Double Page Spread 4

In relations to the development of the first half of my double page spread, I had kept the background image the same but had changed the layout of the text. I decided to erase the text and start fresh, I had written a new paragraph describing the article, explaining what its about and had included quotes from famous artists and other magazines. By doing this it makes it seem as if the artists have some sort of relation to fame and recognition from celebrities. The text has been separated so that the description is on one half and the quotes are on the other, this makes the page look much more appealing than having all the text on one side. 

The second half of the double page spread was completely changed. I had kept the background image and decreased the size of it and placed it into one corner of the two pages, I also included another image of the same size and placed it onto the opposite side of the page. Then I fitted the entire article onto the page, to make it look ore professional and sophisticated I structured the pages into columns, three on one side and three on the other. The font type was kept the same but decreased in size so that all the text can fit onto the page. By using a plain white background means that the article is much more easy to read as the text comes up clearer.

Double Page Spread 3

After presenting my first designs to my target audience I came across several barriers which prove that the design was not effective and did not look very appealing to my target audience. They had told me that the page was not organised and looked unprofessional and that I had to rearrange the text to make it look more appealing. I also found out that the text colour was not effective and was not complimented by the background image which made it hard to read. Acting on the feedback provided I decided to change the layout and design of the pages.

Double Page Spread 2

The double page spread spans over 4 pages as the article is quite long. The remaining text from the article has been copied onto the page along with another image in relation to the article. The text is kept the same, same font and same font colour.

Double Page Spread 1

Before designing my double page spread I had written out a article to be present across the double page spreads. I had asked the individuals which my cover story was based on, several questions and wrote their answers down. 

I have now included an image onto the page which reflects the name of the article, 'Flashy Lifestyle'. I have also placed some of the article onto the page and colour coded the text, black text being questions and red being answers. The text has been separated into columns to make it look more like existing magazine articles as a majority of magazine articles are structured using columns. Page numbers have also been added.

Double Page Spread Interview

The Asmal’s have taken the UK music game by storm! The cousins, who reside in Ilford, London, have come out of nowhere and grown the support of a huge number of people all over the UK.

We know that you three are cousins but what’s your past, what made you decide to enter the music industry?

We haven’t always lived in Ilford, at the age of 18 our families moved down from Leicester to escape various forms of corruption, we won’t go into too much detail. Since moving from Leicester we have come across stabbings and burglaries within our neighbourhood, these events have resulted in our families and close circle of friends to become much closer and do whatever it takes to protect one another. We moved down from Leicester to escape our past lives, surrounded by drugs and money … A lot of it! We began making little verses when we were younger, over the years we have become more and more passionate about making music, we effectively use music as an escape from all the bad things which often tempt us.

Who influences you to make the decisions you make?

Like most people the three of us look up to our parents as they have provided with us with everything we could ever want, we grew up in a wealthy environment as both parents had well paid jobs, we do whatever we can to please our parents, to give back what they have given us throughout our lifetime. Also, our small circle of friends play a huge part in our decisions, each and every one of us in the small group would die for each other. We have been friends for years and if one person eats, everyone eats, that’s why you will see my whole clique in the best designer clothes, from Louis Vuitton to Giuseppe Zanotti. To us, money is the motive, make as much as we can for as long as we can, which is why we have tried our hardest to make it in the music scene because we know, if you make it, you’re looking at a lot of money. A famous artist who has made it big which we see as a role model is Meek Mill of MMG (Maybach Music Group), only because he has worked his arse off to get where he is today. He never had it easy, moving coke to make a living and provide for his family. I’m not saying that we are in a similar situation in any circumstance but we have grew up in a rough area of Leicester and Ilford despite being gifted by our parents.

Would you ever sell out, as in leave your group of friends to become surrounded by more successful individuals?

