Mood board for music magazine

This is a mood board of the kind of artists that i would pick to use in my magazine. Some artists are more modern than others, so i think in my magazine i would have a mix of old and new artists, so it appeals to more people.

UK Top 40

This is the current UK Top 40, I have looked at it and decided which songs would fit in with my genre of my music magazine: Pop. This will help me decide what my front cover image should look like.

1. Trouble Maker (feat flo rida) - Olly Murs POP
2. Something New – Girls aloud POP
3. Little Things – One Direction POP
4. Beneath Your Beautiful (featuring Emeli Sande) – Labrinth POP
5. Girl On Fire – Alicia Keys POP
6. Gangnam Style – Psy
7. The Power Of Love – Gabrielle Aplin
8. Candy – Robbie Williams POP
9. Locked Out Of Heaven – Bruno Mars POP
10. Diamonds – Rihanna POP
11. Ho Hey – The Lumineers
12. DNA – Little Mix POP
13. A Thousand Years – Christina Peri
14. Not Giving In (feat John Newman & Alex Clare) – Rudimental
15. Don’t You Worry Child (feat John Martin) – Swedish House Mafia
16. Skyfall – Adele
17. Can You Hear Me – Wiley
18. Sweet Nothing – Calvin Harris
19. Latch – Disclosure
20. One More Night – Maroon 5 POP
21. Hall Of Fame – The Script POP
22. Shine Ya Line – Rita Ora POP
23. Give Me Love – Ed Sheeran POP
24. Beauty And The Beats – Justin Bieber POP
25. We Are Never Getting Back Together – Taylor Swift POP
26. Tidal Wave – Sub Focus
27. Back In Black – AC/DC
28. Anything Could Happen – Ellie Goulding POP
29. I Found You – The Wanted POP
30. Try – Pink POP
31. Love Is Easy – McFly POP
32. Live While Were Young – One Direction POP
33. I Cry – Flo Rida
34. Wings – Little Mix POP
35. Va Va Voom – Nicki Minaj
36. Right Now – Rihanna POP
37. Wonder – Naughty Boy
38. Gold Dust – DJ Fresh
39. Do You Think Of Me – Misha B POP
40. Highway To Hell – AC/DC

Out of the 40 top hit songs around 23 are pop songs, so this is over half and there for must be quite a popular genre of music. It's believed that around 60% of the UK's population prefer pop music to anything else. But this doesnt mean to say they wont listen to other genres of music, so i think my music magazine should be mainly aimed at pop but that it should also have a few other music styles just so it appeals to a much wider audience.

This photo is of all the artists from the Top 40 that i would class as Pop artists, the photos are also the kind i would like to have included in my magazine. I like it when the main focus is the artists face and there isn't much going on in the background becasue when you put text on top you want it to stand out not dissapear in the background. I think i prefer the close ups and medium close ups better than the other photos.

Comparing three front covers, contents pages and double page spreads

This is the front cover of three different music magazines; Vibe, Q and Kerang. I'm going to compare these magazines and see what conventions they have.
They all use white text for the name of their magazine as this stands out against the rest of the cover which is in colour.
They all have the name of the artist photographed in the photo on the front cover with some text, this maybe suggests there will be an article about them inside the magazine,which draws the reader in as they may like the artist on the front.
Each magazine uses red (Q mostly). Red is a bold colour and is related to love, this could mean the magazine is wanting the reader to 'love' it. It is also neither a masculine or feminine colour so it attracts the attention of every one, therefore getting a wider range of audience.
They all have a house style, so they use the same colours and text through out the front cover, this is conventional of a music magazine.
They don't use the same kind of photo, Q is a close up where as the other two arnt. Also on Kerang the model isn't facing square on to the camera, he has got his body tilted. And because of this they have slanted the text so it fits in with him, its rare that you see this on a music magazine. They normally have the model looking straight at the camera with a straight body to draw the viewer in as its like they are looking directly at them.
Q and Vibe have similar lay outs in that they both have the picture in the middle then two columns of text either side and a bit of text that runs along the whole magazine. They also both have a plug/splash. Where as Kerrangs photo is slightly more to the right of the page and most of the small text is on the left hand side with bigger, more important text filling almost the full length. This could make it easier for the reader to quickly look and the magazine and understand what the main articles in it are.

