Finish my main task!!!

I have finished my main task, I have learnt a lot of things from this project, I have also developed my photoshop, InDesign skills and knowledges and better in taking photos. I really enjoy creating this project however I've got quite a lot of limitation which stop me from working properly for example I couldn't do any work during the half-term except drawing design pages, because my laptop is a apple product, macbook pro and I haven't got any Microsoft Office and Adobe on it so it is quite different for me and I had to spend more time working outside the lessons.

Evaluation of my music magazine

Evaluation of my music magazine

View more presentations from Rattanapol Rattanarak.

Audience feedback

Final Pages, Front Cover, Contents Page, DPS

Here is the final pages (Front Cover, Contents Page and Double Page Spread) that I've been working on.

Double Page Spread Final

Here is the final of my double page spread, I've typed in more text, added page number and also MS logo. 

Double Page Spread 4th Draft

Here is my 4th draft of the double page spread, I've changed everything from the third one as it didn't look very nice and professional. I've put my model picture as a background picture and I've put the title for this page. The text I've typed in is just roughly typed just to see how much I have to type it in.



Photoshoot for my DPS

I have been taking more photos during the weekend in order to use them for my double page spread, and I used my iPhone to take these photos

Double Page Spread 3rd Draft

This is my third draft of my double page spread, I have put the photo of my model to see how it's going to look like.

Double Page Spread 2nd Draft

Here is my second draft of the double page spread, I have changed the position of the text box and the pictures.

Double Page Spread 1st Draft

This is my double page spread 1st draft, just to show the position of title text and the pictures and how my double page spead going to look like.

Contents Page Final

Here is the final contents page, however I might come back and change something.

Contents page 2nd Draft

As the masthead of the first draft looks a bit like horror which doesn't suggest anything about Hiphop/Rap but scary. Therefore in this 2nd draft I used very simple font for the masthead which doesn't suggest anything at all because if I used graffiti style for the masthead of the contents page, it's going to be too much and it won't look as professional as the others type of music magazine.

Contents Page 1st Draft

I've started to make my contents page for the Monster Sound music magazine and this is my 1st draft of it.

Making my own logo

I've been making my own logo to use for the pages for example, contents page and Double Page Spread. From the logo "M" stands for "Monster" and "S" stands for "Sound"



Front Cover Final

Here is my final front cover. As I got a comment on the previous draft that I should have only one cover line that related to my model, therefore I have to changed one of them to something else, so I decided to have the one below "+" from O.T to "Free-CD inside". I've also changed the position of the barcode from left to right and rotated it to save more space. From now on I'll have more space for my model's cover line, so I can play with the different fonts and colours.

Front Cover 4th Draft

This is how my front cover of the Monster Sound music magazine look so far. Any suggestion please comment.

Front Cover 3rd Draft

Here is my third draft of my front cover page. I've changed the position of the cover lines, the font of the word "Sound", put the barcode and price and also deleted the name of my model. I changed the position  of the cover line because I got an advice from my media teacher that the position of the cover lines of my music magazine would look better if they are in straight line. I deleted the name with the cover line of my model because it ruined the photo, it made the photo looked poor.

Front cover 2nd Draft

Here is my second draft of my front cover with the position of the cover lines, my model's name, barcode and price of my music magazine.

Front cover 1st Draft

Here is my first draft of my front cover page. As I mentioned before in the treatment that the Monster Sound music magazine will normally use black and white for the background colour of the front magazine so most of the colours will come from the costumes of the model for each issue.

Contents Page 3rd Layout

Here is my third layout of the contents page, this one is really simple one that contains only the masthead, picture of my model, the banner about the model and the barcode.

Contents Page 2nd Layout

For the second contents page layout, I still thinking about to put something for my background that can represent the name of my magazine, however this time I decided to put only "M" letter for the "Monster" and also added the picture of my model on it.

Contents Page 1st Layout

Here is my 1st contents page layout, I've been thinking about using letters M and S for the background to represent my music magazine's name as "M" for "Monster" and "S" for "Sound"

Front Cover 3rd Layout

Here is the third layout of my music magazine front cover, it's a very simple one with the masthead, the picture of my model with the banner about him and the barcode and price at the bottom right corner.

Front Cover 2nd Layout

Here is my second layout of the front cover, I have changed the position of the cover line, my model's name with a cover lines and also the position of the photo of my model. I also added the price of my music magazine on the barcode to make it looks more professional and as same as the other music magazine as possible.

Front Cover 1st Layout

Here is the first layout of my front cover of my music magazine. I decided to put a photo of my model in the middle of the page, the masthead on the top, barcode on the bottom left and the cover lines all along the image.