Is that even a smart question to ask? Answer is no, we would never sell out for fame, we all grew up together, like a family, if we want to succeed, we will do it together, no selling out, and no back-stabbing. We are happy being surrounded by each other, in my opinion, we make enough money as it is, and it is enough to feed our families and then some. We have enough to spend thousands and thousands on clothing just because we can. If one of us was approached by a record label, we would say, if you want to sign one of us, you have to sign the other two, it’s always been a team effort and it will stay that way.

Who would you consider as ‘competition’ or a threat?

Competition? Who can we class as competition? We have no specific artists but every rising UK artist will come under the category of our competition, around Ilford we have several individuals who are like us, motivated by money and success, but what makes every person different is the way we do things, some will work hard and try to improve themselves others are naturally good, it just the case of finding which you are.

I see that you are wearing a lot of designer clothing. What role does fashion play in your lives?

Fashion to us, it means a lot, from day one we have been covered in  designer clothing, Gucci, Versace you name it, we had it, given to us when we were young by our parents, we want to keep that same lifestyle, which is why we work so hard in order to make money to pay for those things. Not only clothing, we also work hard to buy the finer things in life, we each have brand new cars, the three of us recently bought a house in Chigwell, we paid equal amounts and hope to move in, in the near future, when our income is stable we will move in, then slowly work towards moving our family out into homes of their choice.

Contents Page 3

I have developed the page further by adding more images and moving the text around once again. I have structured the page so that the images are in the central area of the page so that the attention of the reader will be drawn to the images. The images I have chosen to use represent the main cover story of the magazine, I have also included location photography of graffiti.

Contents Page 2

I have roughly separated the articles but will rearrange the page again. I have also included some pictures and played around with the layout of them, struggling to find the best suited design for the page

Contents Page 1

Today I started finished the magazine's flat plan and began the construction of the contents pages. The flat plan has been designed in a way so that it is easier for me to separate each article depending on its type, competition/advert etc.  I wrote up the list of articles ready to be separated into various columns.

Front Cover Development

I have acquired an image for the front cover, the image is of 1 member of the trio which my double page spread will be based on. When developing the front cover I altered the layout of the page, this including moving the text around in order to be visible on the page without blocking the image being used. I had also changed the font colour so it fits in with the colour scheme of the magazine (black, white and red). The price of the magazine and issue number was also included.

Front Page & Flat Plan

This image represents the first basic design for the magazine front cover, it consists of a masthead, several article names, a bar-code and a gift notification (which will be provided with the magazine).

Up to this point I have designed the masthead to be placed on the front  cover, decided what will be present on the contents page, to make it easier I have started to create a flat plan for the magazine and allocated colours depending on the type of page, e.g. blue pages are adverts, red pages are competitions etc.
I am still looking for a picture to be placed on the front cover, contents page and double page spread.

Masthead

I had experimented with a range of styles to use for my masthead, I felt it was necessary to incorporate some sort of idea linking with music within the masthead. Within each design idea for the masthead I had used the G Clef/Treble Clef or Crotchet symbol to replace the 'I' within the name of the magazine. I had experimented with a range of fonts and colours, although each design consisted a musical symbol the designs were different. Despite receiving some positive feedback about the designs the same negative response which had come up was that the font does not fit in with the genre of the magazine. taking that into consideration, I had looked at existing music magazines of my genre and analysed their mastheads and noticed that they all have a small, bold font which s easy to read and stands out on the page. therefore I opted for a much simpler font which is much easier to read on the page in comparison to the ones which I used in the drafts. I will leave the font colour alone for the moment and will decide the colour for the text once I have chosen an image to use for my front cover.

Magazine Pitch

Magazine Proposal

Student Magazine

Other Equipment

We also found out what the reflector boards were used for There are 3 different reflector boards, a white board, a silver board and a gold board. The gold board removes shadows present on the subject and gives the subject a gold tint, the silver board provides a hard light on the subject and the white board will soften the shadows present on the subject. They all have a similar appearance and are made of the same material.

We even learned what the Godox was used for. The Godox is a pair of remotes which are used to cause flash heads to activate through the press of a button. The 2 devices communicate with each other, 1 is placed on top of the camera and the other is placed on/near a flash head. By pressing the buttons on the Godox you can test the flash however when you have the device connected to the camera it will automatically activate the flash heads when a photo is taken.

