Draft Question 1

At the start of this task I had a rough idea of what form I wanted my magazine to have but the ideas where limited, in order to help gather some ideas together I began conducting some research on other magazines with the same music genre – doing this I looked at magazines such as Q magazine however I found the best form of research on magazines was looking at students as I felt this would give a better idea of what is realistic that I could produce and here I got an idea that I wanted to use a blue turquoise colour theme and I wanted the music genre to pop/indie. I wanted my magazine to look professional and not full of tack, something in which the Q magazine brand follows, this was a good guide line for me while producing my magazine.

 

Using a close up shot of my model Ella for my front cover was used for my front cover, all successful magazines such as Q always use close ups and always come out the most effective. I believe it helps create a personal relationship between both the model and the reader due to the aspect that an extreme close up helps enable to tell a story about the person, drawing attention to my magazine on the shelves. I believe close ups are the most professional and classy approach to the front cover main image. Moving on to the masthead used the bold font in my house style themed colour turquoise blue, it stands out through the increased size of it not only did I want my masthead to stand out being big but I wanted the font to tell a story itself about the type of music genre my magazine is, I feel I done this well.
 

Moving on to the house style used, colours of white black and turquoise blue. I knew I wanted to include the basic colours of white and black as, as boring and frequently used they may be they stand out over many other colours and are a nice colour to mix with your main colour. My main colour of turquoise blue I choose due to the fact I felt it went so well with my music genre, when you think of the colour you would associate it with hipsters. I named my magazine ‘radar’ as I felt it was a name which would catch people’s eye and signified the genre of my magazine. The masthead itself followed the house style of blue while the slogans around it where white and black which I believed outlined the importance of the masthead. Sell lines play a huge importance on a front cover, they give away cheeky lines about the insight to the magazine and also determine a sell of the magazine, if someone likes the look of the magazines front cover there is a higher chance of them purchasing. Including the main quote of my article on my front cover above introducing my model Ella this helped to introduce the article and what my main story line would be about. After researching into magazines similar to mine it was obvious including a list of artist that where being featured in my magazine would be a key aspect to success, evidently audiences of this genre were interested in hearing gossip about a lot more than one artist.

 

 Throughout my contents page I want to demonstrate the conventions of real media products, I have been able to do this through the way in which I express a large number of artists on the side of the page - this would suggest to the audience the genre of my magazine whilst attract a wider audience through demonstrating well known artists. Whilst engaging my readers to get involved through subscribing online I am demonstrating to my audience i have understood their needs from the print industry as due to my target audience not wanting to go out every week purchasing the product they have the opportunity to still be involved within my magazine whilst not having to make any effort - this helps to balance the users of online and print. Although still promoting twitter/facebook on my contents page to ensure my audience know i have met the needs of the teenage market. Throughout my contents page i have ensured sticking to the same house style of turquoise blue with the same fonts and sizes throughout keeping the appearance professional.

The start of my double page spread stars in promoting the artist herself to the magazine, an extreme close up helps to create emotion and suspense - the image itself can create enough for a viewer to want to read about it, if you feel connected to the artist its likely you’re going to be more interested in the magazine and get involved in the article. Whilst the main image takes up the whole page a small section in the corner starts the magazines article off, highlighting key words from the quote describing the most dramatic words. Most successful magazines such as Q use this style of double page spread to introduce the artist as a sense of importance of them.