Research and planning:Distribution

Big named distributor companies like frontline, can distributed over 160 magazine titles and get a lot from them, in terms of profit. Because there such a huge mainstream company, they can afford to distribute and sell their magazines wherever they want. So like from small corner stores to the big retailers such as WHS, Asda, Tesco’s and 55,000 other retailers around the world. Bauer, who is one of the major UK publishers and is the largest privately owned publisher in Europe, is joined with frontline to help publish some of the magazines which are out in many stores today e.g. Bella, Take a Break, TVQuick and many more. One example of their music magazines that they publish is Q, which is the UK best selling music monthly magazine. It has a wide amount of big mainstream artist including Oasis, U2 and this is how they have attracted such a huge global audience. Because they know a little bit more about the music industry and how it works compared to some other companies.
Independent Distributors have their own distributing network and have to think about other ways of how to distribute their music out there, because they don’t have the money to distribute their music out there like many big mainstream distributors. They only really sell their magazines online or either many independent, down to earth retailers, for example urban outfitters and Studio 4. Vice is an example of a small company with a small niche audience. There much more upmarket than other mainstream companies and quite dominant about there magazine being the coolest magazine because it’s more interesting like getting a magazine from them than like taking the boring easy step and getting it from a big store like Tesco’s and Asda etc…

Detail Research into forms and conventions

For my magazine, Iam going to focus on selling my magazine to teenagers and also the younger adulthood generation, because many of the magazines which you can buy today target that general genre. So this magazine is going to be for people who like rock and pop music and who want to be aspirers.

In some ways the magazines that I looked at, they all have some similar patterns to try and appeal their audiences ti buy their magazine. But then in other ways they have used other forms and conventions to try and make it different. The three magazines that I have looked at, NME, Q and Kerrang, title and style wise for these mags are reletivly the same. All three of them use quite dark, bland colouring for the lettering of the coverlines and the sidelines, thenn also for the background. The only thing which is different about the front covers of these three magazines is the layout of them. The audiences are different in all of the magazines, Kerrang are more like based at a teenage generation, just getting into the adult stages, aged around 14-21. In the jicnar scale, I believe that they would be classed around a c2, because I dont think they have much of an understanding of how the music industry works compared to the likes of NME and Q magazine. Kerrang have more of a lombard attitude towards music, so they dont really care what people think about them as long as theie still enoying themselves in the music industry. An example of this would be Hayley Williams on the front cover of Kerrang magazine punching her fist out towards the audience and her slogans around her saying words like "I know who Iam". So Kerrang and their bands give sort of a domineering approach towards their audience, which some people in the UK like and thats why Kerrang is one of the most popular music magazines.

NME and Q magazines audience are based on also teenagers but also the adult generation. They are quite simple in what they do aswell, which what I mean by that is they act like lombards, their more mature in what they do in the music industry. In their magazines and on the front cover, its quite bland and simple.

I believed I had to research into these magazines to give me a better understanding of how different magazines act towards different audiences, So I know what people like in a magazine and so I can find it easier to produce my magazine.

Initial Research into forms and conventions

Before we go into deciding on what magazine we do. We had to find a bit of research into different genres and audiences of other magazine, to give us an idea of whats in the market and how to produce our own magazine.

Title: Wonkavision Magazine.

The Audience: Teenage audience, just getting into adulthood


Main Contents: Many interviews with the band

Brand Identity: A independant magazine for independant music. Down to earth kind of bands.






Title: Q Magazine


The Audience: Teenage an a adult audience

Main Contents: Reviews of albums, Q awards, Exclusive interviews with many bands like U2 and Oasis, Competitions to win tickets for access all areas in gigs. Also bands views on other eachother, e.g. what Arctic Monkeys frontman, Alex Turner thinks of band Take That.

Brand Identitys: Big major label Magazine,






Title: Classic FM

The Audience: Mostly the older adult generation. Maybe a tiny amount of youth people.

Main Contents: Live Music Guides, Free CDs, Interviews on debut albums and talks about the passion of music.

Brand Identitys: Very Upmarket, Sophisticated Magazine. For the older adult generation who know a little bit more about how the music industry works, take classical music seriously.

What I need to do next is to make my final decision on what genre im doing for my magazine. To help me do this, I will be looking at more magazines that are in the market today in more detail. So ive got an idea on what I want to do and to see what the public like to have when buying a magazine.

Main Task:Magazines

The main task is create a front cover and a contents on a double page spread for a new music magazine. It must be an individual piece of work and all text and images used, must be original and not taken from the internet etc... We have been given a list of dates which will be important to follow to complete the task successfully. The most important deadlines I would need to remember is the deadlines. So for the deadlines for the research and planning, the 8th of January, the production deadline, 15th January, so thats the taking photos doing the layout for the magazine etc... Then the Post production deadline on 12th February. The next of the deadlines I will need to remember next is the evaluation deadlines, from the 15th of February to the 5th of March.