Nikon DSLR D7000

We will be using Nikon DSLR D7000. This particular camera is 18 million mega pixel camera with 2 memory card slots. When taking a photo of the subject the camera will beep to indicate that the subject is in focus. It has a 18-105 zoom lens which creates photos of very high quality despite the zoom setting. When you are taking a photo you cannot us the screen as it is only as it is a playback monitor which is used to show what has been photographed so you can only use to view finder. When taking photos, you can use it with ease to take pictures as there are buttons on 2 sides of the camera also there are 2 main settings which the camera should be set on, either A or S, 'A' stands for aperture and 'S' stands for shutter speed. Aperture is a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. Shutter speed is the time which the shutter is open when taking a photographed, this can be altered on the camera before taking a photo. We also learnt about depth of field, depth of field is what is in focus in a photograph, there are 2 types when it comes to depth of field, shallow depth of field and deep depth of field, shallow depth of field is where the foreground is in focus and the background is blurred and deep depth of field is the opposite, background is in focus and the foreground is blurred. When taking a photo the subject must not be too close to the backdrop as they will bleach into the backdrop thus creating a low quality image. In order to take a black and white image, the setting must be changed on the camera itself rather than later on an editing software as it would produce a photo of much higher quality. The camera can be set on 2 different settings, manual and automatic, automatic prevents the user from altering the focus of the camera where annual provides full control.

Trinity Flash Sytem

The 3 point lighting system consists of 3 flash heads with different covers allocated to them, there are 2 soft boxes (1 with a grid) and 1 snoot. The simple soft box is a rectangular cover which is attached to the flash heads in order to direct light to the subject, the soft box with a grid is used to distribute light evenly and the snoot is a cone-like cover for the flash heads. Furthermore, each of the 3 lights are given used for different purposes, 1 is a key light, another is the fill light and the final one is the hair line light. The key light is the  main flash head used to light the subject(s), the fill light is used to remove shadow from the subject(s) and the hair line light is used at the back of the subject(s) to separate the subject(s) from the backdrop. The 3 point lighting system uses a 3-1 lighting ratio, the key light is 3 times as powerful than the other 2 lights, the ratio is 5-3-1.5 (5-Key Light, 3-Fill Light and 1.5 Hair Line Light). On the back of each of the flash heads there are buttons, these buttons are used to alter the intensity of the spurt of flash.

Studio Introduction

 

During this lesson we were taken into the studio to learn how to take photos for our music magazine, learn what the equipment is used for and the safety precautions.
We have access to a white and a black backdrop for when we want to take our photos. We also have access to a 3 point lighting system which is a professional flash kit which would be controlled by a remote. Each of the 3 flash lights have their own individual purposes which are important when taking photos.

Creation Of College Magazine Front Page

Screenshot of the creation of the front page for the college magazine. Needs a cover star and the cover lines need to be rearranged.

College Magazine Plan

A plan of what the front cover of my college magazine may look like, includes masthead, cover lines, barcode etc.

Magazine Stand

Looking at a stores magazine stand it was clear to see the relation between popularity and the positioning of the magazines. The more popular magazines were positioned on the front of the magazine stand as they were the most purchased therefore allowing easy access for customers. When being displayed on the stand, every magazine has its front cover facing the front, towards the customer, so it is easy for them to view each magazine. The magazines which were behind the most popular were easy to see to an extent, the clearest part of the magazine which was visible to the customer was the title/masthead.

The majority of magazines had cover stars/cover images in the centre of the page but there are some exceptions which have the images near the bottom or on the side of the page, on these magazines there is much more text in comparison to the magazines which have a central cover star image. Each of the magazines have their own colour scheme or font which are unique to their company.

