The first thing I did was make an A3 sized page and took a photograph of the kooks, i changed the opacity so that I could write on top of it and it’s be easy to read.
I then gave it a title.
Then i added text, i had to put in separate text boxes to make it look like it’s in columns.
Here is the final piece.
Today i finished making my magazine mock up of a front cover and a contents page.
Next lessons I will make another mock up and use different ideas.
The first thing I did towards making my magazine mock up was put a photograph onto a Photoshop file.
The next thing that I did was select and remove the head of the artists in the photo and saved the clipping of his head on another Photoshop page.
I then typed in my masthead.
The I put the head of the artist back on. By doing this the mast head now looks like it’s behind the artists head which i think makes the whole magazine look more professional.
I then inserted another image of another band and wrote some text describing the image above it.
I then inserted the issue date and some text about it being a kooks exclusive and bullet points underneath the ‘Kooks exculisve’ subheading stating what is in the piece.
Finally i added a bar code to make it look professional.
To start making my contents page i took a section of the photo on the front page and stretched it to the size of the contents page to give it a background.
I then typed in stories within the magazine and a contents page headline.
I then inserted corresponding images with the text and then put numbers with them.
Today i started to make a mock-up magazine, i have made the front cover and have started on the contents page, next lesson i will finish the contents page and start to make a double page spread mock-up
Today I have done research into the indie genre and completed that. Then I did research into magazine front covers, contents pages and double page spreads. Finally I did a bit of research into my target audience. I have found this session very successful and productive, now next lesson i can start making magazine mock-ups.
Target is the audience that your work is aimed at. You can identify it through different characteristics such as age, race, income and gender.
For example my magazine will be aimed at 12-18 year old because they’re the age range that are most likely to keep up with the music that’s around right now which is indie. My audience could be any race if thy have grown up in Britain and fit into the age range. The income of my target audience will be high working class to high middle class because it will be reasonably priced for what the magazine is. The gender or my target audience will be mostly males because most females would prefer to read gossip or fashion magazines.
The most common and simplest definitions of “indie” is the definition of not being connected with a major recording label (currently one of the “Big Four” recording companies: Warner, Universal, Sony BMG and EMI). This is the definition used by NME’s indie music charts in the UK, among others.
The problem with this definition is that most of the larger independent labels are run along the same business principles as the major labels, with A&R departments, marketing budgets and commercial considerations guiding their operations. Meanwhile, major labels often retain independently-oriented artists who are given greater creative independence, and who receive considerable critical acclaim. Some notable major-label artists of this sort include Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Pulp and The Flaming Lips.
The word “indie” is often used to refer specifically to various genres or sounds. During the 1980s, “indie” was synonymous in Great Britain with jangly guitar pop of the C-86 movement. During the 1990s a lot of Britpop bands were referred to as “indie”, despite most of the movement being signed to major labels and dominating sales charts. More recently, the word “indie” is sometimes used as a synonym for new wave revivalist bands such as Franz Ferdinand and The Killers. The word “indie” is sometimes used as a synonym for alternative, a word which often bears the stigma of being associated with cynically manufactured mass-market teen-rebellion music from major labels. Such usages of “indie” may be considered inaccurate for various reasons: for one, stylistic qualities are often not accurately correlated to commercial independence or adherence to indie principles (this is particularly true when a sound becomes popular, its leading exponents are signed by major labels and more success-oriented bands and production teams attempt to imitate the style; this ultimately culminates in commercially driven artists sporting the same stylistic traits the “indie” artists of a year ago had). Secondly, however pervasive any style of music (even one as broadly defined as “guitar pop” or “post-punk rock”) may become at a particular time, it by definition cannot embody all of indie music, as, by indie’s nature, there will be indie artists, labels and entire local scenes operating outside of this style and its definitions.
