As part of my AS, my task was to create a music magazine using certain technologies for an audience that I was able to choose myself. To start off, I looked at many existing music magazines such as Word Up and XXL to get inspired and find ideas that I could interpret in my own way when doing my music magazine.
My music magazine has many features that is linked to and are similar to other existing music magazines. Looking through music magazines I realised that the colours that have been used carry on throughout the whole magazine. For my music magazine I have also carried my selected colours red, black and grey throughout the front cover, contents and double page spread. My magazine front cover has features such as plugs, selling lines, buttons and teasers which make it look like any other ordinary existing magazine front cover. The structure of it is that I have the picture in the middle with cover stories around it. The masthead is written in a big font so that it is big enough to catch reader’s eyes when they see it in the magazines section at a shop. My magazine also has a barcode, date, issue and price on it which is really important on the front cover and in my opinion it is what makes my front cover look like a real existing magazine. I use emotive language such as ‘exclusive’ which is also a factor that other magazines have.
On my contents page I have many features such as cover stories, competitions and regulars. These have page numbers on them and are something which every magazine has so that it is easier for the reader to find the right page. I have got an Editor-In-Chief Letter section on my contents page. Many magazines have this on the contents page however it is not on every magazine. I was excited to try this out and wanted to be original so I left a section on my contents page for that. I have a small image of my front cover on my contents page because when I did some research on Editor-In-Chief Letters; I found that many of them had that. My contents also have a big font at the top because I wanted to carry that out throughout all my pages, and again I have written the masthead and date so that there is no confusion with the readers. On my double page spread, I have features such as pull quotes; stand first, an image and most importantly; the interview. The features that I have used challenge forms and conventions of real, existing music magazines, and most importantly, something that all existing magazines do is to Photoshop there images and that is something that I have done throughout my front cover, contents and also double page spread.
After looking at existing magazines and doing a survey, I decided that I wanted to base my genre on hip hop music. I was excited about doing this because I know a lot about this music genre as it is the type of music that I am into and listen to myself. The questionnaire that I did before starting to do my magazine helped my figure out the age group to base it on. Many people that said they were into music magazines were in the age group of 16-21 and they were of all genders so therefore I came to the decision of making my hip hop music magazine for ages 16-21 of all genders and when I came to making my magazine, made it clear throughout all the pages that it is a music magazine. The colours red and black often represent hip hop in magazines; looking at other magazines such as XXL, you will see that it is also a colour the both males and females like. I came up with names for my magazine and my favourite ones were Replay and HYPE. Out of those names, from my own opinion and others I chose HYPE because I felt that it sounded more like hip hop than Replay and relates to hip hop much better. Replay sounded like a name that could be for any music genre so I finally decided to go with HYPE which makes my magazine not only look hip hop but also sound hip hop. Looking at my front cover I think it is obvious that the music genre is hip hop. I have a ‘PLUS’ section which has names of hip hop singers Nicki Minaj, Waka Flaka, Kanye West and Swizz Beatz. These are existing singers which a very popular and famous to people who listen to hip hop music, I believe that they are a success in the music industry so therefore I added their names on my front cover. My model is also posing in a way that young adults of the ages of 16-21 usually pose, the mise-en-scene such as the clothes he is wearing and the way my model is standing by a brick wall also makes it noticeable that it is a hip hop magazine.
Harry Publications is a magazine publisher of many magazines including a lot of hip hop magazines such as XXL. I think that Harry Publications might distribute and publish my magazine because it is a music magazine of the genre hip hop and they have published hip hop music magazines in the past such as XXL so they have experience. As well as that, I would like it to be sold in music shops such as HMV or even corner shops that sell magazines.
I attracted my audience by having a male model. This is so that male readers look up to the hip hop model and so that females get attract to it and lead it to buy the magazine. The colours of my magazine also attract female and male audiences because it is colours they both genders like. My masthead is also big and bold so I think it would attract someone’s attention as soon as they see it on a magazine shelf inside a shop. My cover stories are very interesting so I think that that is a way of catching my audience’s eye. Also, there are names of singers nowadays so I think young audiences would get attracted by it and want to know more about it.
I used many techniques in technologies in the processes of constructing this product. Before I began this project, I was not very good at using Photoshop and this project has definitely helped me get better at it. I used tools such as cropping, cloning, and brushing and many more which I am much better at thanks to this project. A site such Blogger has helped me put down my feelings and thought publicly and it was my first time using it and I think it has helped me upload posts and presentations of my work. Slide share was a website that I was again new too. It allowed me to upload my presentations in a much quicker and simpler way. I think that my photography skills have improved deeply from before. I used to take pictures with any sort of camera whereas now, I know to use a better quality camera and I also think about the mise-en-scene, the lighting and camera settings and also the shot type for example whether it is mid shot, long shot or another type of shot.
Looking back to my preliminary task, I have learnt to use Photoshop much better. For my preliminary task I mainly used publisher to layout my magazine and I did not manipulate my images whereas in this project I did my layout and my image on Photoshop and I just found it a better quality because before, my preliminary task looked more like a poster than a magazine. I have also learnt about how to attract my audience for example by using the right colour, fonts depending on my target audience.
Overall I have enjoyed doing this project and have picked up on so many new skills on technologies.
My Final magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread:
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