Final Magazine:

This is final magazine cover that I have made. I have changed so many aspects of this design as you can see. For example, I have cropped the picture (and it is also a new picture that I took from my second photoshoot) and I have also made it black and white because I thought it worked better on this cover than if it were a full colour picture. This is just personal choice for me and I only did this because of creative preference. However I think this works because it allows the reader's attention to be drawn in to this duo and the distraction of the colours are not there and you can just focus and appreciate what is there in front of you. I have also changed the font and where the text is set. Such as I have changed where I put 'The Psychedelic Issue' text (I have also changed it from 'unique' to 'psychedelic' now which I thought looked a lot better)and I have moved it from underneath the masthead to underneath the picture because I feel as though now I have a border around the picture that this looks better and everything looks like it belongs where it is. Also I have moved the barcode and the writing that accompanies it, this is mainly because of the addition of the border and I felt as though this was more subtle than if I had left it in the bottom right hand corner. I have also moved the text that goes next to it slightly more central and I have placed that underneath the picture because of the fact that I wanted it to be noticeable but without anyone really noticing it completely. It needs to be there but not in a obvious way. I have changed all of the font as well, using 'Never Let Go' and 'Quicksand' from 1001 Fonts. I feel as though these fonts fit better with my magazine because of the fact that they are more in keeping with the style of magazines that I most admire and I feel as though both of these fonts work very well together. I prefer working with just two fonts rather than three because of the fact that it looks neater and more put together like I wanted it to in the first place.

My contents page has changed a lot since my first draft. I feel as though I have developed more skills and understanding in how magazines are put together and also I feel as though that my magazine looks cleaner and more sophisticated. Everything is connected in my magazine now. As you can see now, I have developed the whole contents page and changed the font, the layout, the picture, and I have also added more writing to the page with the addition of the contributors and also who works at the magazine. I feel as though the addition of these extra features have enabled me to achieve a more precise and professional finish to my magazine which I have been striving for since I had completed my draft task. I also like the addition of the lines onto the page rather than leaving everything in the free space. It adds structure and centres everything on the page. Overall for this page I am very pleased with the outcome of this because of the fact that I feel as though it looks like an actual magazine and I would probably expect to this in one of the magazines that I am interested in.

This is my double page spread, I am very pleased with this. I didn't have to change a lot to achieve this outcome. I didn't really change the layout at all, just changing the margin in the middle of the page to make sure that if in a real magazine that the writing or the pictures wouldn't be overlapping the crease in the middle.I have changed the font on all of my pages, this is because I felt as though they weren't really what I wanted or expected my magazine to be like. I am more pleased with these font choices because of the fact that they are more subtle and more in keeping with how I expected my magazine to be in the first place. I am also more impressed with the outcome of my images as well because I feel as though that I had got the hang of the lighting and how to generally take pictures to achieve a crisper look and finish to my magazine. I have also changed the separation line of my page number to the bottom rather than the top; I prefer this look because I feel like it makes the page look cleaner and simpler. Rather than everything being squashed on the page together therefore making it look messy. 

Targets for the Week Commencing: 10/03/2014

For this week I am planning on finishing my magazine ready to hand in on Friday, I have pretty much finished by this point and I just have a few tweaks and layout movements to do just to finish anything off. I am pleased with my final design because it is exactly what I wanted to make. The only thing I am struggling with now is the contents page still because I want it to look as realistic as it can possibly be and that is very tricky to achieve because it can easily look fake and too simple. I am continuing to look at my magazine even though it is finished however I just want to make sure that everything is perfect and up to my standards, which unfortunately are quite high, although this gives me an advantage because that means I can look at things more critically and with an analytical eye which allows me to see where I have gone wrong or where things just don't work or look right in the style and genre of my magazine. 
Another thing I am concentrating on doing this week would be the remaining blog work that I need to do because I have been concentrating on my draft for a while I have not really as much effort into my blog work and I am going to rectify that this week because I still have so much to add and develop for my magazine before the deadline.
I don't have to add a lot of features to my magazine now but I still want to tweak a few more things before I have to hand it in on Friday.

