Front Cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

On My Contents Page

Listed below is what i would like to include on my contents page and what i would like it to look like.

Colours : I will be using bright bold strong colours on a dark background, for three reasons.

1. It will make the writing stand out and clear to the reader of what is written.


2. My teenage audience would like to see colourful, bright pages; appeal to them.


3. Seems fun, playful and welcoming to the reader

Images : I will include some images which are relevant to what may be included in the magazine articles. Seeing pictures immediately draw the readers attention, so this will give me a chance to make certain articles/ parts of the magazine stand out more.

Information on the page (My First Draft) :

• Past and Upcoming Gigs

1. Rhianna's performance in Manchester


2. T.I comes to perform in O2 Arena


3. Chris Brown live at Wembely

• Interviews

1. 50 Cent and his Son


2. Neyo


3. Alica Keys


4. Lil Wayne

• Celebrity couples
  

1. Beyonce and Jayz


2. Chris Brown and Rhianna


3. Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey

• Songs

1. Charts


2. New Singles


3. Most sold Albums

• Extras

1. Celebs fashion
2. Celeb hairstyles
3. Chipmunk Vs. Tinchy Stryda
4. Celebs caught slipping

• Up comming Celebs
  

1. Team Two Two
2. Rude Boyz

Looking At Different Contents Pages

This is another students work which i have found on the Internet and particularly liked. I like the way it is laid out and the style of the page, as all the bits fit in together neatly. It is clearly divided into different sections of the magazine making it easier for the audience to select which parts they want to read.

Moreover, the colours used go very well together; the neon yellow and white makes the writing stand out allot on the black background making the writing clear and readable, also and the pink gives a strong, bold outline to define the images the good colour co-ordinating scheme works well in this image and makes every detail stand out. This added to the attraction of their audience which would be teenagers, which is also the same for my one so i will be using bright, bold colours as well.

I like the fact that they have images on the contents page, and the images used are linked to the articles in the magazine. Images make a page seem more enjoyable and entertaining, it entices the reader to explore the magazine further, which this one definitely does. I too would like to add images into my contents page so it would seem fun and almost welcoming.
Furthermore, the fact that there are only a few images and they are part of the articles which are numbered with big bold writing makes them articles stand out the most which may be what the writer was trying to establish. This is a good way to make more important articles be seen and grab the readers attention.

The information included in the contents page was well thought out as all the artists are very famous, established R&B artists, which would attract the audience the writer is trying to appeal to. In addition, the other article titles included seem to be very interesting and teenagers would want to read them, as it did appeal to me and if it was in front of me i would definitely read the inside.

Planning My Own Music Magazine

Now that I have done enough research on music magazines, i am quite clear now on what my music magazine should look like. I have also taken into consideration audience, costs and logos. I can now start the planning to make my own magazine.

While planning I will be putting into consideration the results I got from my survey and will try to include what the public have voted for making it appeal to them.

The things I will have to think about to include in my music magazine are:

• A music magazine title


• Genre of music ( R & B, Hip-Hop )


• Audience ( Teenagers )


• Institutions ( L. Londell McMillan )


• Design ( Fun, Playfull, Free )


• Content ( Music, Fashion, Media industry)


• Language etc. ( Slang, Short, Clear, Perice )

Jude Rogers' Interview

Jude Rodgers is a journalist for magazines and newspapers and writes in the following: NME, The Guardian, and The Word. She kindly visited my school and spoke to our year 12 media classes on how and what she does to play her part in the making of the magazines. As NME is a music magazine it is very helpful to hear what she had to say on how to make your article sound the best and most interesting it possibly could.

She told us that she started writing in her own way and kept her own writing style. For our writing to stand out we should have our own unique writing style the way no one else writes. However, according to the target audience, genre or topic you are writing about she told us you would have to change the format of it. For example, an article in the Times to an older audience would use more formal, mature language, in contrast to Seventeen magazine which is aimed at teenagers which would be written in more slang, talkative format.

Therefore, she emphasised that it is very important to know who your target audience is in order to be able to write in a way the reader will enjoy it and feel it was made for them and that it is their type of magazine. This will also make it easier to know what to include in the article, for example what type of fonts, colours, images, style and format of writing.

Jude said to write out an interesting interview it is important to pick out little details of the person being interviewed and included some of them aspects in the articles. Such as their looks, behaviour and the way they answer the questions. Also by included weird or funny things about them such as bad habits, phobias etc could make the article more interesting and amusing to read.

