Chad: Double-Page Spread Analysis: Metal Hammer

Issue 212

The double page spread uses a simple three-colour print. This consists of of black, white and blood red which suits the dark grungey, metal genre which the magazine mainly is.
The spread is a picture led article with a staged photo of a man wearing makeup and looking 'a bit scary', which covers the entire left page. He is very stereotypically 'metal', as he is wearing black leather, black lipstick, and black runny mascara. The photo has been manipulated using an image manipulation application so that there is less colour (it's been desaturated), more contrast (which could have been manipulated using levels/curves/contrast), which, again fits the genre. The image is a photo of a seemingly oldish, chubbyish man - eating what looks like a mangled human brain. This is obviously a disturbing picture, though disturbing images seem to be a normal style for the metal genre, which is a genre based around rebelling from the norm and being controversial.

On the right hand page is the article. At the top of the page is a headline in a large red typeface. The text has then been edited and had graphics/artwork added to make it look like it was made from blood, fitting with the 'scary/disturbedness' of the image. Below this is a black strap line with the stand first in red uppercase - which adds emphasis. The reccurring black and red colour scheme fits the metal scene as explained before.

Below this is the start of an article. It has a leading cap in a large red typeface, which draws your eyes to the start of the article. The article has a formal mode of address with an extended vocabulary, which to assume the readers are somewhat educated. All the text in the double page spread is in a sans-serif typeface which makes the magazine seem more modern.
There is a byline above the article, which could be because the magazine believes the writer and photographer for the article are very important - more important even than the content. There is also a pull quote in a really big red typeface at the bottom of the page, and a humorous caption next to the picture - which makes it seem less serious.

Chad: Photoshoots & Selection/ Rejection

Photoshoot 1: Friday 21st October

I decided to do the photoshoot for my front cover first. Because it is meant to be a high class magazine aimed at mid twenty year olds, I chose my model's costume to reflect this, so I dressed him in a chambray shirt and piped charcoal blazer (I neeedn't bother with what trousers he was wearing, as it was only ever going to be a mid-shot). I chose these because they look smart, yet stylish and edgy - and I think this fitted with the musical scene. I didn't apply any makeup, because I thought that there was nothing that I couldn't fix with Photoshop.

For the front cover, I wanted a studio-style shot, like you find on the more classy magazines. One flaw was this, though, that I did not have access to any kind of studio. To resolve this issue, I identified the most important aspects of studio shots - being well-lit and having no background- and wondered what I could do about them. I decided that to have no background I could simply do this on Photoshop, as long as I did it well. To fix the lighting issue, I would get the best lit place I could find, and face my model at the light source. I took my photos between lessons, and used the best lit place in sixth form.  I think this worked well.

Selection/Rejection
Here are a few of the photos which I rejected:

 

I chose to not use this picture, as it wasn't a Mid-shot. This would mean I would have to crop it more than necessary which would reduce the quality in the final print.

I chose to not use this picture because, the facial expression was incredibly bad. The lighting was almost perfect, but the expression I could not even edit to improve...

I chose to not use this picture, because it was over-lit. This would have meant it would have been almost impossible to edit too. It also wasn't in the right orientation - it wasn't portrait, which would mean I would have had a lot of cropping to do. Plus the pose wasn't that great either.

In the end, I chose to use this photo:

I chose this because I like the pose - it is quite a professional looking pose which I think will go well on my front cover. It is not that conventional, as he isn't looking at the camera, however not looking at the camera has been done before - see here and here. Also, it is in full focus and the lighting is quite good - apart from it is slightly too too yellow, yet I can fix this in photoshop. Finally it is in portrait, which means there is less to crop.

I have also chosen to use this picture for my contents page. I have chose this because I like the pose, and the lighting. I would not use it for my front cover as it isn't serious enough I think. I will change the background to a more colourful photo too.

Photoshoot 2: Tuesday 25th October

Next I decided to do the photoshoot for one of the contents page photos. I used a female model for this picture, as in the survey analysis we realised we should at least feature some females, to make it appeal more to that market. I wanted to try and feature artist's that look like they represent different areas of music, and so I was aiming this picture to look like an American Pop star. Because of this I dressed my model up in an American style -  varsity jacket, and a matching striped dress. I did use makeup this time but kept it natural looking apart from some red lipstick, which I thought would add some American glamour. Unfortunately, my model did have some moles where makeup would have to be very thick to cover them, so I will remove these and any other imperfections in Photoshop.

