Pop-Rock Genre (Prezi)

I made this prezi about the genre of my magazine, Pop-Rock, including some of the previous artists that have represented the genre, as well as some of the magazines that currently cater for it. Looking at previous artists in the Pop-Rock genre was helpful, as it gave a clear idea of the kind of music that my magazine would be looking at, as well as informing about the sort of artists that would appear in my music magazine.

Rock-Pop/Indie Magazine Cover Mood board

I created a mood board of magazine covers, and am looking at the defining details of all the magazine covers. I wanted to find an interesting way of presenting my mood board, and so I did it as a Youtube video. It has also allowed me to get a good look at things such as colour schemes and fonts.

From looking at the mood board, the first colour that stands out to me is red. This only highlights that red is a colour that I should include in my music magazine. Also, the boldest things on the covers will be the name of the magazine, and the artist included on the cover. Also, there will never be much space on the cover; instead, every little gap will have something filling it, to make sure there isn't a lot of space left over to make the magazine cover look empty.

Reader Profile

For my reader profile, I asked my best friend to type up a description of herself, including her favorite genre of music, artists and what she likes in music magazines. This is because she likes the genre of music that I'm thinking of making a magazine on, and therefore, I think she fits the description for a good reader profile.

"Hi! My name is Meghan, I’m sixteen years old and I live in South Norwood. I study Spanish, history, art and product design. I love art, and drawing, and bright colour in general! Also in my spare time, I enjoy reading, going to the cinema and watching movies, and going to concerts. I love doing that as well- my best friend Holly and I go too a lot of shows together. Over the years, we’ve been to festivals like Slam Dunk and Butserfest (which is really good because it is for under twenty one’s so there’s no drinking or anything there), and we went to see Green Day perform in the Emirates Stadium, which was so cool! I don’t really have a favourite genre of music, but I don’t really like rap. I suppose I enjoy pop-rock, or acoustic music? Some of my favourite artists are Don Broco, Lower Than Atlantis and Mallory Knox, who are all quite rock-ish. I like music magazines that have a lot of colour, but not ones that I have to buy weekly, because that can get a little expensive. Ideally, I like monthly magazines, because they tend to be more suitably priced, and seem to have a lot more in them." 

Interview Analyzing 3 Different Magazine Covers

For my focus group, I spoke to my brother as he is a teenager, and like Indie/rock-pop music, which is a genre I am considering doing my magazine on. It was useful getting his perspective, as he likes art and designing, so looking at the magazine covers and getting his opinion on them was very useful.

The covers I used were:

1)

2) NME

3) Q Magazine

I chose each of these magazine covers, because I think they are all quite different to each other, and they all have different qualities. Therefore, there are different things to draw upon from them, such as the size and style of the artist on the cover.

From listening to what my brother said, having bold clear fonts is a must. It must be clear and easy to read, but not over take the image. Again, we realized that bright colours quickly attract more attention, like with the second image. The fact that it uses the primary colours makes it effective, because they contrast with one another, and make it bolder and brighter. It was also effective that there were more pictures on the second magazine, which was something that both magazines 1 and 3 didn't do. On the third magazine, there was a lot of colour, but maybe not enough text and my brother pointed out that he didn't like the fact that it isn't obvious who else is featured in the magazine. It is therefore important to include other artists featured in the magazine so that it appeals to more than one person.

Another common feature in all these magazine covers is that they both feature the colour red quite heavily. The red is a loud, eye catching colour, which tells me that red is a colour that I must use when creating my magazine. I should ideally also include more than one image on the front cover, but also make sure there is the correct amount of text; not to much, not to little. 

Research Rationale

I will be able to talk to my friends and ask them some questions about what music magazines they read/what genre of music that they like. I’m going to create a survey, in which I will ask people questions about music magazines that they buy/how much they’re willing to pay for a magazine/what makes them buy a magazine, and will present the survey answers in an interesting way on the blog (I’m not sure how yet).

I will organise a focus group and create a video with an interesting and hopefully unique way of organising the people that I interview (I am going to try and make it like I’m conducting a science experiment). This is because I want to find a different way of presenting my focus group, whilst showing that I can present my work in a variety of tasks. I will also conduct a survey, to find out what genres of music people enjoy the most/what they like in music magazines. This is because I need to find questions to ask my focus group and I can base my questions of off what I find in the surveys. I am also going to ask my friend as topics of conversation what kind of magazines they are interested in, so I can find out what they like in magazines without it having to be on a camera, and this will give me an idea of what to base my questions for the survey on.

I will need a camera that can record videos, as well as a focus group to actually work with. I’m going to set up a day when people can come and be a part of my focus group. Also, I will need to use sureveymonkey.com to create a survey to send to people for them to complete. 

