Planning a College Magazine

Todays lesson consisted of our class sketching out our plans for our practice college magazine. We had to design a rough cover and contents page which I have shown below. I wanted the contents and cover page to be fun along with formal. I have planned to make it fun by adding fun images of student and staff in various locations of the college. I also am planning to make the cover lines and titles for the articles really fun but school appropriate.

In the cover page I have decided to only add one main image of either a student or college staff with important and fun headings such as, ''TOP 1O TIPS TO SURVIVE COLLEGE!', as a student I think that a cover line would be funny and interesting therefore I have chosen to add it in there. Alongside that to give the magazine a more of a realistic feel I have added a barcode with a price. I know magazines usually advertise their websites on the bottom of the page so thats what I have gone with too. I want the front cover of the magazine to look formal but appealing to students. I will also be adding a bold title in the font Arial in white contrasting it with whatever image I prefer to go with.

For my contents page, I want it to be colourful and filled with images of staff and student. I will be doing a main contents page list making it pretty simple followed with some headings for articles with a image. I want the background of my contents to be an image and I plan on overlapping the over images on that. The contents page in my perspective is going to look fun but formal as thats how school should be. Also at the bottom of my contents page I have left a massive space for deadlines as I think that would be important to students to remind themselves of important deadlines and meeting them.

- Ayat

Media Timeline

Above is a timeline outlining all the projects and tasks which I will be taking on this year in my Media Class. I created this timeline on a website called timetoast. This helps me keep on track and helps me complete work before deadlines.

- Ayat

Photoshop Practice

Today in our media lesson we learnt how to use photoshop. 

I chose to go with an image of Oli Sykes, which had already heavily been photoshopped. I just used it as an example to play around with on photoshop. I entered my image in and resized the rulers as they were wide. I then entered the master heading, which was LSC Magazine as we were told to in lesson. I liked how it looked in the colour white and the font Arial. As I didn't have enough time during the lesson I couldn't expand my knowledge on how to use photoshop very much however I still learnt the basics. 

- Ayat

Media Kit and Institutional Analysis (Task 2)

In today's lesson, we had to choose 2 magazines and find a media kit for them and do a institutional analysis for each one. We had the choice to either work alone or work with a partner, I decided to pair up with Adhan ( http://adhan-nur.blogspot.co.uk/ ). We both decided on the genre of rock magazines. Our next task is to go out and find 2 appropriate magazines to do a detailed analysis on.

Another thing we did in our lesson today was do an analysis of the market kit for the Kerrang! and UNCUT.  

Below is the media kit and the analysis me and Adhan have completed. 

Kerreng!

Media Kit:

Kerrang! Have been a popular magazine for 29 years, this shows that this magazine must be attracting the correct audience for the past nearly 30 years. This also shows that the readers must find this magazine reliable, valid and enjoyable seeing as it has been one of the hottest rock magazines of all time. Also, the mean age for this magazine is 22. This is a good target audience as most 22 year old’s have extra cash to spend on a magazine they may be interested in. 22 year old’s tend to also be involved in social media which is where the magazine probably get their large social media following from.  As shown above, a reader of this magazine is likely to spend over £200 on albums and events which are founded via the Kerrang! Magazine. This shows that this magazine does in fact hold the attention of many readers. People enjoy it and mainly the genre of it. Kerreng!’s main music genre is Rock music, every issue they release they feature the hottest rock bands, this is a good way of attracting a large group of readers. Alongside this, the magazine is considered to be a part of the scene magazine, meaning rock music lovers almost find it essential to have a copy of this magazine. Another important thing about the media kit of this magazine is that their target profile is ABC1, meaning they prefer readers who have a professional career or a job at least, as readers of these profiles would be able to afford a copy of this magazine. However only 52% of the readers actually come under this profile. 

Textual Analysis:

Front Cover Analysis:

On the front page we can clearly see the Masthead on top in a bright red colour with water drops on it to symbolise "wash away your sins". This is the main cover line on the magazine a it directly correlates to the cover star whom is cover in water. This could be because he has washed away his sins. The bright colour is used to grab our attention, the house style of this magazine is the font of the mast head and it's positioning on the magazine. Furthermore, the masthead has various line on it to add to the design to make it more appealing to the targeted audience. In addition, the masthead always ends in an exclamation marks. The cover star is Mallory Knox, and he is not wearing a shirt and the shot is a upper body shot type, this makes it look as though he is not wearing any thing. The cover star is facing into the camera to make it seem as if he was looking at us. the cover lines scattered across the page show us what is coming in the magazine. Also, the cover line on the right shows us that there is posters available in the magazine. There is a bar code in the bottom right corner; next to bar code is the website for Kerrang! Also shows price of magazine in sterling and dollar, furthermore the issues is shown there as well (1587). The bottom left of the page gives us a chance to win VIP tickets to a Fall Out Boy concert and merchandise. 

