My Chosen Title and Colour Scheme

After a lot of questioning and surveying people on titles I have decided in the end that my favourite name is 'Basement'. The word arises connoatations of the indie and singer songwriter music as often portrayed in American films bands of this music type tend to practice in basements. and after drafting some mock ups for potential covers e.c.t Furthermore, for my colour scheme, over the Christmas holidays I asked numerous friends and family members to chose which colour scheme they liked best, I told them to take into consideration the name of the magazine and also the target audience and music genre.

The most popular colours were grey/silver, black, white and purple. I had the idea of changing the colour purple to indigo for obvious reasons, I thought it would be a good link from the title to the colour scheme. My three main colours are there going to be grey/silver, indigo and then alternate between black and white depending what I use this colour for. I think this scheme is good as it creates a sense of professionalism and class and the indigo is nice touch of colours so it isn't too dull and boring. After doing my research on indie and singer/songwriter artists and bands I have seen that they are usually represented in a calm manner rather than being represented like how their music sounds. They are represented by their personalities and what they wear than what type of music they make (This links to Dyers star theory) and therefore I want the cover of my magazine to have a very clean fresh look to it.

Conventions of Music Magazines

Over the course of my time researching several music magazines I have come to notice that all of them have conventional features. They all follow a guideline for having certain features shown which I am going to discuss now, each magazine has their own house style which is what allows them to differ from each other.

Planning - Colour Schemes

Shot types

Planning - name possibilities

I tried testing some fonts out to give me an idea of what I like...

My Target Audience

After looking at my results from my surveys I have decided on which target audience I want to aim my magazine at. The age group that I will be aiming for is 15-23 year olds. I have chosen this because the responses from my survey revealed that people who are older do not read music magazines unlike the young ages (15-23 year olds). In addition, I feel like I can produce a cover, contents page and double page spread best suited for a young adult. Furthermore, I am aware that the most popular genre of music from my survey isn't the genre which I have pursued as this is only a small handful of people out of the entire country. The most popular genre turned out to be pop however my magazine is going to conform to the indie genre as I personally feel that this is the one I am most comfortable to do; I know what to expect being a fan of several artists and bands that are classed as Indie. A lot of magazines include a various amount of artists from different genres because they focus on who is the most popular rather than what type of music they produce. I feel this is an advantage for my magazine, although I am not distributing it in real life I believe that this would be a good selling point to my audience if I was to do so. 

Moreover, my step in planning is preparing mock-ups as to what I want my magazine to look like. From research and doing detailed textual analysises on already existing magazine covers, contents pages and double page spreads I will be looking at their conventional features to help when putting together my design ideas for my product. 

Results of my Survey

To show the results of my survey I have created various charts. This helps clearly show the results which received. I will then further use this information to help me decide who I want my target audience. 

 This survey is out of 25 people. I asked people of various ages however kept it within the younger age groups because I feel as thought I will be able to design a magazine best suited for a younger audience due to myself being young as well. All of these surveys are from my own results and out of 25.

 I can see here that out of the people I have asked, some do not read music magazines despite them being young. The age category 19-20 year old were the ones who do not tend to purchase music magazines, this could be due to the fact that at that age they are usually busy socially and academically. The highest percentage that did read magazines were 17-18 year olds and therefore I should definitely include this age group in my final target audience.

 There are a variety of music genres and each person has their own taste. Therefore as there were too many to show in a chart I decided to narrow it down into the top 4 genres that were chosen because the other genres that were chosen not many people picked them and I thought that it would be pointless including for example, Dubstep when only two people in my survey chose this. This will contribute to my ideas for my target audience as I can see which genre of music is the most popular.

 In this pie chart I am showing the different ages of the people that participated in my survey. As you can see, most were 15-16 year olds followed by 17-18 year olds. This is because I distributed most of my surveys around my class and all of them were in my age category.

I designed a table to show how many out of the 25 people which I questioned said that each genre was their favourite. I found this useful as I can clearly see how many males/females are interested in pop/indie rock/R&B/Singer Songwriter music. 

Research into Target Audiences (Survey)

I created a survey to distribute among my classmates because I had earlier decided that I wanted my target audience to be between the ages of 15-19. My classmates fit into this age group and therefore I took this opportunity to gather some results.

Here I have scanned in the survey which I printed off and handed out. I thought carefully whilst planning my questions; it needed to ensure that they would be relevant to my task and help me when planning it. Moreover, by gathering information on which artists/bands and genre of music is the most popular within my targeted age group, I will be able to get an idea of which artists I can refer to in my magazine as well as giving me thoughts on what genre of music my magazine can focus on.

In addition, I found it important to ask if people would prefer their music magazine to cover a range of genres in terms of music or just stick to one type and therefore knowing if it would attract my desired consumers containing hybrid genres of music. 

