Category: Music Magazine

The feedback I was given after my fifth draft didn’t give me many things to improve on so to make my sixth draft better I worked on making the integration better, meaning I changed the quote on the front cover to match a quote from my article and removed her last name to match the name of the article in my double page spread. I also changed the design slightly on the contents page to the caption fit on the black boxes better without being different sizes.

Final Points to Improve Upon

• DPS- Add a comma after the however in the second paragraph
• DPS- Either add a widget to the second paragraph or remove the widgets from all the others
• DPS- Change the page number to 5 and 6
• Contents- Make the page number of the contents page match the new page number
• Contents- Remove ‘the’ from ‘the BABYMETAL’
• Contents- See if the main proper nouns that are capitalized would look good in colour
• Contents- Make the quote from Scott Truesdell easier to read
• Contents- See how inserts 7 and 13 look with a white border
• Front- Add another cover line saying something like ‘more on’ or ‘inside’ above the cover lines at the bottom

Although the adverts will not be marked, to make my magazine more conventional I have chosen two adverts that I believe would appeal to my target audience of a male in his thirties of the socio-economic class ABC1.

My first advert is for a model of motorcycle. I have chosen this as motorcycles have a similar target audience to that of my magazine, also being of a similar age range to my target audience as to be able to afford this item they will have to be well into their careers so it is a good advert for my more mature audience.

My second advert is advertising the music festival Download, which is a festival that supports mainly metal bands so would be of interest to people reading a metal genre focused magazine.

For the changes for my fifth draft, I mainly focused  on meeting the feedback I had for my contents page as I felt there were a lot of things I could do better. The biggest change I made was the main star of the page as I felt all of the images I used from the shoot of the model I previously used had bad lighting and you couldn’t see her eyes. Acting upon feedback I consistently got, I gave the inserts at the bottom of the page captions so people know what the image is about. I also changed the font of ‘Contents’ as it was the same as ‘Tiegan’ on the front cover which could be misleading to an audience.

I then added in the article I wrote into my double page spread and decided to move the quote to the left side page.

Peer Feedback

After completing my fifth draft of my magazine I got a peer to give me final feedback on this penultimate draft so I can make sure my final draft is as good as it can be. They mainly gave me positive feedback, complementing my variety of shots, my mise-en-scene, and integration of fonts and text.

I created my first draft using the plan that I had made previously and tried to re create the style of a biography that was used in the article about James Lavelle that I had analysed.

Peer Voice Memo

To help me be sure that my article makes sense and doesn’t have grammatical errors, I got a peer to read it out for me. I found that this was especially useful to help me hear how long a sentence is and decide whether it should be shortened down if it turns out to be quite a mouthful.

I then had them analyse the language that I have used.

Targets For Improvement

• Include punctuation in some areas where it’s missing
• Describe her emotions more and how she feels at points in her life it’s lacking in some areas
• Add more to describe her future developments

The demographic that I am targeting for my article is a male in his thirties. To appeal to this demographic, I will write my article in a rather mature tone (not a question and answer style for example) in third person without the presence of the journalist. I will keep the information relevant to that person’s interests by making the information I put in the biography about Tiegan’s music career and include information about bands and experiences she’s had to get to where she is.

To start my article, I will briefly explain who Tiegan is to an audience who may not know her to create an interest in her life and try to entice them in to read the rest of the article. A topic that I have found to be currently trending in my genre is ‘best albums’ so I will include a section about all the albums she has released in her time of being a metal star.

Front Cover

• Change my cover star’s name to just ‘Tiegan’
• Add a few more cover lines in the space left behind after removing Thornborrow

Contents Page

• Change the font of contents so it isn’t the same as Tiegan’s name on the front cover
• Put captions on the photos at the bottom
• Move the quote in from the right so there is some bleed room
• Change ‘we venture’ to just ‘venture’ so it becomes an order to the reader
• Move page numbers in to the right a bit so they aren’t as close to the bleed area

Double Page Spread

• Make metallum in the top left corner slightly smaller
• Add a by line saying who the article was written by
• Change the copy font to be the same as the font used on the contents page to create continuity

To help me understand what a magazine article should be like and how I should write my own, I analysed a professional article, looking at the structure, presence of the journalist, the language and aim, and the representation of the performer.