Second Photoshoot For Magazine:

Created with flickr slideshow.

This is the second photoshoot I have done for my magazine, I have concentrated more this time on perfecting the pictures rather than trying to be overly creative and take pictures at jaunty angles. I have to hopefully organise the styling of my models more so this time, so hopefully now the styling isn't so much of an issue than it was before. Also with the problem with the white t-shirt, I have used it again however I am going to look for any creases that I really don't want to be there then brush them out using Photoshop. I am more pleased with this photoshoot because I feel as though the pictures are more slick and in keeping with my magazine, because it is an upmarket magazine however I want a slightly 'grunge-y' edge which hopefully I have managed to achieve. I am going to change all of the pictures that I have done in my magazine so far and replace them with the pictures I have taken today. They are more what I wanted to take in the first place and even though they are not the dark pictures that I was planning to take I still think these ones are a million times better and will be better than what I have done before.

Draft Feedback and Action Plan:

The feedback I have had for my magazine has been very positive, I am incredibly pleased with how my draft turned out however I now have a clearer idea of the direction that I am intending to take with my final draft of my magazine. The main decision I have made so far is to re-take most of my pictures and to really style my models in a more slick manner to fit the rest of my magazine. This is because one of my models was wearing a Jack Daniels T-Shirt and it was a mistake on my behalf and I should have styled the models better and that is something that I am going to do for the next photo shoot that I will do. The logo on the t-shirt was too garish and bold for my magazine, it didn't fit the style or genre really of my magazine and so this is something I am going rectify for my final draft.
Another thing that I learnt from my feedback is that I need to make some of the writing on the front of my magazine legible because unfortunately the cover line on the front, when it was announcing my band The Requiem, was black and my model's shirt distorted the text and made it so it was almost unreadable. The contrast of colours was the problem and my next choice would be to either choose a re-done picture and make sure my model is wearing a plainer shirt; or I could change the colour of my font and this would definitely be the easier option however I might in fact change both of these elements because then I can really enhance my magazine to the standard that I am expecting of myself by creating something different to my original draft design.
Another element of my draft magazine that I need to improve on is the picture quality of my main DPS photos because the colours in the pictures are slightly off, to change this yet again I am going to take more photos. Hopefully now because I have more experience taking pictures that when I have my second photo shoot I will be able to take photos that really match the style of my magazine. Also because now I have had feedback, I really know the direction I am wanting to take with my magazine and the style I want it to emulate. So also I part of this re-design I am going to completely re-design the contents page and I know exactly how I want that to look. The contents page also will need some new pictures however I could use some from my photo shoot because there are some pictures that I haven't used already and looking back at the ones I have taken I feel as though there are some good ones that I can still use without them being discoloured and they are bright enough to look credible for a professional and slick monthly music magazine.
Also in my DPS I have used a lower case font and an upper case font for my introduction and main article. My feedback said that I needed to justify this more and explain where I have seen this done before and why I have included it in my magazine for this page. I have been looking at more individual magazine that use quirky layouts such as Clash and The Wire; these magazines don't use this text type and format but it is something that I imagine they would do. The particular fonts I have used are made to be lower case and upper case all the way through and that is something that I can't change unless I change my fonts altogether. I would prefer if the fonts were able to include both lower case and upper case in the set font and I am reluctant to change the fonts because I feel as though they match the style and format of my current magazine. The font I have chosen in particular for the introduction of my article, as well as using it for the front cover and contents, I have a particular fondness to as I think it really does fit the style and the way I intended the magazine to look like. For my next post I am going to be looking at my style models and what I am taking inspiration from to achieve my design.

