Magazine Cover (practice with photoshop)

This is a magazine cover i created on photoshop using various tools. I stuck to the basic layout and template of Kerrang! magazine and i included the band Fall Out Boy in my main story.  I took images for the top and bottom of the page from existing magazines which have inspired me, and i experimented with the different layers to ensure that everything was placed correctly.
I have included all the basic features of a magazine, for example; a large HD image of the main band, a large mast head ("LOUD!"), a title (Fall out boy EU Arena dates), a bar code, the essential information (the date, the issue number, the website and the price.)

Magazine Institutions Research

When researching into magazine instututuions, I found that magazines are published by appropriate institutions that relate to the audience of the particular genre of magazine. IPC Media or International Publishing Company is one of the United Kingdom's leading consumer magazine and digital publishers, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year.

IPC Media groups titles under five magazine divisions: Inspire (leisure and specialist), SouthBank (women's lifestyle and home interest), Connect (women's weeklies such as Now Magazine and Look), Ignite! (men's lifestyle and entertainment) and TX (portfolio of television titles). In addition, there is Marketforce, the UK's leading magazine distribution business.

 Music Magazines they own: NME and Guitar and Bass International Publishing Company

Bauer Media Group Is a large German publishing company based in Hamburg, which operates in 15 countries worldwide. Since the company was founded in 1875, it has been privately-owned and under management by the Bauer family. It was formerly called Heinrich Bauer Verlag KG , abbreviated to HBV and usually shortened to H. Bauer.

The Music Magazines this publisher provides are: Q MOJO and KERRANG All three are advertised on their website as being men’s magazines.

Emap Emap was the second largest magazine publisher in UK with about 18% of the news-stand market by revenue (to IPC/Time Warner's 20%). However, in July 2007, the company announced a strategic review. The result was that the company was split up and sold off in December:

The business-to-business magazines were sold to Guardian Media Group and private equity firm Apax - which owns Incisive - for £1bn. The new company is to be called Incisive-Emap. its consumer magazines and radio arm, including Kiss and Magic, went to Bauer for £1.14 billion - making the German magazine publisher the largest in Britain.

 Development Hell Ltd Set up by ex-Emap executives David Hepworth, Jerry Perkins, Mark Ellen and Andrew Harrison. Business plan to launch three magazines over six years. First launch, in March 2003, was Word , focusing on music and entertainment: 'New! Something to read !' screamed the cover. Bought clubbing magazine Mixmag from Emap in November 2005. The Guardian Media Group took a 14% share in the company in July 2004.

If my magazine were to fall into a category, it would be the Bauer Media Group, as the magazines they own; Q, Mojo and Kerrang are all magazines which inspired me with my own magazine. They all share and contain the same genre as the music in my magazine.

LOUD! - Reader Profile

This is a reader profile which i created on photoshop for my own magazine; LOUD!.

For the LOUD! logo, i used an online font generator called "Cool Text" and i chose the font "Frosty." I customised the colour scheme of the text in order for it to look relevant to my magazine, and i then pasted it into Microsoft Paint, where i used the line tool to create the 'smashed' effect which Kerrang! has.

Along the bottom half of the page is the general facts which i gathered from my surveys, and along the top half/bottom right, is images which are relevant to my target audience. I've included the topshop and H&M logos, as they were voted as my audience's favourite stores, i have images of video games, TVs and laptops because i found out that my T.A is very fond of technology when it comes to passing time, there is scans of existing rock magazine covers which have inspired me, i've added all the bands which were voted as the favourites in my survey (A day to remember, man overboard, bring me the horizon, biffy clyro and blink-182) and i have included instruments, piercings and tattoos because those 3 are stereo-typically linked to rock music, and it would be appealing to my magazine's viewers.

