Magazine Preliminary Task | Model Consent

Danniqua 

Maryam

Hajra

Kwamina

Umu

Asha

Magazine Preliminary Task | Design Feedback

I asked people who liked listening to hip hop and R&B music, as well as reading music magazines, what they liked and disliked about my flat plan so that I can incorporate their ideas into my final  piece. I organised what they said into a table and these are the results:

Magazine Preliminary Task | Flat Plan

After brainstorming different features for my magazine front cover and contents page. I have designed a flat plan for each incorporating the ideas from my target audience and focus group. 

Front Cover

For my front cover, I want the image of my model to be at the very back and on the right with a retro, black and white, 90's filter over it so that it can have an old school style similar to old R&B and Hip Hop magazines. The font for the masthead is going to be quite urban, similar to graffiti style used in 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' which allows it to target an older and younger audience as it can remind them of that show and time period. I used the X from where it dots the 'i' as a logo as it has continuity for the magazine and is easily recognizable. The subheadings are mainly going to be in black bold lettering so that it stands out depending on how important it is whilst important names are going to be highlighted in yellow. I want the magazine to have swatches of yellow throughout as it is an energizing colour connoting joy and stimulates mental activity, so information is taken in better. The yellow will also be used with the dividers between each cover line to, again, bring continuity, but separate different articles. I made sure that the left third contained the logo as well as the models name for easy recognition, however the bar code with the price is located on the right as I feel the price shouldn't entirely be the first thing you see as it may turn the reader away. Lastly the slogan is place right under the masthead so the reader understands the main objective of the magazine and that there is a direct correlation between the brand of the magazine and its market.

These are some magazines and themes which influenced my magazine:

Contents Page

My contents page is going to have the same model in however this time she will be on the left hand side, but facing right so she is not making eye contact with the reader. Her stance is still quite relaxed but the level of her importance is prominent in the way she is on both the cover and contents page. I place the logo in the very back this time and it will have a low opacity so that the black doesn't clash with it and the font is still readable, it is also enlarged compared to the front cover just to emphasis that it is the logo. For the masthead, I used the same font as the front cover too, which again is for continuity. I separated the two words onto separate lines so that the models face isn't overly covered. The numbers are in a different font as it gives the magazine a little variation, this is also incorporated in the subheadings and also in the article information. I hope to include more of the yellow into the contents page, either in the subheadings or the numbers. For the subheadings, I tried to include the different features that were suggested by my focus group to show that I was took into consideration their ideas.

These are some images which influenced my contents page:

  

Magazine Preliminary Task | Shot List

My shot list is trying to show the artists in a location where they are comfortable making music as well as capturing them where they feel they are expressing themselves best. I have conducted 5 drawings on how I may want my final front cover to look like including different shot types; close ups and long shots. I also wanted to make sure I incorporated mise-en-scene so that when it comes to take actual photographs, I would know where I would want to take them.

Magazine Preliminary Task | Genre

I have gone into depth about how I wanted my magazine to look and what vibe I wanted to present by analysing various fonts as well as different model posture
I created a presentation annotating my ideas and and how it inspired my decisions.

Magazine Preliminary Task | Survey & Reader Profile

Here's a reader profile of an ideal reader of my magazine:

Hey, my name is Lauryn Harmony Lamar. My mum named me after Lauryn Hill as she was her favourite artist growing up and now we listen to her all the time. I am 17 years old and study Music, Media Studies and Business Studies because I want to be a music producer when I'm older. I feel like black women need a better representation in music where they can be seen in their natural state and I want to be apart of that.
I love listening to music in my spare time or when I'm exercising because it keeps me relaxed and also motivated. My favourite genres would be Hip Hop, R&B and Rap and I usually read magazines like XXL and The Source. I usually pay a subscription fee for my the magazine, but I don't mind as there aren't many magazines like them. My favourite music artists would be J.Cole, Khalid, Rihanna, SZA and Nao. A lot of my friends have similar taste in music and we are always looking for new artists and music.

I decided to change up my focus group to people who I would consider to be be part of my target audience (Maryam, Kwamina, Umu & Danniqua). I read out 8 questions and this is what they answered:

Magazine Preliminary Task | Focus Group & Target Audience

My target audience for my magazine would be women between the ages of 13 and 25, I want to portray in particular, people of colour expressing their natural selves through music like rap, hip-hop, R&B etc. I intend on reaching out to those who have a passion for music and want to experience more that relates to them rather than stereotypes whether this is with existing or upcoming artists.