Action Plan:

My first plan of action is to re-do my photographs for all sections of my magazine, I want to make sure that everything looks pristine and exactly how I want it, and this primarily means the photos because to me they aren't quite right. I love my choice of models and I will definitely be using them again however I need to properly make sure that my styling is exactly how I want it, and make sure that I tell my models what to bring so that they match the idea I have in my head. Also I'm curious to take pictures outside, however I don't think I will be able to as I don't have a professional camera at home and I have ideas about locations and I don't want to be limited to the school grounds. I have gained more inspiration from the likes of Clash and looking at past issues I have found a lot of features that have intrigued me. Such as, their page numbers are in the middle of the page and I really like that effect as it is different to any other page I have seen before. Also the layout in general is something I am inspired by with Clash, they arrange their text in a really unusual way and in my draft I tried to do this as well however I have been inspired by looking at different issues in Clash and finding different ways of laying out my text and even though I was pleased with my DPS generally I still want to try out more things and experiment to see if I can develop my skills further and make my magazine look more professional.
Also I am thinking I will change my contents page, which I have already discussed in previous posts. For this I am thinking of keeping it slick and simple; taking away the black background and the portrait style photo and maybe replacing it with a landscape version. Also I am really going to strip back the whole look so it really matches the style of my magazine. I will probably cut down the amount of writing or just make the text smaller. I wanted it to be fairly text heavy because I took inspiration from Clash, yet again, and their contents pages. Because they seem to have a lot of writing on their page and I wanted to replicate that in my own way. I might have included too much text to that page, and for that I will more than likely cut it down. However I might put the text in two columns to help to condense down the text even more, this will give a cleaner look to the contents page and hopefully give more credit to my magazine. There will be more improvements to be made generally which I am sure that I will comment on them in later posts.

Draft Magazine:

Front Page:

This is the front cover for my magazine. As you can see I have started off by getting the masthead in the right place and working around that because i felt as though it was important to get that in check before moving on to the rest of the cover because this is what draws the reader's attention first and it is important to engage them early on because then you are guaranteed to get a wider readership later on. Next on the first picture, I was going to put a border around the main picture just to reference other magazines such as Loud and Quiet and also others which have used this design in the past; however I decided against it in the end because I felt as though it didn't really look original enough (however it is still something I'm interested in looking at maybe for my final draft!) and I decided to stick to the main photo taking centre stage on the cover, especially with the photo I have chosen because I wanted to fill the page with my models because they are the main focus and I don't want to detract from that at all! I found all of my fonts on '1001 Fonts' and downloaded them to my home computer, I chose this website because I thought they had the most fonts which appealed to my style more and the quirkiness of the the fonts really attracted me to the website. Some of these fonts are ones that I had found for my 'Colour Palettes and Fonts' page so this research was crucial for my magazine because I was able to find a number of fonts that I have later used. I added the addition of "The Unique Issue" in reference to i-D magazine because instead of issue numbers they tend to have certainly named issues. I have chosen to do this (and also to do issue numbers as well) is because I felt as though this is another feature on the magazine that would attract an audience because they would be curious to see why it is a 'unique' issue! I have kept the white background on the barcode because I have been doing research and the magazines that have inspired me the most (which you can see in other posts of mine) usually do this, and it still looks classy and relevant to the cover as a whole. I am quite proud of my cover, but I realise that this is still a first draft and I would like to still develop this idea further and make sure that it is up to the level that I expect of myself.

Contents Page:

This is my contents page. I have gone through quite a lot of ideas for this final design for my first draft to come out, and I still have a lot to work on to achieve a professional finish that I am wanting. I have put an effect on the main picture on this page to make it more unique and original. It adds a special effect on the white background which I think works quite well, however this is something that I might change again because I don't know whether it works for my magazine as a whole. Creating the contents page is one of the hardest parts of the coursework for me because it is so easy for it to look 'slapdash' and unprofessional; This I want to rectify because for my standards this just doesn't look right. This is a learning curve for me and since doing this page I have learnt a lot more about how Photoshop works and for my final draft I am planning to step up my game and create something that meets my standards. However I do like the fonts used (again found on 1001 Fonts) I think that they are quite different, and the layout of the text also is something that I am pleased with. I took inspiration from Clash magazine for the layout of the text as I thought that this was a good way of making the text look good and also to fit in a lot of information into a small area. I have also took inspiration from the black background in Clash and this is something again which I might change for my final draft as I want to see all my options and conclude what I want to do for my final design. Also something I realise now that I need to rectify in my final draft is the addition of the page numbers in the corner, this would have added realism and it is something that I am definitely not going to miss out in my final draft. I added a white border around the writing, this is because I have a black background and I still wanted the black writing so I had to do this to fit my design. However I like the look that this has produced and with the font style I have chosen I think the whole writing style really has worked well for the design and style of the magazine. I think what I would work on for my final draft though is the background colour and also the picture layout because it could look better.

