School Magazine Contents page Mock Up

This is an initial mock up for my school magazine contents page, for my prelim task, also using Microsoft Publisher. I will use a large image used for my main cover page as the main feature for my contents page, displayed as annotated above, as this is a typical feature of various magazines. To accompany this image and to give a visual photo for my captions, I will use photographs of a close up of someone writing into a workbook, the student taking part in a science experimented (also featured on the cover), and finally a shot of some students on the library computers. I may also display the school logo above the title - contents to add a more professional look to the page with drop shadows on the images to aid this aswell.

School Magazine Cover Mock Up

This is an initial mock up of my newsletter, for my prelim task, that I produced using Microsoft Publisher. As this is my first draft of the mockup, I am not certain of what will be featured in my school magazine and so I have not yet decided on what my coverlines will be, but I want my colour scheme to reflect that of the school's (red, white and blue), as I have learned from researching/analysing other school magazines that it is much more appealing and professional to do this. The main ideology I want to portray on my school magazine front cover is the traditional look and values of the school and so for my main image I am going to use the front of the school that is covered in ivy to portray this. This main cover image will also follow the guidelines of a typical magazine by covering the whole page. I also need to decide what headline I want to include.

On the cover I also want to feature a small snapshot image of a year 9 student taking part in a science experiment to further back up the ideology that the school has traditional values and that the students are happy and enthusiastic towards learning. To take these photographs I will use my own DSLR camera to try and get the most professional looking images I can. I have also used the masthead 'Deyes High School News'  because I think that it is a simplistic title which is more professional than perhaps a 'cringey' one (such as a play on words). I will also use the school logo on the cover, which will help with my colour scheme. When choosing the colours for my school magazine I will take into consideration that other school magazines that I have analysed have contained vibrant primary colours which connote a childish, younger audience and so because my school magazine will be aimed at the parents, I will try to tone these colours down to more appropriate shades.

Concert Photographs for my music magazine (Ben Howard)

In November of 2012 I was lucky enough to see one of my favourite artists Ben Howard on his tour. I took quite a few photographs however, my hand was very shaky and so they are not the most professional looking photographs. Most music magazines have images of bands/ artists playing their music, and so this is the type of photo that I will most probably use on my contents page.

                                                      This is my ticket from the night.

These photographs were taken before the course started and so if this concert had of taken place during production I would have taken the photos with a higher quality camera and get closer to the front for the best shots. Despite this, what ever image I decide to use, I will edit them sufficiently.

Concert Photographs for my music magazine

Last night I went to the NME awards tour concert and I took a lot of photos with the intention to use a couple within my music magazine. This opportunity came at the perfect time and so it has allowed me to get photographs that I can use. The bands that played where "Peace", "Miles Kane", "Palma Violets" and "Django Django. Again before I include any of these photos I my magazine I will have to edit them on Photoshop to make them more clear as my hand was shaky when trying to capture good photographs to use.

This again is my ticket from the night.

Second Evaluation of another school's Newsletter: St James' Catholic High School

For further research I looked at a second newsletter from a different high school, this time analysing that of St James' catholic high school in Cheshire. From first looking at the newsletter it is clear what the target audience of the publication is and who it is aimed at, parents/carers of the pupils, which most other newsletters tend to struggle with or fail to portray in a professional way. We can see this right from the outset as the newsletter begins with a letter from the headteacher reading "Dear parents/carers", which is instantly addressing the target audience. Also throughout the newsletter, although the font chosen is professional, formal text, there is a lot of it, which may put the parents off reading far down to other articles. The text is also in a fairly small size and so could be hard for people to read, in an attempt to try to fit all of the information on the pages. Although I am not familiar with the school itself, it seems from the website that the school logo and colour scheme is white, gold and mostly navy blue which is not in conjunction with that of the newsletter.

