Contents Page

risk assesment

created a calendar to organise your time

10/02/2011- Finish off all research and planning of my magazine

11/02/2011- Finished all research and planning of my magazine

12/02/2011- Organise the photo shoot

13/02/2011- Finish taking all photos

14/02/2011- Select and edit photos

15/02/2011- Finish the magazine front cover

draft of article

produce a reader profile

draw a mock up of each page

These are basic mock ups of my magazine, the front page, the contents page and an article mock.

This contains all the elements of a front cover, it has the dominant image, the masthead, the side line, the kickers etc

****NB******* sales figures of NME are 34,000 

planning a photoshoot

my group meet up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at a recording studio the photo shoot will take place here.

mood board

this mood board incorporates all hip hop urban stuff to go in my magazine 

popular music genres using th UK top 40

 9 of the 14 shown here are typical hip hop songs so there is definitely a huge demand for this type of music

Name of the magazine

1)Muzik (this is spelt in an urban fashion and may automatically draw in my target audience)

2)Urb-Word (urban-word)

3)Urb-Gen (urban generation)

4)UK-UG (united kingdoms urban genration)

5)1970 (this was when Rap and Hip-Hop started)

6)Rap't up (a spin on rap and the months latest news)

Planning- Equipment and technologies which will be used

In this section of my blog I will discuss the technologies and other equipment that I will be using. The first and most obvious is the digital camera, this will be used to take my own photos so I am not in breach of any copyrights, it will also allow me to upload the image onto my computer straight from the camera without any complicated processes which I would have to go through with a film camera. I am planning on taking all of my images portrait so that I do need to crop and resize the image as this would waste time, also I will mainly be interested in taking pictures of the upper torso only, however I am unsure as to wether I should take a picture of the group as a whole or wether to take a picture of each other separately and merge them together to look like one image. I will also be using a program called adobe photoshop to brush up and edit all images that I will be taking i.e. cropping, air brushing, changing lighting, adding shadows etc. I will then go onto use a program called Adobe in design to position a create all of the pages within the magazine. Probably the most important tool I will be using is the internet for finding out information and tutorials for the programs as well as other key research within this project. I may also use the studio within college as they have a 3 point lighting system which will allow my images to look as clear and sharp as possible    (also need to add what its function is)








camera
in design
photoshop
internet
other music magazines
lighting equipment (studio)

write around this frame of equipment and software

distribution and production of my magazine

analysed Hip-hop/band images

discussing my target audience using media theory

target audience

circulation figures of Hip-Hop magazines

analysed the style and structure of an article

unique selling point (USP) of my magazine

codes and conventions of a music magazine- Feature article

codes and conventions of a music magazine- Contents page

codes and conventions of a music magazine- Front cover

In this section of my blog I will discuss the key codes and conventions of a magazine, here we have one of the UKs most read music magazines NME and so would be  a good template for my own as its obvious that they have got the "formula" right. To the far left we see the masthead, this is the ussually the largest text on the page and is most often the name of the magazine, the name/title of a magazine and this is often centred to draw immidate focused attention to the title, however as NME are now very well known in the UK so they can possition the title almost anywere on the front page and people should almost always be able to distinguish NME from its competiors even though the title may not be directly in the middle (this is also due to a template*)

initial ideas

In this section of my blog I will dicuss the initial ideas of my project, I have chosen to create a music magazine which encompases three different types of genre:
1)Rap
2)Hip-Hop
3)Urban (i.e. Grime)
I am hoping that this magazine will appeal to any race.Rap, Hip-Hop and Urban are often stereotyped with coloured people and so I hope to overcome this by moving away from that stereotype by possibly using a mixed race group on the front cover. I also want the magazine to appeal to a young audience possibly 16-25, the hip hop culture stems back to the 1970s and so fits the age range perfectly as our generation has grown up listening to this type of music. My magazine should also appeal to the working/middle class audience however hip-hop has become one of the worlds most popular/best selling genres so people from the upper middle class may also be a target audience to consider (this will require more research).
         Currently I have 6 initial titles for the magazine:
1)Muzik (this is spelt in an urban fashion and may automatically draw in my target audience)
2)Urb-Word (urban-word)
3)Urb-Gen (urban generation)
4)UK-UG (united kingdoms urban genration)
5)1970 (this was when Rap and Hip-Hop started)
6)Rap't up (a spin on rap and the months latest news)
         To decide which name gets picked I will ask members of the public and my class mates in a questionaire, or I may have a total re-think depending on the results from the questionaire.
         Hip-Hop as mentioned is one of the worlds leading musical genres and so I believe that there is a massive audience potential for this type of a magazine, for the front cover my intial thoughts were to use a mixed Rap band, I am currently part of a multi-cultural rap band and so could be the main focus point of the cover and the first issue of the magazine, the colours which will be used on the front cover are still being decided however the main colour for the magazine is either going to black or white depending on the picures taken for the front cover, the contents page will be themed to the front cover and then the theme will be relayed throughout the articles, again the articles will most likely to be about my rap group however I can also interview DJs and other MCs who I know or can get in contact with to feature in other stories/articles of the magazine.

Preliminary Task - front cover

Front cover


For this task I had to create a magazine front cover which would be appropriate for a college magazine. We started the task by going out in a small group of friends taking pictures of each other in a medium shot, this allowed space for editing and it was found that most other magazines concentrated on the upper torso. I didnt specifically go out with any initial ideas however when my friend posed, the idea of an intellectual magazine for the high achievers in college came to mind. The first criticism I could make about this task would be the fact that the image is too small and there is a bit too much head room so to speak, I could have over come this by copping the image and enlarging it.The second would be that the background is not in anyway related to the theme and looks rather "scruffy", this could be overcome again by cropping the image and having a plain or themed background. there was also unused space in the advertisement bubble and the bottom strap line. the side line is also bordered which makes the text look as though it is out of place again I could have removed the border and this would allow for a more spacious side line and the text should fit nicely. the shapes which I used also appear quite primary and also matched with the primary colours dot help the front cover in any way, this could be overcome by incorporating the text and shapes in a more professional/effective manner, for example the yellow circle could be made smaller to accommodate the text more comfortably and the shape itself could be made more adventurous, this could be accomplished by editing in adobe photo shop or i could leave it the same and add more text however this might carry the possibility of cramping the page.