This is an image I had found from the first week of creating my magazine front cover. So far, I had cut out an image from my initial photoshoot, implanted my masthead and added a box with general information like price, issue number and web address for the magazine. Throughout this task, I found it difficult to work with this image as the model was dressed in white clothing which practically vanished into the background from the flash of the camera. Although, I overcame this problem and was very careful when cutting it out in order to not miss any of the clothing out. Over the course of making the front cover I am certain to make many changes to suit the indie genre magazine and look professional. For example, I still need to include all of the sell lines, possibly a tagline and also quotes and plugs in order to entice the reader into reading the rest of the magazine.

This week in media I completed the drafts for the contents, double page spread and front cover. I did these tasks firstly by drawing them out on plain paper with rough ideas of what I would want my final product to look like. I believed this task to be relatively easy, because of my past experience of creating a music magazine last year in Media Studies. However, this also adds pressure onto me as I want to further myself and do better than I did previously. Moreover, I got the ideas for each of the pages from the magazines in the same genre and how they create each of these pages. I could then see the generic factors that had to be included on each one of these pages and decided to draft them into my rough sketches. I feel that is vital that I include all of the common codes and conventions of the indie genre in my magazine as it is what defines your magazine as to being from that genre and also separates it from looking like a comic.

       Plus, I also completed my slideshow on the mise-en-scen from my photoshoot, which highlights what props and clothing I used and why I chose to do so. I think that the clothing used in the photoshoots is essential as the clothes need to have a link to the genre so that the audience can have a relationship with it. Additionally, indie magazines are known for being stylish and having a close link with fashion. Therefore, the clothes worn need to be stylish and sleek in order to keep a strong relationship growing between the reader and my magazine.

        Finally, I created my article draft this week and this was to display what kind of interviews are going to feature inside of my magazine. I chose to take great care with my article so that when it came to adding the article to my real magazine, I can either crop parts out or add more to the backbone of the article, saving me both time and effort. I asked questions that the audience are more than likely going to want to know; this makes my article seem more appealing and the fact that I would advertise it as being an ‘exclusive’ adheres to this thought.

Lastly, I had to draft out a double page spread and this again was to give me an insight into what sort of double page spread I was looking into creating. Then, after this was done I could plan about how I was going to achieve these goals and how I was going to make my ideas a reality.
       On one A4 side of the double page spread, I was going to have an introductory page which would simply have a full bleed image of the interviewed artist, with their name in large bold font but also importantly, the word 'Exclusive' contributes vasts amounts to this page as it clearly implies that my magazine is offering something that others cannot, and it is this uniqueness that will help most in selling the magazine.
       Moreover, on the second page I am going to use a variety of images where the model will be in different outfits, but the range of photographs will be from different angles. This will be done so that it will add change to my magazine and keep the readers entertained; but also to simply keep the style of the magazine constant. Additionally, the text used on the page will be neat, clear to read and also layed out in columns. I have chosen this style as it will keep a clear and simple layout throughout my magazine and reflect professionalism but simply keep it easy to read also.

Before I started the draft of my magazine, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to create and this therefore saved me a fair bit of time. Firstly, it is essential that all magazines have a large, and gripping cover image and this is what I attempted to convey in my poor drawing. Moreover, I made sure that the main sell-line linked tightly with the main image to therefore signify the importance of the main artist but also drive into the reader that my magazine can get the biggest artists that other magazines cannot offer. Next, the additional sell-lines were places along the left hand side of the page and the box around them draws attention to them and further highlight what major artists are going to be included in my magazine. Similarly, the masthead comes of great importance as it is pivotal that it is large, bold but also recognisable. I believe that I adhered with the common connotations of the word 'Heritage' because my font was old looking but also formal. Finally, information like the web-site, price and email as this is the key information needed to fulfill the needs of the reader and also to keep them informed on how to stay in contact and up to date with the magzine.

For my contents page draft, I made sure that I highlighted that I wanted to have a busy and informative as this is the key page for finding information about the artists which appeal most to the audience. However, I also want to include some compelling images as these will adhere to the busy theme of the page but also grab the audiences attention and keep them on the page. Furthermore, it will clearly signify who is going to be involved in this issue. Also, I am going to make sure that the main sell-lines from the front cover will be the boldest and most noticable as these are the biggest articles we have, and will therefore be the most compelling and interesting to the reader. Finally, the offer of subscriptions and a 'WIN' sell line gives the readers an exciting offer to win a trip or item that they dream of, but also to highlight how if they subscribe to the magazine; they will receive the magzine for a cheaper price and will also begin to create a relationship with the magazine.