The letter from the headteacher at the beginning makes the newsletter quite formal which is then followed by a prayer (which is a predominant part of their Catholic school life). This is suited to the parents as the text is layed out formally and is very informative. From looking at the screen shot above it looks as if the publication has been produced on Microsoft Publisher with the variation of colour and fonts in cartoonish style boxes. This goes against the professional denotation of the newsletter which can be seen in the screen shots below. You can also see this colour variation and use of childlike format/ image on the second screenshot where red and green text boxes are used and even pink and purple text.

The newsletter includes clip art style images which is very common across many school publications but makes the view unprofessional. To counter this though, it also contains many photo's that look of a high more professional quality although they are a little over exposed on some, which can be seen in the image beneath.

Overall, I would say that this newsletter meets its target audience well with the formality and layout, however there are some features which could be improved to portray a more mature, professional feel. I shall take these points into consideration when designing my own newsletter.

Mock Ups and Conventions for music magazine

For further basic research into music magazines over a lot of different genres, in lesson we collated together a lot of magazines, even from the film industry such as Empire magazine, and created mock ups to help us notice some similarities that were common over the spread in terms of the layout of their front covers. I looked at many genres of magazines but decided to analyse fully two music magazines, as this is our brief and decided on two that were in the indie music genre as this is the genre I will most probably produce as my own. By choosing to analyse an issue of  "Q" and "MOJO" magazine allowed me to see the common layout styles that I will need to take into consideration when making my own to effectively appeal to my target audience.

"MOJO" magazine mock up

This is a mock up from "MOJO" magazine - it featured a main image of the international success rock band, Pink Floyd, which clearly linked to the main article within this issue of the magazine. All text was in capitals including the text in the plug was in capitals, especially the lure promoted in the top right of the front cover, giving away a free Pysch CD, which all help to grab the readers attention and make them more willing to buy the magazine. Obviously the typical conventions of every magazine, including a bar code and a mast head were main features on the cover, and a colour scheme of black, white and red. The masthead is black on a white background with the tagline also in white, all in capitals, to ensure that the masthead is a prominent feature and stand out component of the cover. All of the strap lines and main title are all in white with sub text in grey to show the reader the clear differentiation between the main articles featured in the magazine to further grab the readers attention from them being placed on a multicoloured artistic background.

"Q" magazine mock up

This mock up is of an issue of "Q" magazine which primarily focuses on the indie music genre also. A lot of the time when a music magazine is very recognisable and well known, the central image on the cover would overlay the masthead, not worried about the cover up due to it's popularity and established name, however Q magazine, only being one letter, produce this same representation but through the stand out, very unique and trademark bold red box with the white "Q" overlying the tagline. The Masthead "Q" always takes the place in the top left had corner of the cover but always one of, if not the most focused part of the cover, which attracts its target audience of teens to early 20's from this recognised layout and masthead style. I thought this cover was very cleverly thought out as the main image forms a continuation of the main title, inside the word "Gigs" which merges the two and creates a signified relationship between the word and the image of a mass of people in the beaming lights of a music concert/gig. The rest of the main title is delivered/displayed quite differently with a couple of the words being the same colour range as the "Gigs" text, however the beginning of the title starting with "The" is produced in a plain black semi-formal font against the white background. This provides emphasis on the word and with the whole title reading: "The ten greatest gigs of all time", the use of the emphasis allows no room for deliberation and shows that what they (NME), think is right, must be, which may intrigue and attract the target audience, making them want to know what these gigs are. The overall colour scheme is quite basic only really consisting of red, black, white and blue, for the majority, but this draws more attention to huge title making up a third of the cover.  However, all of the main features and exclusives of popular artists are encased into gold boxes which will heavily attract people to want to read the magazine, as gold has connotations of expense, wealth and rareity, or in terms of magazine special, unique features/content.                                               

Ideologies: Prelim Task

Ideologies are a body of idea or set of beliefs behind different media texts. It is important to be able to clearly identify/differentiate between different ideological components. When producing my own newsletter, I will need to research and consider what ideologies I want to portray/represent, which can be displayed through my use of font choice, images and also the choice of colour scheme, that all relate back to appealing to my target audience of parents.

