Research & Summarise

Front cover

An image based cover is the most commonly used style, but it's important to get it right. A typical successful cover consists of one or a few main images with the main one having a model that gives direct eye contact with the camera, preferably smiling. In many cases it is the cover image that sells the magazine so it has to be right.

Another important thing is the interaction between the words and the picture. some magazines of for a few cover lines, some fill almost each empty space with the cover lines. It all depends on the character of the publication.  
A cover line needs one line set in big type and it has to be the best cover line. It can be call for action, solution to problems, a powerful statement or some word play. 

When choosing a proper body text font, you should choose one that suits your publication. The most popular font for a magazine is a serif font, they use this because it makes it easier for line to line eye transition. However from doing further research into this most magazines use a vary of different fonts within their articles so I will vary my text to follow the common conventions.

Contents page

Each paragraph of text can have a horizontal indent in the first line of the paragraph. The paragraph just below the subheading doesn't have to have to be indented, the indent should be from 3-5mm depending on the width of the text column.

The heading should be situated somewhere easily visible as people read the contents page to find out what the main feature story includes. It also has to be one of the biggest things on the page, then followed by the main image. The other images need to be smaller to show that they are the less important ones that don't belong with the feature article.

With the other smaller images should have mini coverless that include the sub heading of that story, they should also have the page numbers that they appear on so that its easier to navigate to. The text should be in a 5-9pt size font as it's a common convention for magazines, the text should also be written in sentence case.

Double Page Spread

The heading should be the biggest thing on one of the pages and should only typically feature on one side of the page. Subheadings should introduce the different parts of the article and also have pull quotes from the interview, this is to show some of the main interesting things that they reveal.

The other side of the page should be filled with one main image of the featured artist. This image should represent the theme and style of the magazine but also show the colour palette used throughout the story.

The by-line should also be quite small as it isn't an important part to the article, however it still should be quite visible as the writer would want recognition for his/her work.

Verran Edited Images

I didn't really have to edit these images much because I set up my lights in a "flat-light" set up so it would give my image a natural shadow on the side of my models face. I used photoshop to adjust the hue and saturation and also change the brightness and contrast in order to get the perfect final image for my magazine. When taking these images I referred back to my flat plans so that the position and models expression was how I wanted it to feature in my magazine. I chose to have two images of the male star and add one of my female star so that both males and females could relate to the images. If I were to change anything about my images I may have made my images brighter by changing the brightness of the flat boxes, however I feel that the darker images work with the style of my magazine.

Verran Cover Image Selection

These are the four images I got from our class photoshoot, I like all of these images as they have good lighting however the posing on some are better than the others. The one that I have selected is not your typical image for a pop magazine cover because it's not a medium close up, however that is the style that I am going for as I'm going to re-vamp the look of pop magazines.

The story line for this picture will be "pops biggest bad boy" therefore I needed an image of the model not smiling into the camera to represent the stereotypical appearance of a "bad boy". In order to achieve the best representation I am going to look at Stanley Hall's theory about the storm and stress of adolescence.

My photoshoot was taken in a studio with a black back drop. I could have chosen to do a shoot on location however, I wanted a simplistic image with the model being the main focus so if there was a busy background the attention would have been taken away from my model. I also chose for the model to have main focus to represent his attitude and style.

Verran Image planning

  

I like that this image is not the typical medium close up that you would normally find on the cover of a pop magazine. I think this image shows character and attitude which could help relate to the feature article, I also like this image because it is more relaxed/casual but still reaches out and appeals to the target audience.

However when creating my own magazine I will try and stick to the common conventions and use a medium close up of somebody that fits into the target age category this will help to connect to the readers as they can relate to the model. I think both would be suitable for this style of magazine but at the end I will experiment with both styles of images and see which one is most effective.

For my contents page, this is the type of image I will have as one of my main ones. I think it follows the casual theme set for my magazine, I also think that direct eye contact with he camera will be more effective on reaching out to the target audience therefore my model will have to be giving direct eye contact. The hair and make up will be left quite subtle as i don't want the music magazine to be mistaken for a fashion magazine, I'm also going to add in props such as headphones and a guitar to support the mise en scene. For the costume I'm also going to keep it casual just like the shoot with Justin Bieber and have my model posing in casual clothes, I have chosen to do this rather than getting my model to dress in fancy going out clothes because my target audience would be more likely to dress casual therefore it would be easier for them to relate to the artist.

This would an ideal image to use on my double page spread because it fits the casual style that my magazine is going to hold, it also looks like it came from the same shoot because he is against a wall giving direct eye contact to the camera. When creating my double page spread I am going to have one side of the page filled with my image and the other side will be text based, because its a double page spread I will have to leave room in the middle for the cut line to avoid missing parts of my article or image.

