Cover, contents and double page spread templates

Here are the templates i've made up for my cover page, contents page and double page spread.

Colours for my magazine

The background I have chosen for my magazine is black as it follows my style models background colour and the main text colours I am using are white as it contrasts with the black background to make it stand out more and it gives the old classic rock and roll feel about the magazine. I am also using red text under the headings with the white text to give the impression that its a liverpool based magazine featuring all liverpool bands and up and coming liverpool bands. Black, white and red is the house style i'm using as you can see in the following photo.

Font for my magazine

 The font i have chosen is Gill sans ultra bold as it really stands out from the page with the thick bold writing. The Writing is easy to apply different fonts and different shadings to because of how bold it is. This works well because it doesn't make the text any harder to read.

As you can see my font is all quite similar so my style model but so much that it is copied completely.

Character profile

Male

Name: will Jones.

Age: 23.

Occupation: university student studying psychology as well as part time restaurant worker.

Disposable income: grant & work pay means I can buy the necessities but also a few luxuries.

Hobbies/free time: playing guitar, being social with friends, casual gaming and films.

Music taste: kings Of Leon, Kasabian, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Arctic Monkeys, Metallica, Muse, Foo Fighters.

Films: Dumb and Dumber, Star Wars, Lord of the rings, Harry Potter, Saw.

TV: music channels e.g. kerrang, scuzz, comedy central, E4, bbc3, sky1.

Female

Name: Michelle Liddell.

Age: 18.

Occupation: Sixth form student and part time retail store worker.

Disposable income: Bursary provided by sixth form and wages from part time job.

Hobbies/free time: Playing piano, socializing with friends, films and art.

Music taste: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, You me at six, Muse, Paul Weller, Ocean color scene.

Films: Titanic, Harry Potter, Twilight, Halloween and Team America.

TV: Kerrang, Scuzz, E4, Comedy Central, BBC, channel 4

Here is a character profile for both a male and a female reader for my magazine.

planning photos for magazine

We are now at the stage of taking our photos for our final magazine. I am planning to take my photo at the Cavern Club in liverpool. I have said to the people i'm using in my photos that I want to be going over there on saturday 24th of November.

The people i'm using are myself, Michael James, Will Jones and Jordan Ronan. The props I want to use are my guitar and Jordan's guitar and also my acoustic guitar for when we take photos in a different location which will be Michaels band room.

Also if possible i'd like to use a microphone but thats not as vital as the guitars. The costume i'm after is the scruffy shirt, tie and jeans rock look like some Dave Grohl's outfits.

The camera angle I want to try and get are worm eye shots for the Cavern and try to make the poses look like the people in the shots are in action at a gig to give the authentic band look. I want to use medium close up shots for the band room shots with acoustic to give the feel of the person being a serious musician and writing music.

I'd like to to use the Cavern photos for my front cover to attract the reader by having a band rocking out in a gig. I want to use the band room photos for the inside of my magazine on my double page spread but I could also use the Cavern photos in there as well. I will possibly take photos over the liverpool skyline just to remind readers that its a liverpool band.

I would possibly like the try and recreate a shot similar to this:

As you can see it is a worm eye shot of a group of serious looking people but i'd like to have a action shot including all the props of my band while keeping the same style shot as this.

This is the medium close up shot i'm going to try and recreate:

The changes i'd want to make to this photo is that the guitarist will be sat down possibly with a sheet of paper writing music but still keep the same distance for the shot.

Photo at the Cavern Club

I have been looking at photos of inside the cavern club as i've decided to use this location for my photo shoot.

continued research

Today i continued my essay research by looking into companies such EMAP and Bauer

Essay prep

Today I was preparing for my essay question which is "given the current technological developments in terms of magazine production, distribution, and consumption, explain your reasoning for your choice of company to produce your magazine"

For this I researched into Monkey magazine looking for details such as: who started it, its readership and target audience. After this I have to do deeper research into companies such as Bauer and EMAP to help do and argument for both sides and why I would pick either one.

Health and safety photo permissions

This is a document we received from our media teacher clarifying that we have given consent to take photos and videos if needed of other people and our consent that we can have photos and videos taken of us.

Researching photo locations

Im searching for good locations around liverpool to take my cover photo for my magazine:

here is the cavern club with the John Lennon statue, the echo arena and the Philharmonic hall. these are just a few potential good locations

My chosen institution

After researching into all the 3 different potential institutions i have decided that (drum role please) dududududududududududududududududududududud.............. EMAP will be my institution.