The main ideology I wanted to convey in my newsletter was that Deyes is an established school, with traditional values. To do this, after evaluating different newsletters, I have decided that I should use professional looking photographs of areas of the school that look traditional. The main area that shows this and an image that I will most probably use, is the front of the school with it's red brick and ivy covered walls which not only makes the school look established and traditional, but it is the main entrance to the school which plays an important role in representing the school, as it is where visitors will enter. Also, by using a mature colour scheme and fonts, this will show that Deyes is a professional establishment.

The next ideology that I wanted to portray was that Deyes cares about it's pupils by going above and beyond to showcase their talents and encourage motivation, to allow them to fulfil the best school experience as possible. To get this ideology across in my newsletter, I will organise shoots with teachers allowing me to take images of pupils enjoying their lessons, and focus on the students' achievements and success' in all aspects of school life. Also photographs such as students holding their exam results or just simply displaying them in the newsletter amongst text, or showing stage productions that have been held for parents and visitors to showcase their talents, all hold the ideology that the school cares for it's pupils. These photographs will also be taken as professional as possible catering for my target audience and showcase that student success is the main focus of the newsletter.

An ideology that I think is quite important to portray about Deyes, is that it is community of pupils that work together to achieve success. In the past, I know that some parents have been worried about sending their children to a school campus that has ages varying from 12-18, afraid sometimes of bad influences. I think it is important to show the parents, my target audience, that Deyes students are available at any time for help to all years. To do this I may include/feature an image of a sixth former helping out a year 7 student for example to represent the school's sense of community. This may encourage parents to send their son/daughter to Deyes or reassure parents that already have children within the school that it is a friendly and close environment.

Producing my School Magazine: Prelim Task

From analysing our own school newspaper previously, I aim to correct the limitations I found throughout it as there was no set, clear target audience and so made the font style, colour scheme and imagery chosen very confusing to decipher the real demographic. When producing my own newsletter I will need to take a variety of components into consideration to successfully cater for my target audience.

The first main, important aspect I need to decide on before diving in to make my newsletter, is who I want my target  audience to be, and from this I will be able to work on choosing what images, content, fonts and colour scheme and how formal I want it to be. I have chosen to aim my newsletter at parents as I think this is the best option in terms of success of the newsletter, as I know from my own experience that parents are more likely to actually read the content of the magazine as the students would most probably already know and are aware of what is happening around them in their school at the present time and near future, especially through assembly's for example.

Due to my chosen mature audience, the content, unlike the Deyes newsletter, needs to be relevant and appeal to the parents through using professional fonts with a good balance of text and images that show off the school to it's best ability. The fonts used should be formal, but readable such as not using Comic Sans as it is too unprofessional but also not using a font that is too formal and not appealing to read such as Times Roman. This will allow me to promote the schools professionalism effectively. Also this would coincide with the choice of an appropriate colour scheme. I noticed from the Deyes newsletter that the colour scheme matched that of the school badge, which was a really relevant and good use of the colour scheme, however the actual colours were very vibrant and abstract primary tones which have connotations of a younger audience. Taking this into consideration I will try to also keep the colour scheme relevant and match that of the logo but keep the colours toned down to keep a more mature feel.

Also I love professional photographs and as this will not only cater to my target audience but also make the overall newsletter look  more professional itself, I will use images that I will take myself from around the school during production and try to capture the best aspects/areas of our school as best as I can to hopefully make the newsletter more successful with my target audience. These will be used in place of the clip art style imagery from the Deyes newsletter, however hopefully more like the quality of those used in the dance article towards the end. The photographs I will take will be necessary and of things such as the outside of the school itself (as the school has ivy growing all over it's surface and so gives connotations of an established, experienced school), and students taking part in various activities around school.

