Proposal

Proposal for my Music Magazine

Genre - Indie Pop

I shall be aiming my magazine towards elder teens/ young adults in the age range of 16-22. I feel that this age range is more appropriate to the style and genre of the magazine I shall be producing, however I am aiming to cover all aspects of Indie Pop through my magazine design. The photography I shall be using for this magazine will be shot by myself,  I shall use a friend as a model for the image and will be shooting in a location suitable to the current season. The season at the moment is Winter, and I am considering a woodlands/forest location with my model being wrapped up in knitwear and winter accessories.

My magazine will contain typical content seen through music magazines, my main content article will be based around my main image as well as indie pop associated singers. My main cover line will be in relation to the main image, maybe something based along the idea of the singer making a comeback? As well as a  main cover line, I shall include cover-lines based around the indie based artists I shall feature on my magazine front cover.  The ideas I have for cover-lines are based around Ellie Goulding and her tips for entering the music industry and the band London Grammar on their sell out gigs. For my main cover line I want to having something along the lines of 'everybodys mad for Jessie May'

I have decided to call my magazine Chorus, I feel that this title relates to the indie-pop music genre for my magazine. I also feel that I am able to experiment with the design aspect of my title, giving it a quirky edge to the magazine design. I also considered titles such as; Tune, Rhythm and Inspire but I felt that these mastheads conveyed more of a pop/chart music genre. I want my font to be of a classic style that has an edge to the design, I haven't considered what font I shall be using although I do not want my magazine design to be all Serif sans based. 

Its publishing date will be on a monthly basis, and I think that the main image shot can vary depending on the season (ie - Summer = sun/beach and Winter=woods/warmth) My  magazine dimensions will be of a normal sized magazine (A4) as I feel this is the most suitable to the target audience, it is not a high classed magazine and does not need to be overly sized.

For my contents page design, I will stick to the colour scheme on the front cover design and bring it through into the contents. I think neutral creams will work really well with blacks and red emphasis for the factual information found in a contents page, image wise I am going to have an editors note photo and another small image of my main model. The price of my magazine shall be £2.00, as I feel that this price would fit into the market greatly.

To conclude, I want my magazine to represent the indie-pop genre through image,colour and font. I am aiming to do this by edging away from all the gimicky colours seen in Teen Pop magazines.

Overall analytical evaluation

Evaluation

This is a analytical response to my college magazine designs. Having researched the codes and conventions of many different genre of magazine, I produced a front cover design and contents page design in relation to what I researched into. I feel that my magazine design has not only been influenced by other magazines, but also through the association with colour regarding a general magazine scheme. 

My overall response to the design of my front cover is that I feel it relates to the codes and conventions to the magazines that I researched and that it conveys its meaning through the choice of main cover lines and use of image. However if i had to add an improvement to the design of front cover I think I would of chosen a colour basis that represented the college itself in this case this would be green and blue to represent the colour of Southdown's College logo.

My reflective response to the design of my contents page is that I think it looks very basic and  simple but includes topics of interest. The photo I used was of same similarity to my cover design although the student had a completely different style to her, this therefore gave this idea that a college magazine is for everyone. The colours were themed through my cover design and this would of been an improvement, (using colours that relate to Southdown's)

As well as colour improvement, I would of improved the placing of text and shape on my contents page and make sure that it didn't shape the student and make the photo more of a focus rather than the magazines content.

College magazine contents page design

Contents Page Design

This is my contents page design which has been based around my original flat-plan creation, I feel that my contents page reflects what a typical contents page should look like but also has a striking design to it with regards to the choice of colour which has been themed through my front cover design. My contents design includes topics of affair that students have an interest in, I have tried to list them in a order which becomes more of a factual basis towards the end of the magazine and if i created a final design I would of included more of a broad range of topics. I have included the idea that there shall be a  next issue in which I have featured 3 subjects, the subjects again are related to a student and what they want out of a college magazine. Finally I have used a pull quote which has been effectively placed on top of my image, this creates the idea that there are a lot of enrichment opportunities for each individual person.

Improvement?

If I had to improve this design, I wouldn't shape my text boxes around the student but place on top of the student, I feel that this way the magazine design would be able to include more information and use of graphic images.

College magazine front cover design

Front Cover Design

This is my final design for my college magazine front cover. This design was based around the flat-plan I had created lessons previous to the actual design of the magazine, I wanted to stick to a colour basis through my design and chose block colours that are striking and would catch a students eye, these colours being black,red and white. 

