Analysis of existing magazines / Flat plans - Cover

First Analysing

Top of the pops magazine has inspired me the most; this is because I like the, layout, style, images and the fun of the magazine. I also like the age group that it’s based for, you can have a lot of fun with it. Top of the Pops magazine is monthly published. It features chart information, star gossip, fashion and beauty advice, quizzes, song lyrics and posters. It is an additional magazine for the TV show Top of the Pops. The magazine was launched in 1995 along with the show, which has now been cancelled however the magazine is still being published.

The main thing that stands out to me about this magazine is their colour scheme and fonts they've used, they've used 3 simple colours; white, pink and purple sparkle, this has made the presentation towards the page more eye catching and exciting, which I think works really well with their choice of fonts, they've used fonts that are quite free-flowing and elegant rather than bold and blunt, I think it works well with the target audience of young girls too, it's not so much a boys theme.

Their use of images works really well, they have a lot of images on their front page, but not loads so that it completely takes over and looks bad. Their main picture is most effective, Zac Efron is a big sex appeal to young girls so if they see him on the front cover of the magazine they'll want their parents to buy it for them, on the same subject, they use High School Musical as their theme so there is a bit of relevance to the other images too.

Another thing that stands out which is relevant to the age range, is the picture, the main thing that is seen when a magazine is picked up is the image as it is always the biggest part. The objects that make this picture stand out so much is the sparkles that cover the image. I think this is a really effective device to use. From the research that I done prior, the age range/gender of this magazine is 11-15 year old girls, so everything they have done/used has made the whole thing relevant towards them.

Second Analysing

I did not find the Smash Hits magazine quite as interesting or exciting as the Top of the Pops magazine, I think this is because it has a dull, ordinary colour scheme, it uses again 3 main colours, black, yellow and white, yet these aren't are interesting or as effective. I think this is because this magazine is more of a uni-sex magazine, it's not like Top of the Pops who is mainly targeted at girls, but has an equal interest from both genders. It's not 100% clear what the name of the magazine is because it is covered by the singer, but this could also be quite effective, it's effective because the magazine is a well known magazine that has been around for years that people will know what it is and would be able to tell by the style which magazine it is. The main thing that stands out is the phrase in the centre of the image reading; "SON OF DORK" I think this is only relevant if you know what they're talking about, to some people the word 'DORK' might just mean a rude offensive word, but to people of that generation and stereotypes that would be relevant and they may understand more.

I think the Top of the Pops magazine is presented a lot better than the Smash Hits magazine, to me it looks like Smash hits haven't really thought there design through, everything just seems so bold and blunt, where as with Top of the Pops they make it more smooth flowing and elegant.

Both magazines use strap lines in very different ways, Top of the Pops use theirs in a way which talks a little about each story, where as in the Smash Hits magazine they are simple with what they say, for example they just use the names of artists; Simon Webbe. Rihanna. They don't go into any detail about them at all.

Target Audience

http://www.bbcmagazinesadvertising.com/Magazines/Top_Of_The_Pops.html
The audience that I am targeting is the younger audience, I plan to aim it at the ages of people 14+, but I also plan to aim it at the gender of girls, I feel girls will be more interested in it than what a boy would be. The magazine that I am going to compare my magazine to is; Top of the Pops.
I got this information from the Top of the Pops website, it shows that the majority of people that read their magazine are girls at 81% aged 11-15, this is the target audience I'd like to associate my magazine with but with a slightly older audience.

Another source that I'm going to use to analyse Top of the Pops is http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html I visited their site and their results show that 139,000 people, that are 15-44 read the magazine, and of that 122,000 of them are woman.

Smash Hits magazine was a fortnightly magazine that had a huge target audience of young children "120,063 copies a fortnight were sold which was around 60,000 a week." http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4690000/newsid_4690200/4690232.stm

The socio-economic group for this genre of magazines what be people of B/C2 group, but the way the way that plan is set out is as household owners, so my statistics aren't very relevant for this, but predicting what type of background they come from this was the most relevant.

