Progression between my preliminary and my final magazine

What i've learnt about the technology used in my magazines production

How i attracted and adressed my audience

This prezi shows how i have made my magazine user friends aka how i made it attractive to my audience, it also states my audience type.

Who would be my publishing house and why?

When deciding what publishing house i should use i decided i had to do a bit of research, publishing houses tend to only publish once magazine per genre/activity, there also seems to be a equal distribution of magazines are independently publish like Vibe and other like NME that use large corporate publishing houses like IPC. I think for maximum distribution power i would look at using a large publishing house, so i will now look at the difference and potential competition from the two big dogs of magazine publishing in the uk, Bauer and IPC.

Competition
IPC only publishes two music magazines and one is the almighty NME and the other is a less well known magazine called Uncut. I dont see NME as competition as its a huge magazine that varies across all genres of music, also due to bit being such a large magazine the article writers varies alot so there isn't alot of continuity ( articles running across multiple issues) This type of article will be present in my magazine giving it the upper hand.However Uncut covers the same genre as me, this could be an issue as a publisher is less likely a magazine that covers the same genre as a magazine that they are already publishing. However Uncut seems to look at the older rock bands/artists.

                                                   



Bauer publishes two big music magazines, Mojo and KERRANG. Both of these look at the rock genre and leave no space for a magazine like mine, there names are just to big and powerful. Also with these two very successful magazine i would say there would be no need for the publisher to pick up another.

So from this research i have decided to go with IPC media.

How does my magazine represent a particular social group

Rock has always been seen as a closed of genre, the fans are really into their artist and usually form there social groups around it, due to this i want to make my magazine that will open the genre be keep some aspects that only the true rockers will understand. As for the artists i will try to keep the front cover images "family friendly  for the stances i want to vary this, depending on the artist, some artist see there followers like as cult with themselves being the leader, and some try to put them at the same level as the fans for these i will use eye level shots with the artist usually showing facial expression, and for the artists that like to see there fans as a cult i will use a low angle shot to make them seem larger and more of an authoritative figure . Also there the likely to be very little or no facial expression as the artist will want to keep their appearance up.
The tone of my articles will all be laid back  this is the USP of my magazine and i intend to make all the articles laid back and written from the writers personal perspective, this will give a more immersive  and engaging magazine.

How does my magazine challenge real media products

I would say my magazine is typical and does follow the codes and conventions of a real magazine, between making it and my preliminary task i had researched and look through plenty of magazines  i then took inspiration from these and made my magazine, it has typical conventions like a large masthead in one bold color ( depending on background) it has a large main image on the front cover, several sell lines and the required information like barcode, issue number and price. However it may visually look like a typical music magazine but the articles are not conventional  I want my articles to be written in 1st person, with all the writers emotions and personal opinions, this i think will make the readers get even more immersed in the magazine as they will subconsciously compare there opinions to that of the writers, i hope that will make the fan base be more active and participate with online discussions on the magazines website. My double page spreads also contains a pull quote , this is a very common thing to see in professional magazines there used help a reader that is flicking through , the quote used is usually as hook to pull them into the article, i also experimented with the lay out, the two most common, one being a full page of text and one page with an image, the other was the bottom half of the page text the top images. My contents page is set out in columns with images that dont follow these coulombs just like real magazines, however i have used what could be called a cartoon, i used a silhouette this is quite rare to see in magazines however it still is present occasionally.
So i have picked between the typical conventions to make a magazine that will be interesting and i believe i have picked the correct aspects to change.

Log

Today i worked on cutting the background out of my background, once ive done that ill add them into the polaroid template that is on my double page spread. Ive also seperated my images into seperate folders depending on what page the image will be featured on.

Feedback

Did do a Skype call with tom wasnt sure how i could post the audio file so here is a transcript:

Me: so man what do you think i could do to improve the front page any positive or negative points? 

Tom: well you obviously need the images but i do like the idea of a fish eye, i think it would really go with the model you picked and the... well genre that you've picked. Ummm well im not sure if its my screen but your background looks a bit grey rather than black, im just saying as i think you wanted black. I love the erm text at the top great use of words to get the "Muse" bit in, little things like that realy stand out to me the black space well i dont think that will be a problem at all once.

Me: yer i was thinking that about the background didn't know if it was just me ether how about the contents? 

Tom: hmm have a look at the color code for it, right lets have a look. Ummmmm..... i really think that the text could co with being a little smaller, not the once on the pictures but the others, as i think professional seem to be smaller and have alot more so add some more man , apart from that just tighten it up a bit especially the second page the gap between the columns just looks to large.

Me: how about double pages

Tom: That rip effect is pretty awesome man love it, your missing the pictures but.... remember add the title to your second double page spread apart from that i like how you used lots of columns rather than just 2 on a whole page. 

Comparison of existing and mine

All magazines need a name that will grab you eye, the font, colour and size can be very important. This can be seen in NME where the font is block and usually quite big, the colours used are black white red, this way when the masthead              is on the FrontPage no matter what the background colour is it will stand out.  Due to this and the genre that my magazine will be focusing on I picked a quite unique font that will always be shown in white font. As for names there is two main types of names for magazines,  acronyms or abbreviations  like NME ( new musical express ) and Q (Q (( cue)) the music) and catchy names like Kerrang!, VIBE.  I decided to mix them both, I made Freat, it’s a mix of fret (part of a guitar) and threat one of the connotations of some rock or metal stars. This way its relevant to the genre and catchy.

Front page components, most if not all magazines have a general layout, being masthead, main image, main sell line, multiple support sell lines, information (date,issue number, barcode). Ive decided to put the information on the external  back page, this gives the main image a lot more space and lets the possibly buyers get a good look rather than seeing some boring text, I have a very large main image that will go on the front cover. Ive decided to have two main sell lines being “some say im crazy” and “A-Z of gigs part one free today]” these have been picked as they would work as a large hook to pull readers in, readers love free give always and a work like crazy will always pull you in to see why there given bigger fonts than the support sell lines.

Contents page layout and content.

All music magazines that I have seen have some sort of separation in their contents, eg : releases  or news, ive taken this into account have come up with the sub heading of News, Reviews, competitions. To stop the contents page being to boring ive added the occasional picture and what you could call pulled story, this is one that is taken out of its original place given a picture and made it stand out with a white box around the black text, also from what ive seen of magazines there is usually at least one image that isn’t a photograph meaning that’s its ever a drawing or computer generated , so I added a silhouette, this combined with the story title should help pull a possible reader in that is flicking through.  Comparing my magazine to a professional I see one key difference, mine is written from a bias angle, this is possible the USP of my magazine, it may make my target audience niche but that will mean I will have a more devoted audience that is more likely to buy a subscription rather than picking up the occasional copy.

Double page spread, through looking at many magazines I have seen how most of them have a whole page of text in 2-4 columns then a full page image, however I think this isn’t very space effective or visually appealing, so I decided to go for text over both pages with 1 long or multiple smaller images, this way the article ( written in 1^st person so has writers emotions) can refer to the images letting the reader look up every few lines or if the writer made a reference to the main image.  Ive decided against using pull quotes as I think sometimes these look tacky depending on the context or the quote used.

Draft Phillip