Flat Plan - Double Page Spread

 This is my third and final rationale and flat plan, this one specifically is for my double page spread article. Completing these flat plans and rationales has helped me to get a sound idea of how I would like the design of my final product to be and writing the rationale has helped me to get down all of my creative ideas about my final product. I know have a good idea as to how my final product is going to look. These plans however are not set in stone and there is a potential that I could change them before my final product is completed.

 

Flat Plan - Contents Page

This is the flat plan and rationale that I completed for the contents page of my final product.  I completed both of these things for my front cover, contents page and double page spread.

Flat Plan - Front Cover

 This is the flat plan that I completed as a plan for my final product. There is a drawing and a written rationale.

Institutional Research

This is the table that I created while I was doing some research into the different publishing companies that are around so I could decide which one would be best to publish my magazine with. I have researched six different companies all of which specialise in the publication of magazines. I wanted to look at a wide range of companies to see which one would be most suited for my magazine. Looking at which magazines the companies already published helped me immensely to decide which company I should pick because I would not want to pick a company that published magazines that were no where near the same as my chosen genre. I have decided to pick 'Natmags' to publish my magazine. Here is a list explaining why I picked 'Natmags' and why I did not pick some of the other companies.
I chose Natmags' because - it is a British publishing company
                                         - it has a large, diverse list of magazines already published
                                         - they don't publish any 'teen pop' magazines - my product would be unique
I didn't choose 'Emap' because - it specializes in 'business-to-business' magazines
                                                - it does not solely focus on magazine publication
                                                - magazines already published are nothing like my product
I didn't choose 'Conde Nast' because - it is not a British company  (this was something I looked for in a publication house)
                                                         - it is the 'originator of lifestyle magazines'
                                                         - magazines already published are more high-end than my magazine

Analysis of Other Student's Work

I have analysed the work of 5 different students who completed their magazines last year. Each magazine belonged to the music genre but was a different type of music. It helped me to look at this other students work as I could analyse the strength and weaknesses of their work and I can see the standard that is expected of my final product. I can use the strengths I have found and manipulate them so they fit with my magazine and I can review the weaknesses to ensure that these do not occur in my final product.
From this exercise I have found out these following things that I am going to take into consideration when creating my final product....
- use a variety of colours in the colour palette as only using a few colours can be overpowering and at times dull
- ensure an equal balance between image and text on the double page spread so one of the two is not too intense
- check that all text used on the magazine is spelled correctly and is grammatically correct to give the double page spread article a professional finish
- do not use blurry images as it makes the magazine look unprofessional
- follow common conventions of magazines for front cover, contents page and double page spread article

 Below I have included the notes I made while reviewing other student's work. I only included the names of the magazines and have not included any images or students names as I do not think this would be fair to the other students

Potential Images for Magazine

I created this video below so I could post some of the best images from my photo shoot from my magazine. I have selected the images from a larger collection so if at a later date I decide I do not like these images I have more to choose from. These images are not taken at the locations which I first suggested in an earlier post. I changed my mind on the location as taking them outside was not as practical as I first had thought as the weather is very unpredictable making the phot shoot hard to plan and the lighting was not quite as I wanted it. I took the images inside and used a mixture of natural and artificial light. Fortunately the area used for the photo shoot is rich in natural light so artificial light was only used on a few images. I prefer the images that are not artificially lit as the look much more natural, which is how I wanted my images to look.
(Some of the images are made too look more blurry on this video)

Questionnaire Results

In an earlier post I posted a questionnaire that I had designed which I was going to distribute to 20 members of my target audience so I could get an idea of their opinions of magazines. I only asked females to fill in my questionnaire as they are the only gender that I am targeting. I stuck to asking people under the age of 21 because again they are the only age group that I am targeting. I am going to use the results of the individual questions to help me create my final product.

 This pie chart shows the age of the people who completed my questionnaire. I only asked people who were members of my target audience. I tried to focus on the younger members of the target age group as I think these are the most likely to read a teen pop magazine. Although I do still value the opinions of the older participants as some of these may still be reading the magazine.