The typical type of person who would buy my magazine would have to be into Pop/'RnB' music. They would be quite 'girlie' and be into pink. Their interests would be fashion, gossip, boys, social networking sites, texting, make-up and celebrities. They would spend their money on clothes, make-up, hair products, shoes, sweets, jewellery and music. The TV programmes they would be into would be Hollyoaks, Eastenders, X Factor and Friends. The kinds of activities that they would enjoy would be shopping, partying, swimming, dancing and art. Their favourite shops would be New Look, H&M, Superdrug and River Island. The artists and groups that they would be into would be people such as Girls Aloud, Beyonce, Jonas Brothers, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Katy Perry, Pink, Chris Brown and Kanye West. Though the person they would most admire would be someone like Cheryl Cole.

Introduction of main task.

My main task is to create a music magazine. I have been asked to create the music magazine's; front cover, contents page and a double page spread. I was also asked to base my magazine on a type of music genre, there are a variety of music genres about but the genre that I have chosen to base my magazine on is Pop, the reason I have chosen this genre is because I feel the youth of today are more into Pop or 'RnB' music, so my plan is to make it interesting and valuable towards that generation.

Mock-up contents page

This is the mock up of my contents page, I designed this on Adobe InDesign CS2 then edited it on Adobe Photoshop to make it able to be in my evaluation. I got the idea of how I wanted it to look from another magazine and made a couple of changes as to how I wanted it to look.
I think the layout for it is really simple and would be easy to read plus there isn't too much going on that it would appear over the top and in-interesting.
I chose to use a capital letter with bold font for the start of every word of the masthead as I think personally, if I saw that on the contents page of a magazine, it would interest me so I think that appeals to most teenagers which is who my magazine target is for.

Complete Cover

This is my completed cover, I designed this on Adobe InDesign CS2, I made a sketch as to how I wanted it to look prior to designing it so everything was perfect. I kept the colour scheme to a minimum, using 4 different colours so not all the attention was bought to that. I then adjusted it on Adobe Photoshop, sto that I could put it into my evaluation. I am pleased with my completed version, as I thought it wasn't too 'over-whelming' it was basic but still eye catching.
I asked a fellow student if they would be interest and if it would interest them and all the feedback that I received was positive so I knew that it would approve to my target audience.
My colour choice were bright to appeal to my target audience, if the colours were dull, the whole theme to the magazine/genre to the magazine wouldn't be so 'effective.'

Flat Plans

These are the flat plans of my front cover and my contents page, I created these before I designed my final piece then adjusted it if I made any changes.
I got the idea for my contents page, from the contents page of the magazine 'REVEAL' I didn't want anything too over-powering for the contents, so I kept it fairly basic.
I also had the thought of my target audience in my head, I knew that them being the same age range as me, they wouldn't of wanted lots of information because they'd get bored easily, so I tried to keep it as basic and colourful as possible, without going to over the top. I tried to contain as many images as I felt needed, without making it look like a childrens magazine.

Photographs

These are the two pictures that I took for the main image on the front cover of my magazine. The image that I decided to use, was the image on the bottom, the reason I chose this image over the image on the top was because everything was wrong with the top image, the main noticeable problem was that the model was not looking straight on at the camera and another reason that this image was a bad image to use was because the lighting was really dark, both pictures were taken in the same place but the top image was not an ideal brightness. The reason that I chose the image on the bottom was because the lighting was just right and also the model was making eye contact with the reader, which automatically makes the reader feel engaged. The reason I also chose this picture was because it appealed to the target audience, one of my articles was pictures from freshers and a review of it, so I asked the model to pose in a 'Sailor' type way, which was relevant to one article.

Elisa Knight AS Media Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task I have been asked to create a magazine front cover using the software; Adobe InDesign CS2, this is also used by magazine artists. I have to use a picture of a person shoulders up as well as creating my own title for the magazine and also straplines and side colomns. The target audience for this magazine is for teenagers/students attending the college that are interested in the 'going on's' around the college, the age range specifically would be from 16-19 year olds.