Final Main Task

Final Main Task

1) Front cover
2) Contents page
3) Double page spread

Publishers of Magazines

BAUER MEDIA

In our lesson we looked at 2 different publishers of media. The first one we looked at was Bauer Media. Here are some facts:

- Europes largest privatley owned publisher
- 230 magazines in 15 countries as well as online, TV and radio station
- January 2008 following aquasition of Emap business's
- Employs 6,400 people and has 2007 turnover of 1.79 billion Euro's.

Their mission statement is - "To connect audiences with excellent content through our broad multitouch brand platforms."

Some of the media published by Bauer are:

- Kiss FM
- Magic FM
- The Box (TV)
- Kerrange magazine
- Heat

IPC MEDIA

Some facts about IPC media are:

-Not alot of music magazines ( A major magazine they have is NME)
- UK only
- Small audience for small magazines
- Magazines only, not online or radio

Both of these media publishers are extremely different. Bauer is international and therefore would be an excellent choice to go with as my magazine could be published all round the world and become more and more popular. However the likelyhood of this happening when the competition between simular genres of my magazine such as Kerrang, are quite minimal. IPC media is UK only and suits many small magazines. It is also only magazines so this is its main focus whereas Bauer media has TV and radio also. My magazine would compete nicely with IPC media as the only real competition would be NME. Although this is a well known and popular magazine, I feel mine would attract a simular audience.

I would have to choose IPC media if i were to write to one of them. This is because although Bauer media has more attributes I feel the sheer size of the business would hide my potentially good magazine and therefore it would be wasted. As IPC media contempts with small magazines it is more likely to be handle with more care and attention.

Preliminary Task - Returned

I recieved my preliminary task back with feedback from my teacher.

The feedback I received was as follows

- Mast head needs to be more separate.

- Keep the boxed images throughout.

- Cineworld coupon looks like a caption.

- No continuity with contents and cover.

- Different Mast head on contents page.

- Different Borders used on contents page.
- Different Font on contents page.


This feedback helped me realise the importance of a house style and the continuity throughout a magazine. I have considered what I would have done differently and I feel i would have corrected all of the above. I would keep the same colour scheme as it is the St.Marks Colours and I believe it fits. I like the images and I would not have done any different editing to them.

My contents page looked good when i was designing it however again after studying it all the flaws started appearing. I would probably completely scrap this page and start again if I had to. I would make sure that the house style is kept from the front page. I would insure the logo and masthead were in the same places and also borders around the images. I am happy with the images and the content but completely rearrange the layout.

Photography Editing

This is my orginal photo that I took with my models. After studying the photo on photoshop I decided that I would crop the image to only display the model on the right. I decided this because I thought it was more threatening and was more realistic to be in a rock magazine.

In order to crop the image I placed it in photoshop and used the magetic lasso tool to go around the right hand model. This tool works on find the difference between 2 different coloured pixes and drawing a line through them.

After many minutes and steady hand, I had an outline of the image I wanted. I selected 10 px Feather. This is to erase the image's hard edges and make it more opaque around the edges.

This is my final image that i will use on my front cover. I have made the edges of the image soft using the feathing tool and I have also increased the size of the image so that it will fit onto my A4 design on the front cover.

This image will work well as I have studied other magazines and I feel it suits the rock criteria, scary, out of the ordinary and eye catching.

My Models

I spoke with my models today and thankfully they agreed to assist me in my photoshoot. I had to speak to various other people so I could could organise the location and props I would need in order to make the shots look realistic.


Because I also studying Performing Arts I had access to the lighting in our school drama studio. From this i was able to add coloured gells into some lanterns and set up as shot as if it was on a stage. I had my models dressed in the typical clothes of that normal rock artist would be, shirts with skinny ties. I had one of the models shape his hair into a wacky but also agressive look.

I was pleased with how my models turned out on the day as they fitted with the shot I took. I arranged some green and red gels shining down on my models. I also borrowed a microphone stand and microphone for one of the models and one of the models brought their own guitar.

The shots I took are what I will be using for my front page, contents page and double page spread. I'm happy with the way they turned out because I do not need to do much editing in photoshop. I feel that the green and red tints in some of the pictures provide a good feeling as to they models are on a stage in a concert.

The Genre

I have learnt about different features of Rock magazines and I have decided to based my music magazine around the Rock Genre. I will go for the more Gothic Rock as I feel I would better suit creating a dark magazine rather than a high profile vibrant coloured pop magazine.

My target audience is a teenage boy who is highly into gothic music, such as screamo. His interests are going to rock concerts and playing heavy drums. He is active and likes to skateboard. His dress sense is obscene and has many piercings and tattoos. His is not very well educated and has a interest in loud volumed instrumental rock music.

Music Genres

The week beginning 23rd February we looked at different music genres. We got together in groups and created spider diagrams in relation to Pop, Hip Hop, Dance and Rock. We discussed and identified what we as a group thought related to these genres. As the week progressed we looked at our spider diagrams in relation to what the music magazines actually consisted off, such as the language, images and layout, comparing how accurate or different we were.

As you can see these magazine are extremely different in style, layout and colour. Each target audience is different as the magazines have different content which relate the their readers.

My groups main focus was Rock. We looked at different aspects that a typical rock magazine would involved and we came up with many ideas, such as dark colours, threatening images and quite often harsh language. These stylistic features are key to a successful rock magazine as they stereotype a rock magazine.

From this research into the different genres of music I can see the differences and simularies between them. Through class discussion the knowledge about the other genres was revealed and persuaded me on which genre I would choose for my Final Task.