The masthead design is very simplistic but the choice of font which is a Sans Serif makes it noticeable against my main cover image, I feel that the naming of my magazine differs to the norms and conveys my magazines purpose. When creating Puffs and Plugs, I wanted them to be a main focus as this would really a grab a students eye, I done this by creating star based shapes that are visually dynamic. The text I placed inside of these Puffs and Plugs varies in font size,font and colour the reason I chose to have such a mix of styles is because I feel that again it is more striking and grasping on the eye.

I feel that although this is a college magazine, I have stuck to the codes and conventions of a typical magazine design. I have done this by making sure my masthead is of a suitable size and placed to the left of my design, I have also included the release date of my first issue in which this would be a continuous feature throughout the monthly publication.

Finally I have limited the number of cover lines on my magazine to ones which seem interesting to read, these being Enrichment opportunities, Student discounts and the SDC breakfast. I used shape work to really emphasise my cover lines and made my main cover line vary in font size, in which I made the interesting information bold and larger. As well as cover lines the main focus on a magazine is the cover image, which is of a mid shot of a student. I feel that my photo really reflects upon the ideology of a typical student as my model is grasping onto textbooks, and smiling happily.

Improvement?

If I had to improve my magazine design, I think I would of opted towards a colour choice that is more of a basis around the college i.e. - green and blue.

Photos of use

These are the photos which I used within the design of my cover and contents page:

 

         
I chose to use these 2 photos as I felt that they conveyed the ideology of a typical student. Both students are smiling happily and the photos have been taken in suitable locations i.e. - college grounds. I also took a few more photos of the same students, but have not used them in my design as they were not accurately taken. The photos can be seen below:

 



I shall take the photo on the left as an example to why I did not use this image. The photo was of a good location, but the photo is very dark and is not very visible therefore this would mean its not very striking. The reason why this photo was dark, was because the sunlight was shining through the window therefore casting a shadow over my model. I could of probably lightened the photo through using tools in adobe photoshop, but I did not feel that this was worth the time as my other images were capable to be used as a main cover photo.

Drafts

Drafts

These are my drafts which shall be developed into final designs. These drafts contain boxes and image and no main detailed font such as the cover lines. When i develop my design further, I shall include information on the front cover and the magazines topic matters on the design of the contents page.

     

Flatplans - Main cover and Contents

Preliminary task flat-plan - front cover

Here I have designed a flat-plan, this plan is the basic structure of what my magazine cover is going to look like. This flat-plan will direct me when producing my my magazine cover as I shall relate back to my structure, when placing text and image onto the spread. The colours I have used do not represent my magazine colour scheme.

Preliminary task flat-plan - contents page

This is a flat-plan design representing my contents page, I have used shapes and text in which I have placed onto my spread.  I do not want my contents page to be to overpowering so will limit the amount of information I put onto the design, I am also wanting to include the idea of next months issues and incorporate text and image. 

I shall be using a pull quote on my design which will represent an article that is featured in my magazine, this pull quote shall be emphasised in quotation marks.  I shall relate back to my flat-plan design when constructing the contents page as this is a basis of my design.

The proposal

This my proposal to the design of my college magazine.

 I am aiming my magazine towards college students, it shall be more typically aimed at those of 16 years - 18 years of age as this is the type of ideology we expect of a student, I also think that the content within the magazine is targeted towards your typical college students.

My magazine will be the typical college magazine that many students know of, it shall be informative and factual but also have an element of fun such as competitions and freebies. I think that the idea of incorporating competitions and freebies is a good element to have as i feel that this will entice the student into reading the magazine.

Cover lines are the main source of information for a magazine and I have focused on three cover lines in which I feel will grab a students attention. These are:
Main cover line - Enrichment Opportunities
Cover line 1 - Student discounts
Cover line 2 - Southdowns breakfast
I feel that my Cover Line 1 will be something all students are interested in and would read of.

My magazine shall be called 'Happy Days' the reason why I have chosen this as my title is because college is full of opportunities that can be satisfy any student, also many adults have told me that College days are the best days of your life and I wanted to reflect this through my magazine title. As well as this I feel that Happy Days is a unique title compared to the likes of Student Life, SDC, College Days and College Life, however these were a few of my initial ideas when reading the brief. The following titles I have just listed are ones of which I am going to reject, as I think they are too common and not original enough.

When considering fonts, I would preferably use a font which is a sans serif and very striking for my masthead title. Also for the cover lines I would use this idea of a bold striking font although the minute information may be a typewriter based font as this is more casual looking on a student magazine. I want my masthead to be simple and plain, as I think over decorative features may distract the student from what the magazine is actually about.