Photoshop Edits

When producing my own magazine, I will need to use Photoshop tools and skills to edit my photographs that will feature on the front cover, contents page and double page spread. To enable us to do this effectively, during our lesson we had a go at using some of the editing tools to crop photos, increase/ decrease the contrast/ brightness, and use the spot heal and clone stamp tools. To show you what we accomplished within  just one lesson, below are a some examples of the original photos and how we edited different aspects of them to change and improve the outlook of them.

From the images above, you can see that for the first tool we used was the crop tool, which allowed us to crop out any unwanted or unnecessary background, or in this case sky, to make the main focus of the image on the planes or object of interest in the photograph.

After cropping, we slightly advanced to adjusting the brightness/contrast of the original image because as you can see from the top image it is very over exposed. To make the Photograph look more realistic and more high quality I decreased the colour curves which darkened the image a little and decreased the overall brightness.

We then moved on to using the spot healing tool. This allows you to remove any unwanted marks/blemishes from a photograph. To display this clearly I used the spot healing tool in this image to erase the spots of off the Dalmatian's shoulders and mainly face.

This technique is known as the colour burst technique where I used the Polygonal Lasso tool on this image to adapt the colours to black and white, outside the frame of the mirror. I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the area inside the area of the mirror, then selected "inverse" followed by turning that black and white.

Erasing the bottles in this photograph required using the clone stamp tool which allows you to take small sections of the background and stamp it over the bottles that I wanted to make disappear from the image. This technique takes quite sometime to complete and is hard to make look realistic and so to ensure that I did this effectively I had to select various sections of the background from different places to avoid having two identical branches next to each other for example.

Although I had already had experience using Photoshop for media at GCSE and my GCSE and A level art up to this point, I really enjoyed experimenting with different techniques that I know will be extremely helpful and effective when editing photographs for my magazine. Also I learnt quite a bit that I didn't know which was very interesting and I know that these techniques will be necessary in order for my magazine to look professional. I found the clone stamping technique the most difficult as it is very hard to try not to make the background look fake and unrealistic and I don't think I have quite mastered it yet. However I know that with more practice it will become a very appropriate tool that I will no doubt use within the production of my magazine, maybe to erase unwanted scenery or objects that may interfere with some images I use. Also the spot healing tool might be very effective for me to use aswell, especially in my Photograph shoots of "bands" or close up shots of an "artist" to erase any imperfections. This would be relevant as erasing imperfections or airbrushing is very common with the production of the majority of magazines, not just music, to get the most clear and flawless images possible.

Evaluation of the School Newsletter

For our prelim task, we have been asked to produce a school news letter, so with this in mind, in lesson we decided to get an insight by looking at and analysing our own school newsletter from Deyes High. Our newsletter is most likely to be aimed at the students' parents from the articles discussed and the content explaining about achievements throughout all aspects of the school, however the target audience could also involve the students themselves as this can be seen through the choice in images and colour choices. The colour scheme is appropriate and quite effective as they match the colours of our school logo/badge (red, white, light/dark blue), however, this is also one of the newsletter's limitations as the tone of the colours are very abstract, bright primary tones which could be connoted as quite unprofessional and a slightly childish outlook.

Also the images chosen for articles within the newsletter are clip art cartoons, which could have connotations of an immature choice of imagery and divert from the majority of the target audience of parents. On the other hand, this is contrasted as a fair bit of the way through the newsletter, there are a few professional looking photographs of students taking part in drama lessons, which would not only appeal to the parents reading, but also promote the subject effectively.

All throughout the newsletter, the use of plain black text in a formal, paragraphed layout will appeal to the target audience with also a mature feel. However, over the middle spread of pages ('recall to central'), there are large sections of just reams of text and a lot of people, (especially the students within Deyes) would at first sight be put off and bored with reading such large amounts of text. This makes me draw the conclusion that these sections of the newsletter is aimed at the parent, but even a large majority of parents might potentially get bored with this also.