This week I did my second photoshoot and decided to do a shoot outdoors instead of another studio shoot. I believe that this added variety to my wide selection of images and therefore gives me a greater choice of images for when I come to create my magazine, and will be able to use a variety of shots on numerous pages.
             The second shoot took place at my brother's house in Southampton but also around where he lives as there is a lot of scenery that made for a very entertaining, but ultimately successful photoshoot.
               I began the shoot in the garden of my brothers house as it has interesting foliage and shapes in the fencing which I was able to use to create intreging images and poses upon. I believe it is most important to generate an image that will trap the viewers attention and draw them into reading the magazine by having an abstract image. During the shoot I used a lens which blurred the background but still brought the clear focus onto the model. This again added a variety of shots to my arsenal compared to the last shoot, but also added to the quality of creating an image that will be unusual. I think the lens was successful in doing this as it brought out some great images that I am undoubtedly going to use.
               After I had taken a good quality of images in the garden, we decided to move out to the local park. The park seemed to be produce a catalogue of great images as there is a vast amount of scenery to work with. I took shots alongside a bench, playground toys and some without props to yet again provide a variety to the shots I produce. I feel as though this shoot was largely successful as it revealed some jaw-dropping images that will generate the exact feeling I want to out of the audience: shock.
                To conclude, I feel as if so far I have collected enough images to produce a good magazine, but I do not want to just settle for a 'good' magazine and instead want to push myself as far as I can in order to get the greatest results out of it. Therefore, I am more than likely going to do another photoshoot at some point with different models again and different scenery in order to keep my wide-spread choice of iamges growing.

Mise en-scene

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The mise-en-scen powerpoint which I shared on my blog via slideshare highlighted which items I used during my photoshoot and what importance they had. Firstly, I took a photo of the wires used to operate the equipment I had used which spelled out the name of one of the artist which was to be included in my magazine. I believe that this had an artistic feel and was creative and if it was to be included in the magazine, it would represent how my magazine is unique, but also creative and up to date with technoology. After this, I continued to take images of items which I had used throughout the shoot which were generically conventional to the genre. In these images you could see that I had used: a guitar amp, synthesizers and headphones. Through the use of all of these, the audiene could clearly see how my magazine was constructed to be an indie magazine as all of these have connotations of being in indie magazines but also how my magazine is going to follow the conventions of most magazines and ultimately fulfill their needs and wants. Finally, I took individual photographs of both of the people who were included in the photoshoot and explained what they had wore and what the importance of they clothes were and also what it symbolised. I made sure that each of the models clothing was relevant to the genre so that the audience will form a relationship with the magazine because of the choice of their clothing, and will therefore feel influenced to dress the same as the successful bands in the magazine.

Article Draft

My article draft was completed prior to the actual production of my magazine on Microsoft Word so that I could make use of the spell-check property which is not present on Adobe Photoshop CS3. I believe this to be a key factor for the reason why using Microsoft Word would be more beneficial than Adobe, because if I were to make multiple spelling mistakes and grammatical errors on my draft, it would make my magazine look unprofessional and as if someone inexperienced had produced it. I cannot afford for this to happen as I want my magazine to look professional and errors are something that are never present in well established magazines. Additionally, I believe that this is where the previously knowledge gained by the analysis of double page spreads comes in useful, as I now know exactly what needs to be included in order to produce not only a successful magazine, but also what the audience wants from my magazine in order to keep them choosing my magazine over competitors. Finally, I will easily be able to copy and paste this draft over onto my magazine which will be time efficicent. Photoshop will then be used to pick an appealing font and wrap the text around images if it is needed to. This is why I believe that Photoshop is much more effective for the design and layout of the article, but in comparison to Microsoft Word, it is a lot weaker for the use of the actual text.

