Dear Moderator, my name is Sam Wilkinson and my candidate number is 8043.

I have created two pieces of coursework, a preliminary task and a music magazine, I hope you enjoy marking my work :)

http://prezi.com/lm-n1e-ljsdo/evaluation/


This is a link to my Prezi evaluation. I enjoyed using Prezi and evalating my magazine! Although, my account had trouble uploading pictures every time I tried, so all the pictures you need are on my blogger.

Before this post I had only analysed each side of the double page spread, but this is my entire completed double page spread as it should be. I am very happy with this, even though this didnt take the longest to make, I still had alot of diffficulty with it; how to place the pictures, picture size, page size, text layout, the contents of the text and the layout. I feel I should have planned this more extensively so I could have got it done quicker, but I am still thrilled with the final piece. I like the pictures I took, even though they didnt necassarily match up to my planning exactly, I still think that they came out looking very "music magazine ish'". Personally, I think this is my favourite piece of the coursework. I think the whole thing flows nicely, the contrast between the text and the pictures is very effective and I really enjoyed writing the text. I love to write, and writing that was very enjoyable for me.

This is my final contents page which I will now analyse. First of all, as you can see i've stuck with the theme of red and white because I think it stands out and looks highly effective. I also like the way they are seperated into boxes, which I think looks very proffessional, as some magazines tend to cram too much opnto the page which can look untidy, and not very easy to navigate. This however I think is perfectly simple to navigate, the box at the top first off tells readers that its the contents page, which telling them the issue, month and year. The first box on the left is "THE EDITOR" which I always wanted to put in my magazine. This is a feature I regularly saw in the "Radio Times" and I thought it made the magazine look much more proffessional. I also took a picture of Ryan to make the feature look more realistic. The second box on the left was something I learnt from reading Q magazine, that to add seperate and more extensive sections for some stpries on the contents page is useful to change things up a bit, change the layout, and to also give readers more information. Down the right hand side is the "HIGHLIGHTS" section. These were stories that I made up, that I thought would go with the style of the magazine. Stories including the main artist on the front cover, Skrillex, Ke$ha, and a festival guide. Some music magazines tend to swerve away from music news and go towards the "gossip" end of the spectrum. This is not what I wanted to do, at least not for all my stories. I also decided to add two more pictures onto the page, one of the two artists and one of the main artist. I decided to use males for the picture at the bottom right as I didnt want my magazine to be predominantly female. Overall I am very happy with how my contents page has turned out; I like the layout, my own creative stories and the choice of pictures, colour and text styles.

 This is my final front page which I will now analyse. Firstly, the inspiration for my front page was Q magazine. I liked this magazine because of its simlicity and how aesthetically pleasing it was. The bold text against the striking picture created a perfect front cover, stylish and sophisticated. I decided to use the media techniques used in Q to create my own magazine. For this I picked a primary colour to be a them running through the magazine. For this I chose red, it stands out, and on the cover it matches the colour of her lips which was a technique I decided to use on the photoshoot. First of all, the text was all the same size (apart from the main coverline), which I decided to change to make the magazine look more proffessional. I also added an oppertunity to win something which instantly makes the magazine more desirable. Another technique I wanted to use from the very start was for the artist to give the audience direct mode of address; this makes the reader feel more personally sought out to buy the magazine, catching the artsits eye. My logo is also something which I considered carefully, I wanted a smooth and sophisticated logo which would mathc the style and direction of the magazine. Overall, I am ecstatic whith how my fron cover has shaped up, I think this was partially down to the planning, getting inspiration from other texts, brainstorming which pictures to take and using photoshop and its tools in order to create my front cover.      



This is also another planning sheet I used, this was basically to go into more detail about the points in the previous post. :)

For this I focused on 5 main areas:

Genre: The genre I went for initially was indie, going along the lines of NME or Q. I also wanted to focus on mainly new and upcoming artists, struggling to get a record deal who want to promote their music and get noticed. This was not continued to the final peice, as I decided I wanted a more refined magazine, focusing on big artists worldwide.

Price: I made the price 2.99 initially, but decided to increase the price to 3.99 as the number of features and pages means that it was worthy of a higher price. Also the more sophisticated look to the magazine means that it is worthy of a higher price.

House style: "This magazine is going to be very independant, unlike anything on the market today. I want it to be a very simple cover focusing mainly on the artist in the main coverline, while still showing potential buyers that there is a multtude of other artists included in the magazine." This is reflected in my final product, as the front page comprimises mostly of the main artist, but still showing audiences that their are other story's to read inside. I also said on the planning sheet that I wanted to include the chance to win tickets to DOWNLOAD festival; which is true to a degree, however I decided to change it to CREAMFIELDS festival instead.

Audience profile: "I think the audiences for this magazine would be 16 - 26 year olds, both male and female, people who are interested in discovering and enjoying new and unfound music, brought to light by this magazine." In the path to creating my magazine I swerved from this notion of "promoting new acts" as it could be a very risky move for a magazine to make, also, I wanted to make a more established and defined magazine, recognising well known artists but moving away from the glamour and gossip magazines.

Font and Colour: In my plan I stated that I wanted to keep the font and colour very simple, moving away from rival magazine Kerrang! which uses jaggedy and brash colours. For my magazine I wanted to make it a very 'clean' look but with a bright and distinctive colour scheme so it looks good on the shelf. I think this is true, as the magazine has a recurring theme: the colour red. Also the front cover is fairly reserved compared to some rival magazines, which I think makes the artist on the cover have more precedence over the cover.

This is the preliminary planning sheet for my main piece of media coursework, here I explain the genre, price, audience, house style, images, double page spread, offers, USP and other things. I had a vague idea of what type of magazine I would like to make, it would be a magazine where people can find out about new UK artists, I also wanted to go to London to take my pictures. My plan for my double page spread would to have a page of text and a page of 4 pictures. For offers, I explained that I wanted to give away a chance to win free tickets to a festival. I also made sure that it would be an indie magazine, and definitely not pop, that it would be unique, bright and stand out, and not put too much stuff on the front cover.


How this compares to the finished article:

-it looks much more like a pop magazine than an indie magazine because of the use of colour and language
-its not specifically for new or UK artists
-I decided to go for a cleaner more reserved look, so I decided to take the pictures closer to home. My front cover would initially hvae some sort of photographic background, but after experimenting with adding text, I found it would be easier to use a plain background in order to make the text stand out against the picture.

How this is similar to the finished article:

-I did include an enticement for someone to win tickets for a festival, as I though the idea would help entice more readers to buy the magazine.
-I did stick to my original idea for my double page spread, in which I have text on one page and four main pictures on the other