Towards the end, there are pages that are titled "puzzle time" and "Numeracy top tips" that are clearly aimed at the students, which may be quite useful to them, however a Mickey Mouse clip art is used also here and though this section is aimed at the students, Mickey Mouse is usually associated with younger children than those in high school, and so the students could feel slightly patronised and may be dissuaded from reading the page. Overall, this newsletter has a mixed target audience which may decrease the appeal to any children or adults that are supposed to read it, which is clearly outlined by the use of both informal and formal content. From analysing the newsletter from our school, it has allowed to really think about what changes and amendments I will have to consider when making my own, to make my target audience clear.

Data Collection: Questionnaire

For my research into what music magazine genres appeal to the widest demographic, I have decided to collect some data to allow me to get these results, through creating a questionnaire, to identify codes and conventions that I will need to consider when creating my own magazine to appeal to my female, indie target audience. To produce the questionnaire I used a neighbouring software to Google Blogger, known as Google Docs. This allowed me to quickly and easily share/distribute and collect a lot of data - on the internet - to and from the widest range of the population of all ages. This is an effective and appropriate use of collecting my data as today most people have access to a computer to fill out my questionnaire.With the results I will be able to clearly see and collate various different pieces of information to see what appeals to consumers in terms of music magazines such as; content they are most attracted to when buying a music magazine, how much they are willing to pay and their preferred genre etc. These sets of information will be highly necessary considerations when creating and designing my magazine. The layout of my questionnaire had a total of 6 questions per page, which I decided from the experience of filling out questionnaires myslef, as I found that a long list of lots of questions can sometimes be a bit overwhelming and put people off filling out the whole form, so I structured mine in this way to avoid this from happening to get more results. This was my first time using the Google Docs software and at first I  had a little difficulty. This difficulty came from locating the tools to break up and create links to the pages that were relevant to the person filling out the questionnaire, to save the hassle of scrolling through unnecessary questions that didn't apply to them. However I found it very useful and for the most part easy to navigate and construct my questions, making it a faster process. With my results I am going to make a bar chart to clearly show the range of varied answers and to allow me to see easily what the most preferred genre of music magazines is. Below is the link to my music questionnaire, it would be of great help if you could take a minute of your time to fill it out to help me gather as much data as possible, thank you!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFZ1VFRYakVXSVZGQ0lFWGp0eEJaOEE6MQ#gid=0

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign is something that stands for/signifies something other than itself.

The two main approaches and dominant models/theorists behind what constitutes a sign are;
-  Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
-  Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914

Saussure's approach concluded of a two-part or dyadic semiotic system. He believed that signs do not represent reality but construct it. He defined a sign as being compiled of a "signifier" (the form in which the sign takes) and the signified (the concept represented). To put it in other words, something which has connotations of something else. Saussure concluded that signs:- both the signifier and the signified, are purely psychological and only make sense in a formal abstract system. He stated that a one word language is an impossibility and that a sign refers to what it is not.

The second approach takes the form of Pierce's triadic semiotic system which states that there are 3 main different types of sign; Indexes, Icons and Symbols. With indexes, the signifier is not arbitrary, but is connected to the signified in some form, either physically or casually. For example the smell of smoke represents fire, yet does not necessarily indicate/signify a fire. Icons have a signifier that resembles signified, for example a drawing or picture of a tree depicts/resembles a tree, however is not the tree in its actual form. Finally, a symbol is when the signifier is totally arbitrary and conventional (numbers and letters).

When creating my magazine I will have to thoroughly take into account the semiotics used in a range of the components on my contents page, double page spread and most importantly my front cover in order for me to attract my target audience. These semiotics will have to be considered with my use of colour for backgrounds and fonts, the images I use, and even with the mise en scene of my photography shoots, as the wrong use of components like this could prevent my magazine reaching the required result. In order for me to do this successfully I will need to think through the eyes of the consumer. A bad combination of semiotics could be for example; if my magazine was of a pop genre, I would not use black shredded fonts or dark red colour schemes to attract my upbeat, party crowd! So in turn, keeping my semiotics appropriate will allow me to appeal to my targeted demographic audience. My chose music magazine genre is Indie/Indie rock and so I will be turning to magazines such as NME and Q for inspiration on what semiotics will be appropriate for my desired audience.