These are the contents pages of the same magazines as above.
Out of these three I would say Q is the one that has most stuck to its house style from the front cover. The other two have drifted slightly. Vibe's front cover is the hardest one to relate to the front cover and there is so much different. The text is different and the colour scheme is, also the fact that they have used a black and white image on the contents page and a fully coloured image on the front cover makes them seem like they are not from the same magazine.
Q has stuck with the colour scheme of Red, White and Black, and with colour photographs on both the front cover and the contents page.
Kerang have slightly drifted but they do still use yellow on both the front cover and contents page so you can tell they are part of the same magazine. Also the colour yellow isn't often used on magazines because its a colour that can easily disappear and is not very easy to see, so the fact they do use yellow makes this magazine unique.

These are a double page spread from each of the above magazine.
The article in them all is set out in collums (3 per page) this makes it easier for the reader and makes it seem like theres less text to read.
Q has refrence to its house colour from the contentsd page and front cover as it uses the colour red, meaning its easy to understand its part of the same magazine.
The Vibe and Kerrang double page spreads dont look like they belong to the same magazine as there is nothing linking them to the front page or the contents page. The only thing similar is the text used in the Kerrang magazine.

Focus group about music magazines

Genre for my music so far

Choosing my music genre on Prezi

Market research into existing pop rock music magazines

Q magazine
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the UK. It was first published in 1986 where it set its self apart from other music magazines because of its standard of photography and printing. Q magazine started of with a sub-title of 'The modern guide to music and more' and was original going to be called Cue, but the name was changed so that it wouldn't get mixed up with a magazine about snooker, also they thought that a single letter title would be more prominent on newsstands.
The magazine has a review section featuring new releases, reissues, music compilations,film and live concert reviews as well as radio and television reviews. It used a rating system from one to five stars. It also has a list of about 8 albums which they class as the best new releases in the last three months. Q's current editor is Andrew Harrison and this magazine has a close relationship with the Glastonbury festival, producing a free daily newspaper on site and a review magazine available at the end of the festival. Q also have a radio channel and a TV channel. A criticism of Q are that they now seem to be concentrating on the popularity of bands rather than their music. Their audience is 68% male and 32% female, most of the audience is affluent with 68% ABC1.83% of the readers are aged between 15 and 44 showing they're able to make their magazine appeal to a wide of ages and social groups. They do this by featuring both new artists and artists that have been around a while.

Vibe magazine
Vibe is a music and entertainment magazine founded by Quincy Jones, it features R&B and Hip- hop artists, actors and other entertainers. It's issued every other month. Vibe has a circulation of 300,943 of which 202,439 was paid and 98,504 was non paid. It was first launched in 1993 and had origionally be called Volume. On June 30 2009 Vibe announced they were shutting down but were back up and running in 2012.
The magazine includes a 20 questions section

Brief for Music Magazine

The front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.
-All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate, minimum of FOUR images

