Ruby writes an AS Media blog or something...: January 2013

Thursday, 31 January 2013

Plan for Photography Shoot

This is the plan for my photography shoot for my magazine which I'm going to do on Thursday. This plan isn't completely right as I found out that Katie Sutherland wasn't coming to do the photoshoot so it will actually be Chloe Lam and instead of a guitar for the props for the contents page, it will be a ukelele.

Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Reader Profiles

Reader Profile 1:

Name: Amy
Age: 17
Favourite colour: Green
Favourite band: Blink 182
Favourite genre: Rock/Alternative
Favourite magazine: Q
Reads magazines often?: Sometimes.
Likes: Star wars, cats and the Hobbit.
Dislikes: Frogs, the colour yellow and Miley Cyrus.
One word to describe themselves: Crazy
Hobbies: Drawing and hanging out with friends
Favourite Book: Lord of the Rings
Subjects: Art, English Lit, Media and Psychology

Reader Profile 2:

Name: Melanie
Age: 16
Favourite colour: Red
Favourite band: Chameleon Circuit
Favourite genre: Indie Rock
Favourite magazine: NME
Reads magazines often?: Not always but when she has time
Likes: Reading, her pet dog, tumblr
Dislikes: Annoying people, RS and The Lovely Bones movie
One word to describe themselves: Awesome
Hobbies: Acting and Trampolining
Favourite Book: Hunger Games
Subjects: History, Drama, Geography and Maths

Contacting Artist and Manager.

These are the messages that I had with my artist however, now they cannot come to the school. This is unfortunate however I have asked one of my school friends if it is possible for them to be my artist for my magazine. She said yes so it's all okay now.

Anyway, these are the messages...

Monday, 28 January 2013

Contents Page Flat Plan 2 : New and Improved

Contents Page 2:

I have a much larger photograph on the contents page to make it more appealing. It is also of the cover story which shows where the actual article is, this is what the reader was most probably drawn in by when they saw the front cover. That means that they will most probably want to see where that particular article is.
I made the title change colour when it hits her hair in the image as it is the same colour; this makes it seem interesting as that way of writing the title is never used. I asked my friend if they could actually read it and they said yes so no worries there.
I also wrote the page number in quite large letters. I like this; it shows the reader what they are looking for. That is not the only image though; I have 4 others with subtext to tell them which article the image is from, it also matches with the contents list. I made sure that the list is big enough to read as my focus group said that it was too small.
The colour scheme of the contents page matches with the cover and the double page spread so the reader will know that it is the same magazine.
I tried to make the contents professional rather than childish and so I asked one of the people from the focus group about if in comparison, the contents page is not childish like the one that they were looking at in the video. She said that it was a much nicer layout and it didn't look at all childish so that is good.

Front Cover Flat Plan 2 : New and Improved

Front Cover 2:

I am so happy with how this turned out. I changed the text layout as the last time I did the flat plan, it was everwhere and it wasn't that neat. I have still got the same colour scheme and it looks much nicer on the front cover now that I have moved everything around.
I have the cover story quote as the biggest text (apart from the magazine name obviously) so that the reader will know what the large image is in reference to and what the main story is.
I changed the name of the magazine to MAG to stop confusion and I wrote magazine name underneath.
I really like the part of the cover which says 'Plus', that is the conventional thing that you would see on a front cover and it looks neat.
I could have put more images on the front but I didn't want to and I have met the amount of images that we have to have in our three pages overall.

Points to improve on.

What I have learnt about what I need to do to improve.

According to our peer assessment, I should think of a name for my magazine which I will have to do anyway but I can understand that it will look better on the new flat plan if it is more like the final magazine look.

Also, she said that I should add more text to the contents page. I will definitely do this as you don’t really know what is going to be inside.
On the front page, I want to change the red writing that says ‘Interview with the Arctic Monkeys’ to an orange font as I feel that the front page looks a bit to cluttered with colour and my main two colours are orange and light blue.
I also think that this will fit with the colour scheme better. Another thing I need to improve are the fonts, some of them are a bit messy and so I want to neaten those up a bit.

These are the points of my flat plans that I need to improve on.

Double Page Spread Flat Plan

Double Page Spread:

I really like this flat plan. It has just the right amount of colour as it isn't too overwhelming. The flat plan looks like there is little colour however the artist will be wearing the same colours and so it will look better when it is finally done.
I used my focus group's feedback on the unconventional layout of the double page spread to help me decide on the final layout. I really like it, it looks clean and nice and I think that the reader will like it.
The focus group said that you should always have the title of the article at the top of the page so that is what I have done here. I don't have anything I need to improve on, I think. I like the colours, layout and the images.

