominate social values so that they’re more likely to be decoded correctly. I think I’ve proven this on a small scale in the way that the majority of my intended meanings matched the way my sample interpreted them. Hopefully, this wouldn’t vary too much across a more widespread sample if my preferred readings agree with hegemonic trends. These similarities mean I’d be more likely to attract my target readers, and my product would be a success.
From my quotes I've learnt that my product is pretty realistic. Each one commented on the professionalism and high standard which is obviously really positive. Also my target readers were judged well as female, teens and early 20s. Although I planned it to not be gender specific, after I noticed my cover seemed more aimed at females, I carried on this theme, and now I'm glad after finding out the majority of Clash's and Spin readers are male, as it makes my audience a bit more different.
They show that my photos are a vital piece to my product as they were praised specifically in 2 of my quotes, for the standard and how well they represent the style of the magazine and artist. The language is said to be a main element that tailors it to my target reader, as it doesn't waffle, and probably because of humour and style. The way it's presented was also noticed to appeal to readers, as it was a carefree style, but also an effective, neat layout with an obvious house style, which is something I'd aimed to achieve throughout my production
One quote said it veered from a mainstream teenage style magazine, appealing to the niche market, but I think it means when it is included with the teen magazine genre (rather than music genre), it's more different that mainstream, which can be considered positive as maybe it's appealing to more individual, mature teens.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
My main IT resources used throughout were the Internet, Publisher and Photoshop, general DTP. I’m fairly experienced with these from general work and my GCSE Media Studies practical production.
For my research I used Google Images and Flickr to save some high quality images of covers, contents and DPS to analyse and form conventions. I’ve never used Flickr before, but I’m glad I found it. To get images of real magazine features I'd found I used a scanner to get them on the PC. I also learnt I could use the Internet to download media packs from Spin and Clash's websites to learn more about reader profiles.
For my planning, I learnt I was able to scan sketches of layouts and poses to try out on layouts which were very helpful. That also allowed me to post images of my sketches on my blog. Using Publisher, I made developed drafts for each of my pages which were very important in the creation process as I had a guide to follow.
Technology in the construction stage was arguably the most important, as obviously my whole product came together using Photoshop, where I think my skills developed because a higher standard was need for this product. Because it's such an advanced programme I felt it really extended my creative decisions and I could do anything I needed to change really, and I feel my skills were developed enough to make what I needed. In order to take images, I used my camera, another important technology in construction, and although mine was fairly low quality, it still was obviously vital for the factor of original photography. I learnt about shot distances and lighting in order to get the best out of my images. Also I used the Internet to download the perfect font for my style, which I believe was a major help in the professionalism and credibility of my product.
In the evaluation stage apart from using this blog to type it up, I didn't use much technology. I used my blog to show people my product and one of my quote sources delivered the quote to me through a comment. I did also email my questions to people, so in a respect I used more IT than I noticed, as it's just a natural occurrence to me now.
Overall, I learnt that different technologies are extremely efficient when producing something so IT orientated. It helped me with my time management and generally made everything easier.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
A major thing I’ve learnt is that a lot more consideration can go into things, to get better results and to have better reasoning to use them. Just extra detail and research into things can go a long way.
Thinking more about language and fonts especially can help fit into conventions more easily, so therefore gives a more professional finish.
I feel I’ve learnt more about image editing in the progression because I was thinking so much more specifically, like where shadows should be and the shot distances used. Trying out different poses and facial expression is also very important, as this is something I didn’t really do at all in my preliminary task, I just jumped straight in there, but I think this was partly to do with the medium close up control.
Also I think my ability of making effective layouts has grown, as my cover layout on the preliminary tasks were very simple and straightforward, but I know that on my full product the layouts have much more advanced thinking behind them and therefore work better.
I think that although my product is generally conventional, as I was worried about it's credibility, there is one unconventional twist about it.
My genre challenges the real media products, as most music magazines are focused on rock music, whereas I chose to surround mine on popular, chart, mainstream music. I did this because I believed that it is still the most common interest of people in Britain, and I thought it deserved to have a magazine purely dedicated to it, rather than mainstream music lovers having to flick carefully through magazines like Q and Clash for small features on their favourite artists.
My genre is present in every element of my product, and has changed the way I've used codes, as obviously with such a different genre it means my reader is somewhat far from the average music magazine reader. Those who read Clash and Spin are predominantly male, and mine has evolved to become aimed at female readers mainly. Typical music magazine readers are often characterised by the gig-goer stereotype, constantly listening to their iPod, plays an instrument, tried to be in a band at one stage or another, but I don't believe such an obsession with music is required to have a genuine interest in it, enough to buy a magazine about it anyway.
That is the main way my magazine challenges real products, and really the rest of the features are quite conventional, but I consider them to be slightly developed in the way they have been manipulated in order to appeal to my unstereotypical reader.
My language is basically conventional, but I think the style of sarcasm and other humour used is more out there as it is slightly blunter than that of Q, and very opinionated therefore acting as a source of personal identity. This was to represent the strongness of the genre, often considered as not "real" music which was the theme I was trying to prove throughout my product, especially through the name.
The smaller features of language are all very conventional for that of a music magazine, in the forms of the features listed in the contents, the generally straightforward denotations, the Q&A style of my interview and the way artist's names are used. So the format of all of my language is the same as most media texts, but the style in which it is written is slightly developed in a sense.
A specific feature which challenges the convention of another topic closely linked in with musical entertainment is the way I've chosen to have another section on a range of topics. This borderlines on teenage magazines, which I think is really something different and unusual.
My images all the way through my product are very conventional through the concept of them. The simple poses, minimalist look, shot distance, plain backgrounds and facial expressions of them all add to there conventionality. The way I've edited them with high contrast and high brightness is unusual, but I think it's an example of how I've manipulated a convention to fit in with my genre and style, as I think they look more lively and fun, connoting that music isn't serious, it's for leisure.
For my colours I have stuck to the conventional amount, and used black and white, so is typical on paper. But I think the bright colours I've used means there's never really any darkness like on a lot of magazines, but again is an example of how it's been twisted to fit to my female audience. It isn't that neutral anywhere, but is very fresh and lively as the bright colours I've used both have very energetic connotations as I've explained. So in some consideration, they've just been developed in order to match my unconventional genre and readers.
The layouts I've used have also been conventional, but with an edge. The cover for instance, has the masthead on the opposite side. A tiny difference, yet I think it's very noticeable and slides my product out of level with other similar magazines. The contents again, pretty typical columns of text and images, but over 2 pages and again my DPS shows the twist of 2 images. All these are not major, so I wouldn't consider them to be challenging that of a real magazine, but I think the fact these small changes run throughout as part of my house style means they're like a signifier proving my magazine is different, if only by a small margin.
My fonts are something I demanded on keeping plain, as I always noticed it never ever varied on real products when doing my research. It's vital they are plain as without this simple element the magazine loses credibility instantly because it would be indistinguishable as one of its own kind next to similar products.
Overall, my magazine has enough conventions to be counted as a music magazine, but I think the variations and edge it has to it distinguish it from real media products in a positive way.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As a main theme of my magazine was to represent the strength of the genre, I feel I’m representing the fans of that genre as real, strong people, a contrast to the representation of them often portrayed by other media and social groups. For example, people who like mainstream chart music may be considered as mindless drones by some die hard rock music fans, just because their attitude to music is less serious, but I think my magazine counters this. Through my strong connotations of the title, the shock language and sometimes offensive humour I think I represent chart music lovers to be individuals and a force to be reckoned with, which I think is effectively positive.
Also, I think I represent females well. The bold colours again show they’re not a weak gender and the clothes my models wearing also represents how women don’t need to be shown sexually, they can have an impact in other ways. I think there’s quite an independent vibe because of the strength I’ve aimed for, so it represents women in their own right, not in connection to men. Generally as my cover artist is female, it shows authority. But it isn’t a tomboy style, because although the colours are bold and strong, one of them is still pink. However it is a hot pink and has much more feistier connotations than pastels.
Because my audience will mainly be old teenagers, I think a representation of them can be drawn from my product too. Because my product’s style is so clean and fresh, it puts a positive light on teenagers, as there’s no grunge and it’s very organised. So at first glance, it basically present’s the younger generation as goody two shoes, but then on closer inspection where the blunt sarcastic humour and bad language come in, it puts a rebellious spin on how teens are represented. Yet it still holds some dignity and maturity because the bad language is infrequent and the humour is sometimes quite clever.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would hope a publishing company like Bauer Publishing would take on my media product.
They already publish a few music magazines - Q, Kerrang and Mojo. I think as mine is unconventional in any selection of music magazines, there’s a gap for it in this area of their publishing. It also publishes only 1 teen magazine, therefore a music magazine aimed at that audience may be welcome.
Plus as they publish a massive range of women’s magazines, it means there’s an even better place for my music magazine as it’s aimed more at women. I think the unconventional style of my magazine would fit in with their publishing as they also publish Pop, a quirky fashion magazine, so showing they’ve experimented away from the norm before.
Also as it’s the same company that owns Big City radio stations, like Metro Radio and Kiss, it provide a complimentary link to my area of mainstream music and an intertextuality relation.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
When deciding on my target audience, my initial open ended criteria was “anyone older than 12 who felt stupid reading Top of The Pops” (which actually doesn’t exist anymore!) but I developed this to 15 – late 20s, both genders and interested in mainstream.
Throughout the production of my product I feel this has evolved more, and became more specific, especially with my audience feedback exercises and looking at the media packs for Clash and Spin.
Firstly, it’s developed to be more aimed at females than both genders, but I’m glad of this because of Clash and Spin readers beings predominantly male, making mine for a more alternative audience than existing media products. Also as I mentioned before, because my genre of music is more unusual for a music magazine, my audience is also more unusual.
Far from the typical male music magazine reader, characterised by the gig-goer stereotype, constantly listening to their iPod, plays an instrument and trying to be in bands at one stage or another, my female audience exists. My audience will probably have less of an obsession with music, and it will act as a leisurely part of their life, enhancing it rather than ruling it. They would still be interested mainly in mainstream music, but may just like a wide variation.
From my audience feedback questions I’ve learnt my audience is basically a normal girl, no one with an extreme lifestyle or anything, someone who often fits in with trends and likes mainstream elements of other things in life, but may have an individual streak in their fashion sense or personality making them a little edgier and stronger than a completely average girl. However, they are quite sophisticated and mature I think, and have a well rounded lifestyle equally split into different parts of life.
How did you attract/address your audience?
Generally, to attract females, I gave the whole style of my magazine a very neat organised feel, which I think is definitely more suited to females than males. I made sure everything matched perfectly, even the artist’s clothes fitted in well with the colour scheme. Also I think my reader’s overall attitude is made obvious in the presentation of my magazine. Obviously their sense of music is appealed to by the fact I used real artist’s from the mainstream genre to get this across.
