Main Task First Draft

this is the first draft of my main task, it includes the front cover, contents page and double page spread

Deciding My Colours

This is a preview of the type of colour scheme I will be using for my magazine. It is a dark colour scheme upholding with the rock/metal genre and is similar but not the same as the colour scheme of my style model.

Deciding My Font

The font below is the font I have decided to use for magazine, because it is similar to my style model. Also because it is clear and easy to read and very simple.

I have chosen not to use the font below because although it has similarities to the font of my style model it is not a suitable font given my target audience which is based around rock and metal. another reason I chose not to use this is that it isn't very clear and could be difficult for some people to use.

Deciding My Audience

Audience Sketches:

Name: Michael Williamson

Age: 17

Occupation: student

Hobbies: Skateboarding

Interests – general: Watching TV, Art, Cars

Interests - specific:

Music: Billy talent, Slipknot, Three days grace

Film: Horror

TV: Kerrang, Top gear

Free time: Playing guitar

Name: Charlotte Smith

Age: 19

Occupation: student

Hobbies: Listening to music

Interests – general: Music

Interests - specific:

            Music: Rise against, Foo Fighters, Bon jovi

            Film: Comedy

TV: The big bang theory, How I met your mother

            Free time: Reading

Location shots - main task

These are location shots I took for my main task, the locations include the echo arena and the cavern club.

Plan of shot locations for main task

Tomorrow I will be taking location shots in liverpool, which will be used as a basis for my final main task shots. The pictures below are examples of what I want my actors to do when I take my final shots.

Online magazine - Monkey

Monkey is an magazine published by Dennis, which is exclusively online and on mobile platforms. It contains video and audio content in both editorial and advertising. Each 48-page issue features: a Cover girl shoot, cars, sport, humour, entertainment, gadgets, and clothes. The magazine is aimed at 16 to 30 year olds, with a current readership of 271,667.

Bauer Media

Bauer Media has more than 80 media brands which cover many different genres and are aimed at many different audiences, these range from music magazines such as Kerrang and Mojo to radio stations like Magic and Kiss, they also own Heat, 4Music and Grazia among many others.

It started out as a small printing house, now The Bauer Publishing Group has grown into a worldwide publishing and media company. The Bauer Publishing Group comprises 282 magazines worldwide in 15 countries, as well as TV and radio stations. Bauer started its business the UK with the launch of Bella magazine in 1987 and as H Bauer Publishing became Britain's third largest publisher. Bauer further expanded in the UK with the purchase of Emap Consumer Media and Emap Radio in 2008 to become the UK's biggest publishing group.

Deciding the Institution for main task.

The institution I have chosen to publish my magazine is IPC Media, because they only have one music magazine (NME) so there is a gap in the market for a magazine similar in style and genre to Kerrang magazine (owned by Bauer media)  .

Another reason I have chosen IPC is that NME is a highly successful music magazine which stretches across a range of media, and is read by around 1.1 million people every week, this means there is a good chance of my music magazine being successful as well.

Although there would be a gap in the market for a Kerrang-type magazine at the National magazine company the reason I didn't choose to use the National magazine company was because, that company doesn't have a successful music magazine of any genre currently on the market. 

Research for choosing a magazine institution

IPC Media - has over 60 media brands, and they come in multiple media forms ranging from magazines to online. It reaches 26 million UK adults, nearly two thirds of women and over 40% of men.

EMAP - specialises in business-to-business magazines, of which it has 20. In its history it has had other magazines which have since ceased to be published, especially a fair number of gaming magazines they produced which stopped being published in the mid-90s.

National magazine company (now Hearst Magazines UK) - publishes 19 magazines in the UK, none of which are music magazines and it also has several websites, some of these are connected with a print magazine but the rest are stand-alone websites.

Health and Safety - Photo permissions form

This is the consent form for the people I am going to take photos of, this is to make sure that I have the permission of their parents and this form allows me to take photos of them once the form has been filled in.

Main task - Magazine research

 These are a range of current music magazines I have looked at in order to find a suitable style model for my music magazine. they cover a variety of different genres and all use different conventions.

The magazine I have decided to use as my main influence is kerrang, the target audience for kerrang is 60% male, 40% female and mostly has a readership of white british D-C class citizens who are 15-24 year olds, the precise percentage is 69.5%. The magazine’s psychographic is defined as ‘people who aspire to be respected among other people and people who wish to have a high paid job.’

 I have chosen kerrang because I am part of kerrang's target audience therefore I will know which things to include, such as genres of music and type of clothing worn by artists/bands. It will also make it easier to arrange the conventions of the magazine because I am familiar with the arrangements of kerrang magazine.

Preliminary task photos

I took around 30 photos for my preliminary task, some I have discarded because they didn't meet the criteria for the preliminary task, i have selected two photos to use for my coursework.

The two above photos are photos I discarded because they didn't use the rule of thirds and the angles were not interesting enough

Preliminary task

This is my finished preliminary task, there are several improvements i could make:

• There is too much space left unused on the right side, this could be solved by making the text more prominent to take up this wasted space.
• The editing of the photo needs improving, there are rough edges which needed to be cut out

Style Models for Pre-lim task

Examples of school magazine front covers

Initial Audience Feedback

Preparation For Preliminary Task

Firstly I took some photos based loosely around school for a school magazine. the photos were supposed to be medium close-up. after reviewing the photos I watched a video on the rule of thirds to improve the composition of my photos.

Deciding My Brief

Brief 

Print:

 preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in a medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of a layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.

main task:

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

all images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate, minimum of four images per candidate.


I chose this brief because of the available resources (e.g. adobe photoshop) and there is high quality coursework from previous candidates available to look at for inspiration and ideas.