Music Magazine Research

To start off the basis of my journey to making my music magazine, I did some initial research into the multitude of different music genres that are available today. Some magazines are more popular than others, similarly to music genres in general and so this has enabled me to look at an array of magazines that cater to different audiences.

This is an example of a cover page from Q magazine - a music magazine that primarily focuses on the indie music genre. This is my personal favourite music genre and so will be doing further research into magazines of this type, mainly focusing on Q magazine in particular for inspiration for my own magazine. As you can see from this image above, Q magazine cover tend to have a main, large central image surrounded by smaller tag lines (in this issue of the Arctic Monkeys). Also we can pick up that even though the masthead of the magazine is only one letter, they can afford to still have the central image covering the letter "Q" as it is such a well known, established magazine.

This is a cover from Kerrang! music magazine. This magazine is more based around heavier rock/metal music unlike the likes of NME or Q for example. Due to this style of music Kerrang! use darker tones in their colour scheme such as their trademark, recognisable dark reds, white and black to tie in the heavy metal/rock genre. It features bands/artists ranging from Biffy Clyro, to Metallica, Muse and American alternative rock band such as My Chemical Romance and 30 seconds to Mars (as shown above). Kerrang! often feature a main central image supported by smaller images that portray some of the other bands featured in the issue/magazine in the form of interviews, news updates etc.

 

Above are examples of issues of Rolling Stone magazine that has a very deep pool with many features from various genres. Also as you can probably tell sometimes Rolling Stone diverts away from music as their main features altogether, as seen in the 2nd issue cover showing the beautifully talented actress Jennifer Lawrence, however since it is primarily a music magazine, you can see that music is still massively featured from the tag lines down the right side of the cover displaying artists/bands from very different genres such as Jack White (rock) to the likes of John Mayer and Taylor Swift who are singer/songwriters of country folk music. Rolling Stone however vary from such artists to issues with the main central image being of Grunge legends Nirvana, as seen in the first issue shown above. Obviously, some music magazines are successful without having a definite genre and Rolling Stone Magazine is a prime example of this being a success. Again, similar to Q, Rolling Stone features a singular image surrounded by text and is renowned for its busy and cluttered layout. 

Above are a couple of issues of Billboard magazine that has a very clear set genre - Pop, R&B and Rap music. The two issues feature very famous performers, the first being Katy Perry (known for her upbeat pop music style) and the second example featuring Eminem, a prominent rapper. These two examples that I have chosen represent a typical cover of Billboard with a mid shot of the artist, with minimal text in the space surrounding the image, not revealing much about the inside content of the magazine. Also like NME and Q magazine in particular, Billboard also can afford to have the artist featured on the front to cover the Masthead, as it is a well known and recognisable magazine for fans of the Pop, R&B and Rap genre of music.

My Chosen Genre

I knew from the outset that I wanted to create an indie music magazine as it is the type of music that I have always listened to and been interested in. This will help me to be inspired when doing  future research, as I am most familiar with the conventions of this genre of music magazine for my final production. I will get most of my inspiration from magazines such as Q and NME to combine components to aid mine to look the most professional and realistic as possible.

I have collated a few issues of NME and Q magazines over the years, and have noticed conventions that are used frequently in all of them. As you can see from the image above, although NME has an established title/masthead which is usually red, this can vary depending on the issue and what compliments the colour scheme or contrast the background. There are usually a variety of plugs to draw the readers attention, usually promoting an album for example and usually around 3-4 colours are used to tie the colour scheme together, mainly consisting of red, white, black and then a colour that fits with the specific edition. I really like the artistic layout of NME and have turned to this as inspiration also for my contents page and double page spread.