Production Log 18

Production Log 17

I have completed one of my double page spreads. I have made a small adjustment from my first draft by deleting a photograph and replacing this with a "five minute fact" box. I think this gives the page more diversity and seperation from images. It also makes the magazine look more professiona as many music magazines contain a small box with information in it. I have now completed my front cover and have now started to create my second double page spread. I want this page to mostly consist of images as I want to make the magazine look like it has more than just text in it. I also want to fill up the white space on the second double page spread and think that the easiest way to do this would be to add a photograph. I'm going to incorporate some more text onto the second double page spread such as a pull quote or small paragraph about the two artists. Below is an image of what my second double page spread currently looks like unfinished.

Production Log 16

I have started at adjust my draft to become my final magazine. I have made a various amount of changes to my magazine. Today I mainly focussed on changing the front cover of my magazine. The biggest change has been changing the front cover image. Instead of having both my models on the front cover, I have decided to use one. This is because I felt that the original picture did not look professional and seemed out of proportion with the sell lines. I think that it also enables me to include a better selling point for the magazine as I can now get the audience wondering who the artist is that sang with Carly Evans, as there is no image to give this away. I have changed my mast head completely including the fonts. I have created the letter R as a simple iconic logo for the masthead and changed the font completely for "Rampage" to a more basic style. However this still stands out on my masgazine and makes it look more professional. I also changed the font for all of my sell lines on the front cover and used two different ones rather than just one font for all of them. This creates a better contrast and divides the quotes and storylines up better, making them easier to read.

Production Log 15

I have completed my first draft for my magazine as shown below. I am quite satisfied with how it has turned out. However I think that it needs a lot of adjustments made to it to make it look more professional and complete as at the moment I think there are too many white spaces on the front cover and first double page spread. I am going to improve this by trying to take more pictures or use more cretive sell lines and fonts to take up more of the space. To find out what else needs to be improved, I am going to ask my target audience and few outside my target audience what they think about the magazine. There input can help me improve my magazine. I am also going to compare my magazine to one that already exists to see if I have included anything new or taken ideas that have already been used and either improved on them or whether they need to be improved in my next draft.

Production Log 14

I have now chosen what images I wish to use for my magazine and for what sections of it. This will save time as when it comes to creating my magazine, I will know exactly what images I wish to use. I am now starting to learn how to use indesign which is a new program similar to photoshop. Its quite easy to use. I've kept with my orange,black and white colour scheme which so far has gone well. I've only just started to create my contents page so hopefully I will be able to adapt more skills in Indesign to create a professional looking magazine. I have also scanned my initital designs that I will analyse shortly.

Production Log 13

I have now started to come up with some ideas for the magazine in more detail such as what I would like as cover lines and as my double page spread. I have made a mock up magazine to see how I could place these cover lines as well as a mock interview for my double page spread. Im now starting to put my whole magazine together after creating drafts and mocks of ideas that I want to use for my final finished magazine.

Production Log 12

 While browsing on the internet at magazines. I came across this one by NME. I love the use of the colour scheme as even though it uses orange. It is very bland and basic. It is also a special edition cover, so you would expect it to be quite bold and significant. This is in its own way because of its simplicity whilst being able to still look professional and capture the eye of a reader. Having an animal in as a prop is also an idea that I really like, but wouldn't use in my own designs as I think this would be difficult to master. Overall I really like the look of this magazine, including the font in the very top right hand corner that states " Introducing the new NME"  I also like the blue NME front cover because i have used a similar guitar as a prop for my photoshoot. Therefore I could use a similar idea of matching the main masthead colour to the colour of the guitar.

Production Log 11

Over the past week or so, I have come up with some name designs for my masthead of my magazine. They're quite dramatic and I think they fit very well with the name being "Rampage" as they look chaotic and stand out a lot. However I have slightly started to chnge the designs after coming up with some more basic ones recently that I will upload shortly. I want to start finalising what I want my masthead to be now that I have more of a clear idea of what I want and I know more about what colour scheme I want to use.

So now I know a bit more about what I want my masthead to be, I decided to start looking at some colour schemes to go with this. I know for definate that I do not want to use more than three colours and that black and white are most likely definately going to be used in my colour scheme. At the moment I am most drawn to using orange as the main colour for my magazine, but after looking at some other colour schemes im not sure if I prefer some others. But I plan to mess around with some colours for my masthead and see what I like the most.

Production Log 10

I have looked at what I would like my target audience to be for my magazine. To do this I had to look at things such as gender, interests, styles, and what my target audience would be aged around. To find out more about who already used magazines and the kind of audiences out there, I decided to make a survey to put onto my blog so that people could input some information about music magazines. This information really helped me to see what I should be including in my magazine and what draws someone in to read them. This survey also allowed me to know what age group mainly reads music magazines and therefore I now know that my magazine should be based around 15-18 year olds. My data also showed that people mainly bought magazines only when they liked what the main story was about rather than on a regular bases. A large majority said they bought magazines to find out about certain artists and interviews. Therefore I now know that I should focus largely on these things when making my own magazine.

Production Log 9

This week I have also created a mood board for my music magazine. The images include pop rock artists, such as paramore, and music magazine covers. I used this to generate some ideas into what kind of images I could create myself with my own models and what styles of titles I could use. This helped me a lot to get more of an idea about the genre of music I have chosen by being able to see how artists of this genre dress and look in an image. As well as being able to see more ideas about that the style of magazines are like.

