My planning and research

Explanation of why I chose the Brief

Once I have evaluated and seen the results of my preliminary task, I then came to the decision of doing the print task for my coursework. I found the print task more enjoyable and found I had more of an opportunity to include my personality and ideas into. I also discovered that I found it less changeling to appeal the print task to my target audience and I had a better understanding of how to do this .I also preferred how I could express my creative side when creating my layout, concepts, articles and photographs on the print brief then I would of in making a short film. In my opinion film would have been more difficult as I may have struggled to use various computer programmes such as photo shop in which I wouldn’t of been able to edit my film clips as well as I would of editing my magazine, due to being able to experiment with fonts, colour schemes, layouts etc.
   As well as producing a music magazine to appeal to my target audience I also wanted to appeal to the audience of our chosen genre of music being ‘funky house’. Although the ‘funky house’ genre is extremely popular in today’s society and there doesn’t appear to be many music magazines which particularly focus on this genre of music. I then realised there was a gap in the market due to the results in my questionnaire. My group thought it would be a good opportunity to come up with a fresh, exciting music magazine which would appeal to the connotation of glamorous, materialistic club ravers. As my group all share an interest in this particular genre of music we will be targeting people of middle class roughly between the ages of 16-21 which is the younger generation in today’s society. My group chose to target this particular audience as they share the demographic of a materialistic lifestyle and aspire for success which all focus on the same ideology which is associated with Funky house. We are hoping to attract both genders but more specifically females as of their ideology of this glamorous and materialistic lifestyle. Also so we can incorporate an element of fashion into our magazine due to funky house being associated with a glamorous, wealthy upper class side to it

Initial brainstorm of Ideas

There are a number of different music magazines around in today’s society which mainly appear to be rock/ indie magazines and Pop magazines. Rock/Indie magazines such as NME, Q and Kerrang. This genre is slightly targeted towards the male younger gender generally being in their teens early twenties who desire to have a rebellious, edgy dangerous lifestyle in which they try to disobey the norms and values in society. Pop magazine such as Top of the Pops ideally target a completely different audience such as a younger generation roughly between 11-16 all aspiring a lifestyle of wealth and materialistic luxuries which is shown through Pop’s colourful, glamorous appeal to their magazines.

In my opinion both these genres could be compition to our genre of music due to Funky house becoming more popular and both genres wanting to attract a wider target audience. Especially pop is a competition for our type of magazine as pop shares the same connotations in which the funky house genre does of this ideology of glamorous, desirable, materialistic lifestyle. Therefore it targets a similar audience.

My Questionnaire and Findings

Together me and my group designed a questionnaire in which we all decided we would be able to gather a conclusion in the most popular music magazine, genre, age group for certain genres, and if any magazine were specific to any particular genres.
We asked each participant to state their name, age, and gender and some of the questions included into our questionnaire:

What’s your favourite genre of music? – funky house, rNb, rock, indie, other.
Do you read music magazines? If so what ones? Q, NME, Top of the Pops, Kerrang, other.
Do you only read one genre of music magazines? Yes, No
How much would you spend on a Music Magazine? £1-£2, £2-£3,£3-£4, above £5.

The results I discovered from my questionnaire lead me to believe that the most popular music for the younger generation of 15-21 year olds was funky House but the most read music magazine was Kerrang. Kerrang is of a rock genre, My group then came up with the conclusion that there was a gap in the market for a Funky House magazine, as the majority of music magazines around in society in this period of don’t fit this particular genre.
These findings helped me to shape my product as I then had a better understanding of a particular group of people’s favourite genre of music. Also what people expect to find in a magazine and how much they would roughly spend on a magazine being between £2-£3.


How I attend to Work in a group

For my group I chose to work with two other people in which I knew I would work well with and would be able to express my ideas, views and opinions with. I also knew my group would be hard working and would all be willing to put in a high level of energy and focus into making this project to the best of our ability. My group all split various tasks equally to between each other to insure that we was all doing roughly the same amount of work and also so we could work with each others strengths and weakness’. Our work was allocated by myself researching other magazines of the same genre, Molly researching how to appeal to our target audience and finally Yasmine who researched artists who fitted with our music genre. We worked individually as well as in a team In order to be able to add our own identity and style into our project. We all worked separately in researching 3 different magazines all of a different genre in which we analysed the front cover, contents page and double page spread. My group planned our time very effectively as we worked together in school as well as outside school. We all decided upon a day and time in which we were all free to create three different issues of our magazines a swell as take all of our own pictures.

My research

Through myself researching and viewing various different music magazines, I have developed enough knowledge to understand what the main features and conventions I must include to create a realistic yet unique magazine. I read a range of different magazine articles in which I then felt confident enough to start to began drafting my own interview. My main convention I discovered for a music magazine was mainly the picture on the magazine which would be the major attraction, as this informs the reader of the genre, concepts and messages which will be displayed through my magazine. Im also aware of the master head, cover lines, sub headings, must be on the cover without taking away the main focus from the image of the artist.
My research on the genre of funky house helped me to gain a better understand of the conventions I needed to fit in with this particular genre. As funky house has clear association with neon colours, loud, crazy, I knew I would have to make my magazine bright, eye catching, a crowded layout.

Designing Our Magazine

As my group needed to come up with three different issues of our magazine we all done various research into other artists which would help us to get influences from whilst creating artists and bands to go on our magazine. We carefully choose artists in today’s society which not only fitted the genre of funky house but artists that were glamorous, wealthy successful women which portrayed the target audiences ideology for living a demographic lifestyle of materialistic, escapism and pleasure seeking. We got inspiration from artists we felt fit these categories such as Cheryl Cole, Pixie Lott, Lady Gaga, and The Saturdays. We based our location at my group member Molly’s house as we felt it had the right amount of space, coloured backgrounds for the particular images we was looking for.
As well as using ourselves in our photographs, we also asked some of our friends to participate in our pictures as we felt we could portray them convey the message of glamorous and wealth that we needed to express through our magazine.
My group used a range of equipment and software such as a camera, tripod, and photo shop in order to create a range of different shots such as close-ups, full length, and different angled shots.