 This question will be a big help when creating my double page spread as it will help me to decide how I will organise the layout of my magazine. The results clearly show that the target audience prefer image led articles which is what I was expecting as younger people will prefer to look at images rather than read a large amount of text. This makes the article writing easier but will mean I will have to ensure I have some good quality double page spread images.

 In particular this question will help me when designing the front cover of my magazine. I will be able to see which feature I should spend the most time and effort on. Based on these results a younger target audience values the main image. From these results I am going to ensure I get a very good quality main image as I hope this will attract my target audience. I am going to make sure that this image is appealing to an audience and perhaps ask sample of my target audience to rate different images.

 I am going to take the results of this questionnaire and use these when designing my contents page. The features which have been highlighted as the most popular I will focus on in my contents page. Articles was the clear favourite which means I will focus a great deal of attention onto my double page spread as this is the only article that I can show. I am going to focus highly on free gifts and competitions on both my contents page and front cover to ensure both of these pages appeal to my target audience.

With this question I was aiming to establish which music genre was the most popular with my target audience (teenagers) as if it was not pop and I was creating a teen pop magazine my magazine would not sell well. Fortunately the most popular genre was pop. This means that will have a captive target audience and I will be able to link features such as adverts on my contents to the pop music genre.

The favourite band/artist that was highlighted in my questionnaire results was 'Little Mix.' I am going to use this result to plan celebrity that I am going to use for the front cover image and for the double page spread article. This result has confirmed to me that I am going to use girl band as the celebrity for my magazine as this is mainly what appeals to my target audience. I am also going to include other images but the girl band will be my main content.

I thought it particularly important to ask my target audience about the price of a magazine. Pricing a magazine to high is a crucial mistake that I could not afford to make. My participants made a unanimous decision that a price in between £1 and £2.99 would be most appropriate. Subsequently I have decided to price my magazine at £2.50. Price is particularly important with a younger teenage audience because very few readers will have jobs meaning the magazine cannot be too expensive.

From the results to this question I can research the magazines that my target audience have highlighted as their favourite to read so I can establish what features would attract them to the magazine. 'Look' was the favourite magazine of my target audience and this is a celebrity gossip come fashion magazine. I don't know how many aspects of this magazine I will be able to include in my magazine but I am going to look to the magazine for inspiration.

I found the answer to this question interesting as a magazine competition is something I had been considering as an enigma code for my magazine although I wasn't sure how my target audience would react to this. I am pleased with the result as it means I can go ahead with my plans for a magazine competition. The competition will draw in readers in as they will have the chance to win attractive prizes. I am going to look into desired prizes in more detail in later posts.

The information from this question is essential when I am designing my front cover. A front cover is the first thing that a reader will look at, and immediately from the front cover, the reader will make a judgement on whether to read that magazine. I now have a good understanding of which colours I should be using on my front cover and have decided on using mainly pinks and purples but trying to incorporate some other colours subtly to make the cover as eye catching as possible.

This question will not help me with the design of my magazine but this information would  be crucial in the post production aspect of my magazine. I could create an online version which readers could access by paying a monthly subscription or paying when they read. The  most popular of the four choices was local shop, which is to be expected as transport is limited for young teenagers. From this question I know my magazine would be competing with other teen pop magazines on a shop shelf so have to ensure that my front cover is as attractive and as eye catching as possible.

Double Page Spread - Essential Conventions

I completed this mind map after I deconstructed three double page spreads taken from music magazines. On this mind map I have mentioned all of the conventions that I consider essential to include on my products double page spread and a brief explanation of why I think that and their purpose on the page.