From thisreader profile, it is clear that the interests of my target audience include:
Gaming, band merchandise, music magazines such as Kerrang and NME, food (i.e. Pizza), books, the internet and a lot of them also enjoy pop punk music, such as the band Man Overboard.

this matches my initial expectations, as i had previously predicted that my target audience would enjoy things such as playing instruments and video games. However, i did not expect my target audience to be such huge fans of topshop and H&M, i expected them to be interested in only band merchandise, shirts etc - not high street clothes. Because of this, i will not include as much band merch ads as i was origninally going to; i will add in perhaps a puff for competitions to do with topshop vouchers etc.

Survey Results (Part 2)

After I gained my first set of results, i realised that i needed some more in-depth answers on the particular interests of my target audience, therefore i created another survey asking the following questions: "What's your favourite type of food?", "Whats your favourite genre of Tv show?", "Where do you like to shop for clothing?", "How much money do you usually spend on clothes per shopping session?", "How much do you usually spend per gig ticket?", "Roughly, how many hours do you spend online per day?", and "What is your favourite website?"  
All this newly found information will help me with my target audience research, and it will give me a clear understanding of what to include in my reader profile. I posted another tweet to twitter, inviting people who like rock music (my chosen music genre) to take the time to kindly fill in my questionnaire. This tweet is shown below. 

Results:

~ What is your favourite type of food?

Out of the options; Take-away food, Fast Food, Healthy food, Junk food and store-bought food/meals, the most popular was Take-away food. (exactly 50% of people asked answered with this option). 

~ What is your favourite genre of TV show?

Out of the options; Documentary, News channels, Comedy, Reality, Drama, Anime, Cartoons, Reality and Murder mysteries, the ones which proved most popular were Cartoons, Drama and Comedy, as these took up over 80% of the total votes.

~ Where do you like to shop for clothing?

The most popular outcomes from this question was TopShop, H&M and Online (for band merch etc). The shop JD Sports was an option for this question, however 0% of people chose it, which implies that my target audience are not fans of sport. 

~ How much do you spend on clothes per shopping session? 

The most popular answer from this question was "£21 to 30" and "£31 to £40", both with 27.27%  worth of people. This is a reasonable price range for clothing, and it is very average for teenagers to spend this much in their favourite shops, therefore this may imply that these teenagers are of an average, middle class working background. This will help me when pricing my magazine.

~ How much money do you tend to spend per gig ticket?

The options in this question ranged from "I dont go to gigs" to "0-£20" right the way up to £50+. Only 1 person from the survey said they dont go to gigs, which shows me that gigs and concerts are very popular with my target audience, and the most popular answer, with 54.55% of people voting for it, was £0-£20. This is reasonably cheap for a gig ticket, which may suggest that the disposable income of my teenage audience is low. This will once again help with pricing. 

~ Per day, how many hours do you roughly spend on the internet? 

The options in this question ranged from 0 hours to 15+ hours, and the most popular answer was 6-8 hours. This is a reasonably high amount of time when taking into consideration the fact that most of my target audience are students and they do not have a lot of time outside college hours. This tells me that the internet is a big interest within my target audience. 

~ What's your favourite website?

The options given were: Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook and Other (please specify). The Most popular was Twitter with 73.73% of the votes, closely followed by Youtube and Tumblr, both with 36.36%. Facebook gained 0% of the votes, which shows me that Facebook may be a dislike of my target audience. 

Photoshop Experiment

This is my first attempt at playing around with photoshop and testing my skills to create a poster for The Simpsons movie. I used various aspects of photoshop in order to make it; I experimented with Filters on the doughnuts, i used the transform tool to modify the scale of the Homer image, i duplicated the doughnut layer to give the impression that Homer was standing in a rain of doughnuts, and i experimented with layers by adding an image of clouds in the background.

Survey Results

I created a survey on a website called SurveyMonkey in order to get results regarding my ideal target audience for my music magazine. In order to get people to answer my questionnaire, i posted a link to it on twitter; inviting people to participate. (The tweet is shown above). The first question asked was the person's gender; 82.35% answered 'female' and 23.53% answered with 'male'. Below are the other results from the questions included within the survey. These results have been presented in numerous styles, e.g. pie chart, tables, etc. 