Contents Page:

The contents page has a three colour scheme consisting of white, red, yellow and black. The contents page mainly consists of an image of a man who is probably being interviewed on the page number that is written on his right side. The image has a red background to make him stand out from it, he is also dressed in smart attire but he is wearing eye liner. This is done because that is the common style of the people who listen to this genre of music. on the right side of the page, you will see various articles featured in the magazine with the page number next to it in bold. The style/format they have done this in is unusual as it seems as though they have written it in paragraphs.There are fouteen pages referred to as that is the amount of stories (articles) covered in the magazine.

The names of the articles are displayed in a black colour to make it stand out more from the white background it is on.

Double Page Spread:

In this article there were several double page spreads, therefore I decided to chose this one as it was the one with the brightest colour. The colour of the DPS is a bright pink colour that goes darker in the corners. In the centre there is the artist, Vic Fuentes, in a pose looking up. His name is displayed next to him in white to stand out from the background, his last name is written in a special font. His band name is also displayed under his name to show that he is not a solo artist but a part of a band.No drop caps are used but, the Q and A logo was used to replace it. Furthermore,the questions are displayed in a bold font to make it more obvious. There are four short columns of interview preceded by a pull quote that says "I'm afraid of my family dying".

Uncut

Media Kit:

Above is the UNCUT media pack.  This clearly shows that a large fan base of the UNCUT readers are men, this could primarily be due to the rock genre of the magazine and that men may prefer it more than females. Also, the average age for UNCUT is higher than Kerrang!, which is, 37. This may be as by the time you are 37 you are likely to be settled with a reasonable income, many of these 37 year old’s probably have spare money to spend on their favourite magazine. 77% of the UNCUT readers are working fulltime, meaning if they were to come under a dynamic class they would either be ABC1. Meaning have a professional or job which allows you to afford magazines without it being an issue.

Moving onto technology, about 37% of UNCUT readers own an IPOD. This means a vast majority of the readers tend to keep up with the magazine over social media, which also helps out the magazine with their online following. Uncut readers download, an estimate of 86% download music every week. This displays that the readers of UNCUT really enjoy the genre the magazine is based on. Therefore there are such high numbers of downloads in the music genre. The magazine allows readers to be made aware of new rock bands, artists and many more! It makes a platform for newcomers and they generate money through advertisement. 

Textual Analysis:

Front Cover Analysis:

On the front page we can clearly see the Masthead on top in a bright and bold red colour which stands out from the changing blue coloured background. The colour is specifically used to grab our attention as it is bright and placed at the top. The house style of this particular magazine is the colour consistency. This is via the colour red which is always present in the front cover of the magazine. On this issue (November 2015), the cover star is Rod Stewart is wearing clothes (plaid scarf and a second more colourful scarf) that you wouldn't expect to see him in today, his shot type is upper body shot type. This is to foreshadow the fact that the article will be about his past rather than now, furthermore within the magazine you will find a ten page interview with him. The cover star is facing into the camera with no emotion, this makes him look serious. By looking at the camera and acting as he's talking to someone is as if he is talking to the reader. By having him almost block out the entire name of the magazine it shows him to be important it also shows us that he is the featured main artist. The cover line on the right side of the magazine shows us the other articles in the magazine (e.g. Joanna Newsom "I have this weird amnesia"). There is a bar code in the bottom right corner; next to bar code is the website for uncut, promoting website. Also shows price of magazine in sterling and dollar, furthermore the issues is shown there as well. The bottom left of the page gives us a free CD that is provided and created by the magazine. By having a free CD with the magazine, this may draw the customer to buy the magazine as well, if they are interested in the genre of music or interested in the artist.

Contents Page:

The contents page has a three colour scheme consisting of white, red and black. The contents page mainly consists of a letter from the editor, accompanied by an image of Joanne Newsom. The letter has a drop cap and the first three words are completely capitalised and the language is informal as it includes curse words. There is no page number on the contents page as it does not need one. There are seventeen pages referred to as that is the amount of stories (articles) covered in the magazine. The names of the articles are displayed in a red colour to make it stand out more, and look more appealing to the reader. The sections in the contents page are in columns and are aligned, making the contents page organised allowing the letter in the magazine to be seen, making it easy to find the chosen article.

Included CD:

A CD comes as standard in every monthly edition of the magazine, this contains some songs that they deem worthy to be features by them as their top tracks of the month in the Rock genre. By having a free CD attached to the magazine appeals to customers as some may be interested in Rock music This will make more people want to buy the magazine and will increase the sales. Additionally, by having the CD on the magazine, it will help to promote the featured artists more, creating an increase in fans. Moreover, on page ten there is a guide to the CD ranking the tracks and giving some information on each track.

