Similar product research of contents page magazine Drummer- By sam.

Contents Page.

The Drummer contents page has a lot of information on it, it tells us about an exclusive interview which would get the reader interested as its private and they'd know all about it, also it shows loads of feature stories about plenty of artist which will interest people a lot. This helps to think of a contents page for my magazine as it shows what people would like to see and what will intrigue them with all the feature stories on the artists. This will help when it comes to designing my magazine, even the colours of the contents page have resemblance to the front cover of this magazine they follow the main house style of the magazine and knowing this I will be able to follow the style of my magazine while making it.

Similar product research NME front cover- Sam

In the NME front page which I'm researching im looking at the whole front cover to see whats good and what I could use in my magazine. Firstly the masthead on this issue contemplates with the front cover background as the light colours stand out with each other. The main artist which this front cover is trying to show the most stand out with the whole background and masthead. As this catches the eyes of people. The masthead and background doesn't usually suit the NME house style. This shows me that a change to stop the whole thing from being mainstream is good and can help to get more people interested into this magazine. This has helped decide what to do for my magazine as this magazine is one of the most popular around today. Also on the magazine there is indicators on the side of the page which shows a mini contents on the front cover so people looking at the front cover realise what is in the magazine, doing this most people will pick up the magazine and because of that more people will look in the magazine getting more buyers. This magazine seems to be some sort of special addition as on the right hand side of the magazine it states about a award show for the music and that the magazine has chosen themselves. As this is one of the best magazines around people will take in what they say. This has given me an idea of putting in an award scheme and insights on the most upcoming artists. Also on the front cover is an artist. A band member from 'My Chemical Romance' this is what I want on my magazine front cover and artist so this shows the best sort of positioning to put the artist on the magazine front cover to show him/her off well.

What I Have Learnt So Far - Tom.

What I have learnt so far.

So far I have learnt how to use the mac computers better than I could before, I have learnt how to use adobe photoshop and the effects that come with them, in adobe I have learnt how to rotate a picture, how to edit title and add colour or style to it, I also have learnt how to add different things to layers, so we can put them behind writing. I have learnt how to use cameras properly without taking awful pictures, I have learnt the different effects that backgrounds can have on a picture and that it is important to get a good background. I have also learnt the effects of light on pictures, too much light spoils a picture, whereas not enough light makes the picture hard to see, it is important to get the right balance with light. I have learnt placement of the model in the picture(if using one) is equally important, and that if badly placed the photo won't looked as good or as professional as it would if they were well placed. I have learnt about the rule of thirds, which are the grid lines of which you use to take the photo, these are very important and can dictate a lot of the photo. I have learnt how to upload things onto a blog and how to create my own blog. I have learnt how to analyse a front cover of a magazine, for things such as mast head, house style,puffs, informal/formal text, and from this analysation I have learnt how to improve my own front cover.

Similar Product Research - Vibe Contents Page Analysis - Tom.

Vibe Contents Page Analysis

Vibe are more of a r and b music magazine,  this is their contents page. I can see a lot of white space in the contents page, however they have tried to make it less unattractive with the background of a man staring out at you. This is trying to take your attention off the lack of contents on the contents page, I would not do my magazine contents page like vibe have, the lack of contents means the magazine won’t be very full. The colours of black on grey also don’t work very well, and makes it uninteresting to the audience. In my magazine I would fill my contents page so there is not as many white spaces as there is on the vibe contents page, it is an uninteresting, empty page and not many people would by an empty magazine such as this.

Similar Product Research NME Front Cover. - Tom.

NME Magazine front cover analysis.

The masthead is the red writing wrapped in white and then black, this is the NME house style and is typically associated with NME. I have chosen to study this magazine because it will help me with  ideas for my music magazine and is a well known magazine. There is a black and yellow puff underneath the masthead, this is interesting and I could put one there in my own magazine. There is a list of the best things in the magazines aligned to the left hand side of the magazine, underneath the puff. I should put this mini table of contents into my magazines to show people who like to browse the magazines cover to see if they will buy it. The picture on the front is of Alex Turner and Miles Kane,  these two are very established with the artic monkeys and now the last shadow puppets, I am going to put an artist on the front of my magazine. The barcode is rotated to fit into the page without  taking up the space used for a quote. There isn’t much whitespace in the magazine front cover and this is a good thing, I should try to cut out as much whitespace as possible in my magazine as readers find it unattractive. The NME also use a very informative style of font, however on this front cover they have used the word collaborating, which is quite a formal style of wording. The NME aim their magazine at mainly teenagers. The house style the NME use is very contrasting, the white red and black clash with each other and are in bold, this makes the text stand out to people.

Evaluation of what i've learnt so far. - By Sam

Evaluation of what I've learnt.

During my Media lessons I have learnt plenty of skills surrounding the subject. Firstly I learnt how to take photos on a camera following specific techniques. While taking the photos I learnt to focus in on the background and focus in on specific areas of the photo. I was told to take many pictures and then look at them to see the best ones. It was obvious to see what pictures were good and which were bad. I learnt to single out the good ones from the bad ones to use for my magazine front cover. After making the front cover and analysing it I learnt what real front covers would look like and what I could do to approve mine and the way to make mine better for better marking. After I had been helped to improve mine I then checked what mine was like and as I had learnt previously on how to take good pictures on the camera I used this technique by following the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is: sectioning the picture into three and on the camera it has a grid with three lines and what you want for the viewer to see specifically has to be on these three lines. This way the picture looks clearer for people to see. Also I have learnt the real names for things on the magazine. For example the masthead which is just a technical term for the title. The publishers that organise how the magazine is going to be specifically choose a colour scheme on the masthead that collides with background to stand out to catch the buyers eye. The main thing I have learnt is how to use the macs we use in the lesson to do all the work, a I had never used a mac before I have promptly learnt how to use them and make my work on them up to good standard. The last thing I have learnt is how to analysis the front cover on magazine as we have been taught whats on the front cover.