For this picture I wanted the location to seem American too, so I want it to be in an American looking city at night. There are two problem with this - one is that night time photos are tricky to get the lighting just right, and the second is the most obvious - I do not have the budget to travel to an American city to take the photo. I will resolve these two issues in two ways: Firstly I will take the photos in daylight and then in the Photoshop editing stage edit them in a way to make them look like they were taken at night. It is much easier to control the light if you take them during the day, and this is what some professionals do when taking night scenes (e.g. the nightime surfing sequence at the beginning of the film 'Die Another Day') so it is not unheard of. I will cut out my model from the photo using photoshop and, place it over a night time american city background, and try to make it look as realistic as possible. For this picture I wanted to take a photo that was well lit, but with some shading so that it would fit in better within the night time scene. It didn't matter where the location was, just as long as the lighting was good.

I took this photoshoot in Brigg, midday Tuesday 25th October, which was the half term holidays.

Selection/Rejection
In this photoshoot, there were some good as well as bad photos. Here is a selection of the photos which I rejected.

A close up. I didn't use this one because I didn't like the facial expression, and I didn't think it would work as a photo. I may consider doing a close-up photo in the future however.

I chose to not use this one because almost all of her face is in shadow. This does not look at all professional.

I could not use this picture as it was very blurry. This would not look at all good in the magazine, and would look incredibly unprofessional.

Here is the photo that I am deciding to use.

I have chosen to use this, mainly because I like the pose. Also the lighting is quite good too, as not much as in shadow apart from the side of her face and the folds of her clothes. Obviously it has been taken during the day, however I can make it look like it was taken at night time quite easily. It is in full focus which will look crisp and sharp in the magazine, and it is a Medium Long Shot.

Photoshoot 3:TBC
Photoshoot 4:TBC

Chad: Contents Analysis: Mojo Magazine

Issue: February 2010

The first thing that strikes you when you look at Mojo Magazine's single contents page is that the majority of it is in black and white. This gives it a somewhat classic feel to it - which ties in with the magazine's genre of modern and classic good music. The only actual colour on the content's page is red, which is one of the most common colours to be on a magazine. This is because it goes with black and white very well, and adds a seriousness to the contents page - which belongs to a serious music magazine.

The masthead of the magazine is at the top of the contents page, identifying which magazine it belongs to. It is black, and in a curvy sans-serif typeface. The letters are all in capitals which makes it stand out more, as well as making it even more serious and formal. Below the mast head are three locations (London, Memphis, Nenagh) which seem to have no obvious purpose, but might make the magazine seem more international and diverse.

The majority of the text is in a sans-serif typeface. This modern approach to text contrasts with the classic style of the magazine, and the black and white photo. The text that is in a serif typeface is the text that is meant to be emphasised - hence the change in style. Text that wants to be emphasised is also in bold too, which does its purpose and makes it stand out more.

The contents page does not expand upon many of the articles of the magazine; the text is quite large and there are only two sections mentioned - 'Features' and 'Cover Story'. This could be because the producers of the magazine only wanted to show the very best articles in the magazine, and wanted to emphasise them more by making them bigger. The 'Cover Story' section is separated from the Features as there are two red dividers above and below it. 

There is a pull quote from the Corrine Bailey Rae article that is the main story. It is a powerful simile and is elaborated by text that puts it in context below 'Corrine Bailey Rae on the grief of her husband's death, P46'. This ties in with the photo. The photo covers the entire page and is very artistic. It is in black and white which as explained earlier makes it seem more classic. The photo seems quite wintery which ties in with the issue of the magazine. The background is completely out of focus. Her hair is covering one half of her face while she looks solemnly at the camera. This is very artistic, and could be a metaphor for her introverted personality whilst grieving. This could also explain the black and white colour scheme too. From analysing this Contents page, we will take from it the use artistic photos, and try and successfully use them on our magazines..

Chad: Expansions Into Other Media Outlets

Before we produce and publish our magazines, it might be beneficial to consider alternatives or expansions to publishing the magazine in print. This could be instead of, or in addition to printing. I feel it would probably at this stage be better for it to be expansion in addition to the magazine, as printing is still the conventional and most popular method of reading magazine content, and it will take time for the majority of the audience to transfer over to other forms.

The digital media sector is a rapidly growing market. The sector branches out massively, but it does include possible outlets such as social media, websites, and applications on tablets;


Possible Expansions For The Magazine On Social Media
We would try to connect to readers, in order to get a positive interest from them. We would try to keep the updates engaging, by giving the updates character, rather than just linking to articles and trying to sell the magazine. We would try and utilize feedback from consumers, and would try and give something back that they find worth it. This way it will be mutually beneficial from both sides perspective. Consumers will get more of the magazine they love, and the magazine will get a bigger, wider and more loyal audience. The advantages of social media are that there is very little cost in using it - and it will probably generate money and a bigger audience. However some time is involved in maintaining it.