The results from this set of questions show the following: The most popular music genre is rock music, the most popular magazine is Kerrang, the majority of people in my audience are aged between 14 to 16, and the majority of people asked would spend between £3.00-£3.99 on a music magazine. These are all relevant factors when researching information on my target audience, as it provides me with essential information in order to create my magazine with the interests of my target audience in mind. 

This set of information shows me that: people who answered the survey enjoy going to gigs, as the majority have been to over 6 in their life time, most of the audience are students, and the most common way of listening to music is via iTunes. This helps me because now i know to include iTunes information within my magazine. Also, knowing that the majority of the audience is either a student or unemployed, implies to me that they do not own a lot of disposable income. This is relevant when pricing my magazine.

The most popular bands/artists were; Blink-182, Biffy Clyro, A day to Remember, Man Overboard, Avenged Sevenfold and Bring me the Horizon, therefore these will be bands that i will feature in my magazine. Also, the list of hobbies listed above give me an idea on my audience's general interests, and it would also come in handy when chosing various adverts for the magazine; choosing adverts involving items which relate to the target audience is more likely to increase attraction and attention.

Reader Profile (NME)

This shows the main interests of the target audience of NME. It also includes some useful and relevant facts/statistics at the bottom, which may be useful as part of my research when designing my own magazine.

This shows that the majority of the target audience for NME is male (69%) and the secondary audience is female (31%). The average age for this magazine is 24 years old, showing that it is not just a music magazine designed for teenagers. Over half of the people who read NME are fully emplyed, which would explain the higher price tag in comparison to other music magazines of it's nature.

Proposal Form - Potential Difficulties

Potential area where there might be a problem	How I will deal with this problem
Front cover images My model may be unavailable on the day or he may change his mind on wanting to pose for me, therefore I will not be able to take my desired  photos of him I may not be able to get a top quality camera in order to take the photos; therefore they may not look professional as they will not be HD.	I will find a replacement and I will ask one of my other friends to do it instead. This would be inconvenient in such short notice but it would still be achievable. I will take a photo on my phone or a digital camera instead, and edit it on Photoshop as best I can, in order to improve the quality.
Article Inside Magazine . My article might not sound very professional, as I have had very little experience in writing magazine articles. There may be technical difficulties or faults with saving my double page article, and there may be a chance of losing all of my work I may not have enough storyline to my article to fill an entire double page spread within my magazine.	I will research into existing magazine articles and I will use them as a template in order to write my own. I will save my work in multiple places after typing it up, (i.e. my documents, a memory stick etc) and I will email it to myself to reduce the chances of losing it. I will interview my model as if he were actually a band member, and I’d write down everything he says to include it as a segment in my magazine. I will also fill up the pages with photographs to minimalize the text.
Images to accompany article I may not be able to find a “studio” or a set-up which looks like the inside of a recording studio There may not be enough images to fill the entire double page spread.	I will forget about the idea of studio photographs and I will just take more photos of my model in various poses I will make sure to take as many photographs as possible, however if there is not enough, I will increase the size of the existing photos and I will add more text to the page, to give the impression that the page is a lot more “busy” than it actually is.

Proposal Form - Advanced

Describe your idea for the brief: A rock magazine called “LOUD!” with a busy front cover; covered in the main image with lots of subheadings down the right hand side.  These subheadings will have relevant photos next to them, framed with both square and circular borders. The contents page will have “LOUD! CONTENTS” wrote across the top of the page in bold writing, with the main image and page numbers etc underneath. The double page spread will include updates on the latest band news of my chosen (imaginary) band.

Genre/ sub genre: list similar texts which have inspired your thoughts Kerrang! Magazine – this has inspired me because I really like the typography and the fonts which are used for the cover. The exclamation mark from the title “Kerrang!” has also inspired me to use one in my own work (i.e. LOUD!) Also, the content and types of bands mentioned within Kerrang! Are going to be very similar to the ones I include in mine.

Target audience: gender/ age/ characteristics/ behaviour The gender is mainly towards males with a secondary audience of females and the age range I am going for is between 16 – 19 years. The target audience will stereotypically be opinionated when it comes to music, and they are not the type of person to follow the crowd in order to fit in; different is good. They will be interested in the internet (i.e.Twitter, Tumblr) and they may also like gaming in their free time.