Inspirational Texts

'Smash Hits' and 'Top of the Pops' magazine are two well established, long running magazines that belong to the teen pop genre. They both have a very high number of devoted readers most of whom are aged between 11 and 15. I have deconstructed both of these magazine front covers because I thought they were perfect examples of teen pop magazines.
I have named 'Smash Hits' as a inspirational text because it uses many of the common conventions of magazine front cover but develops them so they are unique and suited to their target audience. Even though each front cover of 'Smash Hits' visually looks very different they use the same conventions and have the same house style. While researching different 'Smash Hits' front covers I found that they changed the design their front cover a few years ago. They updated the style of the product and modified it to suit a new generation which brought a new target audience.
'Top of the Pops' is a magazine that I myself used to read as a younger teenager. From a personal perspective the layout of the front cover of this magazine is what encouraged me to read it. The front cover not only hosts images from the main article but also from other articles within the magazine. This acts an enigma code that visually draws a reader to the magazine as by looking at a picture you can get a feel of  the article much faster than you would if you read something about it.

Jarvis Cocker Task

Above I have included the front cover that I have produced as part of the 'Jarvis Cocker' task and the feedback sheet that I received from my teacher. I completed the 'Jarvis Cocker' task on Photoshop. This task allowed me to become more familiar with the program and allowed me to learn the function of different tools. I like the image that I used on the front cover as it had eye-line match with the audience. Eye line match is something that I believe to be a key convention for a front cover as it draws a reader to the magazine. It is a mid shot meaning that the image is close enough to the model that it can portray emotion but not so close that the models face is all you can see. A mid shot is something that I am looking to include on my own magazine. On reflection, I think I should have chose a brighter colour for the 'sell lines' and 'enigma codes' as they do not stand out from the background of the front cover. This is something that I am going to  make sure I avoid on my final product because I think it makes the front cover look unprofessional. Whilst the image may be a mid shot and have eye-line match I do not think it was the perfect image to choose for my front cover as it is very blurry which makes the front cover look unprofessional. I think that there is too much dead space on my product, especially since it is a front cover. Dead space is not something that you see much of in professional magazines. I could have filled the space with other images or text which related to the sub head lines. I think that they layout of my magazine was too simple and could have included some more complex design which is something that I am going to look to do in my final product.
I am going to take the strengths from this task and develop so they would appeal to my target audience. There is areas of weakness to this piece of work that I am going to take into consideration when creating my final product so these weaknesses do not appear on my magazine. I hope that by doing this I will improve the grade I received for this task and achieve a higher grade for my final product.

Inspirational Band

When deciding what models I should use for the photo shoot for my magazine I looked to different British pop bands for inspiration. I looked particularly at bands which appeal to teenage girls, my target audience, and then from this I decided which look would be the most achievable for my photo shoot.

With their pop music spanning a decade, Girls Aloud are most definitely an iconic British girl band. From the onset they have produced pop music which has topped the charts, not only in the UK, but across the Globe. Each band member went from normality to stardom in the blink of an eye after featuring on the much loved 'Popstars: The Rivals.' This factor very much made them a band that personified the 'girl next door' image. This image is what made them so appealing to their incredibly large fan base. They were accessible to a watcher, to a reader or to a listener because people understood them. They were just like everyone else. Fans may even have seen a little bit of themselves in a particular band member. They were normal girls living their dream. Throughout their career Girls Aloud have managed to mix the ordinary with the extra-ordinary. Normality and effortless glamour have gone side by side as they switched between magazine shoots and video shoots and TV interviews and radio interviews. Even when dressed to the nines in their video for their Number 1 single 'The Promise,' Girls Aloud managed to create an image which embodied flawless beauty and ultimate glamour, yet still they were the same girls from next door.
This is the image that I am aiming for with my photo shoot. I want to create a band that teenage girls can relate to. Glamour may not be something that every teenage girl aspires to, which is why I am not aiming to focus on this in my double page spread, but it is still an element of the pop band industry that cannot be ignored.

This picture perfectly captures Girls Aloud 'girl next door' image. They are in a similar style of clothing to how I would like my models to be dressed.

This is the official video of Girls Aloud's hit 'The Promise.' This is the video referred to in the above paragraph.