There are various way which a company can distribute their magazine through the internet, television adverts or through mobile phones. Many companies set up accounts within social media sites in order to promote their magazines, and on the sites they present information linking to the magazine such as; information on the magazine, upcoming issues etc, this is also present within the television adverts promoting the magazines and the mobile phone apps dedicated to individual magazines. The adverts include the most information about the magazines but very briefly as they have allocated times given by the channels, where as the mobile phone apps include every little detail about the magazine, including information about the company, what will be present in new future issues, celebrity thoughts etc, the apps are very useful as they use the readers/audience to their advantage and use their opinions to market their magazines, this means that the audience is involved with the success of the magazine/company.

 

Induction Evaluation

In order the write an article on the music industry in terms of music piracy I had to conduct some research about the advantages and the disadvantages of music piracy, views of professional recording artists and a number of statistics to support each side of the argument.

I had started off by surfing the internet, which had a provided me with a reasonable amount of information, to an extent, as the majority of the information which I had found was about the United States rather than the United Kingdom, despite this, the information  which I did find about the UK represented both the advantages and disadvantages. It took some time to obtain information on the UK, however it gradually got easier as I had sourced the information from reliable newspapers, such as The Guardian, which were published within the UK, also due to them being newspapers, dates were provided with the articles therefore I was able to know if the information was about the past or the present. Along with the internet research, a class debate was conducted where each half of the class had been allocated a side, either agreeing or disagreeing with music piracy. This debate was effective as both sides of the argument was represented and researched into, and this information was shared to the rest of the class thus making it easier to write a fair argument.

Before writing the article I had to choose a magazine to write for/represent, once this was chosen I had to read numerous articles which were written within the magazine in order to find out what type of language was to be used when writing my own article, as I had chosen to write for GQ Magazine, the language had to be much more sophisticated and complex in comparison to the language which was used in magazines such as Vibe Magazine or Kerrang Magazine. When writing the article, I had to use 1^st person language when I was giving my own point of view on the situation at hand, ‘In my opinion, I do not believe ...’ 1^st person was also used when quoting others who had provided their views on the whole idea of music piracy.

InDesign seems rather difficult to use at first but it is very similar to Adobe Photoshop which made it much easier for me to use, as I know how to sue the fundamental tools as well as the more difficult in Photoshop, these tools included the; magnetic lasso tool, magic wand tool and more. There was a slight confusion when choosing between the 2 rectangular boxes, one to be used for text and the other for images. After figuring out which is which, it was much easier and quicker for me to design and create and article. I did not know how to change the background colour of the page so  I had to create a rectangle, change the colour, alter its size then send the layer to the bottom so that the text can be visible and easily read.

At first I did not know how to use the Blogger website but after playing around with the various links it became clear and much easier to use. I had learnt how to view my posts, edit y posts etc. Also, it became clear that it was much easier to screenshot my work, save them as JPEGs then post them on my blog as it was much easier to for me to edit my work.

In terms of audience feedback, I had not provided with any therefore I do not know how I will be able to improve my work.

Personal Targets:

o    Research on InDesign and learn how to use the more complex tools.

o    Make sure information is relevant when researching.

o    Alter magazine article’s design and structure according to what other articles from the chosen magazine look like.

Beatz Magazine - Issue 7

The Beatz Magazine is an informal magazine which has a main focus of mainstream music, but also contains articles on fashion and reviews. The magazine had been founded and published by a group of individuals in May 2012 for music lovers across the globe. In order to run the magazine, there are a variety of workers, from a DJ, to bloggers, graphic artists and journalists. In order to gain a large amount of income, the magazine allows advertising space to be purchased by various people, for example famous artist Katy Perry promotes her gigs and clothing brand ‘Trend Star’ promotes their products.