Major conventions I will use The title/masthead of the magazine will be in upper case letters with a smashed effect, (similar to Kerrang!). The front cover will be rather busy with a lot of cover lines covering information on what’s inside the magazine. The colour scheme will be dark to appeal to my target audience.

Conventions I may subvert/ change/ not use I will not make the magazine too over-crowded because otherwise, it will look like its aimed for an audience younger than what I am going for. I may add a few other colours to my colour scheme if I need to, so that it doesn’t lean too far towards the male audience, as I do want it to be gender neutral so everyone can enjoy it.

Original images: what/ where/ what On the front cover, a photo of my friend, Peter, will be taken against a brick wall or in a potography studio. He will be wearing black jeans and either a leather jacket or a flannel shirt, and I will photoshop tattoos onto him to make him appeal to the target audience. He will be looking directly at the camera in order for the mode of address to be direct, and he will be posing as the lead member from my made-up band. His facial expression will be snarling, in order to look more like a 'rockstar'.

Potential difficulties/ Plan B: Peter may be unavailable and will need a replacement under short notice. This replacement will be in the form of another one of my friends, i.e. Georgia or Laura. There could be technical difficulties with the camera therefore other arrangements would need to take place, once again, under short notice.

Proposal Form - Basic

Type of Magazine (fashion, music, etc)	A music Magazine
Name of Magazine	“LOUD!” -          Relates to the target audience (teenagers and young adults who enjoy loud rock music)
Audience (male/female)	Both. Mainly male. I will use dark colours to imply that the audience will be more suited towards males. The secondary audience is female.
Audience (attitudes and interests)	The audience who will want to view this will have interests such as; Bands, tattoos, loud music, piercings, gigs, concerts, band merchandise etc. They stereotypically dislike pop music and popular music artists.
Outlet (where it can be bought from?)	Most newsagents. Exclusive parts of the magazine will also be available online on an official website. Exclusive issues will be available at relevant gigs.
Necessary Information	It will be priced at around £2.00-£3.00 because the target audience is mainly teenagers who receive a low income. The price and issue number will be placed at the top right hand side of the page, and the barcode will be placed at the bottom.
Selling Point	There will be an article mentioned on the front of the magazine which will include an exclusive interview with my model (imaginary band member) and his band.
Theme (article)	Colours used: black, white, red and blue – gender neutral but leans slightly more towards the male audience. Fonts: Bold, upper-cased letters. White lettering with dark backgrounds for contrast.
Images Front Cover	I will get my friend (Peter) to model for me as a band member. The photo will have a direct mode of address as he will be looking directly into the camera and I will use Photoshop to make it look professional.
Images Inside	Photos of my model in various poses and positions in a set-up which looks like a studio for a “Fly on the Wall” feature inside.

       

Deconstruction #3

Double-Page Spread

This is my third deconstruction, but this time i have briefly analysed a Double-paged spread from Kerrang. I have briefly analysed it on paper; covering the main aspects: language, colour, images, and the headline etc.  
Here I will go into it in more detail:

The headline is written in a black font, which is bold and in capital letters. This implies that it is an important - if not the most important - piece of text on the whole page; it's the first thing the reader looks at when they view the page. There is also an exclamation mark which implies sudden strong feelings and a high volume of voice (e.g. it's as if the magazine is shouting at us). The headline covers approximately three quarters of the top of the entire magazine, which emphasises the idea that it was placed and designed the way is is because it needs to be instantly noticed and recognised as the most important typography on the whole page.

The main image used on here is a photo of the band System Of A Down. This is relevant as SOAD are what the main article is about. None of the band members are looking towards the camera, they are all gazing into the distance; showing that the mode of address is indirect. The bandm members on this photo are all looking very casual and level headed, as they are not in a highly posed stance. They are wearing clothing which is regarded as being "cool", (e.g. leather jackets, sunglasses, etc). This makes the reader want to be more like them, as they are successful, laid-back and successful in the music industry.