The colour scheme is a large part of how I addressed my audience, as it’s very fresh and light, hopefully mirroring my reader’s sense of fashion and general lifestyle. There’s no darkness and a very optimistic look, representative of the stereotypes who may read my magazine. Also, the bright colours will be much more appealing to a female, especially the pink, and these colours may be popular in their clothes.
The light-hearted humour in the language is a reflection of how my reader’s view music, not seriously at all, but just in a casual leisurely way. I think this feature particularly is very telling of what kind of people I want reading my magazine. The DPS is less heavy with music info, again showing my readers don’t consider it a life supply, more of an enhancement. My quote in the contents also sends out this message, as it’s about partying with music, effectively a luxury of life.
My individual magazine feature, which consists of elements from other parts in culture, is also designed to attract my well-rounded readers who will have mainstream interests in other things like TV, films and comedy.
To appeal to my reader’s strong streak, I think the blunt and often offensive language will be on the same level as their own attitude. Also by the artist I used on the cover, it provides a possible role model for my kind of readers.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From each part of my audience feedback I’ve learned different things.
From my questions I asked to 2 other people, I’ve learned that my preferred readings have come across well, hopefully because of the way I’ve encoded my product and used recognised codes and conventions, plus making sure they co-ordinate with dominate social values so that they’re more likely to be decoded correctly. I think I’ve proven this on a small scale in the way that the majority of my intended meanings matched the way my sample interpreted them. Hopefully, this wouldn’t vary too much across a more widespread sample if my preferred readings agree with hegemonic trends. These similarities mean I’d be more likely to attract my target readers, and my product would be a success.
From my quotes I've learnt that my product is pretty realistic. Each one commented on the professionalism and high standard which is obviously really positive. Also my target readers were judged well as female, teens and early 20s. Although I planned it to not be gender specific, after I noticed my cover seemed more aimed at females, I carried on this theme, and now I'm glad after finding out the majority of Clash's and Spin readers are male, as it makes my audience a bit more different.
They show that my photos are a vital piece to my product as they were praised specifically in 2 of my quotes, for the standard and how well they represent the style of the magazine and artist. The language is said to be a main element that tailors it to my target reader, as it doesn't waffle, and probably because of humour and style. The way it's presented was also noticed to appeal to readers, as it was a carefree style, but also an effective, neat layout with an obvious house style, which is something I'd aimed to achieve throughout my production
One quote said it veered from a mainstream teenage style magazine, appealing to the niche market, but I think it means when it is included with the teen magazine genre (rather than music genre), it's more different that mainstream, which can be considered positive as maybe it's appealing to more individual, mature teens.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
My main IT resources used throughout were the Internet, Publisher and Photoshop, general DTP. I’m fairly experienced with these from general work and my GCSE Media Studies practical production.
For my research I used Google Images and Flickr to save some high quality images of covers, contents and DPS to analyse and form conventions. I’ve never used Flickr before, but I’m glad I found it. To get images of real magazine features I'd found I used a scanner to get them on the PC. I also learnt I could use the Internet to download media packs from Spin and Clash's websites to learn more about reader profiles.
For my planning, I learnt I was able to scan sketches of layouts and poses to try out on layouts which were very helpful. That also allowed me to post images of my sketches on my blog. Using Publisher, I made developed drafts for each of my pages which were very important in the creation process as I had a guide to follow.
Technology in the construction stage was arguably the most important, as obviously my whole product came together using Photoshop, where I think my skills developed because a higher standard was need for this product. Because it's such an advanced programme I felt it really extended my creative decisions and I could do anything I needed to change really, and I feel my skills were developed enough to make what I needed. In order to take images, I used my camera, another important technology in construction, and although mine was fairly low quality, it still was obviously vital for the factor of original photography. I learnt about shot distances and lighting in order to get the best out of my images. Also I used the Internet to download the perfect font for my style, which I believe was a major help in the professionalism and credibility of my product.
In the evaluation stage apart from using this blog to type it up, I didn't use much technology. I used my blog to show people my product and one of my quote sources delivered the quote to me through a comment. I did also email my questions to people, so in a respect I used more IT than I noticed, as it's just a natural occurrence to me now.
Overall, I learnt that different technologies are extremely efficient when producing something so IT orientated. It helped me with my time management and generally made everything easier.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
A major thing I’ve learnt is that a lot more consideration can go into things, to get better results and to have better reasoning to use them. Just extra detail and research into things can go a long way.
Thinking more about language and fonts especially can help fit into conventions more easily, so therefore gives a more professional finish.
I feel I’ve learnt more about image editing in the progression because I was thinking so much more specifically, like where shadows should be and the shot distances used. Trying out different poses and facial expression is also very important, as this is something I didn’t really do at all in my preliminary task, I just jumped straight in there, but I think this was partly to do with the medium close up control.
Also I think my ability of making effective layouts has grown, as my cover layout on the preliminary tasks were very simple and straightforward, but I know that on my full product the layouts have much more advanced thinking behind them and therefore work better.
Audience Feedback - Quotes
I gathered a few detailed quotes from a range of people, who were hopefully unbias, although doing it for the creator of the product is bound to be slightly influential on what to say. I asked if they had any general comments about my magazine, then asked who they thought it was aimed at and how professional it looked.
These are the quotes I've had;
These are the quotes I've had;
"Overall, the magazine looks very attention grabbing. I like the choice of
colours, they compliment each other very well. The information on the contents page is presented very neatly and easy to read. The photos are relavant and the model represents P!nk very well. The text on the double page spread is displayed well, with no waffling. I think the magazine is aimed at teenagers, preferably girls who are interested general pop/RnB music. I think the magazine looks very professional as the layout is superbly done, and has an obvious house style. I would consider buying this magazine for myself.""There is an excellent sense of house style across the pages. The photography is of a very high standard and really captures the spirit of the magazine. I believe the magazine is aimed at a female audience, teens to early twenties. I think this because of the language used and the carefree style of the overall piece."
"I am very impressed with the very professional look you have created. It appears to be aimed at a female audience probably late teens. This looks different to the usual teenage magazines, possibly moving away from the mainstream and therefore I think you are appealing to a niche market."
They're generally positive, and I'll talk about them more in my evaluation.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Audience Feedback - Questions
This is more of a risky way of assessment, but I do think it is a good indicator to see if I've created that sense of a reader profile through my encoding of my preferred readings. This would be very important to a real magazine, as they'd need to sell their reader profile to advertisers to persuade them to use their magazine. I'll answer a set of questions with my preferred readings with what came straight off my head, and gather a small sample of what others answered to see if they match or at least similar, as everyone associates connotations with different, although often similar things. The list of questions and my answers are;
What breakfast cereal do they eat? Coco Pops
What car/mode of transport do they use? Small cars, bus, metro
What accommodation do they live in? Parents’ homes, flats
What do they drink? Lemonade, Red Bull (similar energy drinks), Alchopops
What TV shows do they watch? American dramas and sitcoms e.g Ugly Betty, Friends, The OC, Gossip Girl and reality TV
What music do they like? Mainstream/chart music
What is their favourite meal? Pizza
What sport do they watch and what sport do they play, if any? Don’t watch, netball, tennis
Who is there partner or are they single? Single or in short-term relationship
Where do they go on holiday? America, France
What shop is their favourite? H&M, Primark
What is their favourite colour? Purple
What genre of film do they like? Comedies, Romantic Comedies
Do you think they go to more gigs at the Carling Academy or the Metro Radio Arena? Metro Radio Arena
Answers I got from several people are (+ to separate each person's answers);
What breakfast cereal do they eat? Coco Pops + Shreddies
What car/mode of transport do they use? Small cars + Cheap cars, mopeds, metros
What accommodation do they live in? Small houses, terraced + Apartments rented accommodation, houses
What do they drink? Smirnoff Ice + Lemonade, Cider, Boost
What TV shows do they watch? X factor, reality TV shows + That 70's show, The OC, American Dramas
What music do they like? Pop + Punk, Pop
What is their favourite meal? Spaghetti bolognese + Spaghetti bolognese
What sport do they watch and what sport do they play, if any? Play and watch tennis + They don’t watch or play, maybe tennis occasionally
Who is their partner or are they single? Single + They’re single, free spirits
Where do they go on holiday? Italy, Spain + Greece
What shop is their favourite? Topshop + H&M
What is their favourite colour? Green + Green
What genre of film do they like? Comedy + Romantic comedies and just comedies
Do you think they go to more gigs at the Carling Academy or the Metro Radio Arena? Metro Radio Arena + Metro Radio Arena
Although it should be expected, the way a lot of the answers match is quite odd. Hopefully this means my codes and conventions are widespread and recognised enough to have formed an accurate typical reader to most people. Most of the answers were very similar or had similar factors about them, and only an odd few were very different, like the favourite colour one, the holiday destinations, and the favourite meal. These answers were more sophisticated than I'd intended, but that's not a bad thing, in fact it's really good. Like for the favourite meal, I'd thought my reader would have preferred fast, easy food, like pizza, but my sample answers both suggested the sit down meal of spaghetti bolognese suggesting a much more traditional, conservative reader I think. The holiday destinations were less cosmopolitan than I'd aimed for, and more exotic, which I think is interesting and also a bit more cultural, reflecting well on my target readers.