This is the contact sheet created from my photoshoot which I did with a class-mate. However, I also decided to get involved throughout the shhot so that my magazine could potentially include a wide-spread variety of images, therefore appealing to the general conventions of a music magazine but also ultimately keeping the reader entertained. Also, I decided to include various props into my photoshoot again to add diversity to my images, but also to highlight the genre of my magazine and simply suggest to the reader that this is the artist. Finally, I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to compile my images into the contact sheet. I did this by selecting file, automate and then contact sheet. I think this was a very simple but efficient process which made my images simple to view, and will be useful when I start the selection process of which images I am going to use for my magazine.

Contact Sheet

Below is my list of possible sell lines ideas which I then analysed to say why I chose them, and the effect they will have. The majority of my sell-lines were to include field specific lexis and play-on-words that are common to the genre. I made sure to use interesting and insightful sell-lines as I believe that they are key to pushing the article onto the audience but also luring them into the magazine as a whole. Additionally, I started to draft my contents page and what I would want to include on it. I started by drafting what are the common conventions of a contents page which would then determine what I will place on my contents. Yet again, I believe that I had previous knowledge from analysing the contents pages in my task. This meant that I knew exactly what I had to include and what it was expected to look like.

Sell Lines+Contents Ideas

I began this week by deciding on which name I was going to use for my magazine from the previous task of streaming mast-head ideas I had completed last week. I settled on the name 'Heritage' as I believe it reflects sophistication from the common connotations of royalty but also familiarity because of the common ideology of heritage being some that we gain naturally. Therefore, I think my name choice is successful and that I just need to make the logo and font iconic so that people can build a relationship with my magazine, but also recognize it just by seeing the logo.
       As I had picked a mast-head that I was now happy with and was appropriate, I could now start deciding on how I would want it to appear on my magazine by drafting up some ideas on Adobe Photoshop. I began by selecting which font I wanted to use. I believe the font to be vitally important as it needs to be both eye-catching, but still recognizable and iconic. I selected a wide range of fonts to play around with to give myself of ideas. The fonts were also put into different colours to see what they would look like in the house colours of my magazine. Finally, I used 'Blending options' on the texts in order to apply effects like strokes and bevels to trial what designs I could possibly use for my mast-head. I think the task of drafting up possible logo's is useful as it gave me an idea of what I need to do when creating my final product.
       Finally, during this week it was my turn to do the photoshoot, and make sure I gained the appropriate images for when it came around to the time of creating my magazine. It was pivitol that I created a variety of images but also interesting ones too, which I noticed through my task where I looked for 'Inspirational photos' which guided me to what kind of image I wanted to have. I had a range of props and clothing to add diversity to the pictures. The use of a time-lapse camera was also a good idea to reflect how the shoot when and to highlight to the audience what I had done to create the images.

Name Designs

The design and experimenting of mastheads was a vital part of the production of my magazine as the masthead has to be eye-catching and significant as it is what the audience will recognise you by and they will then gain a personal relationship with not only the name, but also the text. Therefore, I took time in creating a variety of fonts but also effects using Photoshop CS3. I attempted using both drop and interior shadows, strokes, but also bevels and emboss. Although, before I started any of my designs it was necessary to decide on a name, and I chose to use 'Heritage' as my name as it has common ideology of being powerful, class and superiority. These positive and strong connotations adhere to the ultimate aim of my magazine, which is to be successful. Overall, I believed this process to be useful as it has not only given me a name for my magazine, but also what I want my masthead to look like and what conventions are needed in order for it to be effective and appealing to the audience.

Model Release

The model release was a document that I had created in order to create a sense of formality and professionalism around my photoshoot. The model release was to display that I had gained permission of my model for me to take photographs of them and so that they could not sue me in the future if they did not agree with the use of the photos. Furthermore, the use of a model release also states that the model must be able to make themselves available for the re-shoot of any photoshoots, and I believe this to be a key beneficial factor for using the model release, because if I do not gain any successful or useful images that I want to use; I can recall the same model and under-go a new shoot which will hopefully be more successful.

Mood board

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The mood board that I had created was very genre specific to my theme of indie as it includes images from festivals that people from my desired target audience are likely to attend. These are commonly denoted in most media magazines and are included as they are very appealing and ultimately enticing to the audience. Furthermore, I have included the images of popular culture that my audience are likely to enjoy and in this category there are things like: X FM, NME magazine and also clothing which the audience are more than likely to wear. In addition I had logo's from specific genre events that the audience will pragmatically understand not only because of the large brand image that the logo has but also because of the fact that the audience have a personal relationship with events like this and they have more than likely attended it. Finally, the images of artists from the indie genre are included as these are going to be most appealing to the audience as these are the people who they enjoy listening to and therefore reading about.

