Georgiana Angus: September 2015

MUSIC REPRESENTATION

Music is split into many different categories, but it can be places into two major groups and then split of from there. These groups are Rock and Pop

Now what needs to be remembered is that when we say rock and pop as the two different categories I don't mean Rock and Pop as in the genre and type of music, but instead what they represent towards the music industry

ROCK

“Rock’n roll has always been sexual. Rock’n roll has always been violent. It has teeth. It will scratch your face off. That’s why I like it…..if you like having your brains blown out and pushed up against a wall, then its for you."

Rock is the genre of music that is associated with rebelliousness and the need to be outgoing. Rock is compiled of non conformist artists and the music is considered more important than the looks. This leads to genres within the rock category to look extremely gritty, giving of the impression that they do not care about the look. However sometimes, artists within the rock category try to look like they don't try.

Rock is usually offensive or inappropriate. Where pop tends to sing about love and romance, rock tends to sing more about sex, drugs, violence and anger. This gears it more towards an adult audience, but it is revered by youth as it could give a sense of rebelliousness.

Rock generally has a colour scheme of darker tones and dreary colours. In addition the colours are not particularly gendered so the rock genre does not particularly have a target demographic based on gender.

POP

"Pop culture is not about depth. It's about marketing, supply and demand, consumerism." "Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change."

Pop music conforms heavily to social standards, it follows the rules. It conforms to society rather than question it or go against it. Pop focuses also on the attractiveness and the looks of the artists and less on the quality of music. In addition most pop artists are supposed to be the representation of the perfect form of person. This can be good in it is a good role model for the younger audience, however pop music generally does not have a wide representation in that they are typically white, middle class, attractive people.

Pop music is mostly about love and romance. This is due to the target audience being young and the lack of offensive material guaranties the approval of parents for the child to listen.

Pop music is highly coloured, in dramatic contrast to rock. The colours are bright, loud and highly gendered in that if it is geared towards girls it would be bright pink, and towards boys the colours would be blue.

In addition pop tends to be written by exterior sources instead of the artists themselves. The music is usually manufactured and not performed live but instead digitally.

TERMINOLOGY IN MAGAZINES

ADVERTORIAL

A print advertisement, that is specifically designed to look like the house style of the magazine. Often used to make adverts look more appealing to the audience so that they will read it and not just skip over it.

BANNER

Advertisements that run horizontally along the bottom of the page of publication

GUTTER

Blank space on the inside page margins where a publication is bound or folded

BLEED

Printing that extends past the trimmed edge of the printed page

CIRCULATION

The total average of number of distributed copies of publication in a specified standard of time.

COVERAGE AREA

The geography of were a media has coverage. In print, coverage area is equal to circulation area.

ISLAND AD

A print advertisement surrounded entirely by editorial and not other ads.

PASS ALONG READERSHIP

Readers of a publication in addition to the initial buyer. Also called Secondary Audience

RESEARCHING RESEARCH

QUALITATIVE

This is the more in depth, in detail type research. It involves getting down and personnel with the people and their opinions. It can be;
                Surveys,
                Interviews,
                Observations,
basically anything that holds quality over quantity. Qualitative research is used to get to the nitty gritty underlying reasons, opinions and motivations of the people. Giving us insight into people's ideology and thoughts. Because opinions can't really be measured on a scale as they are subjective sometimes you have to develop a semi-structured way to record the data. This can include focus groups and or individual interviews.

QUANTITATIVE

This type of research includes more numerical data. Data that is quantifiable. Basically it is things that we can count. Quantitative research is usually used to gain a large variety of results, whether it be what type of cat people most like, or a favourite book, it is mostly used so that we can turn our research into statistics that we can compare.
For example
We could go out and show random people three pictures of cats and ask them to point to the one that they like the most. We then add up the results, do a nice bit of mathematics and can come to a conclusion about the general opinion about cats.

This type of research, however easy, holds up numbers and statistics above in depth opinions and the reason behind those opinions. We didn't ask why they liked that cat, or how it made them feel. Quantitative research just focuses on quantifying the opinion. It is objective.