I haven't really considered using taglines for my production of a college magazine cover as I believe that they are not needed when creating this type of magazine. A tagline is often associated with a women's fashion magazine which is a weekly issue whereas something like a college magazine is more of a monthly based issue.

When publishing my magazine I shall think about the seasonal changes and reflect the seasons through my main image, i.e. - during winter I will have a student wearing typical winter clothing such as hats,scarves and gloves. I also think that a popular issue would be when new students are starting college for the first time, the magazine may guide them through the first beginning weeks of college and finally another popular issue may be on open evenings for the college itself, in this case I would preferably have a group of students embracing the college facilities as I think this will portray the college in a positive light.

The kind of image I am considering for my first issue is a basic portrait, mid shot of a student. I will ask a student in my Media class to be my main cover image before going out with a digital camera and choosing a suitable location for the student to strike a pose, I have considered the following locations:
Stairs
Reception
Cafeteria
Green/Outside
Sign Post
Finally I am going to use props when taking my image and these shall be some college textbooks in which students typically carry such as a Pukka Pad or Coursework handout.

I myself would want my college magazine to be published on a monthly based, my reasoning for this would be because I think that a monthly issue will sum up the general month in college.

I want to stick to the typical codes and conventions when considering the dimensions of my magazine, and these dimensions are of an A4 sizing. I do think that A4 is a suitable size as it small and compact and can fit in a students bag quite easily.

My final proposal question is what images/colour I am going to use on my contents page. I am not to clear on what I am going to use yet but I am considering using another student that has a completely different look and style compared to my main page, as I think this will reflect the difference in college and the idea that everyone is unique. Colour wise, I am trying to stick to theme of Red,White and Black so am pretty sure that I am going to use these colours throughout the magazine design.

Initial Ideas - Preliminary Task

Initial Ideas

This is my initial ideas for my preliminary task, which is to produce a magazine front cover revolving around the idea of College. I have created a mind-map and have a number of main subjects, and off these main subjects are thoughts and ideas that have come to my mind. 

Magazine cover practice - InDesign

Practice Design:

This is a practice magazine cover using InDesign; I used a variety of tools to compose my magazine cover although many were basic controls. A number of layers have been used to create this design, with the first layer being an image saved from the internet, to incorporate this photo into my design I had to use the rectangle tool. The rectangle tool is a way of being able to place content onto the design, I shaped my rectangle into the appropriate size before going to file to place my image which was already saved as a Jpeg. The next step was to fit my photo to the size of my rectangle; this can be done in 2 ways;

1) Fit Content To Frame - this means my image would quite literally fill the space of the rectangle.

2) Fit Content Proportionally To Frame - this differs to fitting the content to the frame as the photo would not be stretched or miss-proportioned but would still be enlarged.

I used Fit Content To Frame Tool.

The next steps were easy! I used text boxes to create and style my text using a variety of different fonts, sizing, colours and spacing's, I also used shape work to incorporate stylistic features to my magazine design such as the rectangles which emphasise the text itself. Although there is not a lot of content on my practice magazine design, I still feel as if I have learnt the basic how to knowledge of InDesign and that my final practice outcome does portray my knowledge using the tools. 

IPC Media

Magazine Representations

Essay on young teen girls magazines

 

To what extent should magazines be held responsible for the social ramifications of the representations they offer?

Teen girl magazines have been around for many years and have developed greatly in terms of style and representations of young teen girls. A few examples of magazines that are aimed towards teen girls include; Teen Vogue, Bliss,Shout,Cosmo-Girl,Sugar and Seventeen which has been around for 70 years!

Above are 3 examples gathered from Google images, the codes and conventions of these magazines are all extremely similar. Both of these magazines have used girly colours which will appeal to younger girls, fun, quirky fonts and a huge main image of a young female celebrity in which many young girls aspire to be like. Also their articles all differ to one another but still are based around the same thing i.e. - fashion, make-up and boyfriend stories.

Young teen magazines have sparked many debates and conflict due to the idea behind the way they portray their content to a young girl; these magazines hold a bad representation and encourage young girls to become sexualised at too young of an age. My above photos are a prime example of this, all three of these magazine covers have an article on fashion; fashion is something that many women converse about and has now also become a hot topic to young teen girls, this genre of magazine gives the impression that young girls have to be interested in the latest fashion or the sexiest hairstyle therefore putting too much pressure on the young girls in today’s society.

