Promotion

Bus promotion

Final Pages

These are my finished pages of my magazine. The pages are highly stylized and have a strong theme throughout. I think the magazine targets the desired audience very well with the look of it and the articles that are featured.

10 facts you probably didn't know page...

The template...

The facts...

Corrupt Files

After working through my pages, my USB corrupt and so did some of the files on there. Quite a few of the pages have been ruined completely, some of them I have been able to salvage, but others I have to completely re-do.

Pre-Production

In my weeks of planning, progression was slow but I quickly came to a finish when the deadline was near. I was very happy with the level a had worked at and I thought that what I had done was very good and will definitely help me when I start production on my magazine. I think strongest part of my pre-production was the mock-ups I did; they give everyone a clear idea of what and how I want my magazine to look like. If I was to give the mock-ups to someone to make, they would easily know what to do and I think my ideas would be produced very well. The first set of mock-ups that I drew show the fine details of what goes where etc... The second lot of mock-ups then show how the magazine would look as a finish product. The two sets of mock-ups will make it very easy to make the magazine and you are given a very strong and clear idea of what is to be made. I think the mock-ups were my strongest part of pre-production as it is very neat and organised; I can tell it will make things a lot easier when make the magazine. The weakest part of my pre-production is probably the planning of my props/locations/costumes; the planning was very vague. Although it was vague, I explained what style and type of props/locations/costumes I would have; at least then people aren't going to get the wrong idea when they come to making the images. With the set style and type of things needed there is a broad range of things that can be used in my photos; I can think of new ideas of the day of a photoshoot, as long as that new idea fits in with my style and type. Again, although this part of my planning was vague, therefore, it being my weakest point, I believe it will benefit me in the long run.
The bit of work I am most confident with is again, my mock-ups. I think they are very thorough and detailed. They will help a lot with doing the final magazine production. The bit of work I am least confident with is my research on what company will print the magazine. This is because nothing is set in stone yet. I don't know who exactly is printing it and I'm not too certain on how much it will cost so I need to hurry and decided. If I don't, I will rush and be stressed later down the line.
By following my detailed mock-ups I will be able to make the magazine with ease and I believe it will be very successful. My digital mock-up will help me the most as all I need to do is substitute certain things for my images and text. Following my production plan too will be very helpful as I wont lose track of where I am meant to be and what is next to do. Keeping calm and organised will also be a very helpful factor for success in my magazine.

Planning Week 2

Since last week, I have completed my flat plans for my magazine pages: it took me much longer than expected. I still need to complete my planning for the adverts that will go in the magazine. I will then places all my flat plans together and make a mock-up out of them. I am also half way through doing my mock-up pages on Photoshop. I have also written down a list of models that I will use to go in my magazine and images. I have done some research on who and what company will print my magazine; I have found that most big companies will only print a minimum of 50-100 issues of the magazine rather than the 1 that I need. I have noticed that it's not too much money to print a few issues of the magazine with a smaller company so if I can't get 1 issue printed, this is what I'll have to do. I have also done the planning production schedule of producing the magazine after Christmas. A few final things I need to do, is to finish off remaining job and I need to pick apart all the different, big images that will go in my magazine and do the location, props and costume planning of them. I need to focus on completing my planning for the deadline which is very soon.

Planning - Week 1

When planning for my magazine, I did a range of things to get my ideas flowing and going. I started by looking at my mind map and seeing what I could plan first and I decided that doing some stylesheets of my magazine's theme. It helped my alot when decideding a theme and style of the magazine; I started off doing a sheet of potential colour schemes and then develped my chosen colour into a final stylesheets along with images and fonts. After some inspiration of work with stylesheets and mindmaps, I've started making brainstorms and flat plans of each of the magazine pages. I feel as if I need to do a lot more work on the flatplans. I need to hurry up when doing them so I can carry on with the other parts of planning, but otherwise I see myself completing the planning on time.

Follow-up Questionnaire

Doing the follow up questionnaire at the start of the week, I didn't really think it was going to be much help to  me, but as the week progressed, this proved wrong. I thought that I had covered all aspects of my product in my first questionnaire (which I had) but doing the second questionnaire helpled reinforce what the public want in a magazine. The questionnaire has let me know that the ideas that I had in my head about my magazine were good, creative but still had conventional roots that the public seem to like. I think the questionnaire also helped when finding out people's opinions on how magazines work. Overall, the follow up questionnaire was good and helpful; it had helped me with deciding what will actually go in my magazine.