Colour scheme

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The drafting of what I intended to use as my house colour schemes was vitally important in the production of my magazine as it will be what the audience will build a personal relationship with and what will be instantly recognisable to people when they are thinking about my magazine.Furthermore, I decided to list the common connotations of the intended colours so that I could foreshadow what the future reactions to the colours could be and what they mean to others. Overall, I determined the colour scheme to be an important as it will be a clear indicator of what my magazine will represent and how it will stand out from other competitors on the shelf.

The task of generating name ideas is one that I determine to be of great importance as it is what the audience will have a great relationship and is what the brand image will revolve around. As a consequence of this, the name of the magazine has to be something that will be catchy and easy to remember, but also something that will have a deeper semantical meaning which will outline the purpose and personality of the magazine. Therefore, I came up with a variety of names that would adhere to these conventions that are necessary for the magazine to have in my opinion. Once I had drafted a variety of possible names for my magazine, I decided to select 'Heritage' as the name for my magazine as it does not only have the common connotations of being the most powerful and influencial, but also the audience will have the common ideology of the royal family as they are what we commonly relate with the word 'Heritage'. Finally, this will then be a clear signifier for the class, power and design of my text as the style and outlook will revolve around the name of my magazine.

Over half term we were set the homework of completing three more tasks from the list that we were given in the previous week. The tasks that we were to complete were: a mood board, name ideas for the magazine and the colour scheme for the magazine. All of these were to be taken equally as important as the actual construction of the magazine as these tasks are vital for planning and laying down the foundations for our magazine.
      Firstly, I completed the mood board as I found this a very simple task. Although it was simple and easy to complete, I still believe it to be of importance as it gave me a clear insight into what relates with the genre I am going into and what things I should include in my magazine. I used images of bands who are popular in the indie genre, of indie fashion and of festivals in my mood board as all of these things are items that are most commonly seen in indie magazines as they are of the interests of the readers. I then went on to research images from photoshoots that would inspire me when I do my photoshoot. I found images of indie artists that particularly caught my eye due to them being abnormal and artistic. From this task I took away what things I need to include in my magazine in order to compell my audience but also ideas for what I can do in my photoshoot to capture a successful image.
     I then drafted name ideas for my magazine which I feel is a critical process as the name is what the audience build a relationship with and need to remember. Thus meaning that the masthead has to be both suitable but relevant to the genre. I came up with four suitable ideas for my magazine title: Immaculate, In the Indie, Symbol and Heritage. I then stated why I chose them and what impact these words would have on the audience. This again was all constructed on a Prezi presentation.
      Finally, was the colour scheme task where I had to plan which colours I would be using throughout my magazine and what effect and purpose they would serve. I chose to use the colours red and blue for the more decorative articles and to highlight the vitally important news and the special edition interviews and these colours will show change from the simple black font used for everything else. However, black font will still be used most frequently as it gives the magazine a sophisticated and professional feel. I believe the colour scheme to be very important as it gives the magazine a unique feel and also gives the readers something to notice and gain a pragmatic understanding with.

At the start of this week we were given a task completion sheet, and this gave us a heads up and insight into every task we were going to have to complete right up until the end of the task. We had freedom to choose what order we would like to do these tasks in, but we just had to make sure that everything was completed. I decided to start with the 'Target Audience' task and chose to display this as a Prezi presentation.
       The target audience task was to be an in depth analysis of who my magazine is going to be aimed it much deeper analysis than I had previously done so in my proposal. Although, the fact that I had previously made the proposal that also vaguely highlighted who my magazine was aimed at meant that I already had described who my magazine is intended to be aimed at but now just needed to go into deeper detail. In addition, I also had to address how and why my magazine will appeal to this audience. I found this resourceful as it meant that I had to do research into how other magazines of the same genre make sure their magazine appeal to their audience and I then used this research to give myself ideas on how I'm going to do the same thing.
       During this task, I also used the information that I had gained from my polls to reflect what the population expect from a magazine and how I can then fulfill their needs. I think that the poll was very successful as it gave me a clear insight into what people of my age expect from a magazine, although, to extend myself further I believe that I should conduct the same poll on people of different ages and social classes to narrow down my audience even further.  Another objective on this task was to find out the interests of my audience and how I am going to feed their interests in my magazine.
       Finally, I had to think about how I was going to advertise my magazine in order to promote it and get it out to my desired audience. I drafted that I was going to hand out free magazines of the first issue in hot-spots for my desired audience like Westfields. I think this could be a good idea as this is where people of my target audience are most likely to be and as it's free, they will take one and if they then enjoy the magazine, will come back for more and start to build a relationship. To complete my target audience task I am going to film an interview based clip where I will ask questions to someone who is part of my target audience in order to receive even more feedback and give an interactive feel to my work.
     