Photoshoot for my front cover page

Here is my model, he is a student in my school who has the good looking for this kind of music magazine. He's also enjoy and really into hip hop and rap style of music, this makes him dress perfectly as I wanted him to dress because he really love this and this is his style. That is why I chose him as my model.

The treatment

The magazine: Monster Sound

Target Readership: The Monster Sound is a new music magazine which aimed at teens and adults in both sex. Its audiences target are people who enjoy and like Hip Hop and Rap music. The targeted audience of the Monster Sound music magazine is aged between 16 to 25. Sometimes the parents of the readers will get involve as some people at age around 16-18 still asking their parents for money, but not every times as some of them are working in part-time jobs. Therefore the readers of this magazine would be classed as middle class and also for working class. The readers of this magazine are mainly mainstreamers who don't really like something challenging, they like something the look familiar, however they could also be aspirers who would like to be like the celebrities that they like. The aspirers have a strong sense of fashion and they also like the newest songs and also gadgets. The readers of this magazine are mainly people who have self-confidents, specially people who dress themselve as Hip Hop or Rapper style. As these style are differently from other styles, for people who really into this genre of music, they would dress themselve with really big size of clothes they wear and if they don't really have the sense of self-confidents then they wouldn't wear this type of clothes because they will feel different from the other people.

Form and style: Monster Sound is an A4 full colour magazine which contains celebrity photos, interviews, fashion, news, gossips, true stories and reviews. The front cover of this magazine would normally use the famous Hip Hop and Rapper celebrities such as 50 Cent, Eminem, The Game and Lil Wayne etc. For the front cover it will be mainly male stars as there are more famous male rappers and female rappers. For the background colour and tone, it will mostly be in black or white so most of the colour will come from the rap star on the cover so it makes the celebrities of each magazine looks stand out. Cover lines will be vibrant and contemporary with the issues that its audiences want to know about the hip hop and the rap stars, they will also include detail about the special offer inside the magazine like free-CD, free download codes, poster and also competition to win somethings. Graphics used are bold and in colour that catch the audiences' eyes, the cover lines will be around the model on each issue. The magazine can be sell at £1.99 - £4.49 but as its targeted audiences are aged between 16 - 25, that means some of they might not be working of making money by themselve so the price have to be affordable, reasonable and also desirable for them. Therefore the price should be in the middle of the range or even in lower range like £2.49. And as the Monster Sound magazine is new to the market, it cannot really be sell at the same price with its competitors like XXL and VIBE magazines which are well-known by people, unless the Monster Sound magazine is very catchy and make people want to try new magazine but as we know that the targeted audiences of the kind of music magazine are mainstreamers who don't really like something challenging and don't like something the look unfamiliar which means that it would be really difficult for the Monster Sound unless it's cheaper.

Themes and Typical features: Monster Sound will have regular features typical to the Hip Hop/Rap music magazine because it would be less risks for the Monster Sound because if it tries to do something different to get more audiences then it might be very risky as they have to put more investment in research to find out what the audiences want and it's not going to be 100% sure that people will buy the magazine because obviously they're not going to do this research all over the world. Most of the issues will include hip hop fashion, along with the lastest celebrity gossip and music reviews. There will be mainly focus of male hip hop and rap stars because most famous and well-knowns rappers and hip hop are mainly male. It will contain some article about the new hip hop or rapper that might become famous. The used of language for the Monster Sound magazine would be in informal ways, so the audiences will feel like the magazine is one of their best friend. The writter will try his best to use language that is familiar to the targeted audiences' language to make the magazine looks really interesting and also to make its audiences into the magazine.

Potential advertisers: It will be a range of hiphop/rap advertise in the magazine each week, for example new tops, new jeans, new caps and other accessories and of course new albums of hip hop and rap songs.

Editorial Team: The editorial team of Monster Sound magazine will be experienced male and female writers and designers who know about the audiences very well, like know what they want to read or to know about. The editorial team have to be both male and female because male writers don't know female audiences as well as the female writers and the female writers won't know about the male readers as well as the male writers. The writers have to be people who can bring new and fresh ideas to each magazine issue to make the magazine contains new stuff on it which will make the magazine become more interesting.

Plan Photoshoot

For my photo, I'm going to pick a male student from my school who has the look of hip hop or rapper style and I will dress him as a hiphop/rapper. For the costumes, they have to be quite colourful as I will use very simple either black or white background of the front cover. Therefore the colours will purely from the costumes and also the text that have the contrast colours. As I'm going to use either simple black or white background colour for the cover so the setting is not important for my front cover at all because I don't need it, however taking photo from inside building and outside building could effect the lighting. In term of lighting, it's going to be high key light because I don't really want my photo to have lots of shadow in it.