This is the article I chose to analyse: James Lavelle Biography

In the September 2017 article ‘QMAVERICK’ about James Lavelle, the structure is set up to be a biography. This is shown through it being a factual description and story about James Lavelle’s life and his feelings about these events. These stories are told from a third person perspective by the author Dorian Lynskey, who’s presence is invisible throughout the audience apart from in the introduction when it says ‘Dorian Lynskey hears his story.’ The impact of this being in third person makes the article feel more informative and factual about James Lavelle’s life and the absence of the journalist creates a separation between the reader and the artist.

The sense of location for the reader is inside the events of Lavelle’s life that are told by the journalist and in reading this the reader will experience what it would have been like to be James Lavelle. The types of words used in this article are largely descriptive on the emotions shown my Lavelle, describing his quotes to be said ‘wistfully’ and ‘happily’ to make the reader sympathies with his story. The actual quotes themselves include a few swear words which show to us that the target audience of the magazine is for young adults and this helps it fit with their genre of alternative hip hop as that isn’t a genre suited to a younger audience.

In conclusion, the journalist has represented Lavelle clearly by closely sticking to facts which are backed up by quotes from Lavelle. They have also used uncensored quotes which represent Lavelle in the most accurate way and portray what he is like as a person.

For the front cover of my magazine, I changed very little as I am happy with how it looks, but I did have to change the colour of the cover lines from black to white as I felt they were rather difficult to read on top of a dark grey background. I also made my masthead a bit taller to stop it looking so squashed.

In my contents page, I added another cover line in the space that was created when I changed the font and made it closer together. I also gave it a silver gradient background as I found that with just a white background it looked a bit plain. Finally I added a page number to meet the features a contents page should have.

I found that the background I made for my double page spread (dps) was too light and rather unnoticeable so I used the burn tool on Photoshop to make it a lot darker. I also gave it a page number on the left and used the red and blue theme on other parts of my dps to make the pages more interesting to look at.

To make my contents page better, I changed parts of it according to the feedback I got on my first draft. The first thing I changed was the size of my model to be a bit larger to better fill the space on the left page. I then got rid of Tiegan’s second name as it was maybe a bit too long and put the story name in it’s place. This then gave me space to add in a stand first where the story name used to be which will tempt the reader into reading the article. Finally, to appeal to the conventions of a double page spread, I also added in a page number and the name of the photographer.

For my double page spread I decided to put my main model on the left page and the article on the right. I’ve included a section for a quote within my main body of text and have the name of the artist at the top of the page as the biggest text so it stands out and allows the audience to know who this article will be about. Additionally, I left a space beneath the artists name to allow me to put a title for the article once I decide what my article will be about.

For my image of my model, I used Photoshop to edit a 3D effect onto her of blue and red to contrast and stand out from the black text of the article. It also gives her a much bolder star image and makes her seem like a more interesting person, which would be intended to attract a larger audience to read the article.

Some of the conventions that I feel I may need to add into my double page spread are:

• A page number so the reader can easily use the contents page to find the article
• A drop capital
• The by line to say who the article was written by
• Questions for the artist
• A stand first to introduce the article

Peer Feedback

This double page spread doesn’t include page numbers or a stand first which would best to include. It does include columns of text and a headline. You may also want to add a byline so the reader knows who wrote the article and drop capitals. This article does consider where the fold would be as it only cuts of a slight part of the model’s shoulder. Nothing too major would be out of view. I believe the image does create enough visual as it is bright and bold. This intrigues the audience as it may be their favourite artists and would like to know more. The photo may be better if you darkened the blue eye as it looks too bright. Also, you may want to put something in the background as it is quite plain.

Targets For Development

• Add in page numbers
• Give it a byline
• Write who the photography was by
• Write a stand first under the title, an opening short paragraph that tempts the reader in a larger font going across all three columns
• Paragraph my main body of text
• Drop capitals in my main body of text