I have made this decision because EMAP is the only one of the three institutions that does not feature a music magazine so I have spotted a good opportunity to fill a gap in the market. I have not made this decision without considering the risks though. EMAP is very inexperienced with the music brand of magazine but i will also have no competition from the likes of MOJO and Q within this institution, whatever happens i would be the leading music magazine within EMAP. Also the readers for EMAP are less than both Bauer and IPC but maybe with the introduction of a music magazine that appeals to the younger generation it will introduce a whole new set of readers to EMAP and this may attract more music magazines of different appeal to the institution and help it to grow.

Deciding my institution

Now that i've decided my magazine style model i'm looking at 3 different potential institutions to publish and market my magazine. I have looked at IPC media, Bauer media and EMAP.

EMAP claims to be a trustworthy brand with trusted content, independent and inquisitive. This institution is clearly an established brand with a a thriving portfolio of brands but it doesn't feature any music based magazines.

IPC has a wider portfolio of brands with numbers breaching 60. IPC refer to these brands as iconic. They have a wide range of platforms from country to fashion to music and many more. They also claim that they have 26 million adult readers which clearly shows they have a huge readership and this is something to consider when deciding my magazine institution.

Bauer media is the largest privately owned publishing group in europe. They sell over 300 magazines over 15 countries. They have a very wide portfolio of different brands but they also include a lot of different music brands including MOJO which is my style model. This is a huge factor to consider if i choose Bauer as my institution.

Deciding final style model

I am looking a range of possible style models that include:

• Q magazine
• Kerrang
• Mojo
• NME

Here are examples of the magazines i am researching to be my style model. As you can see all of these magazines are showcasing different genres. Kerrang showing heavy screamo metal, Q showing indie rock, MOJO showing garage rock and NME showing indie pop. Target age range of Kerrang, Q and NME is mostly 15-25 so these magazines appeal to a younger generation. Whereas MOJO appeals to adults ranging from 25-40 so this suggests this magazine is for a more serious and mature reader of music. I have decided that i want my target audience to be between the ages of 18-25. This means that my target audience will be of the younger generation but still expected professional content. I also want my magazine to focus entirely on the rock culture of music including classic rock, modern rock and heavy rock.

Through further investigation into the magazines I have chosen Mojo to be my style model over the other choices because Mojo is for music obsessed readers that enjoy listening to classic and modern rock, folk, soul, country to reggae and electronic. MOJO does not feature heavy rock as I intend for my magazine so i'm going to challenge the conventions of MOJO and include the heavy rock convention of Kerrang into my magazine making it reach out to a wider audience.  

Researching institutions

Yesterday as part of our theory lesson we researched into different magazine institutions and we decided which 3 we are going to write about. i decided on Monkey, Emap and Bauer media.

Pre-lim contents page

Here is my finished contents page for my Pre-lim task.

pre-lim magazine cover

Here is my pre-lim magazine cover. I am happy with the photograph it keeps to the rule of thirds but the  audience will focus on the big gap in the middle so I must improve my compositions to make them perfect. Also the footer of the page has a lot of wasted space. I need to make my text more prominent for my final magazine.

pre-lim photo

Here is the photo I have chosen to use on my pre lim task

pre-lim task photo shoot

We had to take photos for the cover of our school magazine as part of the pre-lim task. I set my photo up by getting a sixth form student positioned at an apple mac to show the new high quality facilities at the school. I had to plan out whether the mac from was free at the time I wanted to do my photo shoot and whether the student I used was free at that time as well. I applied the rule of thirds into the composition of the photograph and the props I used were the mac and the student, the camera angle was also a medium close up because this is what the pre-lim requires.

Preparing for our preliminary task

Mr Liddel told us to go out in two groups and take some original photographs around the school to give us a taste of how it is to take photos. The next lesson we reviewed the photos and gave constructive feedback to each other then the lesson after that we went on youtube and watched videos describing the rule of thirds, which is the rule of composing photos to a high quality by employing such skills as; keeping eyes on the top line of the grid on the photo and not keeping people centred in the photo.

Deciding our brief

print brief

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a mast head. additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.

main task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.

we chose this brief because we have the correct resources such as adobe photoshop and we looked at previous coursework and decided we can produce quality high standard work.