Risk Assessment.

Draft Layout of Magazine.

Location/ Props/ Costumes.

                                                                Location / Props / Costumes

 I will be taking my images in various places. My front cover image shall be taken within a home environment, such as my friend’s musical room and their garage which is where they keep all of their instruments etc. I feel like this would be a good setting for my main cover image because it will show relevance and reference to the genre of the magazine. Also I thought this was quite unconventional as not many magazines have their front cover images taken in places at home, let alone not in some sort of studio. Not only this but having my front cover image taken in a musical environment will mean I will have plenty of product placement and advertising within my front cover, if this becomes a problem I could use this choice of setting and background for my double page spread article as these images conventionally seem to be taken in a more comfortable environment than a studio. This is evident in not just music magazines like Kerrang but also in most genres of magazines also. However, if this plan doesn’t work out and we do not get permission for this, I shall take my images in the studio at college and either Photoshop in an appropriate background or just use photography to create the effect I want in order to position my audience to recognise the magazine and what genre it is depending on the construction of the front cover. This should create the convention of passion for music and the love for what the band do and how they do it. This grunge environment also represents the genre of music quite well as it isn’t the most comfortable and posh environment that pop music magazines tend to have which kind of connotes the style in which the performers of this genre of music live.

 For my props I shall be using the items found within the setting I have chosen such as the instruments around the room and things alike because this will easily represent the genre of music and this is also quite conventional to the music magazine stereotypes. Apart from instruments like guitars and such I won’t be using any props because these don’t have much to do with the genre and I believe that if too many props are used, this will ruin and overcrowd the image, making it unprofessional and not suitable for my magazine. Electric guitars will represent my demographic quite well as these instruments are used a lot within the rock industry and are probably the main instrument for this, which are also used a lot in other magazines such as Kerrang and Scuzz.

 I won’t be using any type of extravagant costumes as most people who perform and listen to this genre of music usually just wear normal everyday clothes such as skinny jeans and a shirt. I believe this will be enough to represent my music genre and will keep the images quite simple and not too busy. This will mean I will be able to reflect my audience and create a good image at the same time. I did think about this quite a lot as I wasn’t sure whether I should change the outfits around but I decided to go with the simple everyday look as this was what appealed to the audience the most and what is used in other magazines. Because this is conventional and stereotypical for these types of magazine, it must work in order for Kerrang to be as popular as it is so I decided to intertextualise and use it too.

Colours Mood Board Analysis

                                              Colours Mood Board Analysis

 With the colours on my mood board, I used my survey questions to help me make the final decision on what colours to use, in which the answers were red, black, yellow and white. I used the intertextuality from the Kerrang magazine for this also as their magazine includes various shades of these different colours. These colours apply to the target audience not only because I asked my audience what colours they would like to see but these are the colours that are associated stereotypically with the pop-punk/ rock industry. For example, this genre of music videos and such include black and white shots more than coloured shots in order to add dramatic effect and the connotations of the song come across a lot quicker, for instance the song would probably be about sadness, death or just about how someone feels.

 In my magazine, I will be using various shades of these four colours such as greys, lighter reds and darker yellows in order to make up my magazine and make it more exciting and variating rather than just 4 colours and nothing else. This would also make it look a lot more professional to the audience. Not only have these colours been used before in magazines and music videos but these colours have been used in a lot of branding and would therefore mean that I could advertise a lot of branding inside my magazine and I could continue the conventionality the whole way through as this set of colours is used quite commonly and conventionally. I laid these colours out in an appealing way as they are set out in a scale to easily display the variation of different shades of one colour going from dark to light and light to dark.

Fonts Mood Board Analysis

Fonts Mood board Analysis

 In my fonts mood board I have chosen mostly serif fonts because these fonts tend to be the ones most commonly used in my chosen genre of music magazine, for example, Kerrang! magazine uses mostly serif fonts because these fonts represent the music and the consumer that is reading the magazine. Using these fonts creates the ideology of consumerism because of this representation. This is because of the line of appeal to the demographic in which I am selling my magazine to, this is due to the use of sharp lines, black, dark toned colours and the use of grotesque imagery su7ch as blood and gore. I decided to use these fonts in my magazine not only because they are conventional to the genre and what the audience expects but because they give the connotations of death and danger, which also represent the music in which the magazine beholds. Also, the typography inside music magazines like this also usually have most of their text in capitals because this represents the motion of shouting or a specific sound made; much like Kerrang! magazine which was a name chosen because of the onomatopoeia of the sound of an electric guitar when strum.