What breakfast cereal do they eat? Coco Pops
What car/mode of transport do they use? Small cars, bus, metro
What accommodation do they live in? Parents’ homes, flats
What do they drink? Lemonade, Red Bull (similar energy drinks), Alchopops
What TV shows do they watch? American dramas and sitcoms e.g Ugly Betty, Friends, The OC, Gossip Girl and reality TV
What music do they like? Mainstream/chart music
What is their favourite meal? Pizza
What sport do they watch and what sport do they play, if any? Don’t watch, netball, tennis
Who is there partner or are they single? Single or in short-term relationship
Where do they go on holiday? America, France
What shop is their favourite? H&M, Primark
What is their favourite colour? Purple
What genre of film do they like? Comedies, Romantic Comedies
Do you think they go to more gigs at the Carling Academy or the Metro Radio Arena? Metro Radio Arena
Answers I got from several people are (+ to separate each person's answers);
What breakfast cereal do they eat? Coco Pops + Shreddies
What car/mode of transport do they use? Small cars + Cheap cars, mopeds, metros
What accommodation do they live in? Small houses, terraced + Apartments rented accommodation, houses
What do they drink? Smirnoff Ice + Lemonade, Cider, Boost
What TV shows do they watch? X factor, reality TV shows + That 70's show, The OC, American Dramas
What music do they like? Pop + Punk, Pop
What is their favourite meal? Spaghetti bolognese + Spaghetti bolognese
What sport do they watch and what sport do they play, if any? Play and watch tennis + They don’t watch or play, maybe tennis occasionally
Who is their partner or are they single? Single + They’re single, free spirits
Where do they go on holiday? Italy, Spain + Greece
What shop is their favourite? Topshop + H&M
What is their favourite colour? Green + Green
What genre of film do they like? Comedy + Romantic comedies and just comedies
Do you think they go to more gigs at the Carling Academy or the Metro Radio Arena? Metro Radio Arena + Metro Radio Arena
Although it should be expected, the way a lot of the answers match is quite odd. Hopefully this means my codes and conventions are widespread and recognised enough to have formed an accurate typical reader to most people. Most of the answers were very similar or had similar factors about them, and only an odd few were very different, like the favourite colour one, the holiday destinations, and the favourite meal. These answers were more sophisticated than I'd intended, but that's not a bad thing, in fact it's really good. Like for the favourite meal, I'd thought my reader would have preferred fast, easy food, like pizza, but my sample answers both suggested the sit down meal of spaghetti bolognese suggesting a much more traditional, conservative reader I think. The holiday destinations were less cosmopolitan than I'd aimed for, and more exotic, which I think is interesting and also a bit more cultural, reflecting well on my target readers.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Planning My Audience Feedback
On my research into how to gain audience feedback, I read something that suggested I download some media packs off popular magazine websites, so I downloaded those of Clash and Spin. This is probably something I should have done when I was deciding on my target audience, as they have reader profiles that are so specific, but I think I can use the information off these to inspire me for ways collect audience feedback. It also gives me an idea of what my audience should be looking for. Just something I noticed when reading them, going back to my genre idea, they are really focused on expressing the fact that their readers are individual and lead the crowd, so I'm very glad I chose to do a very mainstream magazine as I think it means my audience is wider. Also something unusal, both magazine have much larger proportion of men readers, so even though mine began as not gender specific, maybe it's a good thing it's it developed into a magazine aimed at females.
I have 3 methods to collect audience feedback, mainly to see how well I have encoded features aimed at my readers and to see how realistic people think it is, and they are;
- Quotes - I want to get some fairly detailed quotes off some hopefully unbias people about who they think it's aimed at and if it looks professional.
- Questions - I've got a list of seemingly obscure questions I gained from a media textbook, and I'd fill them in myself according to my preferred reading of my magazine, and ask a small smaple to do the same and see if their answers match at all with mine. Hopefully this idea will work, but it may be slightly too obscure.
- Magazine stand - I had the thought of asking my local Borders if I could just place cover on the music stands for an hour or so, and watch discretely to see if anyone picks it up or looks at it. I think this would be a real test of professionality, but I'm doubtful that I'll be able to carry out this experiment, but it may be worth asking.
I have 3 methods to collect audience feedback, mainly to see how well I have encoded features aimed at my readers and to see how realistic people think it is, and they are;
- Quotes - I want to get some fairly detailed quotes off some hopefully unbias people about who they think it's aimed at and if it looks professional.
- Questions - I've got a list of seemingly obscure questions I gained from a media textbook, and I'd fill them in myself according to my preferred reading of my magazine, and ask a small smaple to do the same and see if their answers match at all with mine. Hopefully this idea will work, but it may be slightly too obscure.
- Magazine stand - I had the thought of asking my local Borders if I could just place cover on the music stands for an hour or so, and watch discretely to see if anyone picks it up or looks at it. I think this would be a real test of professionality, but I'm doubtful that I'll be able to carry out this experiment, but it may be worth asking.
My Complete Product
This is everything put together so I'm now ready to start my evaluation and audience feedback.
Monday, 8 December 2008
My Final DPS
This is my final DPS, which I'm very pleased with because I think it looks really realistic.
It is basically exactly the same organisation of my developed draft, as everything went very according to plan including my photos. I've added small features like the page numbers and "Words by" part, just for that real professionality and to draw everything together.
I've made this background to look like a room and although I'm not totally thrilled with it, I think it gives an interesting appearance. The way it's quite grainy actually works in my advantage I think, as it looks less plain and unreal, and the shading of it just gives some variation to the background. I think it's subtle but I don't think it would be the same without it. I've also burned it in parts to create dull shadows of where my images are to try and make it look like they're part of the same photo.
For both my images, all I've really done is even out pigmentation, heightened brightness and contrast and added a drop and internal shadow. I also managed to remove the shadow from my sitting image, as there is on the original image on her back. I did this by just smudging and covering it with similar colours. I think the shadows on the headphone one work really well, similarly to the headphones image on my contents, so it's just like there's something good about that set of images. I was really pleased I managed to have the headphone wire leaking into the frame, because I think it's just one of those tiny quirky differences that looks really good.
For the font of the title I did use an image of P!nk's logo, but I've cut it out and coloured it to suit my house style. I think using the Gill Sans MT was the right decision, as it looks much more like an interview in a magazine. I've also used the drop cap 4 lines into it which is the typical amount looking at others.
My first draft is shown here and like my contents, it's incredibly similar to my final draft. I got some suggestions on how I could improve it, even just things to try, which included;
It is basically exactly the same organisation of my developed draft, as everything went very according to plan including my photos. I've added small features like the page numbers and "Words by" part, just for that real professionality and to draw everything together.
I've made this background to look like a room and although I'm not totally thrilled with it, I think it gives an interesting appearance. The way it's quite grainy actually works in my advantage I think, as it looks less plain and unreal, and the shading of it just gives some variation to the background. I think it's subtle but I don't think it would be the same without it. I've also burned it in parts to create dull shadows of where my images are to try and make it look like they're part of the same photo.
For both my images, all I've really done is even out pigmentation, heightened brightness and contrast and added a drop and internal shadow. I also managed to remove the shadow from my sitting image, as there is on the original image on her back. I did this by just smudging and covering it with similar colours. I think the shadows on the headphone one work really well, similarly to the headphones image on my contents, so it's just like there's something good about that set of images. I was really pleased I managed to have the headphone wire leaking into the frame, because I think it's just one of those tiny quirky differences that looks really good.
For the font of the title I did use an image of P!nk's logo, but I've cut it out and coloured it to suit my house style. I think using the Gill Sans MT was the right decision, as it looks much more like an interview in a magazine. I've also used the drop cap 4 lines into it which is the typical amount looking at others.
My first draft is shown here and like my contents, it's incredibly similar to my final draft. I got some suggestions on how I could improve it, even just things to try, which included;- Switching the left page number (on contents too) to make it a mirror image
- Put a quote from the article somewhere
- Have small hints of green - "Words by.." and the quotation marks
- A small corner title categorising what section of the magazine it was
I tried all these changes on my second draft, as seen here. I had no problem changing the page number as this is something I genuinely hadn't noticed until then, and I understood why. I tried putting a quote on, although it had to be in pink because I couldn't use white or black because of the placement, so I'm not sure if I'm keen on it. I added some green, I don't know if if makes the quote look a bit messy compared to the very fresh neat feel of the rest of the page. I then added a little phrase in the top left corner, "Cover Character", telling the reader this is a feature from my cover, which I think is something I'll stick with as it's subtle and what would be a handy navigation tool for the reader looking through the magazine.
On gaining more feedback from my teacher, she liked the changes, although when I said I felt the quote made it look a bit messy she suggested I alter the hue of my model's shoes to keep it all together if that's what I was unhappy with. She also suggested I make the quotation marks smaller, just so they don't cover any parts of the words and recomended I changed the feature in the top right corner. In the end I did decide to use "Exclusive" as it is that conventional emotive phrase used commonly. It gives the reader the sense that they're reading something no one else has, that it's special to them, which is why so many magazines, and not just in the music genre, use it. I think the combination of the style I've put it in helps with the connotations, as it's bold italic (or DemiOblique as Photoshop calls it) which I think gives it that fast, fresh, important look. I've also turned it to have it running verticalling down the page just to give it an edge, I also feel it fits better this way. So with these changes I created my final DPS article at the top of the post.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
My DPS Photoshoot
These are the best shots of what I planned, for my planned layout I took one photo with the white t-shirt and one with the black vest to heighten the contrast some more.
Sitting on the floor - I got a couple of really good shots of this pose, and I think because I had my model actually leaning on something it will look more realistic when it's cut out. However, the shadow may cause a slight problem, but hopefully I'd be able to sort that out on Photoshop. I think this stance worked out well and doesn't look too posed apart from the fact she's looking into the camera. I don't think it fully has that vulnerable feel, especially because of the heels, but I still think it's quite personal because she's quite curled up.
Birdseye view - I think this is definitely really unusual and it was really difficult to take from that angle. It looks pretty serious and ever so slightly menacing, even a bit creepy because of the way I'd have it on my DPS so it looks like she's clinging off the wall, a bit like a spider. But hopefully my readers wouldn't take that negative postion towards it if I do have to use it. I do have a couple of others but they aren't as good photography.
Sitting on the floor - I got a couple of really good shots of this pose, and I think because I had my model actually leaning on something it will look more realistic when it's cut out. However, the shadow may cause a slight problem, but hopefully I'd be able to sort that out on Photoshop. I think this stance worked out well and doesn't look too posed apart from the fact she's looking into the camera. I don't think it fully has that vulnerable feel, especially because of the heels, but I still think it's quite personal because she's quite curled up.
Headphones full length - I love this photo! I think it works perfectly for the music side of things and at the same time is fairly humourous. I think my model strangely looks like P!nk too. It looks as if it will be really easy to cut out, I might even just use the Magic Wand instead of cutting it out manually with the Polygonal Lasso. I like how the headphone wire trails off at the bottom too, I could have this leaking into the white frame I plan on having just as a quirky detail, and maybe hinting that it continues onto the next page, even though I'm not making that part.
Birdseye view - I think this is definitely really unusual and it was really difficult to take from that angle. It looks pretty serious and ever so slightly menacing, even a bit creepy because of the way I'd have it on my DPS so it looks like she's clinging off the wall, a bit like a spider. But hopefully my readers wouldn't take that negative postion towards it if I do have to use it. I do have a couple of others but they aren't as good photography.Now I'm ready to put everything together for my final DPS.
Saturday, 6 December 2008
DPS Developed Draft
This is made using Layout 2 of my drafts, as I think it is the most effective plus I've made my article fit perfectly into the arrangement. Although it can't be seen on this image, I want to have a white frame around the whole DPS, as I think draws everything together for that neat feel, and keeps the house style of a fresh, clean look. I'm using a greyish background for most of the DPS, as I didn't want to use just white or black, as half of my models clothes are white, half are black so she wouldn't have stood out at all, but I think this is a compromise. When creating the background, I may attempt to make it look like an off-white room, with my sitting image in the corner as I think this would emphasise it's vulnerability, but my creative skills may not stretch that far.
