Preliminary Task

Before we began creating our magazine, we did a preliminary task of creating a front cover of a magazine and a contents page, to get used to making a magazine.

Planning/Sketching Page Layouts

These are my original rough plans for my front cover, contents page and article of my magazine. This gave me a good idea for when I eventually got round to making my 

magazine on the computer. I followed it nearly exactly.

Front Cover Plan

Contents Page Plan

Feature Page Plan

My article plan is hard to see due to poor scanning quality.

Shooting/Selecting Images

I decided not to use these images in my magazine due to the fact that they are all very similar, one of this style will be used in my main article. I did not want my images to all be of the band playing, so I selected the ones that differed the most and these are the ones that were used on my front cover, contents page and in my main article.

Planning/Sketching Images

To prepare for the manipulation of the images that will be on my front cover, I practised cutting out the background on a picture of a dog on Fireworks, as I planned to cut out most or all of the pictures I used in my magazine. You can see it is not very clearly cut out which helped me learn that I needed to do better than this on my actual magazine images to make them look more professional.

Analysing Front Cover Images

I looked at other magazine covers to influence me on how the image represents the artist. On this Kerrang! magazine cover, The King Blues are represented as a hardcore band, with bandanas on their face and smashing glass with a hammer. This represents their care-free attitude and somewhat a rebellion.This helps them fit in with the theme of the magazine, and gives them their rock identity. I knew, by looking at covers like these, I needed to take an image for my front cover that easily gives them an identity.

Researching and Designing Mastheads

On deciding my genre to be alternative/indie, I did a brainstorm on what I believe alternative and indie music is all about to help me decide on a name for my magazine. The names I came up with were: Edge and Fringe.

At first I decided on the name Edge, as indie music is far from mainstream and people who listen to it are on the edge of society.

Eventually I decided on the name Fringe for my music magazine. This is because indie and alternative music has always been somewhat on the edge of mainstream and popular music, and ‘fringe’ is a word to say describes this (on the fringe of society, etc). I incorporated my first name into this name. Also, people that listen to this type of music typically have long, scruffy hair with fringes, so this is a pun on their hairstyles.

When deciding on what design my masthead would look like, I prefered simpler designs such as the NME masthead (shown below). This is simple and very visible on the page, making it easy to find while searching for it in a shop. This helped me decide on a masthead which was block capital letters.

Once I decided the name for my magazine would be Fringe, this was my first design of my masthead. Plain, block letters sporting fringes, because of the name. However I thought this design was too plain for my magazine and needed something more.

I changed my masthead to this, a rougher version but still recognisably similar. The roughness of the letters represents the roughness of my readers 'rock' lifestyle, and perhaps the messiness of their hair.

Investigating the Conventions of: Front Covers/Contents Page/Feature Pages

Front Covers
In order to understand what is needed on the front cover, contents page and feature of my magazine, I researched into other magazine covers and what was included as the key elements. I discovered the main conventions of a front cover were mastheads, coverlines, images, banners, prices, etc. Below, I analysed the front cover of Q magazine.

Contents Page

Feature Page

Exploring Values/Ideologies of Different Music Magazines

Ideologies are what you believe according to your position in society. They can describe a certain set of ideas, and outline what's important to you.

On deciding what values and ideologies I wanted my music magazine to have, I researched into what other magazines appeared to have made clear in what they believe in. Firstly, I looked at NME and these are the main beliefs I thought NME had:

• an interest in the history of music and the past
• new media technology e.g. radio, Twitter, TV
• an interest in politics
• an interest in quality music (e.g. track of the year), showing it's serious
• business-like nature, evident from the online music store
• mainstream pretending to be independent.

I then went on to research Smash Hits and found:

• young, made for young people, e.g. bright, bubbly, fun
• keen interest in pop music and chart positions
• female qualities (pink and purple)
• simple
• not in any way political

Researching Target Audiences of Different Music Magazines

 

 The pictures above show my work on researching how magazines portray their favoured audiences. For example the picture on the left shows a magazine cover and what I thought was obviously the gender, age, etc of the magazine. For example, the readers of Opera News could be either gender, an age of 40+, an income of A-C and their hobbies being going to the theatre, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars. The work on the right is my work comparing NME and Uncut reader statistics. 

Investigating the Market

Before I began my magazine I researched magazines already on the market, like NME, Q and Kerrang. I had already decided on creating an alternative/indie magazine and so when I looked at these particular magazines they were of a similar genre to the one that I wanted my magazine to be. Although, as you can see, there are already magazines of this genre around, I wanted to make a magazine that I found interesting and that I felt I already knew a bit about. I used these to help base my magazine around, but still adapt it to make my magazine seem fresh on the market.