The colour scheme for this double page spread is Black, red, white and yellow. Black and red are two colour typically stereotyped as being associated with rock music, and the use of yellow and white make the magazine's apparence more gender neutral; so people of both sexes will be able to enjoy it. Not all fans of system of a down are male, therefore a gender neutral colour scheme is very relevant.

A pull out quote has been used on this page: "It's just a matter of finding out the right time for us to get in the studio and do it". This is taken from the main story/article and the quote itself shows that the band want to make themselves more motivated to make music; showing the fans that the band are dedicated and want to keep making them happy with new music and albums. The quote is wrote in a white font with a black drop shadow, making it stand out and "jump" off the page to make it stand out to the reader. If the reader was to read this before the main article, they would be persuaded to read the entire article for more of the story's details.

The article itself is split into two columns. This is appropriate because the target audience of kerrang (the magazine which this article was taken from) are around the age range of 15-16. These people usually do enjoy reading, however they are easily put off by large bodies of text; by splitting it up into columns, it makes the size of the text appear to decrease, making it more attractive to the eye of the target audience.

The language used is colloquial, as it includes text such as "I ♥ SOAD". This relates to the teenage audience, as they are stereotypically the type of people (mainly girls) who tend to write like that, with the drawing of hearts and abbreviating band's names down to letters.

Deconstruction #2

Deconstruction #1

Front Cover

The font used on the cover of this issue of Kerrang! Is all capitalised; there is no use of upper-cased letters and the masthead of the page is written in a bold, “smashed” font. Both of these factors will appeal to the target audience (young adults interested in rock music) as the smashed lettering could represent the ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ lifestyle; care free, stereotypically  violent, etc. This also reminds me of when rock stars smash their guitars on stage during shows and performances, which would once again relate to the lifestyle and interests of the magazine’s target audience.

The main text used on this cover (the main selling point) is:

World exclusive:  “The hiatus was dark!” Fall out Boy back to save the world! And themselves…”

The use of the words “world exclusive” will draw the readers in as they will want to buy the magazine for the never-before-seen information. The pull-out quote “The hiatus was dark!” implies that there is an interview inside the magazine with Fall out Boy; a band which were on hiatus for 4 years. Due to the fact none of their fans have heard from them in so long, will mean that ‘exclusive’ news/interviews confirming that they are back will prove to be very popular.

Other text used on the front cover is the subheadings/cover-lines for the other stories; “Bring Me The Horizon: When rock lyrics go wrong!” “24 hours in the life of… The Kerrang! Tour”, “Jesus Christ! The crucification of Asking Alexandria!” “System of a Down! New Album! New Danger!”

Each of these subheadings include an exclamation mark, which is relevant because fans of the magazine will recognise that the exclamation mark at the end of “Kerrang!” is almost like the magazine’s trademark, therefore the use of them wherever possible really ties in with Kerrang!’s theme. Also, the use of repetition in the heading “New Album! New Danger!” emphasises the fact that the magazine contains fresh, first hand and up-to-date information, which the target audience (fans of System of a Down) would appreciate a lot.

There is some puff included in this magazine in the form of “5 amazing free posters!” This would appeal to the audience as the main readers of the magazine are female, and female teenagers are stereotypically known for having posters on their bedroom walls of celebrities or artists that they look up to. This also includes a preview of all the posters which are included inside, which is helpful to the reader because it lets them know what they’re actually paying for. Also, in the top right section of the cover, there is a segment which says “WIN! Iron maiden swag!” This appeals to the target audience because the readers will be interested in the band merchandise because they have an interest in bands, and the word “swag” is commonly used and known by teenagers, therefore the text is relating to them.  

The colours used for this magazine are red, white and black. The combination of these three colours gives the impression that the magazine is gender neutral; it does not lean towards one gender in particular. For example, if the magazine was aimed towards boys, the colour scheme would most likely include blue, or it would only contain dark shades of colours. However, the light orange brightens up this magazine, implying that is for both male and female.

