front page first draft and contents page

The DPS took longest to complete because I had to arrange all the text and make sure it all fitted on. Once I had done the DPS as well I also knew more in general on how to use photoshop which made the process a lot quicker. With my front page I tried to go for the less conventional look with my images by using a photo where there is no direct mode of address with the audience. I wanted this to create the effect that maybe she is hiding something, making the reader more persuaded to read the magazine. I tried to keep a brand identity flowing between all of my pages by using similar colours. With the contents page I think the colour is a little less similar to the front page and DPS but on my final piece I shall correct this. Overall though I am happy with these two pieces. I may include more photos on the front page to make it more interesting to the reader, but I am not completely sure so I may construct a quick survey to see who in my target audience agrees with this.

making my first draft of the construction pieces...

Once I had re written my double page spread writing, I began creating the double page spread on the program photoshop because it has advantages to other programs such as word or publisher with things like the fonts and how you can edit the photos. For example, when I wanted the image behind the text I had to change the opacity slightly of the image which I would not have been able to do as well on word or publisher. However, before I started changing the font and images on the page I had to read through some tutorials on how to use photoshop properly because I wasn't that good on it. My DPS took a long time to complete but overall I am happy with it. Seeing as it is my first draft though I am considering taking some more music related photos for the page but I shall do that once completing the front page and contents page.

changing my idea...

I have began designing the final layout for my double page spread but I have been having difficulty trying to included enough of my two music artists. It's hard to include the same amount of each person especially as they each represent a different kind of music genre. Therefore, I am considering taking out one of the music artists and just focusing on just the one. I would still concentrate on the idea of a sibling music band splitting up and being signed up to different music labels, but it would be easier I think to focus on just one. However, this means that I will have to re write slightly what I'm going to put in my double page spread.

I have gone out to take photos for my magazine, using my two sisters as models. I varied the photos using more dramatic lighting in some areas such as my garage where the light filtered in. I then took some simple photos of them both, concentrating more on their features and facial expressions. Im thinking of using these kind of photos for the back ground photo and perhaps the front page main photo. I then uploaded these into photo shop, gave some of them a more professional look with a white background and intensified the lighting on others to give it more interest to the reader. Overall I am quite happy with these photos, but I'm intending on taking another lot of photos with hopefully a better camera because the camera I used for some of my photos couldn't handle the lighting and sometimes blurred the shots.

I have been looking recently at the history of the music industry and how it has developed throughout the years and how certain magazines had to adapt to survive. For example, NME changed its style to meet the style of punk head on. New writers were recruited from the magazines own readership. This way, they managed to still please their audience. I then looked at the music industry websites such as the company Smash Hits. Again here it is clear how the company try to relate to the audience by including topics which interest them into their website such as the latest mobile phones, and 'walls' where they can leave messages for them. This wall would also help them get positive or negative feedback from their audience. Smash Hits is also interesting regarding its history as it used to be a hugely popular magazine in the 1980s but then its sales dwindled during the 1990s. This was because its audience was finding other ways to access music. Therefore, in order to survive, the company stopped publishing and just kept a website for their readers. This is an example of how the music companies have to adapt through history to survive.

Research into blogging

Now I've been using blogging for a while now, I've been considering the strengths and weaknesses of blogging. One of the main strengths of it I think is that I can make it personal to me, as it allows you to include a photo of yourself and choose a layout that suits you. It's also another strength that blogs are interactive. This is helpful because it means you can include video links, images off the internet, scanned images and podcasts in your blog as well. These can explain the work you're doing better. Another strength is that you can follow other people and perhaps get tips from how they are writing in their blogs. I also like how you get more freedom from doing blogs in that you can write as little or as much as you want.
However, there are weaknesses in it as well when concerning including your own paper based work in the blogs. You have to scan it in which can be time consuming which sometimes defeats the point of blogs being quicker to do compared to hand writing it.

Mock up of magazine cover

I looked around the internet to get inspiration for good layouts and then designed mine by hand in pencil first just to get a good idea of what it will look like. I didnt want to create something on the computer that I ended up not liking. I did three ones by hand, and then chose a final one to actually create on a desktop program. I ended up using the program Photoshop to create my mock up. All images I took from the internet I edited and I tried using a use of three colours for a scheme to keep it simple but appealing. In my previous research I noticed that most magazines have a large image on the right or filling the whole page so I followed that idea. Overall Im quite pleased with my mock up cover because of the dramatic colours I decided to use. I couldn't decide however which final one to use because there were two images, one with a close up of the music artist and one with a mid close up shot. I'm considering showing them to my target audience to see which one they prefer before I decide on which kind of shot to use in my final cover.

Summary of this past week :)

I havent been on this in a while because my school internet has been messing around. So therefore I shall go through what I've been doing in my Media lessons the past week with my class mates. After Monday's lesson where we created these blog we set about creating our own questionnaires to distribute to others. These questions were related to the music magazine we intend on doing. I wanted to keep mine to two pages to prevent the participants from getting bored but it ran over into 3 pages. I may add more images and colour to it in the future to make it more appealing.
In the next lesson we looked at other music magazines already out on the market. We analysed them and the features included on the front page and contents page and what effect they would have on the reader. I quite liked doing this because it made me realise how every single thing on my magazine cover will affect the target audience's opinion and how much detail Im going to have to go into.
I then looked at my questionnaire and got others to look over it for me. This let me make improvements to it because I had other people's input. :) I also sectioned the questionnaire off into sections so that it doesnt intimidate the participant filling it in when I give it out. I put it into categories of the personal details, the genre of music and what the audience would want in general out of a music magazine.
I also did what I planned and organised the layout of my quiz better, including pictures and making it more appealing. I intend to hand this out now to 30 people in the next week or so and see what results I get back :) Should be goood.

In today's lesson we looked at advertising and how certain adverts are put with particular magazines due to what target audience that magazine attracts :). This helped a lot I think because it let me think more about what kind of adverts would be suited to my magazine. Hopefully, my hobbies question in my questionnaire should help with this :). We also went on to analyse the features on a double spread page (dps). Images seem to be very popular in them so these should also be present in my DPS when I come to designing it. There's so much to think about! Tomorrow Im going to print out 30 copies of my questionnaire and hand them out :).

Purpose of using Blogs :)

There's loads of different reasons for using blogs. I mainly use Facebook for my use of social media at the moment, it's pretty much a major part of my everyday life. Oh and Youtube :). These types of blogs are for personal use and allowing others to interact with you easily even if they are on the other side of the world! I don't really do that but my friends do. There is then the business side of blogging, using it for marketing, branding, advertising and things like that. Personal blogging is good because it allows people to reflect their personalities.

Yeah so as I said before, this is the first time I've ever used blogging. I'm actually quite excited about this :) I think it's really good that the OCR exam board have decided to let us do this and use modern day technology to record all our developments in the project :). It's a lot better than having to hand write everything anyway!

Introduction to blogging :)

Helloo

My name's Sam Butcher, this is my first blog so this is quite new to meee. Yeah so this is my blog for my media course which I'm currently doing at Sponne School :).