So the aim of an interview would be to obviously get information on the artist but also something interesting or significant which has never been said before that no one knows of making your article interesting and different to the rest and stand out.

We were also told that we did not need to limit ourselves to a certain type of music when writing in a music magazine, as you can write about many different music genres in one same magazine this is because people are more interested in allot of different types of music now and not just one genre as it was around 20 years ago.

Jude also insisted on the importance of having an attractive, catching front cover to draw the audience attention she also said it could be as simple as we wanted as it did not have to be too clever. Moreover, the logo and title is also very important, it should be one word ,catchy and direct this will have a Strong affect on the audience making them relate and want to read the magazine.

Overall, Jude Rogers was very helpful, useful and a great inspiration to people who would like to do journalism. She gave allot of useful unimportant tips and hints on how to make your article the best over others by being able to make it stand out and appeal to your target audience. She also made it seem easy and possible and motivated me to do the best i could when making my own music magazine.

Double Page Spread

No man's land- Imortal Technique

This is a very unique, different approach to what would be included in a music magazine, it is not the typical music based article. However, is a rappers view on the war in Iraq. This would not be expected to be found in any other music magazine, and is what may make this magazine more interesting and appealing.

Part 2: This shows that there were and will be several other articles about this issue which would make people want to buy the next magazine to carry on reading the articles.

The fact that the artist is wearing an Arabian scarf around his head would prove he is from an Iranian country. The figure he is showing with his fingers represents "peace" and implies he is a good person and wants the war to end and for there to be peace this would allow him to be liked by the public and people would feel happy reading the article.

The artist used in the image looks like he would be from the middle east, however because the picture has been taken with him placed on an British tank, it could show the similarity between the two sides and in a way represents two sides to him which young people who are born in Britain or America but are from middle eastern countries could relate to him and the article. This would be good to include in a music magazine as young people are more likely to read music magazines rather than newspapers or listen to the news so this way they would still get information on war and world realities by reading the music magazine.

His face from this image does not seem happy or amused at the idea of the war and therefore shows the audience there is something wrong with it. This would grab attention as pictures in music magazines are usually of happy celebrities, smiling with a positive approach. However, to see this one with a sad, angry face would reflect the darker side to the world.

The colours that are used in the article are very dull, dark colours to represent and emphasise the seriousness of the writing. It does not use bright colourful writing, so does not give a positive happy feeling. Moreover the fonts used are very simple and formal which shows it is a more mature, informal piece of writing.

Music Magazine Survey

Click on the link below to let me know what you would like to see in a Music magazine to help me know what to include in a magazine that people will enjoy to read. Thank You!

Click Here to take survey

I carried out my survey and got 10 people to fill it out and by using thier results and feedback were able to analyse their results which I have written up below:

1. How old are you ?

I firstly asked this question so i was able to get some information about the participants who are likely to be my target audience so by finding out their age it will help me in directing me to the way I should create my magazine, my knowing the target audience's age I will be able to decide on the style of writing, language used, amount of text, images, what content to include, colours, fonts and many other aspects of my music magazine.

My survey showed on average the age was 18 so I knew i had a teenage audience so had to design my music magazine to attract a younger generation audience.

2. What ethnicity are you ?

This question would also give me information on my target audience so by knowing the general ethnicity who are interested it may influence the genre of the music in the magazine, the style and format of writing, maybe adding a page for a specific ethnicity and may effect other minor details.

As i got very mixed results, it gave me a wide variation of ethnicity's to appeal to therefore gave me a wider audience and allows me to include things from any nationality making my magazine multi culturally attractive.

3. What gender are you ?

The gender of the audience would decide on the style of the magazine and the type of approach i would take when designing it, deciding on the colours and images used. For example, if my whole sample were girls I may have thought of decorating the front colour in pink with girly designs.

Fortunately, I had a 50/50 percentage of boys and girls so I had the choice which gender to appeal more to or to both. By making it for both has more advantages as it will give you a wider audience.

4. What genres of music do you enjoy listening to ?

When creating a music magazine the genre of the music is extremely important when trying to appeal to a certain target audience, so by asking this question the results will show which kind of music culture I should try and represent to attract audience.

As you can see from my results there is a high rise and interest in R&B genre which I also enjoy so I would know what style and form to use when writing for a R&B audience. There is an extreme downfall in classical

music so I know not to include any classical music.