Mindmap

Fonts Moodboard

Front Cover Moodboard

Advert Moodboard

Creating Moodboards, Mindmaps and Stylesheets

When making moodboards, mindmaps and stylesheets, I found it very helpful and interesting. It helped me with deciding what different things would be going in my magazine. I went into thorough detail, noting down where pictures will be taken and what pages will look like. I think this will be really helpful when putting the contents together. It is now clear to me what my magazine will end up looking like and what sort of magazine it will be due to the moodboards, mindmaps and stylesheets. I have explored some major ideas in my magazine which could be outstanding. I now have a rough idea of what sort of font I will have on my front page and how it might look. I think I need to explore my ideas more with the adverts that will go in my magazine; I think that I need to make my adverts much more bigger, very unique and creative. This will support my portfolio for university. Making this moodboards and mindmaps has helped me considerably; I know exactly what I want to produce and how I will do it.

Creating Audience Research

When doing my survey, I wrote a list of possible questions and whittled them down to 10. I thought of the possible closed question that will help me in what I include in my magazine and how it will work. When putting my questionnaire on surveymonkey I made sure that the questions flowed and they weren’t too long and hard to think about. I posted the link of the questionnaire onto my Facebook and magazine websites and groups.

When collating my data together, it should fairly simple as the website did it for me. I will make graphs from it; this should be easy to understand of know what people think of magazines.

I hope to find a range of feedback from people and hopefully it will benefit me and help me with what I want to put and do in my magazine. I hope the feedback is clear and understandable. Hopefully it will give me a clear view of what I want to do and it will also help me when evaluating the product.

I think the survey is going to benefit me a lot in the future and I think it is a very good way of getting peoples reactions and views on things.

The Magazine Industry

When doing my industry research, I looked up the main job roles in the Magazine Industry. I found out the importance of the main jobs and what they would do when constructing a magazine together. I found out the jobs in different departments and what they would do on a day to day basis. I found out that most people who work for a magazine agency are freelance and are independent.  There is a clear hierarchy of jobs in the magazine industry with distinctive job roles to be completed from making tea and coffee to making sure that the magazine is ready on time. I found it a beneficial task to me as it opened my eyes to the different jobs in the magazine industry and this made me realise what potential job I could look for in the future.

When doing the case study, I looked at a company called Northern and Shell and these publish newspapers such as the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and the Daily Star Sunday. They also publish the magazines OK!, New! and Star. These are the sort of magazines that I will be magazine in my FMP. I found that the company is quite big, doing work since 1974 in the City of London. They are mainly a UK based company but they branched out into a television group launching the TV channel, 5USA. Their newspapers target a more older generation but their magazines are more for the older teenagers and the 20’s-30’s. Although their TV channels, 5 and 5* are aimed at a huge range of audience. They also own a few adult TV channels which are obviously aimed at an older generation of 18+. I found this information by looking it up on the internet and mailing the company. I found this quite helpful as I have a good idea of how the magazine industry now works.

Evaluating Existing Products

When evaluating existing products I went through a range of magazines. Some of them were fashion magazines, general magazines, free magazines and the more high-end ones. I went through the whole of the magazines and I pulled out the pages that stood out to me. Analysing these would help me in the future when making up my magazine as I would know what to do when making the striking pages I desire. I looked at five different aspects on the pages; colour, photography, writing style, font and text/picture ratio. I went through each aspect and picked out everything explaining what was done and why.

I found out a range of things from why certain colours are used and why a certain ratio of text and images is used. I found that when the article is sad and down, the colours tend to be quite dark too. When using colours they are used not too often and they are executed very well. The colours tend to have the same tone and are not too striking. When the colours aren’t the same, they are totally different from each other and this makes the article pop out.

When constructing a magazine a lot of thought process is put into it. The photography is also a highly thought part of the magazine. Most of the images are posed so this means that the magazine company have to go out of their way to get paparazzi or organise a photo shoot with the chosen celebrity. The posed images in the magazines make them professional.  If the image is not taken by the magazine, the image is often screen shots of the topic in conversation, e.g. a clip in a movie or a TV show.

The text also matters when constructing an article together. Whether it is relaxed or very posh; the text is a very big part of the article and have the correct writing style matters a lot. It has to match with the chosen topic otherwise the article will not flow. Making sure the writing is readable to all abilities is definitely important; it has to be basic enough for the lower class to read it but interesting enough for the upper class to read it.

The font is also very important too. The text needs to be legible yet eye catching at the same time. Using a sans serif font or a serif font will depend on the article.

By analysing existing magazines I have been able to decide what sort of articles I would like in my magazine, how I want them to look and what I want them to be about. Getting a range of magazines and analysing different pages has given me a wide range of pages I could possibly make. I have realised that the pages that jump out are the ones that have a very good, striking page layout, font and colour scheme. The colours have to flow, the page layout needs to be unique and striking and the font needs to stand out.