I have conducted a survey of 4 individuals (AJ, Danniqua, Maryam and Hajra) from my focus group discussing ideas relating to the magazine of what they would want to see more of.

Advertising | Deconstructing and Analysing Print Advertisement

Continuing with advertisement, three things have to be considered when creating print advertisement; media language, representation and audience which all work hand in hand to make successful media.

MEDIA LANGUAGE

• Colour
• Shot
• Angle
• Focus
• Realism 
• Layout 
• Font
• Design  
• Text
• Copy
• Mise-en-scene

REPRESENTATION

• Who is seen?
• How are they represented?

AUDIENCE

• Target audience
• What might they make of it?
• How is the audience addressed?
• How are values transferred?

Different cultures may respond to media differently as in eastern cultures they may read from left to right whereas in western culture we read from left to right, so it's important to consider these factors when creating advertisement.

It is thought that images are more powerful than words, so some companies may use less words and a strong picture to get their message across.

Slogans and strap lines are useful when you want the audience to remember your brand so it's common for advertisers to use rhymes, puns or imperatives to persuade people to remember and buy their product.

Knowing your audience is important because they are the ones you are targeting, so it is useful to know what tone of address you use which can be altered with the text and type face you use.

To reiterate on an earlier post, denotations and connotations are very important because the idea of various cultures may have different association with certain colours, images or language. There is also the theory of semiotics; Saussure says that there can be two level of meaning in an object the signifier and the signified.

Advertising | Branding & Technological Convergence

Advertisement is the ways in which their products are promoted so that it is persuading enough for consumers to buy. Different companies have various ways of advertising and many features included so I am going to focus on them in this post.


To start off, the different ways that companies may choose to advertise would be:

• Posters
• Billboard
• Magazine/Magazine
• Social Media
• Commercials
• Radio
• Celebrity Endorsement
• Trailers
• Sponsors

Companies need a brand where consumers can instantly know what products they sell and what that company is about. A brand is a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name, for example; Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Adidas and Cadbury to name a few.




At a point there were 50 large companies who were involved in Cross Media Convergence/ Horizontal Integration This would mean that the companies would own different networks like music, news, film, transport, gaming, video etc. so that money would stay in-house and have exposure on all platforms. Overtime these companies decreased into 4 major labels; Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI which now is owned by Universal. These labels have a advantage as they have collective intelligence where if they are putting together a film, they have specific departments to collaborate who are expertise in that area.




There is also Vertical Integration which is slightly different as it is when companies own certain facilities to produce their products instead of using an outside source.






An example of a cross media link with Sony would be the James Bond franchise owned by Sony as well as Adele who sang the official theme song for one of the films which was also owned by Sony.

Now with a majority of films and music being streamed online for free illegally, these big companies had to find an alternative way of meeting the needs of the consumers as well as making a profit. What companies decided was to publish their music and movies online where it could be streamed for free, however the consumers would either have to pay a fee to download it or include advertisements in intervals so that it could afford being played for free.

The reason for these changes is because of the evolution of technology where we have evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0.

Web 1.0 around 1996 was a read only web where you could only receive information from around 250,000 sites and approximately 45 million global users. Web 2.0 in comparison has a significant difference where people were able to also produce their own ideas and upload them online, this increased the site count to around 80,000,000 in only 10 years. By this point there were 1+ billion users and is still growing rapidly.

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Convergence theory by Henry Jenkins states that there is a pressure for companies and consumers to work together to produce new media.

He believes that there is a category for new media created by companies to make people's lives easier and making things better accessed, e.g. oyster cards, online magazines, Netflix, online banking etc. Although this category is pretty vast there is also a category  for active audiences where they would develop this ideas further to create things like parodies of existing videos, memes and even independent online shopping where they can sell their own items.

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To link back to Cross Media Convergence, there is also something called a conglomerate where one company owns a controlling stake in a number of smaller companies, which conduct business separately. This is useful when you are really trying to get something across to the consumer, they may choose to use these other companies to sell their brand through synergy. Synergy could be simply done through a TV commercial where they use product placement to slyly advertise without you even realising. Here's an example:





Magazine Preliminary Task | Deconstructing Real Media Text continued.