Fiona Drake AS Media

The idea was for my music magazine to look as professional as possible, and i wanted it to look like i could imagine seeing it on a newsstand. After looking at my finished preliminary task i decided that it was a good base to build upon, as I could see many areas that I could improve on, so this gave me ideas of things I could do differently in my final piece. This was the main reason I found my preliminary task useful, because it sparked my imagination, and gave me something to refer back to fro each aspect of my magazine, so I could see how it didn’t look professional and do the opposite I did for the prelim so that the final piece would look better.

There are many roles within the magazine industry, and in my magazine I played all of them! Roles typically seen in magazines that I did are...

They way I tackled each role for the production of my magazine was...

 Prelim and final piece comparison

What have I learnt?

Overall I found doing all the roles a positive experience. It was overwhelming, but I felt it gave me a good grip on what I wanted, and allowed me to make the magazine as close to the magazine I had pictured in my head. Working with myself was useful for me because I could do everything in a way that I knew would work when it was all put together. I learnt through this, that for magazine production to work, (in a group the way it would be done in a professional situation) the team need to be really close knit and work together to strive to achieve something that is as close to the Art directors vision as possible, as they are the ones who know best what the audience want, and how to please them. Another important thing I learnt the value of was doing audience surveys before production, as this gave a great insight into what the people you are targeting your magazine at want to see. In a way, this makes it much less risky, as before making it, you know how to make them like it! When designing the magazine, I realised how important the mise en scene of the pages are. Really little things like the cut of the clothing work, or the coverall colour tone of the final image is the way you want it. If it’s not, it might not apply to your target audience and could connote something that they don’t feel represents them and isn’t part of their ideology. This could discourage your target audience from purchasing the magazine, which would leave you with very few people buying the magazine. In terms of technology, I learnt that it is important to find an editing program that suits you and the way you work. Editing also needs to be accurate, and an example of this is placement of the masthead. I felt that my cover didn’t look put together properly, and just looked like writing over a picture, until I moved the masthead up a tiny bit, and all of a sudden the whole cover benefited from it. Also the power of cropping the photos take was something else i learnt. Having the image at the perfect size is so important because it can attract the audience to the magazine cover. Also cropping the image from when photos are used within the magazine means that you can customise how much space you have for the article. This allows for the desired amount to be written about the artist without the page looking blank and empty, as this would make it seem unprofessional. I learnt so much about the world of magazine production from this, and realised how much technical and artistic work, planning and thought is put into the glossy covers we see.

In order to make my magazine look professional, it was vital that I used the right editing software. However, first I needed to use technology to ensure I had the components for my magazine. To begin with, I used a Lumix G6 to take my photos with. I used this camera to make sure that the picture were good quality and focused properly. This is important because using bad quality images is not something that is seen in magazine unless done deliberately, or if it’s a paparazzi picture that has been used in a gossip magazine. NRS states that more gossip magazine are bought by people who are C2DE than ABC1, and as my target audience are ABC1, it would go against what they are attracted to use blurring or paparazzi style photos. Also, as my target audience like a clean, professional, minimalistic look, it was vital that my images were well taken. Through this I’ve learnt that image quality connotes different things to different audiences, and in some cases is completely necessary and is fine to be used.

Technology I used throughout making and editing
 

Once the images were taken, I needed to edit them. Initially, I wanted them to appear polished and completely perfect, but as I looked over my target audience I realised that they were lovers of modern and minimalistic, however were loyal to tradition and safety. For this reason I decided to make my images appear clean and not too airbrushed so that they would be representative of the model and her music, rather than the model and her looks. To show this, I didn’t use any airbrush features, and the only way I edited the model was by brightening her eyes in the image used for the double page spread.