Double Page Spread #3

This is the third and final double page spread that I have deconstructed. This is from a different magazine from the other two deconstructions that I completed and I feel I benefited from looking at the different style that this magazine has and it has allowed me to see how this magazine uniquely displays the common conventions of a double page spread. Each of the double page spreads I have looked at have helped me to get a grasp of the essential and optional conventions of a double page spread. This exercise has given me an idea of how I would like the double page spread of my product to look. I am going to take some ideas from these double page spreads but manipulate them so they would appeal to my target audience and fit with my chosen magazine genre - 'teen pop.' Now that I have deconstructed front covers, contents pages and double page spreads I feel I have enough research from different magazines to start thinking about the design and layout of my own product. I plan to take aspects of all of the magazines I have looked at and apply these to my product in unique and individual ways.

Double Page Spread #2

This is the second double page spread that I have deconstructed. This is from the same magazine as the first double page spread I deconstructed. Although I had originally wanted to look at three different double page spreads from three different magazines look at two from the same magazine helped me as it allowed me to observe the 'house style' of the magazine. It is evident that this magazine has a strong house style that they continue through every issue of their magazine. Even though there is a house style, the magazine have changed elements of the double page spread so it is unique to each article. If I was producing more than one double page spread, this is an element I would look to include in my magazine. One thing that I particularly like about this article is that the writer has included some of the celebrities song lyrics in the title, the audience will immediately pick up on this as the majority of the readers will be a fan of this particular celebrity. There is many elements of this double page spread that I am looking to include in my own product, all of my desired conventions will be posted at a later date.

Double Page Spread #1

This is the first of three double page spreads that I have deconstructed. I tried to take the double page spreads from a variety of magazines so I could see how different magazines displayed different conventions. This magazine in particular was unique as the title was laid out in a very individual way which will immediately attract the audiences attention as it differs from the norm. This magazine may not be a teen pop magazine but I found it beneficial to look at this double page spread because all double page spreads, despite the genre, share many of the same conventions. I think I would like to include more images in my double page spread than the amount that there is in this one as, although I like the one main image, it takes up a lot of the space on the page and is quite distracting to the reader. Not only has this exercise allowed me to highlight the conventions the magazine has used, it has allowed me to think about what effect this will have on a reader and how important every last detail of a magazine is. I am going to use conventions from this magazine but manipulate them so they will appeal to my target audience. After I have deconstructed three double page spreads I am going to produce a mind map which will show all of the conventions that I am aiming to include in my double page spread.

Potential Poses

After reviewing different types of poses I have selected a few that I think to be appropriate for my magazine.

The first one is a 'Super Smiler' pose. This is very common on the front covers of teen pop magazines. The pose has eye-line match which is appealing to an audience as it draws their attention and draws them into the magazine. The fact that the model is smiling gives a happy impression and suggests that the article is lighthearted which will appeal to an audience. I would like the 'Super Smiler' pose to feature in my front cover image. Here is an example of a 'Super Smiler' pose.

A second pose that I would like to include is the 'Chocolate Box' pose. Which is when the lips of the model are slightly apart and it is either full on of their face or slightly to the side. This pose emphasises flawless beauty. I would like this pose to feature on my double page spread. Here is an example of a 'Chocolate Box' pose.

The third and final pose that I am considering including in my magazine is the 'Invitational' Pose. This emphasises the eyes of the model and looks very mysterious. It is a pose which draws in the reader and is a soft sell. I am thinking about including this image on my contents page of double page spread. I think you could possibly use them for a front cover image but I think that a 'Super Smiler' pose would be more appropriate for my magazine genre. Below is an example of an 'invitational' pose.

There was one other poses that we looked at but I have decided to try and avoid them for my magazine. wanted to avoid a Romanic/Sexual pose because I thought it to be inappropriate for my target audience. This image usually features one person but is not common in the teen pop genre. Below is an example of a 'romantic/sexual' pose.

Photography Powerpoint

In class we looked at a photography powerpoint which displayed different photography techniques and how we could use these to get the best possible images for our magazine. We learned about the different distances that can be used to portray different things in an image. From looking at multiple different images I have decided that I would like to try and take a medium shot which I could use for my front cover image. I decided on trying to get a medium shot because it is close enough to show emotion in a characters face but not too large that the face takes up the whole front cover. Here is an example of medium shot and I would like something similar to this on my front cover.

