Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Research and Planning: 3. Preliminary Task Evaluation
My task was to make a cover page and contents page of an educational magazine, including a masthead, medium close up of a student and appropriate text.
I looked at several different types of magazines to decide on the layout and brainstormed on different styles of logos. When I was happy with my logo I drew a rough copy of the cover page on a sheet of paper.
I then moved on to designing the actual page using Adobe Photoshop CS3. First I decided on what background colour to use. I chose a light blue gradient that was slightly darker in the bottom-right corner. I then chose an orange colour for the masthead that would contrast nicely with the background. For the main cover lines I used a pale yellow which would also contrast while not sticking out too much, and a sharp shadow. Sub headings were white. Then I got a picture of the Kinetic Theatre logo and a picture of a Scottish hat from home and applied it to the page. I wanted part of the picture in front of the text and some of it behind it, which wasn’t possible, although I could erase the parts of the hat’s ribbon that overlapped the letters to make it easier to read. In the top right corner I placed the Kinetic Theatre logo along with other small texts each with a different font and colour to add variety. Finally I added a picture of myself taken with a friend’s camera to the background, resizing the image to be a medium close up.
For the contents page I took the two shades of blue from my background for the text on the contents page, using the orange I used for the masthead for the CONTENTS text. I did this to keep the style of the cover page while having the page white, as I think this would look more professional and better suited to a mature audience than a brightly coloured one. Most magazines don’t have pages in full colour like the background of the cover page. I added images from home relating to the content of the articles and spaced the list out irregularly making it seem rebellious and different.
Overall I think that these pages are well-designed. Comparing it with other kinds of newspaper it doesn’t seem as detailed, but at the same time is doesn’t seem cluttered. It is still appealing and eye-catching; although to improve I could have added more images from home.
I looked at several different types of magazines to decide on the layout and brainstormed on different styles of logos. When I was happy with my logo I drew a rough copy of the cover page on a sheet of paper.
I then moved on to designing the actual page using Adobe Photoshop CS3. First I decided on what background colour to use. I chose a light blue gradient that was slightly darker in the bottom-right corner. I then chose an orange colour for the masthead that would contrast nicely with the background. For the main cover lines I used a pale yellow which would also contrast while not sticking out too much, and a sharp shadow. Sub headings were white. Then I got a picture of the Kinetic Theatre logo and a picture of a Scottish hat from home and applied it to the page. I wanted part of the picture in front of the text and some of it behind it, which wasn’t possible, although I could erase the parts of the hat’s ribbon that overlapped the letters to make it easier to read. In the top right corner I placed the Kinetic Theatre logo along with other small texts each with a different font and colour to add variety. Finally I added a picture of myself taken with a friend’s camera to the background, resizing the image to be a medium close up.
For the contents page I took the two shades of blue from my background for the text on the contents page, using the orange I used for the masthead for the CONTENTS text. I did this to keep the style of the cover page while having the page white, as I think this would look more professional and better suited to a mature audience than a brightly coloured one. Most magazines don’t have pages in full colour like the background of the cover page. I added images from home relating to the content of the articles and spaced the list out irregularly making it seem rebellious and different.
Overall I think that these pages are well-designed. Comparing it with other kinds of newspaper it doesn’t seem as detailed, but at the same time is doesn’t seem cluttered. It is still appealing and eye-catching; although to improve I could have added more images from home.
Research and Planning: 4. Music Industry Research
What relationship does the UK Music Industry have with UK Music Magazines?
There are about 74 notable magazines according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_magazines.
The most popular among them are Q, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Blender, Alternative Press, Paste, Vibe, NME and Spin.
The target audience for Q from the beginning were a minority of people who were buying CDs which was a new technology at the time.
Q has a circulation of 130,179 copies sold monthly in the UK as of June 2007 bringing it to an average of 43393 sales per year. Rolling Stone has a circulation of 1.4 million issues sold bi-weekly each issue in the US.
The Magazine Q is owned by Bauer Media Group, as well as Kerrang! and its sister magazine MOJO. Rolling Stone is owned by Wenner Media LLC.
These magazines make money by advertising music artists with news, interviews, photo shoots, reviews of concerts and records and a cover mount which is a compilation of tracks from different artists featured in the magazine.
Record companies get publicity for recording artists and enforce copyright protection for them. If a song belonging to that company is played without paying credit to the artist or the company, it is taken down to ensure that the artist always gets paid for their music.
There are about 74 notable magazines according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_magazines.
The most popular among them are Q, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Blender, Alternative Press, Paste, Vibe, NME and Spin.