Evaluation of college magazine

Evaluation for my college magazine
To achieve my final magazine I started of doing some research on existing magazines, to get some ideas of conventions I should use for mine. Some magazines I really liked, so I wanted to base mine around them and other I didn't like so I avoided mine looking like that. I placed my picture (a mid-shot) in the middle of my magazine cover as this is very common of a magazine cover. I made sure my model was against a light background as the clothes she was wearing were quite dark and I didn't want her to disappear in the background. I made sure my model was looking very happy/excited as this stands out from other magazines and it shows how fun the college is. The top and bag my model is wearing show a range of ethnicity's, this helps to show the college as its a multicultural college. I arranged my text around the model, only overlapping in a few areas, so that the magazine looked like one big smooth thing. I think this makes it look more professional as most magazines overlap their photos with writing. I placed a bar code in the bottom right of my cover, I didn't want it to be massive because it doesn't help to sell the magazine, but I also didn't want it to be small so you wouldn't see it. So I have kept is the size it is a) so I didn't end up with lots of blank space and b) it again makes it look like a conventional magazine. The text on my cover follows a cover scheme, purple and white. Purple is used for the main sections of text and is also a colour that's used a lot in college and white is used to explain/ go further into the main sections of text. Also the same colour text has the same font and size throughout. I like that my magazine isn't perfectly in line, the text almost follows the shape of the model, I have chosen to do this because from my research I could see that a lot of magazines do this and I like how it looks. I felt like my magazine should have a slogan relating to the students, but I just wanted something small so I came up with 'The Students Only Magazine'. I feel this would help sell the magazine as it's like a command, telling students that its the only magazine they can purchase.
If I could do this task again I would spend longer researching other magazines out there and research into what attracts people to magazines. I would spend more time planning what my magazine was going to look like so I had a better picture in my head of what I wanted my final piece to look like. I would also try to get a photo which I could relate an article to, to help link the front cover to the rest of the magazine. For example I would use a photo of someone playing basketball and also have one of the articles on the front about basketball; this would show how proud the college is of their students and how well they do in sport.
Overall I am pleased with my magazine because I feel it looks very professional and would fit in with other magazines if it was on sale in a shop.

Finished College Magazine

Evaluations of existing college magazines

Mind map of ideas and initial idea hand drawn

Origional images taken for the college magzine

Mock up of front cover and contents page

Moodboards for front cover and contents page

Camera framings

Extreme wide shot

In an extreme wide shot the view is so far away from the subject that it isn't even visible. the point of this shot is to show the subjects surroundings.

Very wide shot

A very wide shot is much closer to the subject, but is still quite far away. The subject here is visible but only just.

Wide shot

The subject takes up the full frame. In this case his head and feet are almost at the top and bottom of the frame. The subject doesn't fit the whole width or height of the frame.

Mid shot

This shows some part of the subject in more detail, but still giving the audience the impression that they are looking at the whole subject.

Medium close up

This is half way between a close up and a mid shot. It shows the face more clearly with out getting too close.

Close up

A certain feature or part of the subject takes up most of the frame. A close up of a person usually means their face.

Extreme close up

This gets right in and shows extreme detail. You would normally need a reason to get this close to a subject.

Cut away

This shot is usually of something other than the current action. It could be a different subject or a close up of a different part of the subject.

Cut in

This is like a cutaway but it specifically concentrates on some part of the subject.

Two shot

This shot has a few variations, but the main idea is to have two people in the shot, often used in interviews or when two people are presenting a show.

Over the shoulder

This shot is framed from behind a person who is looking at the subject. The person facing the subject should occupy about 1/3 of the shot.

Noddy shot

This is common in interviews, this shot is of  a person reacting or listening to the subject. Noddies are eddited after the interview is finished.

Point of view shot

This shot shows a view from the subject's perspective. It's usually eddited in a way thats obvious whose it is.

Weather shot

 In this shot the subject is the weather. The sky takes up at least 2/3 of the frame. This shot is common in television programmes where the weather is of particular intrest e.g. sports shows.

Conventions of a contents page

This contents page has a main image which is conventional of a magazine contents page. The photo helps remind us who the target audience is and what kind of magazine it is. They use a mid-shot, which again is another thing you typically see on a contents page. The contents page has a consistent theme, the same colours and text and the way its written. An external company would be responsible for the printing of this magazine. You an tell by the picture and the things written on the page that its target audience is women, 18+, as its stylish and sophisticated and quite girly. It also looks expensive and women like to have things that look expensive so they look like they have a lot of money.

Conventions of a magazine



This magazine has a mast head and a main photo like you would expect a magazine to have. There's a picture of a female holding kitten on this magazine because its target audience is teenage girls. Its a mid-shot photo which is typical of a magazine, it helps you to see what shes wearing and its not too in your face.  The colours and styles they use for the front cover help to show feminism and youth, again reminding us of the audience the magazine is for. An external company would be responsible for the printing of this magazine.