For the font of the title, I've decided to use the artist's logo, but I haven't yet found the real font for P!nk's logo, so I've just used this font which is that of her new album to represent what will be there. If I can't find the font to download, I'll just have to use an image of it and edit it to what I need.
For the blurb font, I've carried on Kravitz from the contents for the house style, and was considering using it for the questions, but I thought this may be too unconventional and I think it's vital that my interview font is just plain and readable to gain credibility.
For the interview font, I had planned on carrying through my Gill Sans MT Condensed from the contents features descriptions, but when I came to try this, it didn't look that readable and just didn't look right. Also a technical problem which would have limited my creative decisions is the fact that Gills Sans MT Condensed doesn't go bold very well so would have looked unprofessional. Instead I've chose to use Gills Sans MT which is basically the smae font except less condensed which therefore makes it very clear. Hopefully this won't damage the house style too much as it's a very similar font.
For the colours, I've mainly stuck to black and white, a convention forthe article, to give it that fake newspaper credibility. The title is the main focus of colour on the page, but as my images won't be stick men, some colour will come from them like my model's red shoes. I was considering tying in the minty green, which will probably be recomended as an improvement in my feedback anyway, but I thought I'd try it without it first.
DPS Image Planning
I have pretty much a solid idea on what I want my images to be like, unlike my cover and contents. After exploring layouts and writing my article, I've focused on promoting my preferred reading of the 2 separate areas of serious music stuff with a more social side, so I've already planned how to encode this into my 2 images. If I have one sitting looking fairly laid back or quite timid it represents the artist as themselves or just a normal person, depending on how my reader interprets it, and the other image can be carrying through my house style of musical props to try and encode my magazine is credible isn't just a flighty pop magazine. I've also had an idea for my back up image if my layout backfires. The stances are;
Sitting on the floor - This is similar to something I planned for my cover and I thoroughly stick with my decision not to use something like this on the cover as I think it's a much more intimate style and so definitely more suitable for the relevant interview, not for the cover. I think this would look casual and laid back, and hold empathy with my reader as it may be how they sit when they're chilling out or maybe even feeling vulnerable, so the level of connotation can vary greatly depending on the individual reader. I think it will contrast well to my more musical shot, as it's just so simplistic and won't draw too much attention away from the article, but will frame it accordingly. It taps into the artist revealing themselves in the interview, even though my interview isn't too personal, so it should encourage my reader to read on.
Headphones full length - This would be carrying on the house style perfectly, as it would be the headphones from the contents and matching the amp on the cover. I was maybe planning to have a crazy facial expression, like a yell, as it would be like a progression from the calm, simple look on the cover, to the enthusiastic smile in the contents, to the scream in the DPS. It again suggests to my reader that the artist is becoming more open, and it's an idea used on the Spin example of a cover, contents and DPS with Duffy, as she's blank faced on the cover, smiling widely in the contents, and going wild in the DPS. Using a full length shot would be a contrast to the intimate curled up image on the other side, as where that shows a personal side a full length shot with a musical prop would represent the star and her career, again showing the 2 sides and balance.
Birdseye view - This is my backup shot, and as I felt I needed an unusual element to my 1 image to keep the house style, I've decided on an interesting camera angle. Hopefully, this would present the 2 sides of my artist as it's personal as it's a full lying down shot, like signifying she's open to anything, although it's a pretty unmotivated pose, but then because of the camera angle it's also very obvious it's an artificial pose, showing that she's a professional artist at a photoshoot. I'm thinking I won't have to use this anyway, but it's good to be prepared.
Sitting on the floor - This is similar to something I planned for my cover and I thoroughly stick with my decision not to use something like this on the cover as I think it's a much more intimate style and so definitely more suitable for the relevant interview, not for the cover. I think this would look casual and laid back, and hold empathy with my reader as it may be how they sit when they're chilling out or maybe even feeling vulnerable, so the level of connotation can vary greatly depending on the individual reader. I think it will contrast well to my more musical shot, as it's just so simplistic and won't draw too much attention away from the article, but will frame it accordingly. It taps into the artist revealing themselves in the interview, even though my interview isn't too personal, so it should encourage my reader to read on.
Headphones full length - This would be carrying on the house style perfectly, as it would be the headphones from the contents and matching the amp on the cover. I was maybe planning to have a crazy facial expression, like a yell, as it would be like a progression from the calm, simple look on the cover, to the enthusiastic smile in the contents, to the scream in the DPS. It again suggests to my reader that the artist is becoming more open, and it's an idea used on the Spin example of a cover, contents and DPS with Duffy, as she's blank faced on the cover, smiling widely in the contents, and going wild in the DPS. Using a full length shot would be a contrast to the intimate curled up image on the other side, as where that shows a personal side a full length shot with a musical prop would represent the star and her career, again showing the 2 sides and balance.
Birdseye view - This is my backup shot, and as I felt I needed an unusual element to my 1 image to keep the house style, I've decided on an interesting camera angle. Hopefully, this would present the 2 sides of my artist as it's personal as it's a full lying down shot, like signifying she's open to anything, although it's a pretty unmotivated pose, but then because of the camera angle it's also very obvious it's an artificial pose, showing that she's a professional artist at a photoshoot. I'm thinking I won't have to use this anyway, but it's good to be prepared.These are all my definite options for each part so I'll take a range of shots for each, and pick out the best.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
DPS Layout Drafts
I've had some previous ideas already about how I'd like to layout my DPS, so it's just a matter of trying these out to see if they work. I know the basic features of my DPS are the block of the article, image/s and the title, which is conventionally the artist's name. I think I will have just the artist's name as it is much more simple and credible, especially because so much of my language is clichey and a bit cheesy. The title will also be in the artist's trademark font, as I didn't do this on the cover so I'll transfer it over to the DPS. My 3 main ideas are;
Layout 1 - This is inspired by the Kaiser Chiefs DPS layout, which when I analysed I thought was a subtle way of changing the convention of a 1-sided interview, by having the image on the top and writing across the bottom. This is similar but basically the opposite way round. So it is unconvential that it's not 1 sided, but it's also incredibly unconventional in the way it features 2 images. Although I only analysed that of bands, I have some of solo artists in my collection and there always seems to be 1 separate image, but I think it's a bit more quirky and unusual to have 2 images blended into 1, especially as it's the same person. It's a very common effect to use, although maybe not on music magazine DPS, but I still think it's clever and has a lot of different connotations. For instance, it's like she's in 2 places at once, maybe representing the balancing of her career and leisure, mirroring that balance in the article, or it could be representing 2 different characters, and it could be emphasised using 2 contrasting images. I'm pretty definite on what kind of images I'd like when it comes to image planning, as I'm trying to keep a house style running through them as well, i.e the musical props. I'm not sure I like the placing of the title in this one, and maybe it's not obvious enough and a bit too unusual, as I'm thinking it looks a bit awkward.
Layout 2 - This is fairly similar to Layout 1, but just generally rearranged. I had initially planned to have it swapped around, so that the sitting image would have been resting against the writing block, but Ms Furness suggested to have it resting against the side of the overall box, which I think works much better as then they're facing towards the article, maybe encoraging the reader to look at it. This also goes against the conventional 1 sided DPS, by having the article directly in the centre. I think this works to an advantage as it puts the main focus on the article, as it should be on a DPS, then the images are contrasting and on either side, and as images on a DPS give identity to the artist, having 1 on each side gives the reader either more control or 2 contrasting representations of her. I also think the placement of the title is much better here, in a more conventional placing (one of the top corners), so the whole layout wouldn' throw my reader off to much as there is still a very conventional element.
Layout 3 - I thought I'd try out the conventional layout of a DPS, just to see if it would be effective at all in my eyes. It is the very basic title at top, article on one page, image on the other layout which is the frame work for most of the ones I've analysed and looked at. I don't think it would be suitable for my magazine, as I'm trying to keep a running house style, and the layouts of both my cover and especially my contents have been unconventional in some way, so surely I should keep that element present in my DPS too? To make it slightly unconventional, I've represented the use of an unusual image, but this is done anyway in some DPS, as normally it's kept simple and basic on the cover as to not offend, but often they tend to be more wild and intriguing on the contents and DPS, like a progession of revealing. I think this can be my back-up if my more risky layouts don't fit together quite right depending on the images and P!nk logo, so I'll plan an image for this just in case.
Layout 1 - This is inspired by the Kaiser Chiefs DPS layout, which when I analysed I thought was a subtle way of changing the convention of a 1-sided interview, by having the image on the top and writing across the bottom. This is similar but basically the opposite way round. So it is unconvential that it's not 1 sided, but it's also incredibly unconventional in the way it features 2 images. Although I only analysed that of bands, I have some of solo artists in my collection and there always seems to be 1 separate image, but I think it's a bit more quirky and unusual to have 2 images blended into 1, especially as it's the same person. It's a very common effect to use, although maybe not on music magazine DPS, but I still think it's clever and has a lot of different connotations. For instance, it's like she's in 2 places at once, maybe representing the balancing of her career and leisure, mirroring that balance in the article, or it could be representing 2 different characters, and it could be emphasised using 2 contrasting images. I'm pretty definite on what kind of images I'd like when it comes to image planning, as I'm trying to keep a house style running through them as well, i.e the musical props. I'm not sure I like the placing of the title in this one, and maybe it's not obvious enough and a bit too unusual, as I'm thinking it looks a bit awkward.
Layout 2 - This is fairly similar to Layout 1, but just generally rearranged. I had initially planned to have it swapped around, so that the sitting image would have been resting against the writing block, but Ms Furness suggested to have it resting against the side of the overall box, which I think works much better as then they're facing towards the article, maybe encoraging the reader to look at it. This also goes against the conventional 1 sided DPS, by having the article directly in the centre. I think this works to an advantage as it puts the main focus on the article, as it should be on a DPS, then the images are contrasting and on either side, and as images on a DPS give identity to the artist, having 1 on each side gives the reader either more control or 2 contrasting representations of her. I also think the placement of the title is much better here, in a more conventional placing (one of the top corners), so the whole layout wouldn' throw my reader off to much as there is still a very conventional element.
Layout 3 - I thought I'd try out the conventional layout of a DPS, just to see if it would be effective at all in my eyes. It is the very basic title at top, article on one page, image on the other layout which is the frame work for most of the ones I've analysed and looked at. I don't think it would be suitable for my magazine, as I'm trying to keep a running house style, and the layouts of both my cover and especially my contents have been unconventional in some way, so surely I should keep that element present in my DPS too? To make it slightly unconventional, I've represented the use of an unusual image, but this is done anyway in some DPS, as normally it's kept simple and basic on the cover as to not offend, but often they tend to be more wild and intriguing on the contents and DPS, like a progession of revealing. I think this can be my back-up if my more risky layouts don't fit together quite right depending on the images and P!nk logo, so I'll plan an image for this just in case.I think I prefer Layout 2 at the minute, but if I do plan for that one, I know that if it doesn't seem to work I could use the same images and just rearrange it into Layout 1. Also Layout 3 is very safe and won't take too much preparing as a back up, I'll just plan a very unusual style image.