Final masthead design

For the final masthead design, I'm going to use the first graffiti font from the masthead design 2 because it looks simple and easy to read and also suggests that the music magazine is about Hip Hop and Rap style. However as my magazine name is Monster Sound, I think it would be better to include some thing the supports my magazine name. Therefore I designed to put the alien on the name of my magazine. I designed to put the alien on the letter O on the word Monster because the alien is kind of monster so it would be good for replacing the alien instead of the letter O. In term of the colour of the masthead it designed to spray the masthead with green colour because when people think of alien, most people would imagine them either in green or in blue colour.

and here is how it looks after I put all of them together.

Masthead Design2

These is my second masthead design which are in different grafiti font styles. The font style of the masthead can suggest the genre of the music magazine so it is important to choose the font style carefully. The grafiti font style gives the audience idea that the music magazine should be about HipHop/Rap music.

Masthead Design

I've designed my masthead designs with the scary font because my magazine is called Monster Sound and I've also put some images of aliens and monsters next to my masthead to identify my magazine name which is Monster Sound. when you think about monster, you would think about something scary so I designed to use the scary font. However when I asked my media teach she said it would be alright if my music magazine is going to be about rock music because the fonts have the look of Indy and rock style but I designed to make a music magazine about Hip hop and Rap style. Therefore I have to use different font style, and the graffiti font style would be the best font which will suit this kind of music magazine the most.

My Questionnaire results

These are the results from my questionnaire about the music magazines?

For question1, three chose What's Hot, four people chose Monster Sound two chose M Mag and only one chose Top 100. Therefore I would go for the most chosen one, Monster Sound.

For question2, eight out nine people read music magazines so there is only who not read the music magazines.

For question3, shows us that most people read only one magazine, one person read two magazines per month and another one doesn't read music magazine at all.

For question4, it shows us that people would pay from £1.99 - £4.49 for a music magazine but this is also link to Question5 how many pages do they expected the magazine to be. For example the people who think the music magazine should be sell at £1.99 - £2.49, they expected the magazine to has around 41-60 pages and for people who think the music magazine should be sell at £2.59 - £4.49 and so on expected the number of pages inside the magazine to be more around 51-90 pages.

For question6, everyone think the music magazine should be released only once a month.

For question7,there are 4 people listen to Pop music, 3 people listen to Hiphop music and only go for Dance music.

For question8, it shows us that the picture on the front cover has the most influence to make people buy the music magazine. This is because the photo on the front cover gives some ideas to the audiences, what the magazine is all about and also what type of music that included inside the magazine. Some would go for cover lines on the front cover of the magazine, because if the cover lines on the magazine are interesting or relate to them then it makes them want to read it. There is some people who would buy the music magazine because of the free CD, as we know that people like free stuff the free CD also has some influence to make them buy the magazine. It also has one suggestion said how about article about the artise for example about  how much they earn and about their houses.

Internet research

Here is my internet research about the readership of the music magazines.

Thursday 11 February 2010 15.56 GMT

 

Mojo: circulation down year on year but slightly up on previous six months

Mojo has overtaken its sister title Q to become the biggest-circulation paid-for music magazine, while there were big drops for music titles New Musical Express, Kerrang! and Metal Hammer in the latest circulation figures out today.
Bauer Media's classic rock magazine Mojo had an average monthly circulation of 98,484 in the second half of last year, down 2% year on year but up 0.8% on the previous six months.
It overtook fellow Bauer title Q, which fell 8% year on year and 5.4% on the first half of the year to 94,811.
There was better news for Q's sister title, film magazine Empire, which was up 2.4% year on year to 194,239. It stretched its already substantial lead over Future Publishing's Total Film, which was down 5.8% year on year to 81,029.
IPC Media's Uncut held onto third place among the paid-for rock music titles, despite a 13.3% fall year on year to 75,518. It was ahead of Classic Rock, which was up 1.5% year on year and 1.3% on the first half of 2009 to 71,242.
But there were big year on year drops for the other titles in the rock music sector. Future Publishing's Metal Hammer was down 16.9% year on year and 9.2% on the previous six months to 41,777.
It was just ahead of Bauer's rock title Kerrang!, which tumbled 21.3% year on year and 4.9% on the first half of 2009 to 41,125, while IPC's NME fell 20.6% year on year, and 6% on the previous six months, to 38,486.
Dance title Mixmag, owned by Development Hell, was also down, falling 13.4% year on year to 26,116. Development Hell's sister title, Word, was down 22.5% year on yearto 26,555.
Channelfly Enterprises' free music monthly The Fly remained the music sector leader with an average distribution of 107,771, up 7.5% year on year.
The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound was up 0.6% on the previous year to 19,842. Future Plus's free film title, Odeon Magazine, was top of the film sector, with an average distribution of 205,380.