Verran Main Artist Profile

The type of artist profile I want to feature in my magazine and on the cover would be a new, young and successful artist. I chose this because I can show gender, youth, age and ethnicity on the cover and build a positive representation of its own through my magazine. I would like the artist to be aged within my target audience because I feel that if I have someone aged around 16-17 it would be the prime artist for my target audiences interest, I'm also going to have my model being a white British female because that's the ethnicity that my main audience will be.

An example of a young successful British female artist would be Cher Lloyd, she's an inspiration to many has she has had to make her way from the bottom to get where she is and it just shows that if she can do it many other people can if they try hard enough. However it contradicts Osgerby's theory that "you don't have to look far to find a bad representation of youth". In any other social situation this would be correct although in the music industry most female pop artists are seen as being a figure to look up to and are well respected. However some of the other music genre's follow his theory and youth are portrayed in a less glamorous and negative way for example; grime, rap and rock.

Verran Mood Board

In my mood board you will see the types of colours, font and image type I will be following when I create my own magazine. The background images are the type of artists I will feature in my contents page stories and base my main feature stories on. I have also included the magazines that I will look at and use as inspiration, although all of these covers have a main image of females posing in quite a vulnerable way where as I am going to have an image of a male looking quite stern directly giving eye contact to the audience which will be subverting the conventions of a pop main image for a cover, usually the main focus is a women looking happy and smiling at the camera. The colours I chose to use for my magazine also subverts the typical choice for a pop magazine because I chose black, blue, white and grey which are all quite dark colours where as usually it would be hot pinks, whites and yellows. I chose not to use those colours because I personally think that they make the magazines look tacky and childish.

Verran DPS article

This Year has been brilliant for new up coming artist Jess Darke, although it’s not all been a smooth journey for her. She’s been heavily criticised by the newspapers for her reckless behaviour, and her on and off relationship with Jackson Mills was suspected to be the reason behind her attitude. It’s still not official whether or not the pair have fully separated but another thing the press haven’t failed to notice are the sudden change in men she has been spotted with, could this mean it’s done for good? So when she came to see us earlier we couldn’t help ask the question everyone was dying to know the answer to.

With all the speculation about you and Jackson how has it affected your relationship? “When Jackson and I first met everything was perfect, we were very much connected together but with busy careers we were both away for weeks at a time. It didn’t really bother us at first because when we were finally reunited it made our bond grow stronger, however then the press started getting involved and published a lot of stuff that was 100% false for example when Jackson was touring in the US he was rumoured to be cheating on me so the trust started to break and things started to change because every time one of us went away we would be snapped with other people. do admit that I’ve made mistakes but that’s not my problem everyone has made them I was just unfortunate enough to have press there to tell everyone about them. We decided to take some time apart to focus on our careers and I feel this was the best move for us because I got scouted and now I’ve been signed to a proper label and I’m not saying that we completely stopped seeing each other but it just gave us time to realise what we wanted without all the papers interfering.

We are now in a place that we meet up at least once a week even if it’s to just grab a coffee, who knows what the future holds for us but one thing I’m sure about is whichever way this goes I’ll always be there for him.” It seems like things for the pair are going good at the moment so will their reckless behaviour stop now that they seem to be settled or do they live on the buzz they get from trouble?

Verran Choosing My Masthead

These are examples of some magazine mast heads, these belong to successful magazine companies therefore I will take inspiration from these when creating my own. I have noticed that a common link between these are that they are all quite blocky and big, I think this is so that it stands out on the page. All of these have a similar colour palette of dark colours except the top of the pops masthead because that one is pink. I felt choosing a colour that was going to represent my target audience and also look good was important as it could effect how the whole cover is portrayed.



This is the masthead that I have designed, I used fonts and photoshop effects to create the PULSE text. I chose this font from "Da font" because I felt it was more modern than my other decision. I then went into photoshop and created the blue outlines, I chose this colour because it represents my target audience and follows my colour palette.

  I also experimented with making the outlines different colours, however I feel that the blue colour i chose was the best as it looked more professional. The pink colour would have been better for my pop magazine but I decided that I am going to go against the typical conventions and re-vamp the look of a pop magazine.

Verran Starting Ideas & Institution

My initial thoughts were to come up with 4 different possible titles, these included; Smash, Just pop, Unplugged and Pulse. To decide which title was going to be most appealing to my target audience I set up a survey in order to reach out to the people I wanted opinions from, 55 people took my survey which meant I had a variety of responses. The majority of responses I had were from people under the age of 18 and the most popular title chosen was 'Pulse', therefore this is the title I am going to use for my final magazine. I haven't 100% decided on which stories/articles I am going to use, however my initial thoughts are "The music behind bond", "Living life through the camera" and "What it's really like to be well known".