Monday, 1 December 2008
Final DPS Article
This is my DPS article, and I've mimiced the bold effects I'm going to have on different parts to make it conventional and clear;
As Bolt trudges up the endless flights of stairs to the top-most studio apartment, in the building illegibly scribbled down onto our schedule, clutching our takeout Starbucks macchiatos for dear life, it really doesn’t feel like we’re about to meet a pop rock legend. We finally reach the door, give gentle rap, and there appears P!nk looking surprisingly perky for 7am on a Monday morning.
She invites us into the humongous loft apartment, temporarily rented from a friend while she polishes up her new single here in central London, where we can hear the faint sound of The Killers in the background. Obviously the catalyst of her luminosity, she also has the recent success of “So What” to thank. A bulky career, spanning 8 years, means P!nk is now infamously known for her kickass infectious pop infused with that trademark honest humour, showing she has the guts to say what everyone else thinks. Her outfit today certainly doesn’t disappoint in that respect. Teamed with boyfriend jeans, her plain white tee emblazoned with decapitated Ugg boots says it all…
Nice tee.
Yeah, I hate those god damn things! Why would anyone pay £200 for a f***** teddy shaped like a boot!? I think it’s ironic they’re made from sheepskin when they’re such a sheeple trend too.
Sheeple?
You know, sheep people? Everyone wearing the same thing, it’s just lazy fashion, people who have no creativity or originality, it’s just not what fashion’s about. Sheeple should be ashamed of themselves.
So, are you pissed it took you this long for a No.1, especially against the sheeple in the business?
Haha, not at all. Some artists never get one in their career so I feel pretty lucky really. I accepted a long time ago that not everyone thinks the same way as I do and because I don’t try and play it safe with my songs, it’s inevitable that there’s a club of P!nk haters out there.
You’ve called your sixth album Funhouse. Really? Haven’t you had a pretty rough year with your split [from husband Carey Hart]?
Well originally I wanted to called it “Heartbreak is a Motherf*****” [grins cheekily], but it’s definitely not just a break-up album. My metaphor for the title is the way I see life and love. I see them as a carnival, where the clowns are meant to be happy, but they’re really scary, and the carnival itself is meant to be fun, but is sometimes kind of creepy. But still, we go and we force laughter and buy cotton candy and strap ourselves tight into rides. That’s like life and love to me, the way they’re supposed to be fun but can sometimes be super scary. And the funhouse mirrors, that distort you so you can barely recognise yourself, and you ask yourself “How did I get here?” and “How do I get out?” but then you feel like you want to do it again, which is the same way I often feel about love and life. But I do openly admit some of the songs on Funhouse are about him.
We see Carey’s in the video for “So What”…
That was great because a lot of people were accusing me of being hypocritical and slagging him off in that song even though our split was fairly friendly, but after everyone saw the video they just shut the f*** up. Even better he had never heard it before we shot the video, he trusts me like that.
Would you say you’ve moved on from piss-take “Stupid Girls” style songs?
This album is my most vulnerable to date, but there still are those “I don’t give a crap what you think” songs like “So What” and “Bad Influence”. I’m not going to abandon the style I’ve made my name with, as it’s true to me and I’m not going to make a U-turn to fit in with anything else, like some other people, mentioning no names. But I have expanded my emotional horizons on a lot of songs, as I’ve never been afraid to expose my soul as well as speak my mind.
P!nk’s turning emo [sarcastic shocked faces].
Not happening! All that “music stops me self-harming” shit is overrated anyway. I put it in the same category as Ugg boots, size zero and McDonalds.
What would that category be?
Bullshit.
As Bolt trudges up the endless flights of stairs to the top-most studio apartment, in the building illegibly scribbled down onto our schedule, clutching our takeout Starbucks macchiatos for dear life, it really doesn’t feel like we’re about to meet a pop rock legend. We finally reach the door, give gentle rap, and there appears P!nk looking surprisingly perky for 7am on a Monday morning.
She invites us into the humongous loft apartment, temporarily rented from a friend while she polishes up her new single here in central London, where we can hear the faint sound of The Killers in the background. Obviously the catalyst of her luminosity, she also has the recent success of “So What” to thank. A bulky career, spanning 8 years, means P!nk is now infamously known for her kickass infectious pop infused with that trademark honest humour, showing she has the guts to say what everyone else thinks. Her outfit today certainly doesn’t disappoint in that respect. Teamed with boyfriend jeans, her plain white tee emblazoned with decapitated Ugg boots says it all…
Nice tee.
Yeah, I hate those god damn things! Why would anyone pay £200 for a f***** teddy shaped like a boot!? I think it’s ironic they’re made from sheepskin when they’re such a sheeple trend too.
Sheeple?
You know, sheep people? Everyone wearing the same thing, it’s just lazy fashion, people who have no creativity or originality, it’s just not what fashion’s about. Sheeple should be ashamed of themselves.
So, are you pissed it took you this long for a No.1, especially against the sheeple in the business?
Haha, not at all. Some artists never get one in their career so I feel pretty lucky really. I accepted a long time ago that not everyone thinks the same way as I do and because I don’t try and play it safe with my songs, it’s inevitable that there’s a club of P!nk haters out there.
You’ve called your sixth album Funhouse. Really? Haven’t you had a pretty rough year with your split [from husband Carey Hart]?
Well originally I wanted to called it “Heartbreak is a Motherf*****” [grins cheekily], but it’s definitely not just a break-up album. My metaphor for the title is the way I see life and love. I see them as a carnival, where the clowns are meant to be happy, but they’re really scary, and the carnival itself is meant to be fun, but is sometimes kind of creepy. But still, we go and we force laughter and buy cotton candy and strap ourselves tight into rides. That’s like life and love to me, the way they’re supposed to be fun but can sometimes be super scary. And the funhouse mirrors, that distort you so you can barely recognise yourself, and you ask yourself “How did I get here?” and “How do I get out?” but then you feel like you want to do it again, which is the same way I often feel about love and life. But I do openly admit some of the songs on Funhouse are about him.
We see Carey’s in the video for “So What”…
That was great because a lot of people were accusing me of being hypocritical and slagging him off in that song even though our split was fairly friendly, but after everyone saw the video they just shut the f*** up. Even better he had never heard it before we shot the video, he trusts me like that.
Would you say you’ve moved on from piss-take “Stupid Girls” style songs?
This album is my most vulnerable to date, but there still are those “I don’t give a crap what you think” songs like “So What” and “Bad Influence”. I’m not going to abandon the style I’ve made my name with, as it’s true to me and I’m not going to make a U-turn to fit in with anything else, like some other people, mentioning no names. But I have expanded my emotional horizons on a lot of songs, as I’ve never been afraid to expose my soul as well as speak my mind.
P!nk’s turning emo [sarcastic shocked faces].
Not happening! All that “music stops me self-harming” shit is overrated anyway. I put it in the same category as Ugg boots, size zero and McDonalds.
What would that category be?
Bullshit.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Writing my DPS Article
Instead of beginning with layouts for my DPS, I've chosen to write the article first because it's the main element to this part of my magazine. I used my research into individual articles and my summary to write a conventional interview, and hopefully my style of writing is professional enough. However, writing my own was slightly different to those in my research, as I'd only analysed those of bands not any solo artists, so I just adapted conventions accordingly to suit my article.
Because I didn't know quite where to start, I used various sources for inspiration. I used the Kaiser Chiefs interview for quite a lot of my writing techniques and to get the balance between chatter and music info right. I wanted to keep my answers very realistic, so I used the biography on P!nk's website to capture the essence, as I think had I just imagined stuff up, it might of got a bit too far fetched and ruined any professionality.
I'd already decided on a Q&A style as it's better for many reasons, as I predicted and then proved by my questionnaire. But on re-reading some DPS using that format, I noticed not all the questions were actually questions. Some were just statements the artist responded to, so I'll do this to add humour and stop the over-questioning feel which may seem a bit juvenile.
I started with conventional scene setting, which gave me a good foundation to start my actual questions. I gave the location, set the mood, some background information about the artist and a fairly random chattery topic (hatred of Ugg boots) which lead me onto the questions smoothly. I dropped in some popular culture language, like Uggs and Starbucks, which hopefully settled the reader into the article as they're good signifiers of current hegemonic interests at the moment.
After lingering around this light topic, I moved onto some talk about her new album, to represent that musical information side. I included a philosophical metaphor about the name of her new album, which hopefully isn't too deep but I'm hoping it'll help with personal identity and teach some readers a value, and won't have the aberrant reading of showing P!nk to be really weird. Risky though.
I asked some more music questions, combined with personal information, then veered to the social chatter side again with a sarcastic comment. I want to give the impression the article is longer and carries on, so I'll finish here for my double page spread.
I think I've managed to continue my house style in the writing, that blunt humour as used on my cover and contents, and it's helped by the statments, as I begin with the statement "Nice tee." in reference to P!nk's bold t-shirt. Also in class today, we did an exercise about carrying on house style in the DPS, and as my work was used as an example, I learned that the humour was part of my house style. I think I'll naturally make sure the look of my DPS incorporates my house style, obviously with the colours and a slightly unconventional layout, as I've had for my cover and contents.
I'll post my final article in my next post.
Because I didn't know quite where to start, I used various sources for inspiration. I used the Kaiser Chiefs interview for quite a lot of my writing techniques and to get the balance between chatter and music info right. I wanted to keep my answers very realistic, so I used the biography on P!nk's website to capture the essence, as I think had I just imagined stuff up, it might of got a bit too far fetched and ruined any professionality.
I'd already decided on a Q&A style as it's better for many reasons, as I predicted and then proved by my questionnaire. But on re-reading some DPS using that format, I noticed not all the questions were actually questions. Some were just statements the artist responded to, so I'll do this to add humour and stop the over-questioning feel which may seem a bit juvenile.
I started with conventional scene setting, which gave me a good foundation to start my actual questions. I gave the location, set the mood, some background information about the artist and a fairly random chattery topic (hatred of Ugg boots) which lead me onto the questions smoothly. I dropped in some popular culture language, like Uggs and Starbucks, which hopefully settled the reader into the article as they're good signifiers of current hegemonic interests at the moment.
After lingering around this light topic, I moved onto some talk about her new album, to represent that musical information side. I included a philosophical metaphor about the name of her new album, which hopefully isn't too deep but I'm hoping it'll help with personal identity and teach some readers a value, and won't have the aberrant reading of showing P!nk to be really weird. Risky though.