The main image for this cover is a photo of Fall out Boy, which links in with the main article about them coming off hiatus. The body language of the band members is very relaxed and they look very happy. The mode of address is direct, as each member is looking directly at the viewer. The smiling and laughing faces of the men imply that they are excited to be back, and it gives off the impression that they are really genuine people. The photography was done professionally, with the lead singer in front, leaning forward, and holding out his hand (which the main selling point is written on). The photo makes the tattoos on their arms look very prominent and they stand out a lot, this ties in with the lifestyles of the target audience, who are most likely very interested in piercings, tattoos, etc. The lighting used in this image is very professionally done, as it is clearly shining on the band’s faces full on, making the photograph very HD. The image of the band is partially covering some of the mast-head, which suggests that this magazine is very well established, meaning that it can be recognised even without the full title on show.

The cover lines have all been placed with a relevant photo down the right hand side of the page, and each one has framing. Two of these frames are circular, which just generally makes the appearance of the magazine a little more interesting, and suggests that the target audience is for teenagers. If the target audience was for adults, they would not care as much for the appearance, and they would be perfectly content with reading a magazine with minimal detail on the front cover.

Overall, the magazine cover is quite busy, and there is a lot going on in every section of the page. In my opinion I like the design, as there is a lot going on and there is already a lot to look at, without even opening the magazine. I don’t think it’s too over-crowded or messy. It includes all the important features that a magazine needs, e.g. masthead (Kerrang!), the main image and story (fall out boy), the barcode, and essential information such as the date (Feb 2013), the issue number (#1454), and the price (£2.20). There is a lot of overlaying used on this magazine;  the mast head is in the very back ground, then there’s the layer with the main image, then a layer with the important text and information in the foreground. This helps to make the magazine look very busy to give the target audience a lot to look at.

Videos

This is an example of the type of music featured in my magazines. 

This is a video of the band A Day to Remember. This band would appeal to my audience as their genre of music is Rock, and they have an upcoming UK tour, which would be an interesting talking point for my magazine. Most of their songs swear a lot, and quite a few of the songs are heavy, which would show that my target audience would not really be suitable for younger viewers. 

This is a video of Bring me the Horizon, this would once again appeal to my audience as the genre of music is Rock. Oli Sykes is very popular with teenage girls, which gives the band attention in the "Attraction" factor.  They are a very popular band in the UK, and most people, regardless of music taste, have heard of them before. Once again, their music can be heavy at times, and a lot of swearing and mature content is used, which is not appropriate for younger audiences. 

Mood Board

This is the mood-board i have created for ideas on my magazine. I created the mood board on the website Pinterest and i have included 20+ images which relate to the genre of my magazine; Rock. I have included images such as gig photos, tattoos, bands, magazines, band merch, etc. - All images which are relevant to my target audience. 

To See the full mood-board, click here.  

Inspirations

Kerrang!

 I like Kerrang!'s design for their magazines because it is a very busy layout but it does not have an overly crowded feel to it. I like the font used for the mast-head, and i am considering using a font similar to it as the mast-head for my own magazine. I  like the poses used for the main image, as they aren't always serious; the band members are usually laughing and i gives the reader the impression that they are really genuine (as shown by the image on the left.)  On the third magazine (the far right) i like the centre part of the magazine where it says "Readers Poll" as it looks similar to a tattoo design, which links in with the lifestyle to the target audience. 

NME

NME's design appeals to me because the poses used by the musicians are serious and direct, but at the same time it has a fun atmosphere, for example, the magazine in the centre (above) has a serious, direct mode of address, but  his fists imply that he's ready for action, which gives the reader excitement. I also like the colour scheme of the magazines on both the far left and the far right, as red blue and white would appeal to both genders, which is the target audience i am going for within my magazine. 


RockSound

RockSound's design appeals to me because i often enjoy the images used for the front covers. For example, on the magazine to the far left, it gives the viewer an impression that the band is very laid back and genuine, which is something i want to achieve on my own magazine. The "5 Free Posters" section is also something i'm thinking of including in my work.