Here is the video made using CamStudio to display how I created my magazine in clear, simple, steps.

The type of magazine that I am looking to create is going to of the same genre and style of NME but with more of a focus on mainstream bands and not with the ‘Under the Radar’ feature that highlights the less well known bands. I am leading my magazine down the more mainstream route as I believe that this is a market which can appeal to many peoples needs as the market is broader, therefore offering more opportunity for success. My magazine will also include the latest reviews from gigs and festivals that both include the type of artists that are going to be expected in my magazine by the audience, but also our views on them that will either adhere and persuade the readers to see them for themselves or inform the audience on our views. Moreover, my magazine will also include the latest interviews of the most recognised artists in an attempt to make my magazine unique from the rest of the similar products, but also to signify that I am going to keep my audience entertained and up to date with the latest changes and stories from the music that they are interested in. Additionally, the writers of my articles will be retired musicians or recognisable faces from the industry as this will make their opinions be more valid and reliable to readers.
My magazine will include the latest reviews of both gigs and festivals as there are features that my audience are going to be most fascinated about, because they are likely to attend these sort of events. To make sure these are the main focus of my magazine, I will have at least two double-page spreads involving up-and-coming bands but also reviews on the latest festivals. Moreover, my magazine will also have a contents page which will be busy looking as this is the look that is generally taken on by similar magazines in the genre, and I want to adhere to the common conventions but with my own twists on the content. The contents will have a few images, but also lots of information for the audience to take in. Finally, my front page spread will be striking as it needs to be individual and appealing to the audience. I will most likely do this by using a large, interesting image alongside lots of sell-lines and a pull quote so that the audience are obliged to read into the magazine to find answers.
The instantly recognizable competitor for my magazine would be NME as it is the magazine that I am taking the majority of my inspiration from so they will therefore be similar. Although, NME is also considered the biggest magazine in the indie genre and it is this factor that will hinder my magazine as I will have to be able to contend for the audience and possibly prize readers away from NME and towards my magazine. Additionally, I will have to compete with Q as they are also a large magazine in the indie genre, but I believe my magazine to have quite a few differences with Q; so my magazine will not clash with it too much.
My magazine will cost between £2.50 and £3.50 on a weekly basis so that it’s always up to date with the latest news and it is also cheaper compared to magazines that are released on a monthly basis. This will appeal to my target audience of people of social classes B1-C1 as they are going to be the classes with the most disposable income. To get money from my magazine I will sell pages for advertisement. These adverts will either be advertising albums, festivals or clothes that are going to be appealing to the audience judging by the genre of the magazine. The audience will also be between the ages of 15-24 as it is people of these ages who are most likely to pick up a magazine and read it to keep up to date with their interests and to read reviews on events they may have been to.
My magazine will be weekly so that my readers can be constantly up to date with their interests and the music industry. I believe that releasing the magazine weekly will also keep the reader on edge and wanting more, as you can advertise next weeks issue in the most recent copy. My magazine will then cost between the regions of £2.50 and £3.50 as this is the average cost of a magazine of my genre and purpose. However, there will also be the chance to subscribe to my magazine in order to receive it for a cheaper price. I will then advertise my magazine on the contents page so that it is easily visible to the audience. The subscription will also be advertised on the website of the magazine, alongside the offer for people being able to download the magazine onto smart phones and tablets as I print media is slowly dying out and people are choosing to instead download the magazine.
In my opinion I believe that my magazine will be successful as it will both coincide with the indie magazines on the market at the moment, but will still have my twist on the genre and will therefore offer something new to the audience and hopefully this factor will entice them into buying my magazine over others. In addition, I think the idea that my magazine will be at a fair weekly price, means that my target audience will have enough disposable income in order to be able to buy my magazine weekly. Finally, my magazine will address the needs for the audience inside of it’s articles so that they will want to read my magazine due to it interesting them, as well as answering their questions created by the sell-lines on the front page.