There are several subcategories indie music is often grouped broadly into. Indie rock and indie pop are the most common ones. The difference between these is difficult to pick up from the instrumentation or sound, as both genres include distorted guitar-based music based on pop-song conventions. If anything, the key distinction comes not from instrumentation or structure but from how strictly they follow cultural constructions of rockist “authenticity”. There is also indie dance, which comes from a fusion of indie pop and electronic/dance music. Crossover between electronica (mostly glitch) resulted in so-called indietronic, electronic indie or indie electronic, for example some artists on the German Morr Music label, or The Postal Service. Another type is Post Rock, which includes bands like Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or Sigur Rós. The idea behind Post Rock is that there are very few (if any) lyrics, yet the songs are long (sometimes upwards of 20 minutes), and the point of the songs are to paint an emotional landscape with just music and no words. Further expanding the original meaning of the term, when used in the independent sense, Blog-Rock has come to encapsulate the wave of upcoming artists in the mid-2000s.
Today I continued with my research for my magazine. I found a lot more front covers and have taken into account some of the techniques that have been used and will use some in my own magazine. I have also looked at a few more contents pages and seen that some are very similar, i just have t make sure that mine links to my own front cover rather than trying to make it look like everyone elses.
Today I looked in-depth at the genre of music ‘Indie’, I needed to do this so that when I made my Magazine it was fitting with the genre, I need to know what i’m talking about to make a magazine about it.
I also looked at other music magazines and looked at techniques that i liked and hat i should use in my own magazine to make it appeal to my target audience.
After much deliberation over my final ideas I have come to the conclusion that I should make an Indie magazine. I have decided to do so because it’s a very popular genre right now, and would have a very wide audience and also it’s the genre that I know most about and am most comfortable doing, plus it’d much easier to do a magazine for one particular genre because you don’t have to worry about making it fit in with all the other genres.
I like how edgy this looks, I think when i make my magazine i would have to make it look just as edgy so the genre is given across, plus this would appeal to students mainly who will be my target audience.
The way the main cover line is in capitals of all different sizes makes it look as if it would be shouted at you, which I think is a good effect for this kind of magazine. The image of the person is quite edgy looking, and looks like she has a bit of attitude which is also something I’d have to do for my magazine to make it look realistic and appeal to my audience.
In music magazines the background of the image is very plain, which is why I will have to consider taking photos in the photography studio. I will use reds in my magazine because red seems to be popular in all music magazines.
The genre of this magazine is evidently more hardcore than what I’m going to do, therefore i have to make sure that i don’t over do my magazine and make it look like this, because it wouldn’t appeal to the right audience. It’s hard to read the main cover line so I must also make sure that my main cover line is in a clear font, but I do like the idea of the text turning corners, I think could either look really effective or no good at all, so I’m undecided as to whether I will put it on my magazine front cover or not. I also like the sepia effect that’s been used on the main image I think if i used this in my magazine it would look quite retro and retro comes arm in arm with indie music.
This again is rock magazine but I think it’s a bit closer to the genre of my magazine than the one before. I think the font they’ve used where it looks like someone has written it is very rocky so i would try to steer clear of using that in my magazine. The main image is like something that could go in my magazine though, the plain background and the attitude given off by the models just shows they’re in a band. The clothes that the band in the main photo are wearing are very important to, because when I first looked at this magazine cover that’s what I looked at first and that’s what told me the genre was rock, I’ll have to get my models to wear clothes that are very similar to artists of indie music, so people can tell straight off the genre of the magazine. The splash of yellow with images on is a good idea because it appeals to my target audience because it gives a sort of don’t care attitude but doesn’t make the rest of the front cover look untidy.
I looked at Billboard magazine front covers, Billboard is a current music chart magazine. The very first thing I noticed when looking at these magazine is that the image shows the exact genre of the artist in the photo, Jay Z is a rapper and his photo shows his to be quite hard but still living the high life with a cigar and designer clothes which is how most people would stereotype a raper, Mary J Blige sings pop and R&B and many think of her as a diva and this is what her photo show. Miley Cyrus sing country music and her image shows her with an acoustic guitar and in a meadow in a check shirt and jeans which is what everyone immediately associates with country music. Lady Gaga sings pop/alternative music and she’s a bit bizarre and her photo shows exactly that. I think I would have to consider doing this for my magazine so I might not take a photo with a white background, I might place them against a brick wall or somewhere that looks a bit rough because it would show how they’re unsigned or with a small record label and are humble.