 Another part of my fonts mood board is the size of the fonts, my bigger sized fonts are usually the ones used for the masthead or for the cover lines whereas the smaller and more curlier sans-serif like fonts, are more used for the article on my double page spread and such the like. This is because my larger and bolder fonts stand out a lot more than the smaller fonts because of their size and the effect it’ll have on the reader, for example, the masthead of Kerrang is bold and large in order to grab the attention of the audience and is something that is seen on every one of their magazines and is considered part of their house style. My magazine also needs to have something that’ll stand out to my audience and will also appeal to what they like and what they usually see, so a large, bold and serif font will apply to them, whereas a smaller, flowery font would more appeal to the audience of an English literature magazine because they have a different expectation for the magazine and a different audience all together.

Fonts Moodboard

Colour Moodboard

Analysis of Survey Results.

Analysis of Survey Results

 From my survey I can use the most answered responses to come up with a main plan for my magazine. By following through with this research I can come up with the plans for my magazine, how I will lay it out and what I can put in it.  For my first question, i asked my demographic if they read music magazines, i did this because this way i would find out whether the magazine would be a good idea in the first place. The results i got were mostly all rounded and there wasn't a real ‘winner’ as such because of the range of answers. Secondly, to follow up this question, i then asked what brand of magazine and what genre of music magazine they read if they answered question one as ‘yes’. This then allowed me to follow up more research on what type of magazines they would be reading and get some ideas from them, which could improve my magazine vastly. For my third question, i asked which three colours my audience would like to see on a music magazine and the top three colours were black, red and white, which are the colours mostly used in the genre of music magazine i am going for, similar to Kerrang’s yellow, black, red and white magazine in which people answered with in the second question. Question 4 and 5 were loosely linked as the time of distribution and the price, for instance, if the product was to be released weekly, it would have to be cheaper. The most answered were weekly and the price of £1. Question 6 was about the content of my magazine and what people would like to see inside of it, which turned out to be Competitions, gigs and tours, posters and freebies and updates on less popular bands. Strangely enough, the next question was whether people would prefer free stuff to be in the magazine and if it would encourage them to buy it, and the majority vote was yes, which converged with the previous question. In question 8, my target audience claimed they would like to see a band as the main cover image on the magazine and then for question 9, they claimed that the adverts they wanted to see were about festivals and band products such as CD’s and Vinyls. Finally, for question 10, i asked where people would buy the music magazine from, and the most requested areas were small shops in the areas and large supermarkets. All of this can be used for elements in my magazine so it will appeal to my audience in the right ways, making it consumerable.

Music Magazine Survey Results.

Original Ideas Statement.

Original Ideas Statement.

 The type of magazine I will be making will be solely a music magazine with advertisements to other franchises which may not be to do with music but will still appeal to the same target audience. The genre of music I am going to put into my music magazine is going to be pop-punk mixed with heavy metal, much similar to the popular music magazine: Kerrang, published by Bauer. The intended demographic will be young adults/ teenagers, mostly males. I have chosen this particular type of magazine because not only does the music inside it appeal to myself but the style of these magazines appeals to me and I would like to recreate a magazine similar to that of Kerrang. 

Mood board Two

Moodboard One

Information on Magazine Publishers.

                                                      Information on Magazine Publishers

 Bauer Media

 The Bauer family owns Bauer Verlagsgruppe. Bauer Media Group entered the UK with the launch of Bella magazine in 1987. Under the name of H Bauer Publishing they became Britain's third largest publisher. Bauer then went on to expand with the consumerism of EMAP consumer media, which then expanded their work and helped them, acquire where they are today. The group then went on to acquire an Australian magazine production company called ACP magazines, which then helped Bauer gain lots more money than they could have had in the first place. This then went on to help Bauer expand and become one of the top selling magazine publishers in todays time. This is proven by one of the UK’s top selling magazines, Kerrang, which has become so popular that it has become multi-media plat formed and is one of the most well-known and read magazines in Europe. More examples of Bauer’s magazines are Women’s Weekly, Bella and Take A Break, which are some of the most popular magazines in the UK.  Bauer publish over 100 brands of magazines for many different audiences, not just for one particular audience. Bauer media own one of the biggest percentages of the market in Europe, close to IPC media or TimeInc.

 IPC Media/ TimeInc

 IPC media, now known as TimeInc are the second biggest publishing company in the world, Bauer being the first. The CEO of TimeInc is Marcus Rich, who works alongside Sam Finlay, managing director to run the company and own the company itself too. The music magazines that TimeInc publish are NME and Uncut magazine. These are the only two music magazines that TimeInc publish and they both go for the same target audience in a way, males. Other magazines that TimeInc publish include Woman’s Weekly, Pick Me Up and Marie Claire, which are all women’s magazines and directed at middle aged to young women. TimeInc hold over 60 iconic magazine brands that are known worldwide, but especially in Europe and Great Britain. They have the second largest percentage of the market as they hold the second most amount of magazine publishing’s in the UK, nonetheless, they do not hold any other multi-media platforms like Bauer does. In the 1960’s, TimeInc magazine was the most popular magazine publisher there was, also over the years, TimeInc joined with many other companies until eventually they all merged and became TimeInc itself, not without having companies leave, such as Time Warner who left because they wanted to focus on TV and entertainment media rather than magazines.