When editing my images, I found that online editing websites such as PicMonkey and Pixlr only have filters that are very warm toned and strong. They didn’t look very crisp and sophisticated, and I didn’t think my target audience would like them at all. This left me in a difficult situation because now I didn’t know where to find filters that would be suitable. Because this wasn’t what I thought would appeal to my target audience, I exported the images to my phone and edited them on an app called VSCOcam, which allowed me to choose more subtle filters, and then alter the strength of them. After that I upped the saturation because it made the colours more vibrant, but it also made the picture more yellow toned. This wasn’t what I was aiming for because I wanted the images to not look warm toned, as colder tones make images look sharper and cleaner. To fix this I lowered the temperature of the images which made them have a much more ‘blue’ tone to them. I did this to all of the images so that they all have a similar appearance and looked like they correlated to the feature, as they were all of the same artist and should show continuity so they don’t look out of place and all fit together. In order to maintain the high quality of the pictures I exported them out of VSCOcam at the highest resolution possible. This worked really well, which surprised me because I thought that using an app would make it less professional, but when looking at the pictures you can’t actually tell because the quality has not diminished.

After this I needed to add the writing. I used PicMonkey for this. First, I downloaded the fonts that I had chosen onto my laptop via DaFont. I found this website really useful as it allowed you to enter what you would type in the font into the website so you can see a preview of what it would look like. I downloaded 3 fonts, RedVelvet, Chapaza and Chapaza Italic. Downloading these was quick and easy. I used these to write on the images, and then altered the colours so that they appealed to my target audience. I took inspiration of where to change font colour and where to change font form covers of Vogue, as they change fonts and colours seamlessly.

Then I realised that it was difficult to add a barcode and be able to position it where I wanted on the cover, so I saved the image and then put it on PowerPoint so that I could quickly add the barcode in the correct place. Then I saved the slide as a JPEG and the cover, double page spread and contents page were finished. Overall, the battle between Pixlr and PicMonkey was easy for me – PicMonkey was the clear winner. I checked them both out to see what I felt was easiest to use, had the most choice of editing techniques and edited everything to a very high standard. PicMonkey ticked all the boxes, so therefore it is what I used for the main bulk of my editing. 

As my magazine is aimed at a niche audience but has a high potential to gain quite a lot of secondary readers, I think it is hard to decide what type of publisher would publish my magazine. As it is designed for a niche audience but is a genre that is of interest for many people it is quite difficult to place, as it could eventually have a lot of readers, but this would be gradual and not immediate. For this reason I think it has more chance of being picked up by an independent publisher, and then experiencing growth at a later date. This might provoke a move to be published by a large media group.

 

I would preferably choose a publisher who publishes music magazines already, and that are doing well. For this reason, I think that Bauer Media or TimeIncUK would be good publishers to publish my magazine, as they already publish Q and NME. These magazines, however, are already big selling magazines, and looking at their NRS results you can see that they have a massive, steady circulation. My magazine would originally not have a very big circulation, and this is because the genre could be seen as quite obscure and unclear. My main focus in my magazine is on classical crossover music (artists like clean bandit), and this isn’t a massive market, meaning the amount of reader may be quite low. However, even though it is a small market, it is a rapidly growing market, and people are showing more and more interest in music which is influenced by classical music. Even though the up and coming bands are playing small venues, they all say how incredibly loyal their fans are, due to them not only listening to the music, but taking a real interest as they recognise the people are just like them – people who learnt a ‘boring’ musical instrument and now are doing something cool with it. This is a USP of my genre. There is a gap in the market for this genre, because as it is a crossover it’s never been seen before. Clean Bandit have bought classical crossover to the masses and this has been inspirational to other musicians to experiment and have fun with instruments that have been seen as frumpy and boring to the public for years.
 