I also set questions such as, what the colour palette should be and what kind of stories they wanted to read, again the responses varied but the answers that were chosen the most were a mixture of all things which includes things such as; fashion, upcoming artists, top 10 songs of the week, interviews with well known artists and freebies and exclusives. The colour palette chosen was red, blue and yellow closely followed by grey blue and pink. therefore I may add a slight bit of pink and grey into my magazine if it doesn't make it look trashy.

The institution that would publish my magazine would be a company such as Bauer media, I think this would be a good idea because they currently don't publish a pop magazine therefore it wouldn't clash with there other magazines and introduce new readers to other types of artists.

Verran Title & Font Design

Front cover

My masthead will be the biggest thing on my cover and will be located at the top filling the width of the page. These are two styles that I have looked at, the serif font looks like more of a music style as each letter has a microphone textured fill, however the bottom sans serif front looks more tidy so I will have to ask 
people of my target audience. If i were to choose the serif font around the edges of the font where it is filled with white i will incorporate my colour palette and fill them with the colours.

Contents Page

I am going to follow the common convention of other magazines and have the text a font that is between 5-10pt, I will also have images with page numbers included next to them. I am going to have an equal balance of text and images, I think this is best as I set a question in my survey about how they wanted the article to be shown and the majority of responses said that an equal balance would be best.

Double Page Spread 

On my DPS I am going to use eye catching text for the masthead and then just a serif font for the rest of my article I decided to do this so that it is easily read but still have a professional style of font for the older end of my target audience. Because half of it will be the image I think ill present the text in columns so that it isn't too short and my audience get a good article about what they wanted to read.

Verran Codes & Conventions

Click here for Powerpoint.

Verran Representations & Stereotypes

Youth

On the cover shows Justin Bieber, a young artist featured on the front, Bill Osgerby said " The representation of youth has not changed much over the past 100 years". He also said that you don't have to go far to find a bad representation of youth. This image kind of supports his theory as Justin has tattoos and has been associated with crime however this image also portrays youth as successful. The clothing that he is wearing isn't smart however this is the sort of clothing associated with what a teenager would wear. Although he has been involved in crime he has changed himself to be a better person and being on the cover means he would get loads of money which shows that teenagers can be successful. My magazine will be aimed at people between the ages of 15-25 so this type of artist would be appealing to them.

Race

Malik says that people from the black and Asian ethnicity are classed as "other" in society as it has become 'the norm' to be white therefore anyone from a different ethnicity are not normal, so the word 'race' only applies to the other non white ethnicities. This magazine cover shows your stereotypical black male, with sunglasses, snapback and a big chain. Black artists are usually seen to feature in hip hop or grime magazines however these artists feature in a pop magazine which is breaking the stereotype. Pop magazines usually feature white artists therefore in order to follow the common conventions I will be using a white person on my cover.

Gender & Sexuality

This cover supports Laura Mulvey's theory of the use of women in two ways only: As erotic objects of desire for the males on screen and in the audience. This female has been sexualised as she is pictured topless on the cover and this is appealing to a male target audience. Using the sex appeal to sell the product has become one of the most used techniques in the media industry. If you are appealing to a male target, by putting a half naked women on the front it will increase your magazine sales. My magazine is going to be aimed at a mixture of audiences as my magazine hasn't got a specific gender target. Therefore I will not be using a sexualised image as my cover because it will introduce gender stereotypes.

Lady Gaga is also a well know bi-sexual female however she doesn’t fit the typical stereotype of an LGBT person, Andy Medhurst says that ‘sexuality disrupts representation, in the real world you cannot 'see' somebodies sexuality, therefore you would not know their sexuality unless they told you.’ This image supports that as she looks just like a “normal stereotypical straight person”. However the media shows gay men as 'screaming queens' and lesbians as 'butch dykes' so this image doesn’t represent that. 

Class

Janet Jackson has never been seen as an “un-classy” woman, however this image of her posing topless for the cover with someone else’s hands covering her breasts may be seen as controversial and not something a person with class would do. The clothes that people wear can give off stereotypes of their personality for example if you saw a person in a business suit you would think they were polite, however if you saw someone in a tracksuit they could be represented as working class and rude however I don’t think this is an effective way of getting to know a person therefore I don’t think class should determine how successful you are in the music industry.

National/Regional identity

This magazine cover clearly shows the national identity. I think that this magazine is aimed at both British and American readers because the main image shows both of the flags and in the puff it reads "UK VS USA". Andrew Higson states that "Identity is generally understood to be the shared identity of naturalised inhabitants of a particular political-geographical space- this can be a particular nation or region". My magazine will show regional/national identity but it won't be predominantly visible to the reader.