Double Page Spread:

The colour of the DPS is a plain black and white with a picture on the right page of the artist being interviewed, John Grant. His name is displayed in a bold and large black colour to make it stand out more. There are four columns of interview preceded by an anecdotal sort of thing about John Grant and how he came to live in Iceland. There is a drop cap in the begging of the DPS, the font size remains the same throughout other than a change in boldness for the questions. This tells us that the format is a Q and A. The drop cap is the letter "J" in a larger size and bold, in a box with the length of eight lines, this corresponds to the genre as it is big and bold much like rock music (which is loud). There is only one image on the double page spread. The image makes the article interesting, as some readers prefer images instead of a whole two page dedicated to text. On the image there is a pull quote to give a snippet of what is to come in the article.

- Ayat

Induction Task Completed

This was the final outcome of my induction assignment. I based my magazine off Kerreng, a Rock magazine. On the right side of my page I added on all the images Kerreng have used on their past issues and another image of a band winning the Kerreng award. On the left hand side I have my article which I uploaded on a blog post before. I had fun playing around on InDesign to achieve this final piece. The style I went for was colums, with a basic grey colour and a ariel font. I added the heading in bold grey, because I think the main heading should always stand out the most. I later on added a rhetorical question as a sub heading, not in bold and slightly smaller than the heading.  

I got used to using InDesign quite quickly. It was pretty simple and easy. All the tools you needed are easy to find. However I found it slightly difficult to get a background colour so I ended up leaving my background plain, white. Another reason why I went with a plain white background as I found it appealing, however the rock magazine has a very different house style compared to this. I wanted to add different Kerreng past covers on the right hand side of my double page spread to give a insight on the original house design of Kerreng.

Overall, this was my final piece. I think its not the best but as my first try on InDesign I am happy with it. Also I got to learn the process of how to use InDesign so I could say that the induction task could be seen as practice to get better on InDesign.  

Changing Face of the Magazine Industry

The magazine industry has had a drastic change over the years. Due to technology, people prefer to use apps and websites over a printed magazine copy. This clearly shows in this year’s statistics as NME, once a leading music brand has dropped down to selling less than 15,000 copies a week. Just like Q Magazine, who have dropped to an average of 46,096 copies sold a week after seeing a 21.8% down fall in profit year by year. However, Heyday, an online app and magazine based on music, art and poetry could proudly say that their mobile app has had a large number of success of 85% every year. This shows that the mobile applications are doing significantly better than the magazines, this is important because it shows technology is doing better than actual magazines.

This clearly proves that since the 90’s the preferences of people has changed, this is mainly because of the increased use of technology. It could be argued that digital technology has destroyed music magazines. This could be because people may argue that magazines tend to go out of date whereas websites and apps are always updated, also why would anyone go and spend money on something when they can find the same information on the internet for free? Alongside this, celebrities have more power through social media website and apps, therefore they don’t need music magazines to promote or cover things for them anymore. For example, a music artist, The Weeknd and dropped a new album which goes by the name of ‘Beauty Behind the Madness’’, The Weeknd promoted his new album a lot on Twitter, on which he has a fan base of 2.74m followers. Therefore people could get celebrity gossip or information about the celebrity straight from social media websites whereas before magazines would be used if people wanted to know about any new albums coming out or anything about the celebrity… before technology took over.

NME, one of the many famous music magazines has decided to drop from the price of £2.50 to free as they’re sales have decreased immensely. Music magazines are now having to work harder just for their audiences to show interest in them, for example:  NME are planning on adding more factors into their magazines now. So they will not just be focusing on music anymore but alongside that their magazines will include information on film, fashion, television, politic, gaming and technology. They are adding other factors to their once famous music magazine to attract readers and to advertise themselves, in attempt to make it back to the top, maybe?

In my opinion there has been a massive change in the magazine industry. It is quite clear that technology does the part of magazines in today’s day and age. However, I think just because people aren’t that interested in printed magazine copies it doesn’t necessary mean that the magazine company or the music brand has been destroyed. This is because magazines who have seen a decrease in their sales for the print copies have also seen a high increase in their applications and websites. Therefore blaming technology for the drop in sales or the interest of people in magazines wouldn’t be quite fair as the same magazines are doing really well on social media sites, online websites and apps. For example, NME came down to selling 15,000 copies a week which led them to make their magazine go free, however NME have a following 760,000 on Twitter along with 555,000 fans on Facebook and their website, www.nme.com has more than 5 million unique users. This shows that even though the magazine industry isn’t doing so well doesn’t mean that they have been forgotten or are demolished as they are still doing really well on social media sites/apps and online websites. 

- Ayat

The Beginning

Hello!

My name is Ayat Awan and welcome to my blog!
On this blog I will be writing about the class activities and projects that I will be do in my AS Media class. I will be posting about everything that goes on in my AS Media class and the process of developing any future projects!

Thank you for reading my first blog post! See you soon. 

- Ayat