Analysis of Surveys - Sam & Tom.

Question 1 On Survey : What colour scheme would you prefer?

After asking all the participants, we found white and blue are the preffered to all the other colour schemes, this is different to the blue and brown we first chose, we asked this question because we wanted to find out how appealing our colour scheme would be to people, and what they’d prefer, as we can see white and blue are preffered by the majority to all the other colours, we will now change our house style to white and blue to suit the needs of most people.

Question 2 On Survey : What would you like to see in the magazine?

The majority of people we asked wanted interviews in the magazine, whereas the small minority of people wanted other things, such as album release dates, we asked this so we could find out what people would want the most in their magazine and again, people wanted interviews so we will now add interviews to the magazine so people who buy the magazines get what they want and it will be more likely that they will buy it again.

Question 3 On Survey : Where do you buy your magazines?

Almost everyone we asked in the survey replied with supermarket, however one or two did answer with music shops and websites. We think we should sell our magazines to supermarkets because we’d make the most sales out of our magazines, and that’s what selling magazines are about, however we could sell not as many to music shops. We asked this question because we wanted to know where would be the best place to sell magazines, and we found out supermarkets, we did except this and we will sell to supermarkets.

Question 4 On Survey : Who’s your favourite artist?

We asked this question in hope we would get a list of artists that have been preffered so we could add them into our magazine, however what we found out is that hardly any one who filled in our survey has a favourite artist, they all prefer  a lot of artists, this question could be improved or maybe more specific, or removed completely and replaced.  We think that instead of this question we could of added a question on gender, which would of made it more specific to who was answering the survey.

Question 5 On Survey : Favourite Music Genre?

We asked this question so we could find out what the music trends were nowadays, then we could base our music magazines around the trends. We have found out that indie and pop are the favourites, so we will edit our magazines to benefit the majority, who mainly like these music genres.

Question 6 On Survey  : What would you like, an established artist or upcoming talent on the front cover?

We found out from our survey question, that most people would like an established artist on the front cover of our magazine, with this in mind we have decided to fill our cover with a picture of an established artist. We asked this question so we could find out what customers would like on the front cover of our magazines, thanks to this we have changed our cover from upcoming talent to established artists.

Question 7 On Survey : Would you prefer a big magazine with no freebies, or a small magazine with freebies?

From the results of the magazine, we have found that almost everybody questioned by the survey wanted a magazine full of contents and no freebies, instead of a small magazine with not much in it, but some freebies. We have come to the conclusion that we should make a magazine full of contents and no freebies, as more people want this and will feel like they have got value for their money. We asked this question so we could find out what style of magazine customers prefer.

Question 8 On Survey : Most Pictures, Mostly Text, Eveny Split?

Most people wanted an evenly split magazine, this goes against our original ideas as we thought more pictures would be good for teenagers,  we will now change our magazine so that it suits the customers and target audience we aim it at. We asked this question so we could find out the primary layout that our audience want, we have learnt that this is different to what we thought in the first place.

Questionnaire- Sam & Tom

Questionnaire

         1) What colour scheme would you prefer?

              - Red and Black

              - Blue and Black

              - White and Blue

              - Blue and Brown

              - Other, Please state.

          2) What would you like to see in the magazine?

          …................................................................

          

           3) Where do you buy your magazines?

- Other.
- Music Shops
- Websites
- Supermarket
4) Who's your favourite artist?

Please state.......................

5) Favorite music genre?
- Indie [ ]
- Rock [ ]
- Pop [ ]
- Folk [ ]
- R&B [ ]
- Punk [ ]
- Metal[ ]
6) What would you like, an established artist or upcoming talent on the front cover?
      - Upcoming Artist [ ]
      - Established Artist [ ]

7) Would you prefer a big magazine with no freebies, or small magazine with freebies?
- Big Magazine [ ]
- Small Magazine [ ]

8) Most Pictures, Mostly Text, Evenly Split?
- Most Pictures [ ]
- Mostly Text [ ]
- Evenly Split [ ]
  

Bauer Media Research - Sam & Tom.

Bauer Media are a media company who reach across eighty influential media brands worldwide, these span a range of interests including, heat, GRAZIA, Closer, MCN, FHM, PARKERS, MATCH, Magic 105.4, Kiss 100, Kerrang and 4Music. They focus mainly on adults and teenagers, magazines like Kerrang mainly focus on teenagers and other magazines such as Heat and Grazia. This reaches over 19 million adults and a lot of teenagers all across the UK.

Although Bauer Media are a big highly-rated company I do not believe they would suit my magazine, as my magazine is not based on new music, its based on music gone by, and Bauer media like to focus on recent activity, and Bauers audiences tend to be teenagers who are interested in new age music or rock, or adult women who like to read about gossip.

However I think that we could approach Bauer media with a fresh idea with our periodic music magazine, but this would be a big risk, as Bauer media don't really sell older music generation magazines, they publish magazines like Kerrang and the NME these are all based on teenagers who like rock music but shy away from the normal kind of music.  

Initial Ideas.

Sam and Tom.

For our idea we are doing music magazines in periodic times, which is our unique idea. To all leading supermarket chains. We have called our magazine, “Periodic Music“, this is because

it is periodic music, straight forward title so that it shows you what its all about. The magazine has the house style blue and brown, this is because its an original colour style, that no other main magazines use. We are basing a double page spread on a band from our years, so thats the difference of the magazines. We are including freebies, different images and putting issue numbers on our magazines.