Creating a Survey for my Reader Profile

I felt it was important when creating a survey for my reader profile to find out that were actually relevant to finding out when creating a music magazine, such as the age of typical readers and the genres that they like. I also wanted to find out what they as readers thought was important to have in a music magazine.
To create my survey, I went on to surveymonkey.com, a brilliant website that allows you to create surveys for free. Once logged in there, I began to create my survey.

It took me a while to think of good questions to put into the survey, but I realized that I could use my survey to find out what young people want in a music magazine nowadays.
Firstly, I asked typical questions, such as whether people are male or female. because girls could want different things in music magazines to boys. I also decided to specify whether or not people brought music magazines, in which case, they could skip the question in asking how often they brought music magazines and gone on to the next question.

When I all the questions for my survey completed, I then posted the survey onto my Facebook page, in which my friends and family can see it and help me to complete it. Social networking is a good way of getting help for portfolios like this.

After posting my survey on Facebook, I waited for people to come back and answer it. Survey Monkey recorded the results and set them in a graph for me.

From my results, I saw that the majority of people who took my survey were aged between 14-16 and 17-20, which implies that my target audience will be quite young people. When I asked how often people brought music magazines, they all said that they don't buy music magazines weekly but they'll buy more than one a month. From this, I draw that it'd be better if my magazine was a monthly magazine instead of a weekly one. This meant I could then draw from the information that the question "How much would you be willing to pay for a monthly music magazine (glossy, around 100 pages)?" to define the price of my magazine. Everyone who has taken the survey so far said that they would be willing to pay between £3-£3.99.

Then I looked at the genre. All the people that took my survey said that they either read metal magazines, or pop-rock magazines such as Q and NME. This worked out well for me, as I have an interest in these styles of music anyway, and I therefore have some knowledge about what would go into a magazine of that genre.

Finally, I asked in my survey what attracts people to a music magazine, to help me work out what to put on my front cover and in my contents page. Most people said that they were attracted to a music magazine with an artist that they recognise on the cover, whilst most people said that they liked the idea of incentives such as posters or free CDs. A few people said they’d buy a magazine because of the live show reviews, whilst more people agreed that they would buy a magazine for album reviews. No one said that they’d purchase a music magazine because of competitions, so this tells me that it’s not really relevant to my music magazine.

Finally, I asked people what they would have in a music magazine to make it appealing to them and left them a comment box, in which they all answered that they are drawn in by the artist on the front cover, and the interviews that are included inside. This tells me that on my front cover, my model will have to be bold and eye catching so that it appeals to people, but with other interviews mentioned on the front cover, to draw people in.   

To help us gain some inspiration for our own magazines, we were set a task over the summer to analyse and "dissect" three different music magazine covers to see what made them stand out. I did so, and created a Wordle to present it, as well as explaining everything that I analysed about the magazine covers. The key features were bright eye catching colours and bold fonts on all of them.

We were then given the same task, which I did in a little more detail, mind-mapping and pin-pointing some of the features that I saw on the magazine covers. When choosing my magazines, I tried to pick covers that I similar layouts, so I could analyse what was different about them and what was the same. Dissecting the magazine covers was helpful, as it allowed me to focus on what works successfully on a mucus magazine cover (e.g. angle of gaze, bright colours, incentives), and maybe things that weren't so successful (e.g. more then 3/4 colours)

Analyzing  these covers helped me when researching for my music magazine, as it highlights the key features that I will need to include on my front cover. For example, a line of gaze seems to be a common theme on music magazines to draw in the reader. Also, it is very important to have a limited colour scheme, because having too many colours makes a magazine look childish and sloppy. Having bold fonts is important, because you want to make your magazine stand out and fonts are a good way to attract people’s attention, but it is also important to make sure that the space on a music magazine is all filled, be it with texts, graphics or images.

 

A "Brief" Introduction

Our brief for this term is to create the cover, contents page and double page spread of a music magazine. I am feeling good about this brief, as I read a lot of music magazines already, and feel that I can confidently pick out some of the key features that make them good. I was initially a little worried about using Photoshop, but I have worked with it before, and know enough about it to be able to create something decent. For now, I know that I want my magazine to be very colourful and eye catching, as I am thinking of basing my music magazine on popular rock magazines like Kerrang! and NME. After looking at some of the work from the previous AS classes, I have noticed that the best ones are the magazines that follow a consistent colour scheme and have a wide variety of text. I am also only likely to use one model for my magazine cover, as it becomes a lot more difficult to organize the cover if there is more than one person on it. I am feeling, over all, quite confident with the brief, and I look forward to the challenges that it brings.