Evaluation

AS Practical Coursework Evaluation

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Final contents page

Double page spread

I created my double page spread using Microsoft publisher. Before this project I hadn’t used this program so it was necessary for me to learn basic skills ahead of creating this feature. I had sketched a layout I would follow when arranging all the elements of the double page spread.The layout was similar to those seen in NME, it is common for one of the pages to be filled with an image of an artist/artists.
I have sustained the house style by continuing my use of a range of colours that give a rainbow effect. The colour red is the most prominent as I have used it throughout in the colouring of my text. ‘Lottie’s’ tights are red with black polka dots, I incorporated this pattern when designing and constructing my title on photo shop.

I discovered that you can use both Photo shop and Publisher simultaneously when using a computer with two monitors I was able to drag pictures and transfer them from one program to another.


I had already wrote the article that I was including in this section so the I simply needed to cut and paste the text from the word document it was saved in. The process of making columns is easy in Publisher compared to Photo shop as there are adjustable templates available. Columns are aligned and evenly spaced in professional magazines this program allowed me to create this look.
The background image is extremely busy, when I pasted the text into the text boxes the writing was barely legible. NME regularly put a white background behind their text to separate it from the image.

I adjusted the transparency of the text boxes so the props in the background could be seen.

Here is my final double page spread:

Contents page pictures

I was lucky when it came to choosing pictures to include in my magazine. I have a range of pictures of music artists that I have taken at concerts or festivals.
Here are the images I have chosen to include in my contents page:

I took this picture of Paolo Nutini at the Glastonbury festival in 2009.





Both of these images below were taken at the Liverpool O2 academy. They are unsigned bands.



Above is another picture I took at Glastonbury in 2009.

Contents page inspiration

In addition to the front cover and double page spread I had to create a contents page for the magazine. I looked in the college library at contents pages in professional magazines. The layout of a contents page is important as is the part of a magazine which almost every reader looks at.

Third photoshoot

The pictures used in the double page spreads of real media texts usually have a background that connects with the text. The artist I am basing my coursework on is young and female, in my article I have wrote about meeting her for the interview in her home. It seemed logical to use her bedroom for the background. The curtains in my bedroom are multi-coloured, I also have a couple of instruments that I added to give off the right connotations.
The artists featured in professional music magazines often have different outfits, for this photo shoot I changed the clothes Charlotte was wearing and made sure the style of them was similar. Here is the picture I’m using for the double page spread:

Third photo shoot

The pictures used in the double page spreads of real media texts usually have a background that connects with the text. The artist I am basing my coursework on is young and female, in my article I have wrote about meeting her for the interview in her home. It seemed logical to use her bedroom for the background. The curtains in my bedroom are multi-coloured, I also have a couple of instruments that I added to give off the right connotations.
The artists featured in professional music magazines often have different outfits, for this photo shoot I changed the clothes Charlotte was wearing and made sure the style of them was similar. Here is the picture I’m using for the double page spread:

Second photoshoot

It began to rain on the day I was meant to be taking photos outside, my model and I had gone to the outside location which is quite far away from college, this meant I wasn’t able to use their studio. Luckily I have white walls in my bedroom so I was able to take some shots there. Here is the picture I have chosen to use for my front cover:




The majority of the pictures I took in that photo shoot were taken lengthways and many of them were out of focus. I couldn’t find a photograph that would be suitable for my double page spread and so I’ve had set another date to take more pictures.

Photoshoot

I have chosen the model I am going to use as my artist for the magazine cover and article I am producing. Hopefully the photo shoot will go according to plan as I have tried to be as prepared as possible. I have carried out recces in a variety of different locations to work out which ones would be suitable. I hope to do the photo shoot outside so the lighting is natural however the weather recently hasn’t been very good, I will not be able to carry it out in the rain. If I can’t get outside due to bad weather conditions I will take the photos in the studio using the three point lighting set up, this will with any luck make the light appear quite natural.

Typography

It was difficult to select a masthead from these variations as they did not fit with the electro-pop feel.




This week I bought ‘Company’ magazine, I decided to try the word fusion in the style of their masthead. Although simple, it looked professional, the boldness of the block text alone made it stand out.

Name of my magazine

The name of a magazine is important as it is what people recognise it by. I began to think of catchy and memorable names which I could possibly use. Here is a brainstorm of my ideas:

These ideas stemmed from my research into published music magazines. NME for example stands for ‘New Musical Express’, I was inspired by this and came up with TMC which would stand for ‘The Music Culture’.
As I have decided to focus on electro-pop artists I looked into its origins. Its main origin was New Wave music. I altered the New to NU to modernise it, so NU wave was another option for my masthead.
I looked up the synonyms of ‘music’ on www.thesaurus.com, many of my ideas for the name of my magazine were words associated with music.
I asked a few of my classmates which name they preferred, out of them all ‘Fusion’ was the most liked heading.

Conventions

Following my research looking at professional music magazines I became aware of the conventions for this form of media text. I found the key ingredients I needed to include on my front cover were:

Genre of my magazine

Whist carrying out my research looking at existing music magazines I have discovered the most common genre is indie/rock. NME (New musical express) is a popular music magazine, it features artists whose music fits these genres. In previous years this particular magazine covered a huge range of musicians and styles including hip-hop, R&B and dance. However at the moment its coverage has become quite limited and less diverse as it focuses mainly on the indie scene. I realised the popularity of these indie magazines was becoming smaller and went on to look at other magazines which covered more styles.
Electro-pop music has featured in the charts a lot recently, artists such as Ke$ha, La Roux and Owl city have made it to number one. I have chosen to focus on this genre of music for my coursework task.

Research

Q magazine is published monthly by Bauer Media group. It doesn’t have a particular genre which makes it appeal to a wider range of people. Its target audience I feel is older than NME’s target audience as the layout of both the front cover and its featured articles are quite simplistic. It has a professional layout which would attract an older audience. The colour scheme used on this cover is black, white and red, some grey is taken from the background to create banners which make the cover lines stand out.



NME is published weekly by IPC Media. The creators of this issue have altered the usual indie/rock genre and have replaced it with the contemporary electro-pop genre. Elements of the indie genre are included in little sections for example the feature on the ‘Arctic monkeys’. NME has a large target audience of people aged from 17-30. The red, white and black colours can be seen in every issue, these colours form part of the house style. There is only three different fonts used on this cover they are changed to make the text visually attractive, their use of a small number of fonts keep the magazine from looking too busy.

After completing both the film and print preliminary tasks I found creating the magazine cover and contents page was more enjoyable. I felt more comfortable using Photoshop over the film editing Adobe Premiere Pro.



This was our Print preliminary piece. Although it has many of the aspects a conventional music magazine has there are many important features missing. I hope to include these in my final coursework piece.

AS Group 15

AS Group 15