I asked some more music questions, combined with personal information, then veered to the social chatter side again with a sarcastic comment. I want to give the impression the article is longer and carries on, so I'll finish here for my double page spread.
I think I've managed to continue my house style in the writing, that blunt humour as used on my cover and contents, and it's helped by the statments, as I begin with the statement "Nice tee." in reference to P!nk's bold t-shirt. Also in class today, we did an exercise about carrying on house style in the DPS, and as my work was used as an example, I learned that the humour was part of my house style. I think I'll naturally make sure the look of my DPS incorporates my house style, obviously with the colours and a slightly unconventional layout, as I've had for my cover and contents.
I'll post my final article in my next post.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
My Final Contents
This my final contents, with a few small changes, but I'm fairly pleased with the result.
Again this is my final contents, but the first draft of my contents is this, which isn't too different too my final really. The feedback from Ms Furness included positives of excellent use of images and a fantastic layout, and the suggested changes were;
I didn't edit my images as much as I edited that on the cover, but I have used Photoshop to increase the contrast and brightness of both. For the contents, I felt I could use more of an effect than on the cover, so I went for that really bright white light effect, which I'm hoping will connote a celebrity element and connect to thoughts of "limelight" and paparazzi, as I feel these are concepts heavily associated with music artists, especially that of mainstream pop. I also feel the effect makes the images look quite luminous, which my readers may decode as a comfortable warmth and familiarity. Similar to what I did on the cover, I added a drop shadow and outer glow, however I think it's works better on P!nk's image than Will Young's.
Really my layout is exactly as it was in the draft, apart from the amount of features in a column, but that's just generally because I made them smaller to have more and to make sure they were fairly spaced apart, as my draft was very cluttered.
I think I stuck to what I said for the font also, using Kravitz Extra Thermal for the title, and the original Kravitz for everything else as it wasn't too thin on this final version in the sizes I used.
Again this is my final contents, but the first draft of my contents is this, which isn't too different too my final really. The feedback from Ms Furness included positives of excellent use of images and a fantastic layout, and the suggested changes were;- Making sure my text on the two pages doesn't cross the centre line
- Adding some green in from the cover
- Changing the way P!nk looks a little out of proportion
To commit to these, I altered my layout slightly and made it tighter and neater to make a centre line, which I'd noticed I'd probably need to do after I finished making this. Although I agreed that P!nk was slightly out of proportion, I couldn't figure out why, because it was an enlarged image, but I'd clicked on the keep the proportions tool as I transformed it on Photoshop. I noticed though, that it only seemed out of proportion on school screens, not on my own at home, but I think the culprit may be the outer glow I added, as it makes it look like the image spreads over a bigger area. However it didn't have this effect on my Will Young image...strange? I think I've now sorted this now, after some twitches on Photoshop, and hopefully it looks better.
Also as I was gaining improvements for my double page spread, I noticed my page numbers weren't a mirror image on here also so I came back to change it quite simply by swapping the BOLT.COM and 9 around to make it more realistic.
When incorporating green into the contents, I tried it in a couple of places and it really looked out of place on the title. Although the places it's used are very minor, it acts as a mini accent colour, and although I'm still not sure of it, I've decided to leave it like that on recommendation. Therefore the final result is that at the top of this post.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
My Contents Photoshoot
I took this photoshoot the same time as my cover photoshoot, so the same conditions apply to this as those I talked about in "My Cover Photoshoot" post.
Headphones - I quite like the set of pictures I took for these, and I especially like the expression of this photo, as it's exactly what I pictured for the optimistic look. Also the shadow is effective behind it, so when I cut it out I could include the shadow and maybe it would look more authentic. Hopefully, this create some intrigue as to what she's doing as I planned, whether she's listening to music or making it. Also I'm hoping this looks pretty genuine, but if I decide not I do have some other similar shots although I'm not as keen on the stances.
Punching - I don't think this is aggressive enough to have that full shock impact, as my model was fairly feeble when I asked her punch towards the camera. Her excuse was that she wasn't an aggressive person, uhuh. It would be interesting had her facial expression been more "grrr" and the non-punching hand a bit more rigid.
Jacket over shoulders - This is indeed very catalogue, and I don't think it's live enough to feature in th conents. I think the photo itself seems is quite a good pose, except from the fact that my model's facial expression looks like he wants to kill someone. I think this might have been an OK back up otherwise, but I think my model interpreted the sultry look wrong, unfortunately in all the shots of this pose.
Flying (combined with jacket) - I think this is the right kind of optimistic, with the looking up and the flying, also the jacket gives it a more sophisticated edge. It does have that dancey feel like I thought it would which is very positive and happy, and it looks just generally hopeful with the arm almost reaching for something - something that could attract many connotations, so can apply to the unusual images convention.
For my P!nk photos;
I used the simplistic look but interesting pose I'd planned in my developed draft, to keep it monochrome, so I used the basic black vest like in some of my potential cover shots.
Headphones - I quite like the set of pictures I took for these, and I especially like the expression of this photo, as it's exactly what I pictured for the optimistic look. Also the shadow is effective behind it, so when I cut it out I could include the shadow and maybe it would look more authentic. Hopefully, this create some intrigue as to what she's doing as I planned, whether she's listening to music or making it. Also I'm hoping this looks pretty genuine, but if I decide not I do have some other similar shots although I'm not as keen on the stances.
Punching - I don't think this is aggressive enough to have that full shock impact, as my model was fairly feeble when I asked her punch towards the camera. Her excuse was that she wasn't an aggressive person, uhuh. It would be interesting had her facial expression been more "grrr" and the non-punching hand a bit more rigid.
For my Will Young photos;
I kept the monochrome look going, jus a white shirt and tie with jeans, which I think classes it up a bit because of the contrast between P!nks clothing and Will Young's.
Jacket over shoulders - This is indeed very catalogue, and I don't think it's live enough to feature in th conents. I think the photo itself seems is quite a good pose, except from the fact that my model's facial expression looks like he wants to kill someone. I think this might have been an OK back up otherwise, but I think my model interpreted the sultry look wrong, unfortunately in all the shots of this pose. 
Flying (combined with jacket) - I think this is the right kind of optimistic, with the looking up and the flying, also the jacket gives it a more sophisticated edge. It does have that dancey feel like I thought it would which is very positive and happy, and it looks just generally hopeful with the arm almost reaching for something - something that could attract many connotations, so can apply to the unusual images convention. I think I'll definitely go for the headphone shot for P!nk, possibly not that exact shot if I decide to reconsider, and for Will Young I'll most likely use the flying style one, but flipped to fit in with my layout.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Contents Developed Draft
This is my developed draft using Layout 2 from my drafts, which I decided on after I made them. I think it will be fairly easy to stick to this layout if I get my images right, as I can manipulate my features around them. I've just used the main features for the purpose of my draft, without most of the smaller descriptions, but some samples just to show the font off, as I will mention. Also the arrnagment of the colours may change, in that my images won't be stick peopel so will have a colour to them so the text on top may not stay the same.
The font I've chosen to use as my main feature font is another modern one off dafont.com called Kravitz, which I've downloaded in Kravitz Thermal/Extra Thermal too as I haven't decided which one I'm going to use yet as the original is fairly thin, but at the minute I'm using Extra Thermal for the heading and the original for everything else. It's very rounded and sans serif, it's also quite circular, unlike my cover font which was very linear. It's going to be my staple feature font, like on the Clash and Q contents, as it's still plain but has that quirky style to it. I think it will appeal to my readers, because of it's roundness and the way it all seems to fit together, helping with the matching vibe I've got going on, as I went less for the thrown-together loook. For my smaller descriptions font, I've used Gills Sans MT Condensed as it's a contrast to the larger more spread out font, so looks effective and again promotes variation and mix, also it's very readable so I'll be able to carry it on in my DPS.
For the colours, I'm using the the convention of 3 colours, black, white and the same bright pink as the cover to keep a theme/house style running through, but this may change each issue. I think I'll also keep my images monochrome, to keep in with the simplisitic modern style and my readers may notice this, then hopefully take the to the reading that I know what I'm doing with this magazine because everything matches well.
I've also chosen to add small quirky details to my contents, just to draw it together more and make it tighter with no random gaps. As well as the quote I decided to add, I've added a download code feature, just an extra feature, where if that code is typed into iTunes it comes up with an automatic playlist to download featuring all the songs from that issue. I've also added a little cover credits box in the corner, which I think just adds to the professionality.
The font I've chosen to use as my main feature font is another modern one off dafont.com called Kravitz, which I've downloaded in Kravitz Thermal/Extra Thermal too as I haven't decided which one I'm going to use yet as the original is fairly thin, but at the minute I'm using Extra Thermal for the heading and the original for everything else. It's very rounded and sans serif, it's also quite circular, unlike my cover font which was very linear. It's going to be my staple feature font, like on the Clash and Q contents, as it's still plain but has that quirky style to it. I think it will appeal to my readers, because of it's roundness and the way it all seems to fit together, helping with the matching vibe I've got going on, as I went less for the thrown-together loook. For my smaller descriptions font, I've used Gills Sans MT Condensed as it's a contrast to the larger more spread out font, so looks effective and again promotes variation and mix, also it's very readable so I'll be able to carry it on in my DPS.
For the colours, I'm using the the convention of 3 colours, black, white and the same bright pink as the cover to keep a theme/house style running through, but this may change each issue. I think I'll also keep my images monochrome, to keep in with the simplisitic modern style and my readers may notice this, then hopefully take the to the reading that I know what I'm doing with this magazine because everything matches well.
I've also chosen to add small quirky details to my contents, just to draw it together more and make it tighter with no random gaps. As well as the quote I decided to add, I've added a download code feature, just an extra feature, where if that code is typed into iTunes it comes up with an automatic playlist to download featuring all the songs from that issue. I've also added a little cover credits box in the corner, which I think just adds to the professionality.
Monday, 24 November 2008
Contents Image Planning
As I'm now having a double page spread contents, this leaves me with more freedom for my images, as I can have them bigger and more extravagant to suit the size of the contents.
Headphones - I think this would be like carrying on that credible music feel from my cover (the amp) and would make a point of intrigue. I think those big style headphones are a great arbitrary sign, as there's so many positive connotations it they could have and they're isn't really any anchorage to them especially as I'm not having a caption, so they could mean a variety of obvious things, is she listening, singing?. They're obviously more effective than ear phones and have that old school vibe, also it's what my audience will recognise as being headphones the artist uses in the studio, giving them that added credibility. They also may help with curiosity, as there's often that wondering what people are listening to when you see people listening to music as it can say a lot about them, like my interview will say a lot about P!nk. I'd like to have her looking optimistic as well, to connect positivity and music, hoping my readers will decode it this way, and looking up as well for that enlightened "everything's good" look.