Facebook
We could set up and use a Facebook page for alpha. Using this we could discover reader's opinions via the comments on our status updates. This could be useful as if we mention stories before they reach print, we could print some of the best comments in the magazine itself. This will involve readers and make them feel they have a positive influence in the magazine. We can also use opinions to adapt the magazine as the reader's want it. We could offer them behind-the-scenes photos as well as Facebook-page-exclusive competitions. Reader's could send in their opinions of albums as well as their own photos which could potentially end in print. We could also run polls and ask the readers what they would want to see, and use it whenever we run 'best albums/tracks/etc of'..... features. Finally, Facebook will enable us to be able to see what demographic the magazine is popular to, by looking at who our fan's are. Several magazines are already involved in this.

Twitter
We could set up a Twitter page for alpha. On this we could 'tweet' regular updates to connect with readers who 'follow' our tweets. Several music magazines already do this, but Q magazine (twitter.com/Qmagazine) does it well, and much better than NME magazine who simply link to articles. Q magazine  uses in ways such as:

• Having mini-competitions where followers tweet their questions to their band, and the best one gets featured. This is a win-win scenario. People in the magazine get a god question to use in the interview which they might have not thought of, and readers get to interact with the magazine. it also entices them to buy the magazine to see if their question was printed. "Got a question for @coldplay Chris Martin? We are speaking to him this week so send us your question by Friday and we'll put the best to him."
• Conversing with readers and artists. This gives the twitter account more character, and makes people more likely to follow the magazines twitter page. Also, tweets to artists could be used in the magazine as exclusives. "@remco1993 Actually we think it might be Ethan from Crystal Castles... @keaneofficial"
• Linking to the main website, to give it more traffic, which could earn more from  ads, as well as being much easier to share large amounts of information, as twitter is limited to 140 characters in each tweet.

One of the main advantages of twitter is that it is instantaneous, and that for a lot of people who access twitter on their smartphones it is push delivered to them - so they have to see it. This is good as long as tweets aren't so frequent that they annoy the follower and force them to choose to unfollow the page. We could also use it to tweet out pictures and videos occasionally that are from behind-the-scenes.


Youtube.
Youtube can be used to share videos, though it is not strictly a social network. We could share special acoustic sessions, behind the scenes videos etc.. on it. Also, Youtube allows users to like and dislike videos, which would enable us to see which videos and artists are popular with readers as well as other Youtube users. We could use this information in future to feature more of what the readers like, which will inevitably boost the audience figures.


Possible Expansions For The Magazine On Tablets


Another possible expansion to the magazine could be to 'publish' the magazine as a tablet magazine as well. The most successful, and easiest to publish on is the Apple iPad. We could also make it available on other Apple devices, such as Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. As of October, Apple announced that they had sold over 250 million of these iOS devices - all of which could support our magazine. The iPad's screen is ideal to read magazines on, as its LCD screen is 9.6 inches diagonally, and has a very high resolution which makes it crystal clear. because of this you could fit  a page of a magazine on it quite comfortably with clear text.

Advantages of putting the magazine onto an iPad include:

• Because no printing costs are needed (ink, paper, staff, machinery etc...) the magazine can be published for virtually nothing, with the only costs being those to create and produce the magazine in the first place. These savings can be passed onto the consumer - which will make them more likely to the buy the magazine, particularly on impulse.
• Because of the Apple devices operating system (iOS) has recently been updated with a feature called 'Newsstand', publishing magazines on these devices is now made much easier. Magazines are now located permanently on one of the main screens of the phone, so they are always easy to find. Subscriptions can now be set up, in addition to just buying magazine separately. Also the magazines deliver themselves to those that have subscribed. This means that if you had subscribed to alpha magazine it would download itself to the device (providing it had internet access) over the night the magazine was released - automatically, so that it is ready to read as soon as the reader wakes up. This makes the process incredibly easy for the consumer, which they may favour above print magazines where they have to go out of their way to pick up their magazines.
• Magazines could also be more than just the usual version. Special digital magazine features could be implemented, as they are on some magazines. This can include moving images, interactive adverts, interactive graphics, and other interactive content - which you could not use in a print magazine. The possibilities of using these are endless, however one use could be to embed song clips into a page that mention  a track. For example, in an interview with an artist, they might mention a song by an artist. You could click the song and it would play a 30/90 second clip of it.

One thing to consider with this is that when selling via these devices, Apple gets 30% of the revenue, whilst the publishers get 70%. This is a factor to consider but not a major one, as even when selling in print the distributors and retailers get a percentage of the cut but this varies per magazine. Some magazines already use iPad magazines, the biggest being: Maxim, New Scientist, Esquire and The Economist. Currently no music magazines use this so it would be a niche market. Many music fans already use iPhones, iPods and iPads to listen to music, so this is a very good platform to use.