3 things I need to do to improve my practical work

After completing my magazine and evaluating what I have done, I need to think ways I could of improved my practical work.

I believe that my magazine that I did was good. But I think one reason it wasnt better than I hoped it would be was because I didnt really watch the time that I had very carefully, so I had to rush abit with my magazine. So really next time I have to use my time more carefully inside of lesson time. But then if Iam a little behind, then I need to use more of my free time, outside of lessons to catch up.

Another way I could do to improve my practical work is to no a bit more about my forms and conventions, cause I thought that was one thing that was lacking a bit in my magazine, but also my evaluation. So i need to look at more conventions and learn a bit more about them.

A third way I could improve my practical work is work a bit more with the technology a bit more. I didnt understands how to use some of the tools and then when it came to talking about how the technology helped me create my magazine in my evaluation, I didnt really know what to put, apart from it had different kinds of fonts, which was good. So I need to work a bit more with the different types of technologies like photoshop and QuarkxPress so i do know how it helps me to create magazines.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product

I used many new technologies which helped me to complete my magazine with not much trouble. The first new program i used for my mag Adobe photoshop. This helped me to load my photo and add text in front of it with no trouble. It has many new tools and new fonts aswell so you dont like have to keep going to other programs, for example paint, if you want to colour in anything on your page as it has it in photoshop already. The picture quality is better when in photoshop compared to in like word. Another new program i used to helped me in my contents page for my magazine which was QuarkXpress. Which helps you in deciding the layout of your contents page.
Media is sometimes not always good for some people who want to reach their dreams or ambition, especially if your not good at it. For example x factor. You love to sing and your ambition is to become a pop star, but if your not a brilliant singer, then you get bad remarks from the media which then your upset about it. As long as the media has got someone to talk about, they dont care who they hurt, at the end of the day its money for them. Also we dont really choose what we want on tv or on the radio, it what the media wants. So then people are paying money for stuff that they dont want to watch.

How did I attract/address your audience?

I believe what would make my audience want to buy my magazine, is by whats in the magazine.
As I saw from the two magazines FHM and Music, the fonts, the layout and the colours were pretty much the same. So I tried to use that in my magazine, by using the simple colouring of black and white and just using simple sans serif text. Also the dark colours for the backgrounds of the front cover and the contents page. From the pictures that I saw in FHM, the moods of some of the models were a bit like they dont give a damn what people think of them. They wernt smiling, there arms were folded and acted like a bit of a lombard. Also actually used bad language in the magazine.
But despite that, some people actually like to see that in a magazine as it comes across them as humor, which everyone loves a bit of humor, but in many forms. The colours of the magazine shows the kind the side of the magazine, so like the colours, black and white, connotates hatred, contempt, hostility, death perhaps. Which shows pretty much what FHM and many rock music is all about now a days. On my front cover though, its kind of different. The colours are the same pretty much, still dark and bland, but just has a bit more colour in it, mostly in the background. Cause I really wanted to make the magazine different to others. The picture of one of my mates on the front cover is different to whats was in FHM. But most rock band singer people as i said before are a bit of a bighead when it comes to them being in magazines and having there picture taken, but makes them look cool to some people. So I took a picture of my mate to make people think that he is the best singer in the world, if he was one. Because of what he is doing aswell will attract people to buy it aswell, as it catch the eye of people. The hair and what he is wearing aswell shows that he is a type of rocker.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For our magazine, I thought I should base our audience around the teen group, between the age of 16-21. Because I believe that many people are mad about rock music at this stage. In the psychographic profile for the audience, I would believe that some of them would be individualists, do what they want to do. But some other people would want to be achievers and looking at what other rock stars do, they want to achieve what the others have and also live their lifestyle.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

As you can see in the magazine, it has many key conventions which are the same as any other magazine and which should be in one. So ive got the masthead, which is the title "Student World",
got a puff, which is underneath the title, the barcode and the date which the magazine has been published. Also I have got some sidelines and coverlines that show you what is in the magazine. As I was doing a rock type magazine aswell, I wanted to keep the magazine colours pretty bland and dull, cause thats what they were like in the other magazines we had to look at, like Q mag. So Ive still kept the dark colours in my magazine but changed it a little bit by added more colours in. For instance, the dark red background of the front cover and the black for the background of the contents page.

Front cover and contents page.

Contents Page

Now we have finished the front cover for our magazine, we now have to do the contents page. But the first part we had to do towards doing the contents page was to look at two magazines, aimed at a similar target audience to our own mag, and just see what simerlarities and differences they both have.