Jacket over shoulder - This is definitely very sophisticated, basically a recgonised code for it, although ever so catalogue. I think it would be simple, and just unoffensive, but therefore may not live up to the unusal stances used for a contents. It would give an upper class look to it, a contrast to my P!nk image, so this could be effective as it would be on the opposite page, therefore promoting variety and widespread suitability.
Learning from the conventions I found in my research, the images have to be of the most popular celebrities, there has to be a range in the amount and the stances have to be unusual. I'll be having two images, as planned on my layout, but I think when doing my photoshoot I might take an extra different shot in case this layout backfires and I resort to a safer option with 3 images. For the most popular celebrities, I'll use my cover star Pink, and from the other features I've decided on I think I'll pick Will Young. This creates balance, which is especially important in my no specific gender magazine, however judging from my cover I would say it's definitely leaning more towards the female audience, as I personally cannot imagine any straight man carrying that, but maybe it's just because females are generally more into mainstream "pop" music, something I considered when choosing my target audience. But back to the point...
For my stances, I think it's very important that they're unusual or have shock value, so I'll look into stances I can use. I think because I've chosen to have full page images that have quite a powerful impact anyway, so the stances don't have to be to intricate, even a simple extravagant gesture would work and will probably fit better into my simple, fresh vibe. Also I think I'll use a medium shot for both, because again this is one of the most popular with my target reader, and there will be more limitations of my pose, so I don't get too carried away. Also it won't overload the page with intrigue, so will help towards that intended cool simplistic reading.
For P!nk;
Headphones - I think this would be like carrying on that credible music feel from my cover (the amp) and would make a point of intrigue. I think those big style headphones are a great arbitrary sign, as there's so many positive connotations it they could have and they're isn't really any anchorage to them especially as I'm not having a caption, so they could mean a variety of obvious things, is she listening, singing?. They're obviously more effective than ear phones and have that old school vibe, also it's what my audience will recognise as being headphones the artist uses in the studio, giving them that added credibility. They also may help with curiosity, as there's often that wondering what people are listening to when you see people listening to music as it can say a lot about them, like my interview will say a lot about P!nk. I'd like to have her looking optimistic as well, to connect positivity and music, hoping my readers will decode it this way, and looking up as well for that enlightened "everything's good" look.Punching 
- This has that shock impact, similarly to the Duffy Spin contents, and especially as I am using full page shots it would be incredibly effective. However, it may evoke very negative connotations, although I don't know that being smashed in the face with a guitar is any more positive, yet that works. I think this is very in-keeping with that attitude look, but is maybe a bit cheesy for it? The parody of the guitar smashing was fairly original, this reminds me of those "cheeky" 90s pull out posters and that is definitely something I don't want to attract. But with my combination of the look I used for my cover, it might just work.
- This has that shock impact, similarly to the Duffy Spin contents, and especially as I am using full page shots it would be incredibly effective. However, it may evoke very negative connotations, although I don't know that being smashed in the face with a guitar is any more positive, yet that works. I think this is very in-keeping with that attitude look, but is maybe a bit cheesy for it? The parody of the guitar smashing was fairly original, this reminds me of those "cheeky" 90s pull out posters and that is definitely something I don't want to attract. But with my combination of the look I used for my cover, it might just work.I like both of these quite a bit, but I'm leaning more towards the headphones as they are much more sophisticated prop, rather than the punching action. I'll take shots of both to see what works.
For Will Young;
Jacket over shoulder - This is definitely very sophisticated, basically a recgonised code for it, although ever so catalogue. I think it would be simple, and just unoffensive, but therefore may not live up to the unusal stances used for a contents. It would give an upper class look to it, a contrast to my P!nk image, so this could be effective as it would be on the opposite page, therefore promoting variety and widespread suitability.Flying - 
This is inspired by Will Young's current album/single cover style. I think if I got it right, that floaty deep style, it would work pretty well as an unusual image. Also with his arms stretching right across my page, it could act as separators, rather than the text just being stuck in the middle. It would also match the optimism of my P!nk one if the headphones work out, as I'd have him looking up a beyond. This could go wrong and be so cheesy you can actually smell it, in which the jacket over the shoulder would be a safe alternative.
This is inspired by Will Young's current album/single cover style. I think if I got it right, that floaty deep style, it would work pretty well as an unusual image. Also with his arms stretching right across my page, it could act as separators, rather than the text just being stuck in the middle. It would also match the optimism of my P!nk one if the headphones work out, as I'd have him looking up a beyond. This could go wrong and be so cheesy you can actually smell it, in which the jacket over the shoulder would be a safe alternative.Both of these are OK, but something I may consider at my photoshoot is combing them together, one arm flying, one arm holding jacket. I think that could have that happy, dancey old movie style effect, which is very optimistic and classic, an interesting contrast to what will be my modern colours and font.
With both my images looking up, it will create a difference to the cover, and not look as desparate I think, so it should work well. I'll try out all these when I do my photoshoot, as there really isn't many and if I'm feeling creative on the day, I can come up with some more stances.
For my extra photoshoot just in case things go wrong, I'll use the Sugababes in some typical girl band sophisticated poses, as they're just a back-up to be honest.
Saturday, 22 November 2008
Contents Listing
I found some quite detailed conventions about the language used in the contents of a music magazine when I was doing my research, so I think that will be enough to help me make my own coverlines. I will look toward my collections for inspiration when coming up with them, but the main things I have to remember to be conventional is to have generally easily denoted feature names and descriptions (although I may twist this occasionally to add more ambiguity), to incorporate my magazine name in some features, to use the occasional clever cliche and to have features that are sources of diversion, surveillance and personal identity.
A very conventional thing for contents to do is to have 3 separate sections, which I worked on by creating my magazine's individual feature. I think I will just go with the common "Features" and "Regulars", because at least then I'm not completely distancing myself from a conventional contents as my layout might throw people off slightly. My 3rd section is celebrity columns, which not only helps towards this convention, but it is a major part of showing personal identity features in my magazine, where my readers can learn behaviour and values as they essentially are guides to parts of life and because of the celebrity's opinions my readers may accept their values. I don't want the title of this section to be celebrity columns, as I think it's a bit long winded and not right. I thought about columns, but it's a bit vague and although my readers will probably get it, it doesn't seem suitable. I was thinking of something like "Star Columns" but that's all a bit cheesy, but then I finally thought "C-Columns" as an abbreviation of what they are. Although I don't think it's clear what the C stands for, I think it's something that would catch on and would sort of be one of those things people don't question, but accept, plus it wouldn't be that hard to get if a reader thought about it. It also has that futuristic techy style with the single letter and hyphen.
As for the general style of my language, I'll try to keep the randomness of the cover going, but I think it need to become slightly more humorous in the contents as I really want my magazine to be very light-hearted, barely serious at all, as I believe music is such a leisurely thing. I like the style of Q's humour, like "Toploader traced. Nation breathes easy"as I think it's subtly clever and funny, so I want to try and have some bluntness and sarcasm in my own descriptions. Also, you get that laid-back feeling off Q like the guys making it have literally just bunged anything in there, the spontaneous effect so I'd like to capture that too. I also don't want to be afraid to be a bit out there, like I've done on my cover with "the original up yours to squeaky clean pop", as I feel this pop magazine needs to have some beliefs and be opinionated with a strong attitude, so this may lead me to use really blunt, get to the point language. I'll discuss my language separated up into the 3 sections they will be, as things need to be slightly different for each.
For the Features section, I decided just to have the artist's names as the feature names, as a lot of the ones I analysed did, as I felt it was the best way to put across what the feature was, as it is a solid signifier, and although levels of connotation will differ depending on the reader's opinion, it puts across simply who's in the magazine. Basically I'm just featuring most of the artists on my cover, although saved some of them for my Regulars section. For the descriptions, I tried to have a bit of fun and keep them short and blunt. I took inspiration from those I'd analysed and decided to use some rhetorical questions, some cliches and Incorporated in song names. I also used some shock language, sarcasm and recognised codes to try and impart the right vibe to my reader that my magazine's laid back, but still knows what it's doing, hopefully reflective of the reader's everyday lifestyle and therefore creating a comfortable feeling for them. Here are some examples;
A very conventional thing for contents to do is to have 3 separate sections, which I worked on by creating my magazine's individual feature. I think I will just go with the common "Features" and "Regulars", because at least then I'm not completely distancing myself from a conventional contents as my layout might throw people off slightly. My 3rd section is celebrity columns, which not only helps towards this convention, but it is a major part of showing personal identity features in my magazine, where my readers can learn behaviour and values as they essentially are guides to parts of life and because of the celebrity's opinions my readers may accept their values. I don't want the title of this section to be celebrity columns, as I think it's a bit long winded and not right. I thought about columns, but it's a bit vague and although my readers will probably get it, it doesn't seem suitable. I was thinking of something like "Star Columns" but that's all a bit cheesy, but then I finally thought "C-Columns" as an abbreviation of what they are. Although I don't think it's clear what the C stands for, I think it's something that would catch on and would sort of be one of those things people don't question, but accept, plus it wouldn't be that hard to get if a reader thought about it. It also has that futuristic techy style with the single letter and hyphen.
As for the general style of my language, I'll try to keep the randomness of the cover going, but I think it need to become slightly more humorous in the contents as I really want my magazine to be very light-hearted, barely serious at all, as I believe music is such a leisurely thing. I like the style of Q's humour, like "Toploader traced. Nation breathes easy"as I think it's subtly clever and funny, so I want to try and have some bluntness and sarcasm in my own descriptions. Also, you get that laid-back feeling off Q like the guys making it have literally just bunged anything in there, the spontaneous effect so I'd like to capture that too. I also don't want to be afraid to be a bit out there, like I've done on my cover with "the original up yours to squeaky clean pop", as I feel this pop magazine needs to have some beliefs and be opinionated with a strong attitude, so this may lead me to use really blunt, get to the point language. I'll discuss my language separated up into the 3 sections they will be, as things need to be slightly different for each.
For the Features section, I decided just to have the artist's names as the feature names, as a lot of the ones I analysed did, as I felt it was the best way to put across what the feature was, as it is a solid signifier, and although levels of connotation will differ depending on the reader's opinion, it puts across simply who's in the magazine. Basically I'm just featuring most of the artists on my cover, although saved some of them for my Regulars section. For the descriptions, I tried to have a bit of fun and keep them short and blunt. I took inspiration from those I'd analysed and decided to use some rhetorical questions, some cliches and Incorporated in song names. I also used some shock language, sarcasm and recognised codes to try and impart the right vibe to my reader that my magazine's laid back, but still knows what it's doing, hopefully reflective of the reader's everyday lifestyle and therefore creating a comfortable feeling for them. Here are some examples;
- P!NK - Does she still have those stupid girls on her list? - Stupid girls was a rather opinionated P!NK song, so I felt it suitable to features, and "list" can differ in it's signified meanings, therefore a rather abstract sign, creating intrigue, but my intended reading would be in her "bad books".
