Magazine Development

I wanted to create a magazine that I would be interested in. Having read Q and NME before, I wanted to create a music magazine that was 'edgy' like NME, but also didn't focus on one particular genre of music like Q, so I combined the two.

When thinking of names for a magazine, I thought of how Q is a reference to the saying 'Cue the music' when in a studio; it is musical. So, I thought of some names like 'Loud' and 'Noise,' but felt they were too explicit, and I wanted to have a name that would be a bit more interpretive. So, I came up with the name 'deciBel.' I felt that the way it is written looks stylised, so it looks modern, and plus, it is a reference to the volume of music, which is obviously very important. Moreover, I felt that with that title, one could think of a number of skylines, slogans and a plethora of other music magazine conventions that would correlate with it effectively.

For my front cover, I wanted to sort of replicate the way in which Chris Martin of Coldplay is there with his head tilted and his mouth wide open. I had to think about creating a shot that didn't immitate the edition of Q that I took my inspiration from, but it had to have the same effect. I feel that it is interesting as it could have a number of interpretations, so I staged my shot for the artist to have his hand on his chin as if he is thinking about something whilst having the direct address, as if he is looking at the audience member.

In terms of the contents page, I had to keep taking photographs in order to get the right pictures on it. Initially, I only had the one photograph on, and I was going to put another photograph on the double page spread in order to complete the required amount of pictures. But having just the one photograph was rather dull, and so I added a second photo towards the end of the task as I felt it was very necessary. I tried to replicate a 'Cher Lloyd image' with the photograph of the girl, as I thought her style was different to the style of the other artist, thus, making the magazine diverse.

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The double page spread required much tampering in terms of typography. I changed the typography for the 'handwritten' style numerous times, simply to make it look as close to that of a pen. Moreover, I had to make sure there wasn't too much blank space so that the magazine didn't look 'unfinished' to an extent. This is why after making a draft of it, I then added a pull quote in the top left of the image and the artist's name also. Another issue I had was putting style lines around the main body of text. When I tried to put them in, it looked quite amateur, and I argued with myself as to whether or not I should leave them. But, with much debate and having asked some of my peers - despite the issue I had with there being too much blank space left, I felt it was best to remove them as the double page spread looked much neater without them; something I wanted to achieve.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Music magazine evaluation complete email from Joe Barron

Magazine Questionnaire

I made a questionnaire and handed it out to 20 different people in order to establish my target audience, and the pros and cons of my magazine from a range of different domographics.

The results of my questionnaire:

Does the magazine look as though it is of a high quality?
Yes: 16 No: 4

Would you say that the front cover image is interesting?
Yes: 13 No: 7

Would the contents of this magazine appeal to you?
Yes: 19 No: 1

Does the magazine present real media features?
Yes: 20 No: 0

Could you see it on the shelves?
Yes: 20 No: 0

Does the typography appeal to you?
Yes: 11 No: 9

Does the idea of a magazine being non-genre specific appeal to you?
Yes: 19 No: 1

Does the price of the magazine seem realistic?
Yes: 15 No: 5

As the consumer, are there any issues with this magazine?
Yes: 2 No: 18

The issues highlighted were merely just in regards to the double page spread, because the fonts used didn't particularly appeal to them; but this was only because of technological limitations in which I had obstructing me.

Double Page Spread

Contents Page - Updated

Double Page Spread - Research

Here, I am going to look at to double page spreads in a Q magazine, as I have established Q to be the magazine most similar to mine, and there are many elements of this magazine's double page spread that I would like to somewhat imitate.

There are two things that immediately draw the audience's attention when looking at this: that is the letters 'L' and 'J' in a big font and in red, which is the magazine's theme colour. Secondly, the main image which is clearly so important, it needs a whole page.

The images seem to take up a medium close-up, which suggests that the attention needs to be brought mainly to their faces, but also to other elements within the misc-en-scene which bare importance. I am going to take some inspiration from this, in the sense of using a whole side to portray the main image, however, I intend on perhaps doing a medium shot or even a long shot depending on the relevance of the misc-en-scene.

Something that I am very interested in using is the big letter. Looking at other magazines such as NME and Billboard, this idea of making the letter fill a whole page but with the main body of the spread coming out underneath seems to be something that only Q magazine does like this; so what I intend to do is, because my double page spread is going to be on Ed Sheeran, who is well known for having ginger hair, I am going to focus the main image on that colour and on his hair, and then have the first letter of the main body be much larger than the rest and have it the same colour of his hair, to emphasis it and to also add some humor to it, as you will see by the quotation that has been put onto the main image of the Jay-Z article that humor comes out a lot, which is what I have also done for my front cover.

The topics of the main body seem to talk about various things about the artists' career, so I am going to select a few things such as Sheeran's new album, how he became known, what he is working on, and then things such as who he would like to work with in the future and who he has worked with before,

I think then I would need to merely keep to conventions such as a title at the top of the double page spread to introduce the artist, page numbers and decorative lines to keep it neat and tidy. Furthermore, in terms of tidyness, the typography should clearly be going towards the Times New Roman font to show class and prestige rather than going back to Comic Sans and losing the magazine's credibility, as I want my magazine to be a high-end magazine with a target audience of music lovers across the gender spectrum from 18+.

Contents Page