Livingly Media

 Livingly media is a completely online magazine publisher with no print magazines and everything is kept on the website. As told by the title of the company, they specialize in home keeping magazines and things alike. This includes magazines such as Zimbio, Lonny magazine and StyleBistro. These are all latinately named magazines and can only be found on the Livingly Media website. Although Livingly media do not hold a large percentage of the market or a large selection of magazines but the magazines they do have are very popular with well-cultured and educated adults, with more of an upper-class background (20 million monthly readers). Livingly media also hold ownership over a couple of websites too such as Polyvore, Yahoo, Buzzfeed and CNN. Livingly Media only produce four magazines, none of which are solely music based but all have evidence of pop culture and the music industry inside them. Finally, Livingly media is owned by Tony Mamone as CEO, Danny Khatib as COO, Erica Carter as VP of Finance, Nicole Amico as VP of Sales, and Bruce Martin as Chief Technology Officer.

College Magazine Textual Analysis

Questionnaire Results

Results From My Questionnaire.

 For my student college magazine, I created a questionnaire that would ask my target audience how they wanted their magazine. I asked 10 open and closed questions in order to gain information about their preferences, including about cover lines and different theme colours for the magazine. The first question asked was if the students read a student magazine and 90% of the results came back negative. The second question asked was about the different colours that attract the students to magazines and the 5 top colours that came back were black, blue, red, green and white.

 This then went onto the third question in which was asked how often the students would like their magazine, the results came back quite varied but 30% preferred every month and the same for every term. When we asked how much the students would pay, most of them, at 40%, said they preferred to pay nothing and 20% said they’d pay 50p for the magazine. The top rated contents that the students wanted to see were music, food, competitions, fashion and revision guides, this meant that I could use these for my cover lines when I made this magazine.

 When asked, the students said they would definitely like free stuff (95%!), which means that the price of the magazine can easily be put up to 50p rather than nothing. On the front of the magazines, for the main cover image, the students much preferred to see students and students work instead of teachers as the students could relate this to. For both multi-plat forming and for advertisements, the students wanted them, as this would sell the magazine to them as they are used to the digital world and magazines having many advertisements in which they can find new stuff from.

 Finally, the students decided that they wanted their magazine to be distributed to either the coffee shop or to the reception, as these are popular places that students usually approach when they have money.

Overview of the magazine industry

Overview of the magazine industry

 The magazine industry isn’t just about music magazines. Although it is one of the top most sold genres of magazine, there are other genres such as beauty magazines, chatty magazines, sports magazines and technology magazines. These are all magazines, which apply to different audiences and apply lines of appeal to their magazines to fit their target audiences. For example, Hello magazine is a chatty magazine targetted at middle ages women, you can tell this by its line of appeal of sex and gossip about sex which is stereotypically and conventioanally something that appeals to women, and this is backed up by the sales of these magazines.

 Some of the top selling magazines in the United Kingdom are The National Trust Magazine (#1 with a circulation of 2,043,876 and published by The National Trust), Asda Magazine (Publicis-Blueprint), Tesco Magazine (Omnicom Group), TV Choice Magazine (Bauer) and Radio Times (Immediate Media Company). Most of these magazines seem to be based on the target audience of lower class citizens of Britain as they are mostly about food and television.

 Some of the top selling music magazines in the United Kingdom are Kerrang Magazine (releases 51 issues per year- Bauer), MOJO Magazine, Q Magazine. All these music magazines seem to be around the genre of rock music, which is targetted at the young audiences, which means that not a lot of older people buy music magazines anymore, as these are the top three sellers in the United Kingdom.

 In the USA, already this year, the consumers who buy them, not the advertisers who advertise inside of them, have spent $22,000 on just magazines. On top of this, in the States, one of the lowest prices of publishing a magazine was $2million a year! Just on one magazine. The typical cost of putting an advert and product placement in a magazine is around $500 to $20,000 depending on where the advert is and when and how the magazine is released. For example, if a popular magazine was being released worldwide, the inside front cover page could cost as much as $500,000 to put a single advert in, and this isnt even for the top top brands.

Complete Analysis of a music magazine

Textual analysis of different music magazines

Preliminary Task College Magazine Front Cover and Contents Page