Category: Component 1

Here I have made a moodboard of 10 magazines that I think look good and can take inspiration from. One thing I think most of these have in common with each other, is the quality lighting and colour. Many of these are monochrome with close up pictures, which I think works well as it emphasises the face of the model and makes them feel important. For the ones in colour, the lighting as well as the background colour make them the main focal point of the image. The colours also contrast with each other which makes them fairly eye catching, which is a key aspect of magazine design. One other aspect I think lots of these magazine covers do well is the positioning of the camera and the pose of the model. Lots of these covers have the star either in a fun, more carefree pose or a close up of their face which makes them seem very important. Some parts I particularly enjoy from these are the colour palette in the middle billboard cover, the posture of the man in the jazz magazine, the low-key lighting and positioning of the man on the jazztimes cover and the close up camera in combination with the facial expression of the man on the variety cover.

A Production Meeting Agenda (PMA) is a table of components that go into a photoshoot. Before doing a photoshoot you will need to fill this out in order to help see your artistic vision through properly. Here we can see a production meeting agenda for my first photoshoot. This will help me when I go to do my photoshoot as it is very direct and to the point with the important information it holds.

In future I will need to always remember a PMA due to their importance to the shoot. They act as a way for us to finalize our plans and start visualizing the future outcome by using features of MES. It will help us figure out who needs to do what and when they need to do it by.

In order to get me thinking about what my star should look like & act like, I decided to study Kenny G as he is one of the most famous Jazz artists out there. Kenny G’s star image is that of someone that is very suave, down-to-earth and fun. He is portryed as someone that is fairly ordinary, yet in an extraordinary position so he uses his time at the top to have fun, like any regular person would. He is also portrayed as someone who is dedicated to & spends the majority of their time honing their craft, in his case it’s his music with the saxophone. This repertoire of elements builds Kenny G’s star image that has been built by not only himself, but the people around him such as his managers.

My star would come across as very fun, casual and artistic but also very cool and chilled out. These connotations would come from their pose and costume. They would have a fairly conventional costume, mainly being a suit with the top button undone along with some sunglasses and a fedora to top off the look. This costume would also connote him being a musician that works in jazz clubs which would further connote him being down-to-earth and fairly ordinary.

In future I will try and think about other stars of the same genre when creating the image for my star so I can more accurately represent my genre by using the repertoire of elements borrowed from several other stars whilst also keeping things fresh and adding my own twist to the formula so my stars image will stand out but also fit in within the conventions of the genre.

KYC – Know your client

In order to know my client, I used YouGov.co.uk to research some of the top jazz artists audience demographics and psychographics. For example, I found out that although Gen X aren’t the biggest fans of Jamie Cullum, they recognise him the most. I also found out that Frank Sinatra has an equal percentage of fans from both Men & Women however slightly more men have heard of him than women.

In future I will try and know my client before making a product for them by doing proper research in areas such as their age, gender, class, race, political beliefs, etc. If we encode our product using this research then our audience will decode it and it will appeal to their uses and gratification. It will also avoid oppositional reading which would be bad press for us.

To create a great work of media, you must have a passion for it. So when deciding which genre of music I should choose for my music magazine I decided to go with a genre that I have a passion for and interest in. For this, the first genre that came to my mind was jazz. This music magazine will also need a name so I decided on The Jazz Hustle.

"Jazz Word Cloud"
Click on the link above to see this word cloud at WordItOut. You may also view it on this website if you enable JavaScript (see your web browser settings).

Hustle attracts people who love all things Jazz, from the musicians to the positive, fun vibes. Our magazine has paved the way forward for many jazz lovers, young and old, in pursuit of good music from any era. When new and hot information is coming out, trust us to be the first to report on it as well as our exculsive interviews with top musicians. If you want to know anything about jazz, our magazine is the one stop shop.

In future I will have to think about my branding and mission statement when creating a product in my future career in order sell my USP (Unique Selling Point) accurate enough for my consumers to be properly informed on what genre / news we cover and what our goal is so they can hopefully become repeated customers and have our magazine as a part of their uses and gratification.

Here we have a cover of billboard magazine with Alicia Keys. Next to it I have annotated some of the key features to analyse and research what kind of people would be interested in this magazine. This was in order to get a better understanding of audience demographics and psychographics and what technical design conventions can suggest about the target audience. For example I came to the conclusion that the primary demographic of billboard magazine were women in their 20’s. In future I will think about how to research my audience when creating my music magazines cover in order to get a better understanding of who they are and what they are interested in.

Every magazine has a cover of some kind. It’s best to have an eye catching one to immediatly engage and interest the audience. There are several elements that go into a good magazine cover, such as the main cover star, masthead and the main cover line. These elements can have the same denotations, however their connotations can make them more appealing to their demographic. For example, the main cover line can help potentially unaware audience members understand the main cover star whilst also attracting the main cover stars fans to the magazine. The text of the main cover line can further add to the appeal of the magazine to its target demographic. To understand these different elements that go into a cover of a magazine, we annotated one ourselves to pinpoint some of these key features.

Here we’ve got a cover from MusicWeek featuring Dua Lipa as the main cover star. This cover is very interesting as it refuses many technical design conventions as it doesn’t contain any pug’s, plugs or insets. This helps the audience focus on the main attraction of this edition of the magazine, being Dua Lipa. This is further shown by how the main cover line is larger than the masthead, which also isn’t a very common thing to happen. In future I will think about these features when creating my own magazine cover to make it as eye catching and effective as possible for my target audience.