The target audience for Q from the beginning were a minority of people who were buying CDs which was a new technology at the time.
Q has a circulation of 130,179 copies sold monthly in the UK as of June 2007 bringing it to an average of 43393 sales per year. Rolling Stone has a circulation of 1.4 million issues sold bi-weekly each issue in the US.
The Magazine Q is owned by Bauer Media Group, as well as Kerrang! and its sister magazine MOJO. Rolling Stone is owned by Wenner Media LLC.
These magazines make money by advertising music artists with news, interviews, photo shoots, reviews of concerts and records and a cover mount which is a compilation of tracks from different artists featured in the magazine.
Record companies get publicity for recording artists and enforce copyright protection for them. If a song belonging to that company is played without paying credit to the artist or the company, it is taken down to ensure that the artist always gets paid for their music.
Research and Planning: 6. Photoshoot Planning
The name of our band is Plutopia. The name was thought up by my family who are more creative with names.
I am the MC who deals with most of the vocal roles of our band, singing lyrics to the songs or stirring up the crowd for songs where I am not needed. My dad is the lead guitar player and secondary vocalist. He tried to start his own music career 8 years ago and had little luck. Now he’s back with his revamped songs that he will sing. James is the technical man who has had the most experience with music software and will provide the synthesised parts of the songs which cannot be made with our conventional guitars. He plays the keyboard which plays the main music track and he plays the main riff himself on the keys.
Our music is mostly Drum and Bass but with some Electronica and a little bit of Trance, so we deal with synthesised music with added guitars to make the music more effective.
We want to convey a powerful but welcoming image by looking confident but not intimidating.
I wear a black beanie and a headset to show that I am the MC. James wears his headphones and sunglasses to convey his image as an artist that he has used for a cover of one of his albums.
Our props are a couple of my Dad’s guitars and keyboards that we have in the background to show how we make our music.
I am the MC who deals with most of the vocal roles of our band, singing lyrics to the songs or stirring up the crowd for songs where I am not needed. My dad is the lead guitar player and secondary vocalist. He tried to start his own music career 8 years ago and had little luck. Now he’s back with his revamped songs that he will sing. James is the technical man who has had the most experience with music software and will provide the synthesised parts of the songs which cannot be made with our conventional guitars. He plays the keyboard which plays the main music track and he plays the main riff himself on the keys.
Our music is mostly Drum and Bass but with some Electronica and a little bit of Trance, so we deal with synthesised music with added guitars to make the music more effective.
We want to convey a powerful but welcoming image by looking confident but not intimidating.
I wear a black beanie and a headset to show that I am the MC. James wears his headphones and sunglasses to convey his image as an artist that he has used for a cover of one of his albums.
Our props are a couple of my Dad’s guitars and keyboards that we have in the background to show how we make our music.
Research and Planning: 7. Response to the Photoshoot
I made no prior preparation to the photo shoot. I had the idea of taking my shots at home using my family as the band rather than doing everything at school. The rest of the class did well by establishing how they were going to do this and who would be in their group. I think I have taken an interesting path of how to do this which may be more difficult since it isn’t at school and I have to find my own time at home, so this may just be a good exercise to help me hone my skills in getting things done and being good at setting goals and deadlines for our group to follow in advance. If I can’t do this then I will stay trailing behind in the work, and I want to avoid this.
Taking pictures at home I didn’t explain fully what image I wanted from these pictures, so my family went by their own idea of the band they were starting rather than me and so this may be communicating the wrong idea.
Taking pictures at home I didn’t explain fully what image I wanted from these pictures, so my family went by their own idea of the band they were starting rather than me and so this may be communicating the wrong idea.
Research and Planning: 8. Concept, Treatment and Evaluation
Concept
The title is Elec; it’s short and rolls off the tongue. It connotes to energy and outlines the genre that the magazine is based around. The previous title was simply DnB, but it was changed since Electronica was a better range of music that I like to listen to so the name covered the wrong range and it sounds way too generic anyway.
This magazine deals with Electronica bands such as The Prodigy and Pendulum as well as our own band. It also deals with music software such as Reason and Record, and synthesisers such as the MiniMogue and their history with Roland the first synthesiser maker. It focuses around the genres of Drum and Bass, Dubstep, Techno and Trance. It can also relate to earlier genres of computer music such as keygens and chiptunes.
It’s Purpose and Aims is to catch the interest of Electronica fans and give information about the Electronica music sub-culture, artists and cheap/free music software to encourage people considering a career in electronic music.