PRIMARY

Primary research is research that you have got all on your own. It is your fist hand account of the information, so you know that it is as genuine and as honest as it could possible be. As you are the one to do the research you can find exactly what you want. It can be done by questionnaire, phone calls, interviews etc.

SECONDARY

Secondary research is just using second hand information. This is when you use research that other people have collected, or just other texts. But be warned my children, sometimes this research can be biased or false, so always take your secondary research with a pinch of salt. However it is useful when it comes to getting information easily, and can also help give you a basic knowledge of the subject you're researching so you can then adapt this information to create a hypothesis for primary research. You can get secondary research from many different sources e.g Newspapers, books, internet, magazines, documentaries, TV etc

HOW THIS HELPS ME

I always feel like I'm a quality over quantity type of person. However I will strive to get as much qualitative research and primary research as I can for the product, I do understand that it is less time consuming and easier to manage doing Secondary research and focusing on quantity. The reason I focus more of quality is I feel it is much more genuine and I can really try and understand the feelings behind why certain things are like that. So I will try at least to mix it up a bit between the different research methods.

Art By Viria Please check them out

THE STUDENT PROJECT

For the preliminary task we were told in the briefing to create the front cover of a school magazine and maybe a contents if we wanted too.

After this briefing I decided to look for a studius area with some students so that I could a educational feel. I headed up to the Library and asked a few people to model for my Magazine cover. My model was sat at a desk with some historical magazines behind her, which I thought would be a good way to portray the educational feel of the magazine. So I took multiple pictures of Anna to try and get a variety of shots. Unfortunately I didn't vary up the shot, it was the same shot but with differences of the smile. This is something I will need to improve on this for my main task.

I tried to take pictures of other people and of some locations around the school, but in the end Anna was probably the best model I could get as we had to have a midshot and she looked very professional for the cover

The other photos I took I decided I would try and use for the contents page, and if not that, they were scrapped.

So I dragged the photos into Pixlr and changed the cropping so it would fit an A4 page. I brightened up that smile and adjusted the shadows so that the picture didn't look flat. Though it was a small adjustment to the colours and brightness, I feel it made the photo more fine and open. Which would make it more appealing to a reader, and thus want to buy it.

I find that Pixlr can be restricting when it comes to text as you can only go up to a certain size, and that size isn't very large. So I used Pages to add the text for the photo. I tried to keep the colour scheme the same so that it would have some sort of presence of a house style. However I used to many colours and now the magazine as a whole does not have a colour scheme and might have looked extremely messy and full if I had put in any more sell lines.

It is named 'the student project' simply because this preliminary task is a student project. I put the word "Project" in large letters as I want this magazines theme to inspire creativity and having "Project" large hopefully triggers off thoughts of creativity and making things.

The contents page is my inner artist emerging. I took a photo of two people walking down the corridor. Using the rule of thirds I placed them in the upper third dead in the centre so your eye is drawn to it.
I placed the title of the magazine in the corner for branding. This is to give the magazine a house style. I then put an inspirational quote on the side to get the spirits up because we all need inspirational quotes every once in a while. It is blue as the rest of the contents page is a mix of red, white and black. So having it in blue makes it stand out compared to the others. In addition blue is shown to increase creativity, and I wanted this page to be a creative artistic page.

So yeah, I think for a first try it was satisfactory, I guess. I know there is an awful lot to improve and work on, so I will try and learn from this and make my final piece a Master Piece

The Four F's of Magazine Design

FORMAT

These are the design choices that appear in each issue. These added together define the overall look and feel. This includes the logo, cover lines, size of the magazine, department headers, and other things the magazine has going for it in the originality field.

FORMULA

This is the the filling of this paperback sandwich. It's basically the contents of the magazine. What it talks about, the length of said talking, things that are talked about regularly. Basically all the good bits.

FRAME

The frame is the main skeleton of the magazine. It sets out the standard size for the margins and gutters. Some magazines are very strict on it, when it comes to articles etc. Others like to mix it up a bit and vary between the articles. However the rule for margins is usually followed, especially on the front cover, as this establishes consistency from issue to issue.

FUNCTIONS

This, in simple terms, is the point of the magazine. What it hopes to achieve in life, it purpose, the message it wants to get out into the world. The function is basically the reason the magazine was created.

