Research Summary

What I've Learnt About Music Magazines

Through this term we have looked at various styles of music magazines from different publishers and have compared them to see the similarities and differences throughout. In my personal research I looked at Kerrang, Metal Hammer and NME. 

The results of my questionnaire also helped me when it came to looking at what audiences expect to see from music magazines, I asked the other students in my class and other friends online to fill out my questionnaire so that I knew what people who read music magazines liked about them, what they would like to see more of, and also reasons why people do not tend to read music magazines. This helped me out a lot in terms of looking at content of the magazine, pricing and free items to include.

Looking at existing magazines has taught me that each magazine has its own house style that it follows with every issue. This tends to be things like fonts, masthead position and the layout of the pages within. My magazine cover analysis post explains the house style of the house style of Metal Hammer magazine. Looking at other products has also taught me a lot about the content in the magazines. An example of this is the use of profanity in an article of NME magazine from 9 Feb 2013. The use of language shows how they are aware of their target audience and use language suitable to them. This is something that I have taken into consideration when producing my magazine.

By watching a four-part documentary on NME, I also learnt about what goes on behind the publishing of a magazine and how the publishers go about fitting in with trends even if it does not quite fit in with their target audience.

Inky Fingers: Pt 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1yGHy1-hfU

Inky Fingers: Pt 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4AbiogpuCQ

Inky Fingers: Pt 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx5r52RnY-Y

Inky Fingers: Pt 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2g6V5Tenzo

After watching the four-part documentary, I produced a blog post based on what I had taken away from watching the video. 

After looking through magazines, we then began to look at the images used in magazines and how they were edited. In order to fully understand this, we had a lesson on using PhotoShop at basic level. It is this lesson where we learnt how to manipulate images to change the colours, backgrounds and how to fix an image. This will come in helpful for me when I take pictures to use in my magazine because I will be able to manipulate them so that they look a lot better and to make them fit in to my magazine better.

After completing my first lot of research, my priorities are to follow the results that I got back from my questionnaire. This is because as a publisher it is important to know what the audience are after and to follow demands in order to make a magazine a hit with the audience. So when I am producing my magazine I will be sure to follow my results so that I can make sure that my content and images are suitable for my audience and so that I can guarantee that they will enjoy reading my magazine.

Contents Page Analysis

This is a contents page from an issue of NME that I purchased. I am using this as an example for my annotation because it is from a hit selling magazine so it is good to see what they do to make their magazine attractive to their audience.
In lesson, we looked at what we would expect to see in a contents page. As a class we said that we would expect to see suitable images and headings that stand out to attract the audience to the main articles advertised. This example of a contents page appears to do that.
The contents page has multiple images that relate to the article that it is put with and there are headings on the page that stand out such as "INSIDE THIS WEEK" which brings attention to the page. Although the page does not look organised, it is to an extent because it is not a chaotic layout.
There is also a competition mentioned on one of the articles, this is another thing that was mentioned as a class, competitions are another thing that as an audience, we would expect to see in a music magazine.

There is a small section on the page with a list of articles on different pages, these do not have related images so therefore are not the more important articles throughout the magazine.

Double Page Analysis

Contents Page Mock

College Cover Mock

This is a print screen of the mock up of a cover for my college magazine. It is a basic mock up of the sort of thing I will want to produce when I have to create my college magazine. I think it is a good starting point as it has a main image and a bold masthead. It also has the school logo on it which is suitable for the magazine.

Magazine Cover Analysis

In lesson I took an image from a front cover of a magazine from the genre that i am going to be focusing on. I annotated the front cover to take ideas for my own magazine. In order to do this I had to look at the house style, images and text used on the front cover. I also had to look out for the editing that had been done to the front page to see what has to be done in order to produce a professional standard cover.

This is a print screen of a Google Images search for Metal Hammer magazine. I have used this print screen to show the trend of the magazine and for an easy way to show the house style. There is a lot of red throughout the covers and there is a lot of images on the front of the magazines, these are things that I will be taking into account when it comes to producing my own music magazine.

Using Photoshop

I learnt how to airbrush a photo. I took this photo and fixed it.

This is what my finished photo looked like after fixing it.

This is the original page setup for Photoshop.

This is what I changed it to for this work.

This is the image I chose to edit.

I had to Rasterize the image to work on it.

I then used the magic wand tool to remove the background.

Once I had removed the background, I added my own.

This was the first thing that I learnt to do on Photoshop. I then learnt how to airbrush a photo.

Images for my Magazine

This is a good medium shot of a student, 

This is a good shot because it is a good, high angled shot. But the surroundings of the image are not very good so therefore I would not use it.

This is a good medium shot and the surroundings fit in more with a college magazine, so this is a possible cover shot.

This would be a good shot for the cover because there is no blurring and it a good shot.

This shot would not be suitable for the cover of a college  because the subject is facing away from the camera.

This is a good shot that could be used because the surroundings of the shot is suitable and also the positioning of the subject makes the shot look a lot better.

This shot would not be suitable for the cover of a magazine because the background is quite blurred and does not look good.