Double Page Spreads:

This is the final design for my Double Page Spread. I am generally very pleased with his design, I think it fits into my target market easily with the unique layout of the text and also the kind of photos I have taken. Out of all the pages I have created so far, this is the one which I imagined in my mind in the first place. For this I have taken inspiration out of magazines such as The Wire, this is because I really like the way that they set out their articles because of the fact that they manage to create an interesting page, not only to read, but also to look at and this is what I wanted to achieve! I had started off, which isn't shown here, with a full image on the right hand side; I had decided that this didn't really look the way I wanted it too and so I changed it to two pictures to give, yet again, a more interesting page to look at. I have used the same fonts from both my contents page and front cover in this DPS, this is so I make sure all the components are connected together to make my magazine come together as a whole. I have tried on this piece t make sure that everything fits together and deleted and altered things that I think do not work as a collective. For example, as I said before, the full image. It just didn't work and I had to get rid of it. On the top image on my DPS, one of my models had a piece of hair falling down on her face; so for this I had to Photoshop that out and also I enhanced the photos to make them look slightly brighter so they stood out even more on the page. I chose to layout the text in this different way as well because I thought it would look slightly abstract for the reader to look at; also with the addition of the writing above the main article, to introduce the text, I like the fact that the font is different for both sections as I think it really sets apart the start of the article and the the main text. I have also added a bar across the top of the page, this is to connect the DPS to the rest of the magazine and also to show the page number. I think with this it brings the page together and makes sure that both the photos and the text are connected and look as one together.

More Covers That Have Inspired Me:

Here are more covers that have proceeded to inspire me. I am in the middle in creating my draft and I have been looking at more unusual pictures that have helped me to actually reach a new creative level. I want to be creating something different and original and to do that I want to see the magazines that have excelled themselves in being unique. What I love on these magazines is the simplicity and also the colours schemes. With magazines such as Betty (which isn't actually a music focused magazine) each of the issues they release coincide with each other and the colours, even though they're different colour schemes, work together all the time and it looks like the style of the magazine is really reflected on what the colour scheme is. Also Betty doesn't include the bar-code on the front of the magazine which is unusual and not really seen throughout the magazine community. This subtraction of this 'vital feature' really sets apart this design and the differently coloured backgrounds, instead of the usual white or mono-tonal shades, also attract the reader's attention. The rest of the covers I have found are also set apart by either their colour scheme or the style of photograph taken, and sometimes even both. This originality and uniqueness have really captured my eye and I'm sure they capture many others as well. 'Studio' magazine is one that has really had an effect on me and the complete yellow scheme of colour is really something that I may try to incorporate into my design;  especially on the cover, colour schemes need to be kept simple and this is a good example of this because it is such a bright colour that it is different compared to the usual black or white. All of these covers have really had an effect on my first draft and I am going to take inspiration from them for my final draft as well. Hopefully I will have the chance to be able to re-do a few pictures this is because I would like to get the same kind of effect that these magazines have seemed to produce.

Reflection of the Past Couple of Weeks:

I have, over the past couple of weeks, been continually researching and planning for the creation of my magazine. I have found this incredibly helpful, especially with the addition of my class feedback and audience survey I have been able to really draw conclusions in how I would like my final design (and also my draft design) to go. However what I have found most helpful was the feedback from my teacher, this has allowed me to see what I need to improve on to be able to reach the higher grades and to have that knowledge on how I can improve my work has been really helpful for me to see my errors.
Also I have starting to gather research for my magazine, such as taking photos for the final design. This has been incredibly helpful for me because I have been able to see finally what the final draft will look like and this for me is very exciting and motivating and it has spurred me on to achieve high grades at the end.
I have been researching many other aspects of my project such as photography techniques and this has also been helpful in making me realise my future intentions with the project.