Deconstruction of EMPIRE

MASTHEAD

The Mast Head is the main Title of the magazine. In this case the title is EMPIRE. Look closely, you might miss it. EMPIRE has maintained a common typeface throughout its publishing years, along with mostly keeping the colour the same. This allows readers to associate the typeface and colour to the magazine.

So if they're in a shop and they see the big E and the bright red colour they'll think "Oohh, that looks like Empire magazine"

COLOURS AND THEME

EMPIRE maintains a colour themes of red and yellow tones. However they do switch it up a bit, for fun, depending on the cover. Because it is a film magazine, they have to showcase a variety of films and EMPIRE tends to use a poster of official photography of the film on the cover. This makes it hard to maintain the theme if it clashes with the cover art. So they will change the colour on occasion. However they do keep the typeface the same in all edition. Even in old editions where the font looks slightly different it still has many similarities.

THE MAIN IMAGE

The main image on this edition is the official photography for the sixth Harry Potter Film. EMPIRE tends to use peoples faces for the cover. In addition it is usually a well known character from a film. Having Daniel Radcliff (Mr Harry Potter) on the cover it immediately catches your attention, especially the attention of those who like the Harry Potter franchise.

MAIN COVER LINE

"Massive Preview Special" Is the main cover line of this Potter edition. Designed to lure the helpless reader into buying the magazine. The main Cover line needs to be intriguing and interesting otherwise it's kind of pointless. The main cover line tends to be in larger font than the rest. Sometimes it will be done in a different colour to the rest of the text, but EMPIRE just made it larger and bold. However it still stands out despite the change in colour, this is because it was positioned carefully so it would have a darker background and thus make it stand the out.

SELLING LINE

This is a short line, usually under the masthead, that demonstrates the magazines main marketing points. In this case EMPIRE says they are "The worlds biggest movie magazine" on the Potter and Interstellar edition, both of which were published in the last 5 years. On the lord of the rings edition however (Published 2003) the selling line was "Australia's no.1 movie magazine". The editor obviously changed the selling line as EMPIRE became more popular to make the selling line much more grander and impressive

SOME OTHER INTERESTING FEATURES

DATE LINE: Month and year of publication this is often placed near the price of the magazine
LEFT THIRD: In shops when magazines are not shown fully on the shelves. it is usually the left third of the cover that is visible. This section needs to be jazzy and have an interesting cover line so that we are more likely to buy it.
BAR CODE: Does what it says on the tin... it's a bar code.

The first magazine even remotely related to music was published in 1894, it's name... Billboard. Now Billboard's first edition may have been released to the world in 1894, it didn't actually start publishing music charts until the 1930's. This magazine's headquarters were based in New York and for a short while was just used as an advertising format for businesses. But after a few years it began to take on adverts for outdoor amusements such as carnivals, circus', fairs, and other live entertainment. It then began to cover movies in 1909 and the radio in 1920. With the rise in the jukebox industry, Billboard started to report the music charts in order to bring in a wider customer range.

      The first magazine to publish music related topics though, is called Melody Maker. Melody Maker was a British weekly music newspaper, so naturally it was better, and it first unleashed in 1926. Its contents included an honour list which was the first ever recorded music charts. Its main genres, pop and rock.
       Continuing on with the theme of British Music magazine is the NME (New Musical Express) magazine which was first published 26 years after Melody Maker hit the shelves. In the 70's, NME became the most popular music magazine in Britain.
        A more modern take on music magazines would be the semi-monthly magazine Vibe. Vibe came out in 1993 and though it has a larger online following now, it is still a very popular music magazine aimed at a young audience generally into Hip Hop and Urban style music.
Now a days, Music magazines take up a large percentage of the magazine production. With so many genres and sub-genres of music existing already, and more to be invented, it's not hard to find a music magazine with your taste of music on the shelves of your local corner shop.

Hello!

This is now to be an AS Media blog designed to hopefully document my progress through AS Media without sucking... Hopefully.
I have been told the main goal this term is to create two magazines:
One- A school magazine
Two- A music magazine
I don't have to create an entire edition of these magazines. I do, however have to make a front page and contents for both, and a double page spread for the music one.
So yeah, lets hope it all turns out okay!