I have trialled some outfits for both of my models as well as hair and makeup so that I can get an idea of what will look good for my photoshoot. I think it is better to test this before the day just to make sure that you have everything you will need to make the shoot look just how you want it to. I decided that Jemma is more girly pop rock than Seren, so I have decided to incorporate this into my magazine. Seeing as i'm doing a collaboration, I think it's good to have a clash from two different styles of pop rock. Therefore it would make a better story as people might not have ever thought they would have gone together to make a song. So I think that this will make my magazine more interesting to write about and for me to do an interview.

Production Log 8

Over the past week, I have done independant research into what I would like to do for my double page spread. I came to the conclusion that many music magazines usually consist of an interview. So i decided that this would be best for me to do. To know more about what I should do and ask for my interview, I decided to research what interviews are usually about and what is asked. I found out a range of questions that I could potentially use and certain topics that I could base the interview on. Such as a tour or a new album. Ideally, because my idea was to to be based on a collaboration between two pop rock artists, I have decided to do an interview about this and interview two people but include there answers for each question.

Production Log 7

This week I started to think of some name ideas for a magazine then decided to put them into a prezi. As I wrote one name, I began to develop it into something else and follow on from it. I ended up with two names that I really liked for different reasons. I was torn between Raw! and Rampage as name ideas. I liked the idea of Raw! because it was short and snappy and would suit being at the top left hand corner of a music magazine. However I realised that even though I had certain reasons for why this title resembled music, I thought that other people may not recognise it as a music magazine title. Therefore I decided to go for Rampage as I think it is better suited for the pop rock genre and fits in nicely with the music magazine industry magazine names already out there whilst still standing out as something new and different. My next step with my name idea is to create an image for it of how I want it to be displayed on the front cover which I will start to think about during the coming weeks.

Production Log 6

When I first decided who to use as my models for my magazine and chose some ideas of what images to take, I wasn't sure what music genre they would suit best. However after researching representation of music genres and artists, I have learnt the differences between each genre I thought my images may be based on. I have decided that the category my style of photo will fit into best would be the pop rock genre. This is because there are a lot more female artists in this genre than the other two that I looked at. So seeing as both of my models are girls I think this was a good reason to choose this category. Another reason why I chose it was because it isn't as dark and serious as rock and not as bland and simple as indie rock. I want my photos to be edgy and look like its based on rock without being so dismal and heavy. I want the photos to look fun, but not pretty and girly like pop would be. Therefore I like the fact of pop and rock being combined as it merges what I want from each genre together.

Production Log 5

I have started looking at image ideas and generating a proposal for my magazine which will be shortly coming up once I have fully planned what im sure I want to do. Doing my research has really enabled me to start creating my own ideas so has helped me a lot. I've set the date for my photoshoot and i'm planning a date before it to test out hair,make up and clothing for my two potential models. Im going for a rocky edgy punk/indie look because it is what I think would look best in for a photograph. I think this sort of thing gets the most publicity which I have learnt as I have been doing my research. I would like to incorporate a prop such as guitar into the photos so I think my chosen genre of music would have to be one that uses a guitar within there music. So I couldn't base my magazine on a classical genre because they don't tend to use guitars so I don't think it would be suitable to use one. 

Production Log 4

I have been looking at codes and conducts of music magazines lately as part of my research. This has enabled me to know what I will need to include in my own magazine to make it look and stand out as a music magazine rather than just any magazine. It has to have special features to make it look specific. I havn't really thought much about what styling or how I want my codes and convetions be in my magazine as i'm still trying to get a basic idea of what I want my magazine to be about and the genre of music I want it to be based on. Before my research I wasn't too sure on the names of the things that had to be used in a magazine, however after this research I feel a lot more confident in knowing what I need to include. Hopefully I can now start to begin to gather ideas about where to use these codes and conventions and how I want them to be portrayed on and within my magazine.

Production Log 3

I have started to come up with some image ideas for my front cover. Although I know what image ideas I would like and what style I would like them to be based on, I do not know what genre they would best suit. I know that I would like my magazine to have have rocky pop look. But because I haven't done my research yet I am uncertain of what genre my images would fit into. This is something that I could research so that I know what genre to base my magazine on.

Production Log 2

Music magazine analysis:

On friday and over the weekened I have been analysing 3 front covers of music magazines. I really liked this task as it allowed me to learn about how magazines are set out and arranged and what styles and techniques are used to attract an audience. A few things I picked up on were the use of large main photos as background images, colour schemes, titles and subheadings. All of which make the covers attractive, easy to read, and appealing to buy. They easily show that they represent a music theme as the magazines were based on music and use the above to show this.

It has made me start to think of some ideas for my own music front cover page and what type of shots and photographs I could use. The main thing im focussed on trying to start picturing is what genre of music I want to base my image on e.g indie music, rock, pop. Another thing I have started to consider is the layout as most of these magazines have similar layouts.

Production Log 1

Preliminary Task:

In media today I was told that we were required to do a preliminary task for our media coursework. Our task was to get into small groups of 3-4 and each take photos around school for a front cover and content page of a school magazine. However we were only allowed to use a mid-shot for the front cover.

Once I had taken all the photos I needed, I headed back and started work on the magazine cover. I had never used photoshop before, so it was interesting to try and figure out how to use it. After a little help and a bit of experimenting, I edited the photo I wanted to use, and began to produce my front cover.

I found it a little tricky at first, but I think with more practice my work will start to improve and develop.