Class Feedback and Audience Research:

Class Feedback and Audience Research from laurennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Photoshoot for Magazine:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

This is the photoshoot that I have took recently for my magazine. However even though I have taken a fair few photographs, I have found that I have a lot of images that are not really suitable for my magazine because they are too blurry or have shadows across the face or background. Although, in saying that I wanted the background to be slightly darker and with more shadows because this is similar to what my chosen photographers do and I wanted to reflect that in my pictures. I have come to conclusion however that I may need to retake some of the photos, to experiment more for one thing and also to get more pictures that I am proud of because I am still quite inexperienced in taking photographs and I would like to build up my skills for future practise. I have found, however, many photos that do meet my standards and I plan to use them in my first draft.

Mock Up Design for my Magazine:

 This is my mock up design for my magazine, I have taken inspiration from a number of magazines to help me achieve this design that I have decided on, with magazines such as Clash and The Wire which with their simplistic design and original interface which I have found to incredibly inspiring when designing my own magazine because I have thought that if these magazines, that are in the public eye are able to achieve this and have a loyal following then so can I. I have tried to keep the same fonts styles throughout my whole design because I want there to be a connection between each page that looks obvious to a reader but is still subtlety done so that it doesn't look like the same page everytime!
I got my fonts from '1001 fonts', as I feel as though they have the most original and 'magazine-worthy' fonts rather than from what I have seen on other font websites.

Flat Plan for my Draft Magazine:

Front Cover: For my front cover I have created a simple design that reflects my intended design that I will be doing for my draft magazine. Here I have placed the photo in the middle of the cover with a border around the edge, with text at the bottom edge of the photo and at the top left hand side of it. This would be probably be different on the final design because I think the addition of a full image on the cover with the coverlines surrounding it would look better for my style of magazine. However because this is just a draft for my final design I still have time to change anything that doesn't look completely right. Also the font type for my draft will be different to this, as I have already found a font on 1001 Fonts I plan to use a number of fonts to create my magazine from this website. Also I have added the tagline 'The Unique Issue', this is a reference to i-D magazine because they do this on every issue that they produce and personally I think that this adds a certain charm to the magazine because it lets the audience know what to expect in the content of the print which is what I want to do for my magazine. 

Contents Page: For my contents page I have decided that I want a large image in the centre with writing over the top of that. I have taken inspiration for this from both Dazed and Confused and also Clash. They have a very unusual way of laying out their contents page and I would like to be innovative and create something different as well that will really catch the eye of a reader and persuade them to actually glance at the page because of the eye catching design. I have chosen to do such a large picture in the contents page because I think that this really adds a drama and elegance to the magazine as it is just something different to look at in the magazine.

Double Page Spread: For this page I am really interested in making a design that is very simplistic but still interests the eye enough to actually carry on reading. I like the thought of really focusing on having the pictures on one side and the writing on the other because I think that this makes the whole magazine look cleaner and slick. Which is what I want to achieve in my final design. I feel as though the text placement on the page is also incredibly important because that can also make for an interesting design and therefore again, engaging the reader to actually carry on reading the magazine article.

Draft Magazine Article

Article for Music Magazine - DRAFT

This is the draft for my article which will go into the mock up version of my magazine.

Band Profile:

Name: 
The Requiem 

Influences: 
Slow Club, Warpaint, Yuck, Miles Kane, Arcade Fire

Music Style: 
Indie/Alternative, influences of 1960's psychedelia (such as Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors), Heavy use on guitars (both acoustic and electric)

How many members of the band?
Two - One male and one female

Roles in the band?
Female: Vocals, Guitar (acoustic and electric - depending on which song), occasional percussion piece
Male: Vocals, Guitar (focuses more on the acoustic side - however he delves more into the bass side of the strings, and he adds a bass to some tracks yet again depending on the song)

General Style?
For my models I am going to dress them in quite slick clothing with hopefully a vintage kind of twist on that. I have looked on websites such as Urban Outfitters and Topshop for the female's outfit and also for the male's, however I have also looked on vintage clothing websites to get inspiration for other pieces that hopefully I could incorporate into their style.