5. How often in a month do you buy a music magazine ?

This question does not really effect my music magazine however, it gives me an idea on if I were to continue making music magazines how often to publish the new ones. It also shows how interested people are in music magazines and weather or not it is the best way to attract my target audiences attention or weather i need to change my target audience to an audience who are more likely to buy music magazines.

My results show that 50% of participants did not buy music magazines at all and the other 50% only bought it 1-5 times a month. Which was a disadvantage for me as I would have to try extra hard to appeal to the public to make teenagers who do not usually buy music magazines to now buy my one.

6. If you don't buy music magazines, why not ? what would make you buy them ?

To help me with my problem of people not buying music magazines from question 5 by asking this question it would help in knowing what I should include to appeal to my audience in order for them to buy it or even be interested.

The answers I got are shown below:

By looking at these answers I knew how to attract the audience more and found effective ways in making my magazine different in order to sell in shops.

7. Do you like seeing the charts in the music magazines ?

When doing my research on already established music magazines I realised that they usually no longer showed the charts in them whereas when looking at much older magazines from 1950s and 60s there were much more reference to the charts. So I was interested to see if this change was because the audience wants it or weather this was a factor effecting the decline in people buying music magazines.

The results showed 85.7% of my participants did want to see the charts and the other 14.3% did not mind so I thought it was useful to include the charts or some form of music listings into my magazine.

8. What attracts you to the front cover of the music magazines ?

This was important information as the front cover was the main attract which would grab the audience into wanting to buy and read my magazine so to know what the audience like on the front cover was helpful when creating my own.

The survey shows people are mostly interested in the celebrities used and the content included on the front cover so I would keep this in my mind when creating my own music magazine front cover.

9. On a scale of 1-10 how interesting and important do you rate the following:

1 being the least 10 being the most.

From this image above it shows that front cover is most important so I will try make my front cover most attractive as it is was draws the audience to the magazine, followed by choice of celebrities which for my magazine will be mainly R&B artists as I found that is what my target audience want by asking from previous questions. Non- music related information seemed to be the least important however, still rated quite highly so i would still included non-music related information in my magazine to add an extra to my music magazine.

10. What else would you like to see in music magazines ?

This would defiantly help me know what to include in my music magazine under the non-music related things and also anything the public would like in music magazines so if they want it and I include it, there more likely to buy it making other people buy it too.

1.Reviews of books and films about music
2.Freebies
3.chances to met celebrities
4.music with more content
5.important concerts that took place in the past
6.free or cheaper tickets to concerts
7.latest gossip, fashion
8.Competitions to win free gig tickets

The list above was what people wanted to see in music magazine so I will try hard to try and include these things in my magazine.

Analysis The Source; Music Magazine

The Music Magazine i have bought and chosen to analyse is called "The Source". It is said to be "The Bible of Hip-Hop Music and Culture". It includes artists latest releases, interviews with celebrities, top rated songs and also other content such as fashion, reviews, sports etc.

The name of this magazine is called "The Source" which implies it will be giving saucy, secretive, new information about celebrities, which is what the audience want to know about. The writing is in bold big block letters which stand out and are easily seen on top of the cover. It is in red which may grab audience attention as it is a bright bold colour, but also the colour red relates to love, which could imply we may be getting deeper, more personal information about the celebrities.

The cover has a variety of well know, established, liked celebrities which would grab and attract the audience. The audience like these celebrities so if they see them on the front cover are more likely to buy the magazine. The celebrities all look very glamorous, fashionable and rich these are an inspiration and idols to teenagers, they look up to them therefore would be interested in what the magazines have to say bout them and would enjoy reading articles about them.

Overall, the cover for this magazine is very bold, colourful, eye catchy and it looks enjoyable and fun to read, therefore will have allot of readers buying the magazine. It seems to be aimed at teens and young adults who are into the Hip-Hop and R&B music genre.

Before Making My Music Magazine

Before starting to make my music magazine, I had to look into other music magazines to get an idea of what it should look like and what items it should be included on the front cover. I found out that on the front cover there would be images of celebrities, latest news highlights, a bit of information on what is in the magazine and also the essential information such as date, issue number, bar code etc. There is the name of the magazine which would be in big and bold followed by a strap line to attract the audience. I also found that there are age groups that certain magazines are particularly aimed at and different genres such as Rock, Pop, R&B etc.





All the magazines above have used well known, established celebrities on their front cover with their names in bold writing to catch the attention of the audience.The picture of the celebrities are a close shot with other images and writing around them. The colours and writing used are very strong,big and bold colours and writing which stand out and.