I have looked into an article titled:

Popular Teen Magazine and Their Possible Effect on Teenage Girls

This article was published via yahoo on May 30th 2006. This was 7 years ago and the articles content is still of the same today, the article has quoted language that teen girl magazines have used;

'beauty is the eye of the beholder' , 'beauty is only skin deep', 'dress to impress', 'be a knockout' and 'find the perfect make-up for you' - these are prime examples into how these magazines cause young teen girls to become so body conscious at an incredibly young age. As well as the social ramifications of fashion and make-up, there comes the idea of young teen girls having to look attractive to grab attention of boys. Boys are always a subject of conversation in a teen girl magazine, there is no escaping the subject no matter what teen girl magazine you pick up. This is a very negative thing as it implies to the young girls that looking good is the only way to 'grab yourself a boyfriend' - again this shows the negative content of these magazines, and makes girls have too much of an interest in fashion, make-up and boys at such a young innocent age. Finally a well debated matter is the issue of low self-esteem caused by these magazines through the choices of article affair such as Anorexia, magazines have a tendency to focus on weight and diet related issues in both young teen girl and women's magazines in general this therefore is a highly negative choice of topic and affects the majority of girls and women.

A headline that has crept up in the media is 'These magazines are making girls sexualised at too young of an age' - this is the topic that has been debated and discussed for many years however no action has been done to stop it, nevertheless it’s not only young girl magazines that take an effect on these girls it’s also the media in general. Media is everywhere whether it is billboards, adverts or on social networking sites there’s no escaping the negative perceptions it portrays. In my own opinion I do not think that teen girl magazines are the only responsibility to the making of sexualising girls at a young age, I think that general advertisements play a huge role into the way a young girl sees the world, on TV there’s constantly ads on the latest make-up, hair dye and new clothing websites etc. This also causes negative associations and again makes these young girls feel like it’s a normal part of life and have to show a genuine interest and liking to these topics.

I gathered some research in which I asked three people what they thought of about teen girl magazines:

My 11 year old brother - He told me he does not know what a teen girl magazine actually is but has seen them on shop displays.

A friend aged 16 - She told me that she used to read Sugar magazine when she was around the age of 13, she read it for the articles on fashion and make-up as well gossip on celebrities. She does not think it caused her to have too much of an interest in make-up, fashion and boys at a young age but feels that the magazines she reads now have more of an emphasis on make-up and fashion.

My mum - My mum thinks that these magazines do have bad representations and put too much of a pressure on young girls however she said make-up, fashion and boys is something that all girls become interested in, so there’s no reason why they can’t have such high interests if they are in magazines that they are reading.

Overall my analytical response shows that there seems to be no good coming from these girls magazines; from a personal view I think that these magazines are damaging girls in today’s society. I think that topics such as 'how to attract a boy’, 'how to look good' and 'the latest fashion' should be scrapped from these magazines all together as they all cause to much of a strain on teen girls. Although I do think some real life stories from young girls themselves should be introduced into these magazines as I feel that they will inspire young girls and make them want to achieve something rather than worry about make-up, fashion and boys at too young of an age.

Reseacrh link used - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/30544/popular_teen_magazines_and_their_possible.html

 

Different magazines same genre

    

Cooking Magazines-



Here I have collected 3 different types of cooking magazines from Google images. Straight away I have noticed they all have the same codes and conventions as one another, each one of these magazines has a very clearly visible masthead and a main image of a recipe that's available to the reader inside of the magazine.

 

The target audience of these types of magazine can vary dependent on whether or not the person likes to cook. However from a personal view I think that the target audience is of a middle aged woman such as 45+. 'Cooking Light' and 'Fine Cooking' both have used a Sans Serif font as their masthead whereas 'Healthy Cooking' has used a Serif font, this portrays 'Healthy Cooking' as a classic cooking magazine with recipes that are simple to do whereas the other two magazines imply more of a technical aspect behind their meanings through the choice of font.

 

Every single cooking magazine I looked at had its main image as the star dish recipe inside the magazine, I think this is a clever use of the front cover spread as it fills the whole page and entices the reader in dependent on their food tastes. As well as this all 3 of my examples seem to have a main cover line which has been emphasised through font size, both 'Cooking Light' and 'Healthy Cooking' mention the word Comfort in their main cover line, comfort food is something the majority of us all like and this will appeal well to its niche.

 

Finally instead of using puffs and plugs, these cooking magazines just use the plug to feed the reader with the content of the magazine. This therefore does not distract from the main cover image and keeps the reader’s eye interested.