- THE TING TINGS - Shut up and let them sing- Again a twist on their song title, and quite a bold statement, which adds to the attitude, suggestive of what the features about.
- THE NU RNB - Start quakin' in your boots Rihanna - A typical cliche combined with a popular artist, connotes that new feel therefore attracting readers.
- GABRIELLA CLIMI - Her silver spoon roots and living in a Volkswagen - Contrast is always an intriguing feature, so as well as this there's the Volkswagen, an infamous festival style car, which hopefully my readers will understand and not develop an aberrant reader of any other Volkswagen car.
- GRILLED CHEESE? - We kick the s**t outta cheesy pop - Blunt, shock language and very opinionated, and basically what my magazines about.
My Regulars section was more difficult, as the contents I looked at varied a lot on what sort of things they featured, some were short, some long, but main features I noticed were some sort of chart, music news (which I plan to extend with a gossip column) and reviews. I featured all these, and managed to feature "The Bolt Interview" as many magazines do. Other features I chose were "TINTERNET", expanding into the Internet side of things to keep the contemporary feel and an equivalent to Clash's "Clash Click" and "Our House", which quite a gossip magazine style feature, but I think it fits in well with pop culture and mirrors the MTV Cribs documentary.
Last was my C-Columns part, and I'd pretty much planned this when I thought about it previously. Instead of a StyleReport: CelebrityName style title, I went for just the celebrity names to emphasise what the section was about, and I thought it was more credible instead of juvenile. For the descriptions it was just more blunt language (The twitterings of a hyper homosexual) and cliches (Paints the town peach), which were hopefully quite creative and humourous, but I've got a feeling they're verging on cringey humour, but hopefully this could have a positive effect because I feel the rest of my contents is quite sophisticated, so it could act as contrast.
So that's basically the language part of my contents, oh, I also decided to mimic Spin's quote idea, with a quote from my cover star P!nk, which was suggested to me by a friend - "Without music, there'd be no party"- and I think this would be empathetic with the opinions of my mainstream readers, as instead of that serious "music is my life and I couldn't live without it" attitude, it's more of a fun-loving positive comment and a good philosophy.
Next I'll decide on my images to feature on my double page spread of a contents, and I might even be able to make them full page, but still have 2, as this way it would be conforming to my audience's opinion of 2 images, but still have that really effective impact like the Spin Duffy contents. Yay!
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Contents Layout Drafts
Next in my production is the contents page so I'll start with layout drafts, as I plan on creating this through the same steps as my cover, starting with layouts, then text and image, my developed draft and final contents.
Layout 1 - I tried to take inspiration from the Blender contents I liked and analysed, as it had the contemporary feel I am again aiming for to bring pop music content up to date and give it some credibility. This is a very simple layout which I think wouldn't stretch any conventions of a contents, and would be fairly run of the mill. The amount of images would hopefully appeal to my targets readers, however the block of writing may put them off, but if it does, are they really the kind of people I want to be reading my magazine? Anyway, I planning on having my list of content very spaced out to keep with that minimalistic modern feel, so it would also look very neat and hopefully have the same effect as the Clash contents had on me. Something I've decided on, is that I want to leave my images fairly unmotivated apart from the fact they are of celebrities, but I don't want to have captions on them. I want this because I want to develop that convention of the images being unusual, and I this would be even more effective because it gives an abstract element to the images, like the Blender contents which I believe worked very well. This is something I would impart on whatever layout I chose, so I may as well mention it now. But this contents is fairly safe, so maybe I need more of a shock impact to get that full sense of intrigue and contemporary-ness.
Layout 2 - This is my most unconventional layout which was really liked by those of my target audience whom I asked. It is a double page spread, which isn't very common and therefore pretty unconventional, but I have seen one. The one I saw was for a special edition and was a full stage shot looking out into the audience. Of course this was mega effective and amazing, but I considered why the same size and spread of content couldn't be used in just a normal issue of a music magazine. After I couldn't really think of a major negative effect it would have, I thought it could provoke that interest from my audience, and generally put my contents on a grander scale. It does look slightly too spaced out of this draft, but hopefully with more artful poses from my models would use the space up. Also it would leave room for any small quirky features I might include, like I was considering including cover credits as I have seen on some contents or a download code. I really like and I am starting to love the idea of doing something so different to get a shock reaction from my readers.
Layout 3 - This is again inspired by that Blender contents, but generally mixes things up a bit more than the first layout. This spreads both the text and image randomly over the page, whereas normally parts are kept together mostly on a contents. So I think by using this one, it's less safe than the first layout, but not as shocking as the second. I do like how my individual feature of columns would be separated as it really emphasises it to the reader the different part to my magazine. It fits in with how many images my readers would like to see, but again wouldn't have captions. I do think this one has quite a fresh vibe because of the text and image mixed up, so therefore develops the conventional contents, but still has a traditional feel to it.
Unlike my cover, I didn't have a clear idea of what kind of contents I wanted, layout wise, so I drew tiny sketches of my considerations and asked a range of my classmates which ones they found more appealing, also asking them to give reasons. My range included 5 one page contents, 1 double page spread contents, and 1 two separate pages contents. Taking into account my target readers' opinions as well as my own thoughts about the conventions I learned from my research, I narrowed my selection down to 3 to make into bigger drafts. However, when I was doing my research I found that layouts for contents vary greatly for each magazine (or at least the ones I looked into), therefore I do have a certain amount of control of the layout of my own so maybe it would be better if it doesn't look like one already created, but still has that professional look. I'll label my layouts with the 3 sections I'm having (I'll just use Features, Regulars and Columns for now, but Columns may change when I come to decide on this) and I'll label my images as Act 1, 2 and 3 as I'm going with my audience research when they said they preferred 2 or 3 images.
Layout 1 - I tried to take inspiration from the Blender contents I liked and analysed, as it had the contemporary feel I am again aiming for to bring pop music content up to date and give it some credibility. This is a very simple layout which I think wouldn't stretch any conventions of a contents, and would be fairly run of the mill. The amount of images would hopefully appeal to my targets readers, however the block of writing may put them off, but if it does, are they really the kind of people I want to be reading my magazine? Anyway, I planning on having my list of content very spaced out to keep with that minimalistic modern feel, so it would also look very neat and hopefully have the same effect as the Clash contents had on me. Something I've decided on, is that I want to leave my images fairly unmotivated apart from the fact they are of celebrities, but I don't want to have captions on them. I want this because I want to develop that convention of the images being unusual, and I this would be even more effective because it gives an abstract element to the images, like the Blender contents which I believe worked very well. This is something I would impart on whatever layout I chose, so I may as well mention it now. But this contents is fairly safe, so maybe I need more of a shock impact to get that full sense of intrigue and contemporary-ness. 
Layout 2 - This is my most unconventional layout which was really liked by those of my target audience whom I asked. It is a double page spread, which isn't very common and therefore pretty unconventional, but I have seen one. The one I saw was for a special edition and was a full stage shot looking out into the audience. Of course this was mega effective and amazing, but I considered why the same size and spread of content couldn't be used in just a normal issue of a music magazine. After I couldn't really think of a major negative effect it would have, I thought it could provoke that interest from my audience, and generally put my contents on a grander scale. It does look slightly too spaced out of this draft, but hopefully with more artful poses from my models would use the space up. Also it would leave room for any small quirky features I might include, like I was considering including cover credits as I have seen on some contents or a download code. I really like and I am starting to love the idea of doing something so different to get a shock reaction from my readers.
Layout 3 - This is again inspired by that Blender contents, but generally mixes things up a bit more than the first layout. This spreads both the text and image randomly over the page, whereas normally parts are kept together mostly on a contents. So I think by using this one, it's less safe than the first layout, but not as shocking as the second. I do like how my individual feature of columns would be separated as it really emphasises it to the reader the different part to my magazine. It fits in with how many images my readers would like to see, but again wouldn't have captions. I do think this one has quite a fresh vibe because of the text and image mixed up, so therefore develops the conventional contents, but still has a traditional feel to it.Out of these 3 layout drafts, I'd really like to give layout 2 a try as I think it could work really well and be very individual if it worked together with everything else. I think if I receive negative feedback bad enough from it, I could revert to layout 3 if it was necessary, so will intend on creating 2, but have 3 as my back up. Before making my developed draft, similarly to my cover I will make some decisions on my language and images first.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
My Final Cover
This is my final cover with everything put together. My masthead, image, coverlines and layout all seem to fit in together.
I have edited my image quite a lot, through the magic of Photoshop, and it really helped extend all my creative decisions past just the photo itself. As well as allowing me to really lighten and increase the contrast to make it fit in with the cool tone of the cover, it allowed me to just even out the pigmentation everywhere. Because my camera quality was fairly low (3.2 MP), the resolution of my image is quite limited, especially as I've increased the size, I thought it was important that everything was spot on. I lightened my models skin quite dramatically because of the fairly dark natural light in my photo, and also added virtual make up, like her blusher and extra mascara to make it more noticeable on the cover. I darkened the leggings, to increase contrast manually, and also burned the belt to make it's print more defined. I believe Photoshop has also allowed me to make it more realistic through lighting effects I added, and makes it seem like I had a real white backdrop, as I added an internal shadow as well as a duplicate shadow behind with an outer glow. I also put a subtle spotlight on my image to added to that showbiz effect. Overall these changes are quite subtle, but I think make that slight professional difference.
Like I predicted I have made some changes from my planned layout, due to the way my image was taken as I described previously. Because of where my masthead is now placed, it does make it slightly more unconventional but I think it still looks like a credible layout. I have also rearranged my cover lines around the image but not too dramatically. I've also added a small barcode to my cover, which I designed exactly like a real magazine barcode using a barcode font off dafont.com.
For my cover lines I used the bold italic version of Siple for the main parts of each coverline (he artist's name) all in capitals, and for the rest I used light Siple.
Initially I made a first draft of my cover, as shown, which wasn't as colourful or large as this one. After receiving feedback from Ms Furness, I had positive feedback of my good use of pink and bold in my coverlines and my good photo, but I had suggested changes of; - Perhaps try tying the masthead colour in with the rest of your cover
- Make the main coverline bigger so it stands out more
- Try making the image slightly bigger so some of the coverlines bleed across it
I wasn't too keen on making my masthead tying into the rest of my cover, as I was initially aiming for that non-colour changing masthead to impart identity, but I experimented with incorporating the minty colour into my coverlines and the result grew on me. I also wasn't sure about making my image bigger because I didn't want my cover lines to bleed over, as I had saw some covers that specifically fit them around. However I understood why it need to be made bigger, as there was some space at the top especially that her head should have filled. I did make these alterations however, and the result was that at the top of this post.
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