Diary: 10/01/13

Transcript: Today I continued to work on my magazine and got feedback from my teacher on it. She told me the weaknesses and good things about my magazine and advised me with what I should change so I wrote down notes. This helped me a lot because it allowed me to learn about what I need to change within my magazine, therefore I found it a lot easier to continue working on it and making changes. However, the hard part I found this lesson was that I found there was a lot to change in my magazine in order to make it look more professional, so I had to adjust to my feedback and prepare to change a lot to it.

Diary: 09/01/13

Diary: 09/01/13

Today I worked on adding descriptions for each powerpoint that I have uploaded to Blogger. This way, I have a short debriefing for each of my powerpoints which can help me for when I want to find planning documents to help me with making my magazine. The easy thing about this task was that I knew how to describe each document and I knew it would help me in the future, however my weakness in this task was that I found it hard to make my descriptions brief and short.

Here is an example of the sort of description/debriefing I added to each one of the documents on my blog:

Focus Group

Focus Group

I cut this video on a program called 'Adobe Media Encoder' so that my input in the focus group discussion was viewable only. Looking at this video, I can see that I learned a few things from the focus group. In preparation for the video-taped discussion, I made sure to print out a few pages of my contact sheet and then I passed some of these out along the table during the video for everyone to look at and tick/cross/circle which pictures they thought would look best used as the main image on my magazine front cover. As you can see me explaining on the video here, when I took my contact sheets back in I found that people had circled mainly mid shots or close up and photos that my model weren't posing as much in. This portrayed to me that my target audience prefer pictures that are more natural and less forced/posed; - after the video I made sure to take this helpful information into account. 

The focus group discussion really helped me because not only was I shown that natural photos are preferred by my target audience, but I saw that most people had agreed with my original choice of main photo to go with, which was a picture of my model in a floral top crossing her arms at the back of her head making direct eye contact with the camera. This suggested two things to me; - firstly that the fact that my model is wearing a floral top in this photo could suggest that my target audience prefer bright, fun and bold clothing that stands out to them.. also, it suggested that maybe they prefer to feel a personal connection with the model and that direct eye contact displayed in that particular photo covers this for them. After realising this, I made sure to not only use this photo on my front cover but I took into account these results to make sure my magazine's photos were as suitable as possible for my target audience. Furthermore, another aspect the focus group helped me on was that when I asked everyone in the group what price would be best suited for my magazine, the majority of people said around £3.00 or below. My previous price I'd set was a lot higher than this so I made sure to change my price. Therefore this feedback was very beneficial from my focus group.

This class discussion allowed us all to get our own primary research when getting detailed information  about things that would be successful in producing our magazine. We even discussed what doesn't look professional leading us to critisize each of each other's work but allowing us to receive beneficial feedback in how to improve. This also taught me what I should and shouldn't include in my magazine. The focus group was an effective research method as I was able to ask my own target audience relevant questions that could be linked to my own magazine so that I could individually receive feedback that would help me.

Furthermore, the purpose of the focus group was to be involved in getting interactive with others and saying what comes naturally instead of doing independant research on the pros and cons of magazines. The advantages of carrying out the focus group were:

• We were able to receive information from non-verbal responses such as body language and facial expressions
• Results can be easier to understand than complicated statistical data
• We were able to learn about our target audience's personal opinions on many topics which made the focus group reliable as every individual in the group was my target audience's age, so I could trust that their answers could be generalised and be beneficial to the producing of my magazine
• The process of the focus group wasn't particularly time-consuming as each topic was brought up, every person was able to give their input instead of everyone being interviewed seperately which would of taken a lot longer

