I found out today that I am creating a magazine Inspired by R&B music. I was happy with this choice because it was a genre I wanted to do but at the same time I knew it would be difficult and challenging to make for the reasons that I had to find a model, improve on Photoshop and Indesign.
I have already come up with some designs that I have thought of here are some of my ideas:
· Bearing in mind that R&B is all about sexy images less clothing and most of the lyrics are mostly about love stories. I thought that I could find a model appealing to both male and female audiences. One of my ideas was to find a male model that would be willing to take his top off and show his “six pack” with a girl behind holding his chest.
· My second idea was to buy a thrown /chair for a male to sit on with his “pimp stick’ and two girls standing beside him with their arms on the side of the chair.
· My third idea was to have a male model on a motor bike with no top on.
· My last idea was to have a female lying on the floor holding some kind of prop in her hand or even standing on a prop.
My music magazine challenges other music magazines such as the layout, contents, sub headings and photographs. I have researched many other music magazines preferable R n B and they are similar and different in some ways than others. I want to create my magazine similar to other magazines, so the audience knows straight away that my magazine is an R n B magazine and don’t get confused with another genre.
Whatever colour my female/male model is wearing I will try to make my front page sub headings and masthead the same similar colours.
My target audience would be simply for anyone who loves to listen to R & B music or are inquisitive to find out what this genre is all about. My media product represents particular social groups by the use of images such as sexy handsome young males and female models, language that would persuade the readers to want to read the magazine and gain knowledge or stimulation, unique style to gain confidence in themselves and motivation to aspire to the artists portrayed; promotions. I feel that my targets audience would be aimed at teenagers mostly.
The kind of media institution that I feel might distribute my music magazine would be IPC media because is a well know company which have a variety of different music genres. Another media institution that might distribute my magazine would be ITC media which is London based and Britain’s largest publisher of consumer magazines.
This is my research of other music magzines which helped me throught the process of my magazine.
Background pictures
v A chair
v A fence
v A wall
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Firstly I had to find a website that created the type of font that I was looking for to help me with my front cover. The website I used was called dafont.com. I found this website very useful because it had a wide variety of different font styles for me to choose from. I finally found the font that I wanted for my master head which was called Devil Breeze.
Whilst creating my magazine I am designing the product similar to other real music magazines by using similar language that most R n B magazines use on their front covers such as free downloads, tips to keep in shape, gossips on other artists; latest albums. I will use the same language techniques to entice my readers and for my magazine to fit into the selected genre. I am also designing my magazine in a similar layout as other magazines for example a big image on the front cover, cover lines, subheadings, barcode, date; the price.
I am designing my magazine to represent social groups by adding fashionable photographs, the use of colour and my attractive young model. The body language plays an important role when representing social groups for example on most R n B magazines the images of artists are normally seductive, revealing, fashionable and attractive, so I tried to use the same techniques.
I feel I am attracting and addressing my audience by my main image on the front page because when you first look at a magazine you look at the images first then your read the articles and the texts. So the image is the first thing that captures the reader eyes and decides whether they want to read on or not. The picture down bellow is the picture I used for my front cover. This picture was taken in college in the girls changing rooms. Out of 84 images it was difficult for me just to choose one at this stage because they were all really nice pictures. I chose this picture because I felt that it best described the personality of the magazine and it described article about herself for the double page spread. The model in my picture is called Goldie and for my double page spread about her it’s about a new female hot artist that is fresh and ready to share her talents and I feel that this picture tells it all that she is sexy and fiery. I am also attracting and addressing my audience by telling my audience the ‘must have songs’ they should have in the article. I am attracting them by stating where they can download Goldie’s new album and other R n B songs. Some of the other features such as how to tighten your body and keep in shape; top 10 best R n B songs this week are just some of the ideas that attract and address the audience.
The name of my magazine is called Angel. I chose this name not only because it is my name but because I felt it would be a suitable name for my genre. I also liked this idea because there was no other music magazine called Angel so this would make the magazine stand out and be unique. I decided to add wings on either side of the letters and add a halo on top of the word to make the name of the magazine big, bold, eye catching and more interesting.
My music magazine challenges other music magazines because mine is targeted at the same genre R n B. My magazine develops on my research of real life magazines so they are bound to look similar in a way.
I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing my magazine. After creating my college magazine I researched a lot of information about magazines preferably music magazines. I noticed that after researching I found that my college magazine was just a little too dark and gloomy compared to the other professional magazines, so I then decided to change the outlook in my music magazine. I noticed that my music magazine looks much more colourful; alive than the college magazine, by this I mean I have thought through the colour schemes much more closely. I decided not to add a colour background on my magazine because during my research, I found a magazine that had no colour background like mine looked very effective and noticeable. I chose to add a yellow orangey halo on top of my title so I decided that the same colour would be my theme.
Looking back at my preliminary task of my school magazine I felt I have learnt and gained loads more knowledge of Photoshop, Indesign and the process of developing a music magazine. I feel I have improved more in these two programmes especially in Indesign because I had not used this programme before. After a few attempts and practises I gradually got the hang of it. This is a print preview of what my magazine looks like so far in Indesign. I have used many layers of which were locked when I was not using them, otherwise my layers would have been disorganised, so I made sure that I named each layer which took most of my time, but it made the process quicker in the end.
I have also felt that I have learnt to engage with the readers more in this magazine rather than the college magazine for example, by adding information such as ‘165 songs you need now’ helps me to connect with the readers and share songs that they would want to listen to. I have also worked on the anchorage of my magazine such as ‘free downloads’ the word free ties down meaning because everyone loves free stuff.
I also feel that another technique I have learnt whilst researching magazines is layout and organisation. I feel that I have created a better job of laying out my images and texts in certain places to make it look more like a professional magazine.
I noticed that Alicia keys has on the same lip stick as the font colour in the magazine which works fantastically.
I think that this magazine cover works well because of the font colour. The red masthead and the sub headings are bold and eye catching.