This information come from this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/11/mojo-q-nme-kerrang-abcs


For this readership figures of music magazines were made in last 2 years "Thursday 11 February 2010" Therefore this information is not really out of date because it was made in just last 2 years so I can used this information and compare it with the information last year but obviously not this year as it's just the beginning of this year. This information is useful for me because I have to create a music magazine so I can use this information to find out what kind of music magazine I should make.

http://www.slideshare.net/mousasow/magazine-target-audience

For this research, it has useful information for me. It says the ages of the people who filled in the form, for this research it had been filled by people around 16-24 years old so it included teenagers and adults. It also shows how many people listen to each type of music in percent. It also shows where and how do they listen to their favourite songs. It also has information about how much do they spend on music and also music magazines.

Photography

What makes a good photograph?


In order to take a good photograph, you have to be aware of the key visual elements and will make use of them in your photo. The key visual elements of good photograph are:

• Colour 
• Form
• Line
• Pattern
• Shape
• Texture
• Tone

You also have to think of framing like how you're going to take your photo and what  you're going to use your photo for? For example if you want to use your photo for a front cover, it would be better if your photo is in portrait format. You also have to think about viewpoint of your photo, which angle would be the better for your photo. You have to plan how you're going to take your photo, you have to consider about foreground, middle ground and background for your photo. When you take your photo, you might also have to think about the balance and the proportion of the photo.

How would you describe the Rankin style?
Here is Rankin words "The Rankin style is that there is no style! I don’t use a specific type of lighting, I don’t use the same way of shooting all the time, apart from looking for honesty in it. That’s my signature really, the honest thing."

These are the example of the good photographs which were took by Rankin, a professional fashion photographer and has taken images for album covers. 

Questionnaire

Here are my questionnaire about the music magazine. Could you please answer my questions below.

Q1) What would you like a music magazine to be called?

1. What's Hot

2. Monster Sound

3. M Mag

4. Top 100


Q2) Do you read music magazines?

1. Yes

2. No


Q3) How many music magazines do you read per month?

1. Never

2. One magazine

3. Two magazines

4. Three or more magazines


Q4) How much would you pay for a music magazine?

1. £1.99 - £2.49

2. £2.59 - £3.49

3. £3.59 - £4.49

4. more than £4.59


Q5) How many pages would you expected the music magazine to be?

1. 41 - 60 pages

2. 51 - 70 pages

3. 71 - 90 pages

4. More than 91 pages



Q6) How often do you think the music magazines should be released?

1. Once a month

2. Twice a month

3. Three times a month

4. Four or more a month


Q7) What kind of music do you listen the most?

1. Pop

2. Hiphop/Rap

3. Classic

4. Dance

5. R&B

6. Rock

7. Other (please write down)


Q8)What is the most likely thing to make you buy a music magazine?

1. Pictures on the front cover

2. Cover lines on the front cover

3. The masthead on the front cover

4. Free-CD

5. Other (please write down)

Textual analysis of Double page spreads

These are the double page spreads that I'm going to analyse.

1.                                                           2.

   

First I'm going to analyse the first double page spread. For this double page spread they used a picture as the background for both page but the picture has nothing on the left hand side so the columns are put on the side so it doesn't look so empty. For the photo, it shows that that this singer is listening to music which give the audiences some clue about this girl, is she a singer? or is she just a famous person who has something to do with music? They put this photo using her beauty to grab the audiences' attention and make them want to read this page. On the top right of the first page it says her name in red with a special font which looks really stand out so the audiences can see and know straightaway who she is or for people who don't know her or don't recognise her, they will be able to remember and recognise her. For the page number of this magazine is on the bottom left and right corner. In this double page spread, it contains two pictures of this singer, one in high angle shot and another one in mid close up shot. The first picture with the high angle shot show that she is an innocent girl which show her cutie.The second picture that is placed on the bottom left show her sexiness as she's bite her lip. Those two picture show that this girl is not just cute and beautyful but also sexy. 

For the second double page spread, it is slightly different from the first one as the background and the column placed in different way. They use big a photo of the person on only one page with very dark colour for the background. The background colour of the page of the left hand-side is in black but the middle bit is in green. The background colours are suit with the costumes that the person is wearing. On the other page on the right hand-side they didn't use any photos for the background, they used black colour as the background and put the photo of the person on the top of the page so it doesn't look like it contains only text on it. The background colour of the picture is also suit with the picture of the person on the another page. For the title of this page it says Disco Revenge which suggest and give audiences some ideas about what kind of music that the person on that page has interested in. However that way this person dress doesn't look like he has interested in Disco music, it seems lightly to be hiphop more. The standfirst of this double page spread has different font style with the other font text on the page. It also has dropcap at the beginning of the first sentence. On the top right of the page it has a text box that says "interview" with the white background and the black text colour which make them look opposite and different from the background colour of the page. The page number of this magazine is kind of on the side, not really on the bottom of the pages.