This week I had to create multiple polls on my blog on both questions about magazines and general information to test the audience on. This primary research would then assist me on constructing my magazine as I will know the audiences needs and I can then begin to plan out how I am going to fulfill them. Once this had been completed, we started to produce our proposal for our magazine and this was to state what genre our magazine was going to be, what was going to be included in it and also what we were going to do to make it appeal to our audience. This became an easy task as we could use the information we had obtained from the polls, to influence our ideas. I believe both of these tasks to be vitally important as I've now learned how to address my audience appropriately, and it is this factor that sells magazines the most as you need to meet the expectations and needs of the audience.

This week in my Media AS studies I had to analyse three contents pages. This started off relatively easy however, it was difficult trying to remember all of the key terms and theories relevant for analysis. Once we had completed these in lesson, we got assigned the homework of analysing a further three front covers. However, I independently analysed the double page spreads too as I knew this is what we were going to be doing next. I believe this to be an effective management of my time as this put me ahead of everyone else and meant that I had more time to do the next task. The next task I got an early start on, and this was to create a 'Prezi' on the codes and conventions of any desired magazine we wanted. I chose to do NME and used facts from a database to reinforce my ideas made in the presentation. I think Prezi is an effective way of doing a presentation as it is both interactive and decorative, but still gets your overall voice and opinion across.

Similar Product Research

Linked above from my scribd page is the similar product research which I completed in order to not only give me ideas on what I could include in my magazine, but also what general codes and conventions need to be seen in every magazine. Throughout my analysis, I decided to analyse magazines from a diverse selection of genres so that I could determine what is common between the magazine but also the differences. I believe this will then lead to me producing a better quality of magazine due to the fact that I will have much better pragmatical knowledge of what needs to be included as opposed to jumping straight into producing the magazine.

      However, I did not only look at front covers and what general conventions they bring to the magazines personal star image and how they stereotype themselves into a specific genre, but I then moved onto analysing contents pages and double-page spreads. When looking at the contents pages, I noticed that they are commonly very busy with subscription offers. They create this busy feel by not only using multiple images, but also by the use of  offers, band index's and in some cases, previews of what is inside the magazine. Yet again, I believe that the research is key before the production of my magazine because by the time I get around to creating my interpretation of the page, I will have a vast image of what I could create due to the fact that I have seen many different pages and have noticed how they have been successful.
     
      Finally, I looked at double page spreads and how they don't only fulfill the needs and wants of the audience about the artist, but it also gives them the sense of having a personal relationship with the artist and also ultimately has the main purpose of adhering to the star image of the interviewee and and assists them in growing as a celebrity. Throughout my research, I noticed that the idea of star image seems to be more present in the rap and R'n'B' genre and I believe this to be because of the fact that in indie magazines, the artists are perceived as being underground and usually care more about their music rather than the fame and money.

My first diary entry will include the first tasks that I have had to do so far in the start of my AS level Media. First off, I had to create an index page and front cover for a school magazine in our preliminary task. I believed this to be an easy task as the magazine did not have to be of a high standard, but instead just had to include the majority of the general conventions seen in a magazine. Whilst doing the task, we had to use photoshop and this was used as a warm-up and refreshment of my memory before we get around to doing the main task. Next, we had to do deep analysis' of three front pages, contents and double-page spreads from magazines. I found this a bit more challenging as it takes time to deeply annotate the magazines using key terms. To conclude, all of the tasks so far have cleared the cobwebs from my mind, and I feel as if I am breaking back into the media mind-set.