The two magazines I looked at were Music and FHM. There are many things you would expect to find on a contents page in a magazine. Including whats in the magazine, like articles, free competitions etc... Pictures of the bands in the magazine, Bold capital lettering in the title and many mastheads. The layout in both of the magazine is pretty much the same, the colour of the background is bland with it just being black and white. Maybe theres a bit more colour in the FHM magazine than the music mag, in like the mastheads, the title and what the people in the band are wearing, but there isnt much difference between the two.

In both of the magazine, they both have simerlarities and differences in the language that they use and also their mode in address in the contents page. They both show in their pictures good dress sense, which perhaps shows the class of there job and the magazine. But you can tell the difference of the language in both magazines from the FHM magazine, where in one of the pictures of the contents page shows he is kind of an individualist, as he wants to do what he wants. He also shows hes a bit of a lombard, as he shows he has lots of money by what hes wearing and his stance, but by whats hes doing and his act towards the people who buy this magazine, hes a bit of a idiot.

In the contents pages, you can see how they appeal to their audience. One appealment for people is the attitude thats the people in the pictures or what the writer has written in the magazine. Some people find bad language funny, so humor is a massive appeal in the magazine.

Another appealment in the magazines are like extras, including talks about the new fashion of clothing for the new season, jokes, attractive pictures like in the FHM magazine. The opera music charts etc...

01In both of the magazines, you can see there is many simerlarities in the house style. The colour of the backgrounds are pretty much the same in the front cover and the contents page. The titles have the same colouring and also the mastheads etc...

Title

For the magazine, our title will be focus on kind of young rock music people who like listening to music all day. So for our target audience, the age group for this magazine is between the age of 16-21, male or female cause everyone really likes rock, I hope. In the jicnar scale, it would be around a c1 and in the psychographic profile I put it with individualists and aspirers, cause most rockers are pretty relaxed and like to do what they want to do in there music videos.

For my audience, I have defined what I believe what type of people my audience are and I have written them into statements.
-Rather go out to clubs and pubs than stay in at home.
-Rather buy a mobile home than a porsche
-Rather buy a takeaway than cook
-Drink beer than water
-Shop at asda than sainsburys
-Rather go to america than spain
-Rather wear there clothes untidy than neat
-Rather smoke than be healthy

"Five things I need to do to target my audience effectively"
-Use basic colouring
-Put extra's in the mag e.g. Posters
-Use simple fonts e.g. sans serif or arial
-maybe use humor in the magaizne
-use quotes from students or put in students views about the college

Research

For the second part of our prelimirary task we had to research into the forms and conventions of similar products to the one Iam going to produce. To do this we had to find 3 covers of magazines which were aimed at the same audience as we have identified and then see if the 3 magazine covers have a similarity between one another.

In subject matter for this type of magazine, it would have to be for people who like the music world and for students who like to do music in school or college etc... The colours used in this magazine are pretty bland. The background are always either black or white. But there is a bit of colour involved in the forground, for example the flames coming off the person guitar and always the logo for the magazine. The layout is always more or less the same aswell. The logo in the corner, the same coloured background, the model people always pretty much in the middle of the magaizne and then the different key conventions around them or on top of them.

The font used in the magazine are simple, just normal Arial or sans serif text. Always bold and in capital letters.

Preliminary Task

Our next task in media studies was a preliminary task. The preliminary task is to produce a front page of a school/college magazine with many photos, some appropriate text and many other key conventions, using DTP and image programming. The first thing we did to get towards this, is look at last years examples of magazines that students did to give us an idea on how to go about doing our own magazine.
One of the magazines we were given was called squash and we had answer many questions about the magazines including how we are able to recognise its a magazine front cover, who we thought the audience was for the magazine and also how the magazine targets the audience effectively.
We are able to recognise its a magazine front cover by how similar it is compared to other magazines which are around today. The many type of key conventions which are on the magazine like the puff, the masthead and the coverlines etc...
For the audience of the magazine, I believed the gender is both male and female, the age is between 16-20. In the jicnar scale i believe for this type of magazine, its between a c1 and a b. The psychographic for the person who did the magazine would probably go under an aspirer or a succeeder as the magazine looks like a student magazine and he has succeeded everything they were asking for in a magazine.
The magazine targets the audience effectively by the bold colours and the font. And by also what is inside the magazine, which the person has shown this by using different key conventions like the screamers and the coverlines etc...

Initial Analysis

For my second task in media studies, I had to undertake an analysis of a magazine front cover I used to show you my understanding of the key conventions. To the left hand side of this paragraph shows this.

Magazine Front Cover: Key Conventions

In media studies, the first task of the year was to learn the different key conventions of the front cover of a magazine. On the left hand side shows me labeling a front cover of a magazine to show what I have learnt.

Introduction

Hi my name is Dan and iam 17 years old. The purpose i created a blog is to record my research and planning for my As coursework in media studies. Also to show you the different key skills I have learnt in this subject.