Institutional grids

I learnt that different styles of magazines each have different ways of approaching issues such as pricing  and publication dates. I took from this that I should put a lot of thought into the ideas such as pricing etc because although they appear to be not as important as other aspects, they are equally as important as they form the critical foundations for a successful music magazine. Also, the way in which different institutions brand themselves varies very much depending on the individual oligopoly so this shows me that I would have to think deeply and carefully as to which institution would be the best at representing my publication. I will explore this idea even further in my imovie video showing details about the 3 main oligopolies.

History of Music Magazines

History Of Music Magazines on Prezi

My next step was to look into the general history of music magazines as they are today. For this task, I chose 5 of the most well known music related publications and had a brief look into their history, most importantly when they were created because the orientation of music magazines has changed drastically over the decades. I conveyed all of my findings on to a prezi presentation in order to be able to see each piece of research carefully layed out, so that I could compare them and gather my own thoughts and ideas of how I want my magazine to look and feel. From this, I learnt that the history of music magazines are quite complex and have taken a lot of time and effort to get them to the stages that they are at today. This then shows me that I need to put a lot of work into ensuring that my magazine is effective and turns out as a finished project that I am happy with.

In depth research into alternative covers

This extended look into alternative covers was really insightful because I am not planning on creating this kind of publication, it helped me to understand the way the frameworks of magazines as a whole are produced. I learnt that the basic framework and motives of magazines are practically the same for every publication it's just the content that alters the types of audience and allows original themes to be formed.

Research into different kinds of music magazines

I decided to look into a different kind of music magazine to broaden my ideas and look at how different people interpret the brief of a music publication. This extended task also was an opportunity to look at a  completely different genre of magazine to see the alternative ways in which they appeal to their personal audiences.

In depth research for NME

I decided to do some more in depth research into the NME cover because I really love the way that the composition and layout creates the exact feel that I want for my music publication. This task allowed me to learn about how the codes and conventions help to influence the target audience and the representation of the band. If the codes and conventions all work really well together, then the cover as a whole will work really well.

Music magazine research

This is my first piece of research for my music magazine. From this I learnt that there are many different components that a cover possesses to attract and audience and be seen as successful and effective. These are stated above on my annotated copy of an NME cover. Most importantly, it's how all of the components work together and whether they allow the cover to flow and portray the desired message to the readers.

Final contents page

This is my final contents page. I decided to keep it quite simple as to not distract the reader from the text. Also, I felt that the physical cover was very detailed in the way that it contained quite a few pictures and colours, so I thought I would tone down the mise en scene of the contents page in order for it to not overshadow the cover. Overall, I think that my ideas for the contents page work quite well, on reflection I feel that I could have added more features to make it more interesting and to add to the convention of the layout.

Final Cover

This is my final result of the magazine cover that I created. All of my research and planning has been combined to create the finished product in a way that I am really pleased with because it is composed of all my ideas and themes. I feel that as a whole, the cover flows really well and ties in nicely. I think that the composition of the image and the camera angles used, combine to make an effective representation of the school.

Fonts

I eventually selected a font for my title after I compared so many different magazine's and the way that they came across to the target audience and from this information, I created a themed title that I feel will  sum up the publication and what it's all about. 

Detailed Research

I started to research into even more  kinds of school magazines with original styles and other purposes to broaden my perspective and see just how other publications come across to an audience, so that I could develop my ideas even further and move closer to actually creating my 'College Life' magazine.

The next step was to plan the physical layout of my cover page. The idea was that although I want it to come across as having a friendly, almost informal feel about it, the last thing I'd want to do is allow the cover to become over crowded with too much information, being almost thrown at you and therefore creating a less classy and professional item.

The title of a magazine is one of the most important elements along with the cover photo because it 'sets the scene' of what kind of magazine it is and as a result it would inform pupils straight away whether they would be interested in picking up the magazine or not. So, the title has to have an effective font and style that fits the brief and suits the target audience.

The colouring of the example was a main feature that I had to consider when preparing to go into the creating stage of the project. I feel like the colours can  largely determine the audience (for example: pink tones would hint towards the feminine aspect and blue would typically represent a more prominently male target audience) For this reason, I want the colours that I do select to be ones that represent a magazine with a unisex theme, so that anyone could feel like they could read it and more importantly be seen reading it. From this I learnt that all these seemingly small factors actually heavily affect who your target audience are and how they respond to your publication. I learnt that the title has to have an effective font as it is viewed as the front of house and creates the first impression for potential buyers. Also that if I want it to appeal to a wide range of audience members then it has to have a consistent unisex colour scheme throughout.

Comparing School Magazines

For this task, I chose 3 existing school magazines to evaluate and compare all the different features of each one. I did this as a way of evaluating all the styles and themes of different types of publications in order to gain inspiration and influences that would allow me to go forward and plan my own magazine. From this I learnt that I would like my magazine to have a sophisticated feeling to compliment it's style and conventions.