Styling for my Models from laurennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

My Chosen Band

Band Name: The Requiem

Album Name: Memorium 

For my band they are going to be a twosome who specialize in the indie/alternative music genre.  I have chosen the name 'The Requiem' because first of all I liked the sound of it; and it sounds like something that would be a real band name. Also it just means 'any piece of music composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person or persons', so even though it has a fairly morbid meaning I want it to mean that they are music reborn in a way. The traditional ways of music have gone and they are there to play at the memorial with their new sound. I have created this name using a random band name generator (I had used the Wikipedia random article technique, however I found nothing that really sparked any imagination so I used the random band name generator just to spark some ideas and develop them myself).  Their style that I have already had in mind is going to be very casual and however with hints of elegance and maturity. I'm going to style my models in this kind of way, I want to create a kind of effortless feel to their persona. Their music would be quite dark and stripped down (an example of this would be Warpaint, as I find their music style to be very laid back and almost like they are not even playing the instruments, like some kind of unknown source is creating it for them), therefore I would like to style my models in such a way that you can see their genre and music style comes through and without actually having to read the article, you know straight away what they are all about. Also to help me get this across as well in my magazine, I would like to take the pictures in a certain way to accentuate this feature of their indie/alternative genre. For example I would like to keep the pictures quite dark and almost moody because this is what I feel like my magazine will be like in it's general genre, I also want my models to be dressed in dark clothing because yet again I want to get across this moody image.
For the photographs, my main idea I have had is that I will keep one main soft light on my models and every other light will be turned off, this is something I am yet to actually test out but when I come to take my pictures I would like to give this method a try because if it works then it will really just add a certain style to my magazine and also the article.

My main band influences that I have though of are Yuck, Warpaint and Slow Club. This is because these are bands that I listen to myself and I love all of their unique styles and I would like to incorporate their style and musical elements into my band when they are being photographed. Also I would like my band to be like Slow Club in its set up, by having one boy and one girl as the geniuses behind the music. This is because it is easier to get the dynamics from both of these genders. Also I would like to do this because it creates a nice even image for both gender groups of the audience to read and look at. Both members of the band will appear in my magazine, in all of the pictures that I am planning to take.

Band Inspiration and Style:

All of these bands and musicians (despite their age now - in regards to Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix) and their certain styles and the colour palettes they seem to associate with themselves are very much something that sparks an idea in my head for what I want my band to be like. Bands such as Yuck and Slow Club have the vibe that my band will have and their effortlessness that they seem to have with their instruments (Warpaint included in this) is just something that I imagine my band to be like. Almost as if they have held a guitar right from birth and it just comes to be second nature.

The band I am taking the most inspiration from though, in both style and music, would be Slow Club. This is because I find their music to be ever-changing and this really appeals to me in a musician because they always offer something new and exciting. My idea that I have had for my band is that they will be a boy/girl combination such as Slow Club, and also the way that this particular band dress as well is something that I am taking into consideration and making sure that they both coordinate and match each other this for me is essential in making my band look as realistic as possible.

Analysis of Magazine Institutions:

Bauer Media Group:

The Bauer Media Group is a German based company that operates in 16 countries, the company was founded in 1875. There is a worldwide circulation of Bauer Media's products, and some 38 million magazines a week are sold by Bauer. Magazine titles such as Q and Mojo are along their list of successful titles along with many other genres and types of magazines. On Bauer's website they describe both Q and Mojo as being:

"MOJO is the world’s largest UK music magazine, delivering a monthly dose of world class journalism and iconic photography to an audience of extremely passionate music consumers. If you’re featured in MOJO, you matter"

"Q, the UK’s biggest selling music monthly magazine, sits at the heart of a cross-platform brand that celebrates the biggest stars in rock and roll and brings you the most exciting new artists. The Q brand has developed a worldwide reputation as a trusted and premium quality voice of musical authority amongst fans, musicians and the music industry alike - one that is founded upon Q's unrivalled access, world-beating exclusives and outstanding production values."