VISUAL

Surveys showed that my target audience were interested in a more minimalistic design scheme. I think that I encompassed this well in my magazine. The pages of my magazine are simplistic due to a few things. The amount of fonts I used was 3. I downloaded fonts from dafont, in order to make sure that they complimented each other and were what my audience would like. I used a bold, strong capital font for my masthead called ‘Red Velvet’ I chose this as I though my target audience would like it because they like structure and focus, so the stature that this font had was suitable. I also, magazines that are seen as sophisticated, such as Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Tatler and GQ all use strong capital fonts that aren’t too intricate. Therefore I decided to mimic this, as that style of font is a convention for upper priced, classy, intellectual magazines. The next font I used was called ‘Chapaza’ and was more san-serif that the first font. I used this not only to show contrast in the fonts, but because my target audience are also quirky and unique, and have an interest in the pop and electronic cross over into classical music, so I though the secondary font should be more flowing and less structured in comparison the Red Velvet font, showing a more relaxed, fun loving side. The third font I used was Chapaza in italic. This was to create variation to the other fonts used, but to enabled familiarity with the audience due to its similarity to the non italic Chapaza font used.  

In terms of colours, I kept the whole 3 pages looking clean and vibrant, without looking warm. I wanted the audience’s love of minimalism to be shown in the colourings too. Minimalism is usually shown as white and very pale colours when seen in interior design, so I decided to use this an influence. My images are shot in natural light because I decided that using lights would make the images over exposed, and looking too perfect. Because of this I also kept the editing of the images to a minimum, and only placed a low level filter and upped the saturation whilst lowering the temperature. This made the images of the model not seem like typical, flawless magazine images that you may see in fashion magazines, and more like the images seen of musicians on music magazine covers who are not made to look as perfect. I think that this reinforces that the magazine is not a fashion style cover, and still has a rough and realistic edge that the audience appreciate, and that makes it suitable to the music magazine conventions. Font colour is also important. I mainly used black and white, as monochrome is traditionally very sophisticated and classy, so appeals to my audience. This also links to the name of my magazine. Black and white are opposite tones at each end of the spectrum of ‘GREYSCALE’. After I had produced the magazine, I had some people saying that due to the classical crossover genre, they thought that black and white were good colours to use as they represented piano keys! However, not all writing is in black and white, as some parts are in a dusky, pastel pink. This is used as I wanted a way to link the background image to the writing placed above it. The models shirt has flowers on of the same colour, so I thought that my replicating that colour in some of the fonts, it would be seen as a colour splash, due to the model wearing mainly black, grey, and a little bit of white. This again represents the structural, sophisticated nature of the magazine through the use of black and white which are serious, down to business colours. By using the pink, it gives the magazine that splash of uniqueness, modern-ness and fun, which are also traits of my target audience’s personalities.

My magazine is for a type of person who has an interest in a style of music, rather than aimed at a specific gender. This means that gaze of the magazine will be men and women. I wanted to make sure that the photos I look for the magazine were because they looked good, rather than because they were made to make a certain gender want to buy the magazine. This mean creating images that were desexualised so that they were universally seen for the model and her musical work rather than being seen for her body as an object. I think that this is important as it is a music magazine not a fashion magazine, and the main interest should be her music rather then he body. Gaze suggests that men look at women, and women look at women, and as my model was female it was important that I made the images look good but not to an extent where her body was desired more than her music. To do this I made the pictures not at all provocative or promiscuous, for example the cover image is only head and shoulders, and no cleavage or legs are shown. In the double page spread image, it is desexualised by the models pose. She is seen crouching down in a closed position with her hand and hair over her mouth, and looking at the camera. This maintains an air of innocence, meaning the image is not overly sexualised.

WRITTEN

I used sophisticated language to make the written article on the double page appeal to my audience. This is because my target audience are ABC1 and highly educated, so need text that is suited to their education level. However, they’re reading this magazine for fun, and because they are interested in classical crossover music, so it needs to be light hearted too. My survey shows that my audience are fun loving even though they are busy and have intellectual jobs, and they love to go out and have a good time. I thought it was important to show both sides of them in the article so that they have balance as they are reading this for fun. I did this by using sophisticated humour in places. This fits the ideology of the target audience, as they don’t want to be restrained to one type of personality, and want to experience both.

Conventions of magazines are somewhat gradual as they get more and more refined through layers being targeted towards certain groups. For example, conventions from magazine to magazine will be the same (to have a masthead, etc) but conventions of music magazines will be more specific, and conventions of a rock magazine would be even more niche.