R&B Magazine FIRST DRAFT

Magazine Eee PDF

This is my magazine first draft. Here, we have my front cover, 2 pages to my contents page and 4 pages to my double page spread. The magazine name I picked was 'the game' representing the competition between artists that they call the game. Ideally this gives my magazine a fiery feel to it as the audience will feel as if it will consist varying amounts of contrasting artists competing with eachother. I used the house colours of purple, black and white; - simple, classy and very R&B. As we can see, on my front cover I have used many sell lines to attract the audience and have made sure that they are bold with drop shadows in order to stand out. Furthermore, it has features to further attract the audience such as a mention of a prize at stake "WIN! Free signed Ciara CD" so that they are aware that they will get a reward back for their money's worth. On the contents page I have used a sort of triangular purple shape with a low transparency to add a 'funky' and quirky feel to the page. It will be intriguing for the audience to view a magazine with a few features to it that are different to the usual. For the listing of the contents' headings such as "on the cover" and "exclusives" I have used a 'fancy' script font that looks quite formal and pretty. I think this adds a classy edge to the magazine. I have used many pictures too, and at the bottom of the page I have put a picture of an iPhone with my front cover on it and text next to it stating that the reader can download an app for the magazine, and next to this is the 'Twitter' logo allowing the reader to follow us on the social networking site. This allows my young audience involve themselves with my magazine online too which is what many teenagers nowadays like to do; - go on social networking sites. As you can see at the bottom of each page I have put the month and year "December 2012" and the page number in bold next to it, so that the audience can easily navigate through my magazine. On the double page spread I have used a white quote from the article to instantly capture the reader's attention, and then "CASSIE STARR" in capitals. The text runs throughout the page, laid-out organised and easy to navigate through. Then, I have put a black and white 3x3 grid of close ups of my model doing different facial expressions. I figured that the black and white colour adds a classy look to the page but yet the juxtaposition between my model's contrasting facial expressions creates a quirky look to it that the reader may instantly be drawn to. At the bottom of the page, I have also added some slanted pictures of my model supposedly "at her last photoshoot" and her "excstatic at her fans' reaction to her new album release". This adds a realistic feature to my magazine as it is almost giving evidence for the things "Cassie" has done and events that have happened such as these. On the second two pages of my double page spread I have used a long shot of my model inbetween the text and also a mid shot just to seperate the text and keep the reader interested in what is being said and the pictures being shown.

Props and Costume

Props & Costume

This props & costumes powerpoint presents my model's clothing, makeup and props used and it establishes my reasons & intentions behind why I chose these for her to use. This helped me because it allowed me to discover the R&B look for most females.

Magazine planning/inspiration

Magazine planning/inspiration

In order to plan my magazine front cover I began to look at fonts online for my masthead. I previously scanned through different fonts on Indesign, however I found that they weren't 'funky', 'Oldskool' or 'R&B' enough for me to use as my masthead. A masthead needs to be big, bubbly and be able to attract your target audience, so I used a website called 'www.dafont.com' and looked through the 'Oldskool' category for fonts. Straight away I discovered a font called 'Pincoyablack' which seemed perfect for my magazine. I've given an example of the font below saying 'Hannah'.

I found that this font was edgy and very R&B with the long curves slanting off of some of the letters. I figured that this font would be perfect to use for my masthead and infact I did use it in the end. This is what the masthead font on my front cover ended up looking like.

Making my front cover
Whilst making my front cover, I used many resources in order to help me such as going online and using 'Google Images', finding Vibe front covers and using them as inspiration in order to create mine. Also, my teacher helped me a couple of times with telling me what looks better on my front cover and what doesn't, aswell as giving me a magazine front cover to have a look at.

Making my double page spread
I'd already looked at previous double page spreads online so making my double page spread wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Aswell as this, my teacher gave me a double page spread to look at and its particular layout inspired me so I used this to help me. I found that some particular features of double page spreads really stood out to me such as this Solange Knowles one below for example.


The feature I took from this double page spread was the different black and white stances posed by Solange; - I used this feature and interpreted it into my own on my magazine by using a black and white 3x3 grid of my model's different facial expressions. I thought this was quite a quirky and fun feature to add to my magazine that would definitely attract the audience's attention. This is what the grid/double page spread ended up looking like.

Diary: 20/12/12

Diary: 20/12/12   

Transcript: Today I continued to work on my R&B magazine, completing final features of my front cover and my contents page. Then I began to work on my double page spread, making sure to make it look professional and organised. The hard part I found about this lesson was that I didn't quite know where to place the images and I also found it quite hard to complete my whole first draft within the lesson. However, the good thing I found about this lesson was that I quite enjoyed creating and designing my magazine and making it look how I wanted it to.