They have a very strong reputation and they also publish magazines along the same lines of genre that I will be doing which is very reassuring for me to see a media company such as this that I know has a very reliable fan base across it's magazines. This production company is possibly one of my many options that I would choose if I was to publish my magazine because I know that a lot of people would have access to it, also it would help the sales of the magazine as well because more people would be buying it every month. I would be very interested to see how my magazine would be distributed within this company because I am making something that will probably only be inspired and bought by a very niche market, so I would like to hope that this company would push my magazine forward and give it the publicity that I desire.

IPC Media Group:

IPC Media is one of the UK's leading magazine and digital publisher. They publish magazines such as NME, which would be the one that I would most appeal to. On IPC's website they describe NME as being a men's music magazine. This is a very different perspective to what I originally thought the target audience was. They describe NME as: 

"NME is the longest published and most respected music weekly in the world. Every week it gives its readers the most exciting, most authoritative coverage of the very best in new music, including award-winning features, the latest releases, live reviews, the definitive guide to the best new bands in its Radar section, as well as a regular look back through the magazine's incredible 60 year heritage."

IPC Media has an incredibly long portfolio of magazines that all have been successful over the years. They sell over 350 million copies of their magazines every year. This to me as well as the Bauer Media Group, like a very interesting and possibly very successful institution to publish my magazine from because they seem to cater for a lot of my target audience. With the likes of NME under their belt, IPC Media would probably be my first choice of publishing company to go down because they are incredibly reliable and successful and would give my magazine the right amount of publicity and attention that would help me get the readership and target audience that I desire. 

Colour Palettes and Fonts:

Colour Palette and Font Analysis by laurennboltonn

Language Register:

The language used throughout the main cover of this magazine is very witty however it also gets straight down to the point. The target market for this magazine would be people from about the ages of 16-25, so in that case what NME has to do is to really be able to connect to that audience; they seem to do that by selecting all of the right artists that this audience would generally listen to such as The Maccabees and Kasabian. This also relates to my magazine audience because I am also going to be focusing on the indie/alternative/rock genre, so really I can take inspiration from NME as to how they style their language throughout the cover and the rest of the contents of the magazine. I would say though that this type of language is more aimed at the male market and this can be inferred because of for one thing the fairly masculine layout, with the blue and red colours. However there is nothing on it that is really stereotypically female type of language. So you could say that NME is a unisex magazine because they want to appeal to both audiences however in doing that they have to cancel out the over the top stereotypes that most magazines do (such as the fashion magazine, Vogue, as it is strictly a women's only magazine). The typography also used on the cover is very clear and bold, this means that when in a shop you can clearly see which artist are in the magazine and whether it is a good idea to purchase or not. I think somebody who is not really interested in the indie genre would probably not be attracted to this cover because it is fairly simple but also busy and the colour palette used on the colour would not be something that they would really be interested in.

The language register on this magazine would be fairly similar to NME however because this is a higher quality, monthly magazine it means that they have more time to be able to produce a more sophisticated design and therefore text. Rather than NME, Dazed has decided to put longer cover lines on the page to show more of what is inside the magazine. This type of language, with the almost softly spoken nature of the text, represents its target audience because the people that would buy the magazine the most would be students or people older that are more interested in things more than just the artists themselves whereas NME just gets straight to the point about what is happening in the world of the artist. I would say that the language used on the front would attract a female audience because of the complexity of the coverlines and this would probably catch a women's eyes more than it would to a male eye. Also the colour palette is very much more soft and delicate than the NME cover which could suggest that Dazed are trying to attract the female readership. 

Music Magazine Playlist:

25 Word Pitch