The masthead of this magazine is partially covered by the artists head but you can still clearly read the title this is different to some of the other magazines where a lot of the mast head is covered by the artists image, but this is probably because this magazine isn’t as well established as some of the other magazine that cover the masthead more.
The name of the artist in the image is the main cover story on this front cover, this is because the artist is a selling point and not only will the magazine have their usual fans buying the magazine but they will always have the artist’s fans who want to buy the magazine to find out more about the artist.
This particular magazine uses slang words on it’s front cover ‘The Hood’ this would appeal to this magazines target audience.
I also looked at contents pages for music magazines.
They follow much the same theme as the front covers using red colours and the images are a bit edgy.
This contents page is quite obviously very similar to the contents page before, but i don’t think they’re from the same magazine. Reds are very popular in contents pages they make it looks edge, band photos are also very common on contents pages, I think that most of my original images will be on the contents page and will be of bands.
This contents page isn’t a contents page from a music magazine, but I think it could pass as an R&B magazine, because the model could be an R&B singer because on most album covers R&B photos are like this. Even though it’s not a music magazine I can still take tips from it. I like how they’ve made ‘contents’ part of the page and bit interesting by breaking it up and writing it at different levels rather than just having it in small and in the corner at the top.
All the stories in this magazine are clearly labeled with page numbers, which is all you really want from a magazine.
The colour scheme sticks to one shade of red, the same shade as the NME masthead, which makes sure that the whole magazine links in together.
The stories that the magazine writers think are most important are in the biggest font and have the best positioning on the page to draw your eye into it and therefore be a selling point.
The whole page is busy there isn’t one it that is bare, this is both a good and bad thing, it’s good because it shows that the magazine is jam packed with stories and it makes it look interesting, whereas on the other hand it could like over packed and intimidating and a bit messy.
After looking at front cover and contents pages I began looking at double page spreads.
This is a double page spread of an interview with an artist. I like how the image crosses over two pages, it’s interlinks them very well. I also like how the image is more background then of the artist because it gives the piece space for the columns and doesn’t have to cover the most important part which is the artitst.
I like how the questions to the artists are like subheadings, with the questions being in bold then the reply in normal text, you see this a lot in most interviews in a magazine but it’s still very effective because it allows people to scan to where they want to read.
The fact that they have used brown for the background of the text is effective because it blends in with the picture in the background.
This is a story about ‘The Chapman Family’ in NME magazine. It’s not like an interview more of a story about the band and this is why it’s not separated up into subsections, like the previous double page spread.
I don’t like the fact that the text and the image are on completely different pages it make it look like a lot of text to read which is quite off putting and my target audience wouldn’t appreciate that because, they’d prefer to just read what they need to, so if it looks shorter by being split up a bit it’d be much easier for them to read.
This is like the previous double page spread, it’s a story rather than a interview.
The mast head is such a font that it looks like it’s should be shouted, it looks as if it want’s to come off the page, which links very well with the image of Lilly Allen.
I like that the main thing is the image of the artist because her arm goes over a little bit onto the side with the text, this shows that it’s all about her, so you can tell from just that, that the story will be about Lilly Allen.
This is a story on the black eyed peas. But they don’t actually say the name of the band anywhere therefore it’s not obvious what band it is and if someone isn’t familiar with the band they wont know who they’re reading about until they’ve read through he peiece.
I like that there is lead in under the masthead because, none of the others have had this and I think it’s quite important to have a lead in to see if they want to continue reading the double page spread.
There are photos of the band over the two pages and they are all in the same speia colour which i think helps the two pages link together. The colours (red, white and black) are the same through-out which also helps to link it all together.
The images are off the band playing which is good because it helps to show the genre they sing in, I think this band are a bit rocky.
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