In conclusion, in my next blog post I will be talking about the demographics from my survey and discuss who my final target audience is. 

Planning - Names for my Magazine

I decided it would be useful to begin thinking of names for my music magazine. I have decided that I want it to appeal to a teenage/young adult audience which consists of both males and females. I have carried out a survey and am in the midst of writing up a post to show my results and explain my chosen target audience and music genre in more detail. 

Since I am trying to appeal to the younger generation I came up with several one word titles. By having one word titles it gives it a fresh look when shown on the cover and also rolls of the tongue giving it an upbeat sound. To make sure that my magazine conforms to the trendy, modern times that teenagers and young adults live in now, I have come up with words that will give off codes as to what music will be featured inside. 

Moreover, the first image here that I have included is a screenshot of me in the middle of creating my mind map. I thought that this would be appropriate so that the examiner will know that I have produced this piece of work myself. In addition, the second image shows my final piece and as you can see I have brainstormed a lot of ideas which I will look at in more detail soon, then I will be able to narrow my thoughts down and as the final step, chose an appropriate name. Before I can finalize my name however, I will be planning ideas on the house style and design on my front cover, contents page and double page spread. Subsequently, once I have chosen my design features and layouts e.c.t I will be able to see what names are most suitable. 

Finally, in my mind map I have used a varied range of fonts which could affect the names which the people I ask choose and so once I have collected my results I am going to write all the names one more time all in the same font to see if the same names then are chosen. I created this map before I had established my target audience and therefore once I have chosen an audience I will pick out which names are most suitable. For now, I want to see which names overall could be possibilities; this can give me ideas as to what I want my magazine to conform to. 

Billboard Magazine Case Study

******Add on billboard awards

The Magazine Production Process

I have created a spider diagram to show me the production process of creating a magazine. I can apply this to my research as this way will allow me to know what stage of production I am at. This will help me have a clear plan for my production as I will know what factors I need to be considering at each stage. Furthermore, it will help me stay on time for my final deadline for my product. For example, I have already began my planning for my product and I am preparing mock-ups for possible designs for my magazine. 

Different Genres of Music

There is a variety of genres within music. My next step in my planning is to focus on finding a target audience, I drew up this mind map to so I can clearly see the different variations and different audiences I could aim for. To start off with, to find a target audience, I am going to create a survey for my fellow classmates to complete. Once I have them back I will look at the demographics as I am thinking of aiming my magazines towards 15-21 year olds. With my classmates being within this age range I can see which types of music are the most popular.

History of Music Magazines

Planning - Mood Board

To start off my planning, I decided to create a mood board of artists that I like. This will help me see what artists I can mention to when designing my magazine i.e article titles and features for the contents page e.c.t. It will also help when it comes to thinking of a story to write for my double page spread as I can transfer events going on with these artists and use them as inspiration. By having this mood board it will let me keep track of what type of magazine I want to produce, I can take ideas from these artists such as their style and the articles that they are featured in for my own designs. In addition, it will aid me when it comes to thinking of the design for my cover, contents page and article because I can use ideas from how they are in photo shoots.

The artist featured on my mood board are, Swim Deep, The Vamps, Joy Division, Nina Nesbitt, The Smiths, Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds, The Maccabees, Ed Sheeran, Bastille, The 1975 and The Courteeners.

Vibe Magazine Contents Page Analysis

Top of the Pops Magazine Contents Page Analysis

NME Magazine Contents Page Analysis

NME Magazine Double Page Spread Analysis

Audience Expectations of Music Magazines

For every type of magazine there will be set audience expectations. Through research and planning the magazine editors will know who their target audience is and what sort of things they expect to find inside, every magazine is different. For example, magazines aimed at younger audiences such as music magazine 'Top of the Pops' have features inside that they know younger females with enjoy such as a section where people from home write in and state their most embarrassing moments. Therefore, they will look at what their target audience will enjoy reading the most and try and feature all of these things within an issue.

If the target audience is for 16-30 years olds then they will know that they are more than likely interested in finding out more about an artists personal affairs rather than a magazine based solely on their music career, this supports Dyers star theory. Furthermore, if the target audience again was a younger generation then the artists that are shown inside would be of young age.

Consequently, magazines such as 'Rolling Stone' includes politics and pop culture because they know that their target audience isn't young and therefore they have an intellectual side to it.

Audiences might expect to find more out about artists besides tour dates and their music careers, they like to get to know them on a more personal level. This refers to Bulmer and Katz Uses and Gratification's theory where readers like to feel as though they have some kind of connection with the artist to escape their normal lives.

I produced a spider diagram to show what some audiences will expect from their music magazine, this will help when planning my own magazine because I will be able to pick out what features to include depending on my chosen audience.