From the powerpoint I also decided to include images that are bright and vivid in colour. It is a common feature of my magazine genre and I find the images to be more attractive and appealing to the reader. The bright colours portray happiness and give a nice impression of the magazine to the reader. Here is an example of and image that I would like to recreate for my magazine.

One of the slides discussed the type of images that we could include in our magazine. There was two different types of images shown and that was a 'Candid Image' and a 'Posed image.' As far as possible I would like to include Candid Images in my magazine. The poses will be as natural as possible. I think that these types of images will fit better with my ideas for my double page spread. Natural images will appeal more to my target audience because young teenagers will be more attracted to a person that they can relate to. Someone in a natural environment with a natural pose will be easier for young teenagers to relate to.

This image is a posed image.

This image is a candid image.

Models

I have started to think about potential models for the photos for my magazine. I have decided that I would like to include a band in my magazine as this is a common feature of magazines. I have asked four of my friends to take part in the photoshoot and subsequent to me print screening this inbox all have agreed and we have arranged a date and time for the photoshoot to take place.

Preliminary Task

Prior to starting the production of my magazine I had to complete a preliminary task. The images show in this post are images of the magazine that I completed as part of my preliminary task. I took all of the images myself although none of them have been edited due to a lack of time and a lack of knowledge and understanding of programmes such as Photoshop. My overall grade for this magazine was a ‘C’ as stated on my feedback form. We were allocated two hours to take photos and put together the front cover and contents page of a college magazine. I was disappointed with the grade I received for this piece as I feel I have the potential to complete the work to a higher standard. I hope to receive a higher grade for my final magazine as by the time I have completed that I will have been able to practice my editing skills and will have had more time to complete the task.

This task gave me a good understanding of how a magazine has to look and the different techniques needed to produce a professional looking magazine. I completed the task on PowerPoint as this was the programme that I felt most comfortable on. I found PowerPoint to be a good programme to complete this task on as it had all the tools necessary. It was quick and easy to put my magazine together. However, for my final product I will be using Photoshop as it is a more advanced programme which includes all of the necessary tools that are essential in the production of my magazine. I feel that Photoshop will give a the product a more professional look.

The main difficulty that I encountered when making this magazine was a lack of time. I did finish the product in the two hours that we were allocated but it was a massive rush. I think that I spent too much time taking images and not enough time putting my magazine together. I spent about 45 minutes taking pictures which left me with one hour and fifteen minutes to produce the magazine. I found deciding the design of my magazine the most challenging as creativity is an area that I have always found to be difficult. In the whole magazine process I found writing the text to be the easiest but I think this is due to an A-Level in English Literature.

I chose the images that I did because they were all appropriate for the story lines that I have stated on my contents pages. All of the images have good lighting and backgrounds which come together to make the images look professional. The eye-line match on the front cover will draw the reader to the magazine and entice them to read it. I tried to include a variety of images which are each unique and individual so that they all interest a different reader. I have also decided to include some of the photos that I did not include in my magazine and the reasons why I thought they were inappropriate.

 I did not use this image because it is slightly blurry as it was an 'action shot.' I had wanted to include it in the contents page of my magazine as it links to the image that I used on the front cover. I also thought that the background of the image was slightly too 'busy' and there was too many potential distractions for the reader which would prevent them from reading all the text.

 I was put of from using this image as again I think that the background it too 'busy' and there is too many distractions for the reader. I could not find a suitable place to use this image as it was not related to any of the story lines that I included on my contents page. Finally I did not like the lighting in this shot as I feel the light is very evidently unnatural and looks quite unprofessional.

 I quite like this image because I think it is unique and individual compared to the other images that we had taken for the preliminary task. I think that the lighting is good as it is natural which makes the image look more professional. I had originally wanted to include the image on the contents page of my magazine but however I could not find an appropriate place for it as it did not fit with any of my story lines.

When taking this image I had planned for it to be my main front cover image. I think that the lighting and background are perfect for a front cover as the background is plain and I could easily layer things over this and the lighting is bright. However when constructing my product I decided against using this image because there was no eye-line match from the model and an eye-line match is important from the front cover as it draws the reader to a magazine.