House Style

Having a house style is one of the most important parts of designing a successful magazine. Having everything in the same order for every issue is an example of a house style, as it is custom to the magazine and will always be continuous through every issue. Other features of having a house style are logos, positioning, masthead style, some colour themes, and image styling. In order for a house style to be successful it must be appealing to the target audience, and show that through altering certain things within the style of that magazine to make them pleasing to the audience that the magazine is trying to attract or maintain. For example, Kerrang! uses its house style effectively throughout its issues. When looking at lots of Kerrang! issues together, you notice that similar colours are always used. Black, white and red always feature on the cover of this magazine, and these colours connote darkness and particularly rebelliousness and danger, which are traits the publisher wants the reader to be interested in or to ‘aspire’ to. Also the masthead shows a fair amount of continuity throughout issues as even though it might change colour it remains the same size and in the same position. This aspect of having a house style is primarily so readers know what they are looking for on the newsstand, and are able to identify with a magazine cover.

My image for my front cover was shot with natural light in order to maintain a realistic, down to earth feel, as through research I found that even though my audience cared about presentation, they preferred looks that were more naturalistic and less over exposed and fake. For this reason I decided to keep editing of the picture minimal and only added a clean coloured filter, upped the saturation whilst lowering the temperature. This along with the monochrome colour scheme of the fonts (bar one, which was a dusky, pastel pink, which was used as a bridge between the image and the headlines on the image as it accompanied the colour of the flowers on the models shirt) should be an effective house style for my magazine as it looks sophisticated and put together properly as it uses only 3 fonts, and also makes it look minimalistic (something my survey results said was preferred)so should attract people who care about clean, sophisticated, yet intricate design. When my magazine cover is placed next to Kerrang! you can see how different they really are. It shows how much of a big part the magazine cover plays in attracting different people, as my magazine cover doesn’t have the same conventions as Kerrang!, meaning readers of Kerrang! would be unlikely to pick up a copy, and vice-versa. When creating my magazine it made me realise how much of a big part researching your target audience is. If I hadn’t done a survey, I might not have known that people who were interested in a classical x pop genre wouldn’t mind not having a musical instrument on the front cover, or that they preferred things to look stylish yet classic. Without this information I might have made the magazine too obviously this genre by putting obvious references to classical instruments and using bright colours, when the people I’m aiming the magazine at actually prefer something more refined and clean.   

Overall, I haven’t broken boundaries with my magazine design, and have kept to the 4 F’s of magazine design. I felt that deviating from a theory that has been in practise for so long with so much success would be risky and could jeopardise the outcome of my magazine. Not following this widely respected theory requires a lot of bravery! It leads to an unusual looking magazine that can have negative reviews. Even though David Carson pushed the boat out during his time as art designer at RayGun and made wonderful magazine covers that didn’t always stay loyal to the 4 F’s, he did make covers that weren’t universally appreciated and weren’t completely practical or logical. I decided not only to play it safe and follow the theory because the structure would suit my target audience better, but also because modern publishers are reluctant to make magazine covers that are too out of the ordinary, and are very unlikely to invest in a magazine that has no structure of loyalty to theories of magazine design.

To conclude, I think that the way I have constructed my magazine uses conventions in a traditional, safe way. The desire of my target audience to have a style that is a hybrid of safe traditional and modern minimalistic is new and could be perceived as a way to develop genre and the conventions of other genres that use devices I have used. I think that development of conventions is healthy, as magazine design is a visual art, and art and design is always modernising and moving forward with fashion as it evolves to show new trends and styles. Merging styles together simply means that not only is it moving forward with pop culture, but staying true to its roots by following theories and using things that show a traditional side to the magazine, making it trust worthy. Most importantly, this is what my target audience are interested in, and it is suited to them, with is a starting point for sales of the magazine and making money through advertising which is ultimately the aim of a successful magazine.