Media Key Concepts Report on Prezi

The key concepts report I did was on a magazine that was to be similar to the magazine I am looking to create and I therefore chose NME as it is in the same genre but also because of its success in the market and the fact that it is aimed at people from the same age group and social class as what my magazine is going to be aimed at.
     Firstly, I looked at the audience of NME and in particular who is most likely to be targeted and how the magazine is going to appeal to them. Moreover, I looked at why this group has been targeted and I generally denoted that men are going to be likely to read the magazine as women have a greater competition from gossip magazines. Although, this still means that the contents have to be interesting and meet the needs and expectations of the audience as there are other magazines on the market that could fulfill this purpose.
     Next, I looked at the general conventions of the magazine and the first thing that I had noticed was the house colour scheme that is kept the same in every edition. I believe this to be successful as it gives the magazine a brand image that is instantly recognisable by the audience and therefore is influencial in the perceptions of the magazine. Plus, the fact the magazine is always there to keep the audience up to date assists the reader with creating a relationship with the magazine as they will put trust into the magazine. Also, it is certain that the magazine will definitely include an artist that is popular at the time or have events up and coming. The magazine do this in order to entertain and inform the audience, but also to imply that their magazine gets all the latest information first.
    I then looked at the representation and how the magazine represents not only itself, but the people it features too. Generally, I noticed that the main artist included in NME magazine will always be represented as being the best thing around at the moment. However, this is understandable as it is done in order to make the reader feel as though they are reading an exclusive interview and something which other magazines cannot offer. Finally, if the story or artist is very important the person can be represented in their own way based upon their own star image.
     To conclude, I looked at the institution which distribute NME which is IPC media who are one of the largest institution companies in the U.K. and having them as the owner of the magazine signifies to the audience that the magazine is successful  as they have been chosen by a very big company.Although, due to the growth of tablets and internet, print magazines are falling drastically in sales and may even die out soon due to the world being overpowered by technology.

Preliminary Task

For the preliminary task set by Mr.Fisher, I was to create a front cover and contents page for a magazine for the genre of our school. I started by drafting up both pages on plain A4 paper. I already knew how to create a successful and effective magazine due to my previous knowledge of magazines from making one last year and also researching them deeply. Next, Mr. Fisher set us homework to outline the drafts to make them more visible for when they would be scanned later. I completely this job effectively, and then progressed to making my draft on Adobe Photoshop CS3.

         

           Firstly, before creating the layout of my page I had to take pictures which were to be used on both of the pages. I got a few of my class mates to pose for images in set up situations (for example a student with a piece of paper pretending to be receiving results). The photographs had to also be taken to relate to the sell-lines that I had earlier created.  I then went back into the classroom and uploaded the pictures to the media-link station for later use where I could easily import them to my work.

         Once I had finally got everything I needed to make a presentable magazine, I went onto Adobe Photoshop CS3 and began to create the general appearance of the magazine. To begin with, I used the text tool to create a masthead but also the plugs around the edge of the cover. Afterwards, I used the rectangle tool with a fill, to create banners at both the top and bottom of the magazine. However, I made sure that I included the general conventions of a magazine in order to make my magazine successful and suitable to the genre. I achieved this by including things like: a barcode, e-mail, price, issue number and a button sell-line. My sell lines included: "Robson ties up uniform comotion" as sell lines like these are ones which are going to be most relevant to the genre and appealing to the audience. Once the general design and text was completed, I had to import my cover image. I attained this by pressing "Ctrl+O" then finding my image. When the image was opened, I used the 'Magic Wand' tool to selecet and remove the background. Then the image was clicked and dragged onto my front cover to complete the cover.

         Afterwards, I had to create a contents page for the same magazine. I started a new page in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and began, yet again, by creating the text first. The 'text tool' was instrumental for my construction of the contents as it has a lot more text than the cover. I began by creating the headline: "Contents" in large font at the top. I decided to use 'Impact' font as it is both bold and eye-catching, therefore making it the focal point of the page. I kept to the house design of my magazine by keeping the same font for the other writing on the page (Lucida Caligraphy). The text tool was again used to construct all of the sell-lines for the key articles that were to be included in my magazine. The headlines of the articles were to be in different font to again distinguish the importance of them away from the normal articles. I also created a box around the headlines using the rectangle, and filled it with a contrasting colour to make it stand out more.

          The final touch to my contents, and the preliminary task was to import the photograph that I had taken ealier to the contents to give the readers an insight into what articles than can expect from this issue. I then repeated the same method as done previously. Although this time, once the image was opened and the layer had been duplicated; I had trouble with using the 'Magic Wand' tool to select the background. So, I had to change the size of the brush in order to make my selecting more accurate. I then selected the whole of the people in my image, right clicked on the image and selected 'Select Inverse' and deleted the background. I then simply clicked and dragged my models over into my contents page to complete it.