Callum: Mock Ups

Front Cover

Contents

Both: Changes To Initial Ideas

Callum: After doing all of my research, I’ve realised two major changes I need to make to my issue.  The first is the date.  Initially, we envisioned the magazine as bi-weekly thing and so I planned the date to be as such. However, now that, thanks to our research, we have found that readers prefer a monthly magazine, I need to change the issue to reflect this.  Seeing as I was going to do an end of year issue anyway, this isn’t too much of a problem and all I really need to do is change the date on the issue to reflect this.

The second major change is what features on the front cover.  Before, I planned to feature a collage of music album front covers from 2011 and have the lead feature be on the Best Albums of the Year.  Seeing as our audience research, however, prefers band specific features.  So, to entice those people in, the main front cover story will be on a band.  However, the albums piece will still be the main feature and will be included on the front cover, but tucked away in the top left of the cover so as not to interfere with the photo.


Chad: After conducting the questionnaire and alalysing the results;  have chosen to change several aspects of my intiial ideas. After looking at Question 3 on the survey, the magazine should have its primary focus of pop/mainstream music, a fairly large focus on indie music, and a slight greater focus on dance and rock music compared to Rap or Classical music.Also, I will try and have an equal ratio of images:articles. It will be a monthly magazine. The majority of the features will be either band specific features or album review features, with some others. The magazine will cost £3.39. The magazine will not have a freebie as paying for freebies in magazines was not popular in the survey. It should have a professional written style, as well as the professional design. We will also use the logo they chose. Because of the fact that it would be impossible for me to photograph any festivals, and have never done so before I have decided to change my issue to a standard issue - November's. As I am no longer doing a festival special, the colour for the logo will no longer be green. The colour scheme will stick to neutral colours, which will also make it seem more professional. My contents page will feature photos from some of the articles, and my double page spread will no longer be festival act reviews.

Both: Contents Analysis: NME

Issue: 19^th March 2011

NME’s single page ‘Contents’ has a much more classic feel to it, compared to how it used to look like. It is however, still lacking certain information. One of the ways the ‘classic’ feel is produced is because of the new header. Whereas in the old style magazine, the header was a simple sans-serif bold typeface; the new style contents page’s header has a typography that is remarkably similar –if not identical- to the typography used on the masthead for The Times newspaper.  The Times is one of the more classic, upper class newspapers with an older target audience, so it is perhaps possible that NME is trying to appeal to an audience that is higher class, and older (though by no stretch is the target audience the same as The Times) than the previous NME.

The new design is also much more informative than the old one. For example, in the previous design, there wasn’t really a ‘proper’ contents page. It consisted of just one photo from one story (often one that’s never elaborated on, either) with a small bit of text describing what’s going on in the photo, and a band index informing of what bands appear in that issue (plus, in some issues, a subscription offer is included beneath the photograph). The contents page of the redesigned NME now actually looks like a contents page. The first notable thing about the new style contents page is that the 7 biggest articles (a mixture of features, regulars and reviews) are singled out with photographs and placed around the contents page, putting emphasis on them. These also have the page numbers overlaying the photo in white boxes at the bottom right of each photo. In addition to that, each story highlighted contains a pull quote from the article that sometimes makes sense (“We need ‘Angles’ to be a work of redoubtable brilliance”) and sometimes they don’t (“No shitting, no slamming doors, no sex”).  These pull quotes are in a Serif font.  Some are bold, some are italics. They do, however, bring down the tone of the magazine, to more causal and youthful. The tone of the magazine is also brought down somewhat by the tabloid-y hyperbole full writing  that is used throughout the contents page and the entire magazine.

The contents page has a lot of black lines and borders, which separate all the different columns, and also make it seem slightly more professional. There is a subscription section in the bottom right of the contents page, which is as big as one of the main stories. A subscription advertisement is placed on the contents page as it has one of the highest traffics of the entire magazine. The regular articles, are deemed less important, and are placed towards the bottom left of the page, in small text and picture-less.  The photos that are used on the contents page come from different sources. Some of them are lifted directly from the articles themselves, and were taken purely for that purpose. Some of the photos are outtakes, and some were archive photos that have been given a fresh lease of life. This ensures that they use the very best photos available to them - even if some are old archival ones – and the outtake photos seem more personal and more casual than the professional photos.

The designers of the contents page have evidently tried to vary the typography as much as possible, as there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern. Some of the headings are in a sans-serif typeface – while others are in serif one. Some are in bold, some aren’t. Some are italicised, some aren’t. Some are block capitals, others aren’t. They are also all different sizes. This has probably been done to try and make it look more artistic. The sub-headings, however, are all uniform. They are all in a sans-serif bold typeface in block capitals, and in black. If they had varied the typography of the subheadings as well, it would have just looked messy - which is probably why they kept them uniform.

Previous Design for NME.

From analysing this magazine contents page, we will take from it: The simple colour scheme; The use of black and white; the simple colour scheme; the older, classier target audience; and the neat, informative layout.