Contents Page Flat Plan 1

Contents Page:

I think that this contents page is a bit boring and bland, I tried to stick with what my focus group said to. I used the same colours as the front cover but it still looks a bit bland and also a bit childish which is what my focus group did not like.
I also think that because it looks quite bland (it won't when it has images) I think I should maybe a larger image it make the contents page and therefore the actual magazine more appealing.

Front cover Flat Plan 1

Front cover:

I do not like this front cover, there are some mistakes on it to do with colours and I think that the flat plan looks very messy. I think that I could do it better.
The text that says 'Inside look into Bombay Bicycle club's new tour.' is not a nice font and so I think that I could make that look better.
Also I made a mistake of adding an extra colour which was red for the text in the top right hand corner which says 'Interview with the Arctic Monkeys' I went over it in orange to try and show that it would be in orange next time as red does not fit with the colour scheme. I also realised that the green outfit that I have drawn doesn't go with the magazine either.
I do however like the font and colour of the title 'Quote from magazine' I will definitely use that kind of font for the actual final piece.
The positioning of the text is not very nice. I think that the text is all over the place and the text about Bombay Bicycle Club's new tour is actually bigger than the cover story's headline.
Also, not many people were clear with the title IOM which stands for Initials of Magazine because I have not made a name yet, although the title 'Initials of Magazine' is written underneath it so when I come to making my front cover, I will have to make that more clear.

Focus Group

I asked my friends a few questions about this magazine in order to help me with finding out what I need to do to for my magazine layout.

This was the magazine that I gave them.

I realised from this focus group that I need the double page spread to look more colourful so that it doesn't look like a newspaper and make the reader feel bored.

I also need to link the colours from the front page to the contents page and the double page spread because otherwise it doesn't seem like the same magazine.

The outfit that the artist wears should be matching the colour scheme of the magazine in order to make it not look messy.

They said that they liked the positioning of the photograph over the title of the magazine but that it would have to be positioned so that you can still read the name.

They also said that they did not like the contents page layout because the actual list for the contents was very small and the whole layout looked very childish.

They did however like the layout of the DPS. Although it still looked a bit like a newspaper and had hardly any colour, the actual layout was good and they liked that it wasn't the conventional way of showing a Double Page Spread.

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Contacting An Artist

The artist that I chose to contact is called Katie Sutherland. The genre of music that she plays is Indie/Folk/Acoustic/Pop and so I thought that she would be a great artist to photograph and interview for my magazine. She used to play music under the name 'Pearl and the Puppets' but she has now changed it to Katie Sutherland.

The message that I sent to her said:

Hello Katie,

I am currently doing my media A-level and as part of our coursework, we have to make a magazine which features an artist. I am a huge fan of your music and I was wondering if I could carry out an interview with you and also take some photographs for the front cover, contents page and double page spread. The genre that I have chosen for my magazine is Folk/Indie and you are perfect for that category. This is a link to my blog which is on the journey of my magazine coursework www.rubyparkerasmedia.blogspot.co.uk The coursework is worth 50% of my overall grade and so I would be extremely grateful if the interview could take place.

The interview (if it does happen) will happen in my school which is in London and would hopefully be on the 28th of January. I am sorry that this is very short notice but I hope that you can come.

Thank you very much,

Ruby Parker-Harbord x

(Then I put the address of the school)

I contacted her through her website http://www.katiesutherland.co.uk/

Today I got a reply back informing me that she would try her best to help me so she had sent my original message to her manager to see if the date would suit her.

This is the reply.

So fingers crossed that she can come ^_^

Survey

I handed out a short survey to 12 people and got them to answer the multiple choice questions so I can see a majority of answers to help me with my magazine and improve it.

This was the survey that I handed out with the 3 questions that I asked people, on it.

Once I had got the information, I transferred it to Excel and made various graphs to show my results.

This shows that people aren't as bothered with magazines as they usually buy them whenever they want to as opposed to the person who buys their magazine once a week which they probably do because they love that magazine or they collect particular ones.

This information shows that no one buys folk in the majority of people who I asked to fill this survey out, however I understand that the reason that they don't buy folk magazines is because there aren't many in the market. So for my next post I might have to ask people about if they would buy folk magazines if there was more of a variety or if they were more common in shops.

It also shows that an equal amount of people will buy a collaborative magazine as opposed to Rock and Indie ones and 2 people will usually not go for this genre or just magazines in general.

The majority of the people who answered this survey said that they would pay £2-£2.99 for a magazine so I now know how to price the magazine that I make.

I will be posting my data on NME with a group who analysise it, sometime this week.