It’s aimed at bright 16 year old males and females who are less interested in mainstream pop music and more interested in certain bands such as The Prodigy and Pendulum, and other artists featured on the UKFDrumAndBass YouTube channel such as Netsky and ShockOne, or new Electronica artists starting their career.
Treatment
The cover page will feature a picture of the band Plutopia as the dominant image. There will be a few articles mentioning the band as well as Top 10s of Electronica, Drum and Bass and Trance etc and articles on cool cheap/free music software for music artists. It will include a flash because they are an effective eye-catching feature.
The contents page will look like Windows Media Player listing the articles like tracks. If there is space in the text there will be small thumbnails of things to the right of the text relating to an article such as the band Plutopia.
The double page spread will feature a review of Plutopia with a stripe going across a point just above the middle page showing a close up of the three members close to each other. Text will be below in solid columns with a few pictures amongst the text.
The tone is laid-back and informal to appeal to 16 year olds. The language will be simple enough but won’t seem like it’s patronising by being too simple. The text and images will be somewhat scattered and not in a regular arrangement, but not completely, to present an interesting Kerrang!-like layout to the viewer without it being too hard to navigate the page layouts.
Justification
I have arranged the magazine’s format to something similar to Kerrang! That is an interesting and unusual format having unorganised layouts and large images with colourful borders. It breaks the convention of how text is written on paper as straight and organised in rows and columns. The text will be randomly spaced out and slightly tilted to present an interesting and different layout to read.
This magazine will appeal to its target audience because its content will be very similar to a magazine such as Kerrang! but will focus on a musical sub-culture that mainstream musical magazines tend to overlook. The people who write music of the target genre are widespread throughout the Internet, so giving certain obscure artists some lime light will mean that the target audience can check out new artists to satisfy a need for more variety in their music library.
The challenges I may face in production may include emulating the style of a music magazine as I have not seen many. I will need to make sure I do enough research to be able to include enough content and pay attention to detail.
The title is Elec; it’s short and rolls off the tongue. It connotes to energy and outlines the genre that the magazine is based around. The previous title was simply DnB, but it was changed since Electronica was a better range of music that I like to listen to so the name covered the wrong range and it sounds way too generic anyway.
This magazine deals with Electronica bands such as The Prodigy and Pendulum as well as our own band. It also deals with music software such as Reason and Record, and synthesisers such as the MiniMogue and their history with Roland the first synthesiser maker. It focuses around the genres of Drum and Bass, Dubstep, Techno and Trance. It can also relate to earlier genres of computer music such as keygens and chiptunes.
It’s Purpose and Aims is to catch the interest of Electronica fans and give information about the Electronica music sub-culture, artists and cheap/free music software to encourage people considering a career in electronic music.
It’s aimed at bright 16 year old males and females who are less interested in mainstream pop music and more interested in certain bands such as The Prodigy and Pendulum, and other artists featured on the UKFDrumAndBass YouTube channel such as Netsky and ShockOne, or new Electronica artists starting their career.
Treatment
The cover page will feature a picture of the band Plutopia as the dominant image. There will be a few articles mentioning the band as well as Top 10s of Electronica, Drum and Bass and Trance etc and articles on cool cheap/free music software for music artists. It will include a flash because they are an effective eye-catching feature.
The contents page will look like Windows Media Player listing the articles like tracks. If there is space in the text there will be small thumbnails of things to the right of the text relating to an article such as the band Plutopia.
The double page spread will feature a review of Plutopia with a stripe going across a point just above the middle page showing a close up of the three members close to each other. Text will be below in solid columns with a few pictures amongst the text.
The tone is laid-back and informal to appeal to 16 year olds. The language will be simple enough but won’t seem like it’s patronising by being too simple. The text and images will be somewhat scattered and not in a regular arrangement, but not completely, to present an interesting Kerrang!-like layout to the viewer without it being too hard to navigate the page layouts.
Justification
I have arranged the magazine’s format to something similar to Kerrang! That is an interesting and unusual format having unorganised layouts and large images with colourful borders. It breaks the convention of how text is written on paper as straight and organised in rows and columns. The text will be randomly spaced out and slightly tilted to present an interesting and different layout to read.
This magazine will appeal to its target audience because its content will be very similar to a magazine such as Kerrang! but will focus on a musical sub-culture that mainstream musical magazines tend to overlook. The people who write music of the target genre are widespread throughout the Internet, so giving certain obscure artists some lime light will mean that the target audience can check out new artists to satisfy a need for more variety in their music library.
The challenges I may face in production may include emulating the style of a music magazine as I have not seen many. I will need to make sure I do enough research to be able to include enough content and pay attention to detail.
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