The front page of the magazine consists of an image of a famous artist, Wiz Khalifa, also known as a cover star. The cover star is in the centre of the page thus drawing attention; this effect is also present with the text which is used to inform the audience about the contents of the magazine. The cover star has been photographed from the head to the waist, this shot is known as a close-medium shot, and it has been taken in front of a blank background/wall. The cover star is seen wearing various accessories including; bracelets, rings, sunglasses, a scarf and a watch. There are also many tattoos which are visible on the cover star. The magazine uses a masthead to present the name of the magazine to its readers, it also uses a cover line in order to tell the readers about the article written about the cover star. The text which is visible on the front cover follows a 3 colour scheme; black, white and red. The information which is presented on the front cover talks about what will be available to read in the magazine, the information includes an article on the ‘Beatz Awards’, ‘Top 10 Artists to Watch’ and more. Furthermore the front cover displays the issue number, date and the company website.

The magazine’s contents page takes up 2 pages which is quite common within magazines of all genres. The 2 pages tell the reader about what kinds of articles can be found within the magazine and what pages they can be found on; this includes articles on fashion and artists. The word ‘Contents’ is written in the largest text size on the page in order to tell the reader that they are on that specific page, where as the text used to tell the reader about the articles is much smaller, despite this the article title is in bold but the article description is in an ordinary font. To make the page look more organised the writers have separated the text into columns, the columns are titled; ‘Regulars’, ‘Features’, ‘Interviews’ and ‘Editor’s Picks’ which could aid the reader to choose what they want to read about. The page presents the reader with the magazine name, magazine website and the page number.

The double page spread is focused on famous artist Wiz Khalifa, and consists of 2 large images and one column of text. The 2 images are of the artist in 2 different outfits which could represent different sides of the artist. One image is of him in a smart and sophisticated outfit and the other is of him in a more rebellious and free-minded outfit. Within the first image he is seen wearing a suit accompanied with smart shoes, a fedora, scarf and a variety of accessories, within the second image he is seen wearing an over-studded jacket which has many badges attached to it, white tee, black trousers and a pair of black boots. The text which accompanies the two images is a continuation of a Q&A which was begun on the previous image it has been positioned in the middle of the 2 images and presented within a single column. The questions of the article are written in blue and the answers are written in black, by doing this it effectively makes the reading more easy and enjoyable for the reader as they can choose to read what they want rather than reading the entire article.  The language which is used within this article is informal as the magazine is directed at a young audience, the language used can be related to by the readers as the words which are used by the artist is also used by the audience.

Beatz Magazine - Issue 9

The front cover of this issue of Beatz magazine consists of a medium-close shot of a new artist who has become very popular all over the world. The photo of the artist has been positioned in the middle of the page in order to draw attention from readers. Lighting has been used effectively when the shot was taken as it has been placed directly on the front of the cover star; also due to the background being darker it allows more focus to be placed on the cover star.  The props and costume worn/used by the cover star have been specifically chosen as they have some sort of association with the target audience of the magazine as they are parts of trends which have been followed my millions of people. The masthead for the front cover has been placed on the top of the page and has been written in a large and bold text, this is effective when it comes to selling the magazine as when it is placed on stands the name of the magazine may be the first thing a customer may see when browsing. Similarly to the masthead, the cover lines have also been written in a large and bold text to make it easier for to reader to read. The cover lines are used in order to tell the audience what this particular issue may contain; furthermore on the bottom of the page there is a list of other artists who will also be included within the magazine.

The contents page of the magazine takes up 2 pages and includes images as well as text. The photos present on the page have been paired up with text in order to illustrate what particular articles are about. Both pages have been separated into columns to organise the pages, all photos, except 2, have been resized in order to fit into the columns, the 2 exceptions are the photos linked to the cover star and main cover line. These photo linked to the cover star is the largest, taking up 3 columns, among all the photos which demonstrates the importance of the article which is followed by the main cover line’s photos, which takes up 2 columns. All the articles titles present on the page have been given numbers to indicate what pages they can be found in the magazine. On the bottom corners of the page, the writers provide the name of the magazine, the website for the magazine and the page numbers. The colour scheme of the page follows the company’s colour scheme, black, red and white.

The double page spread consists of a huge photo of a famous rap/hip hop artist which takes up to pages. The photo is a medium-close shot but is not from a photo shoot but from a live performance. Like other pages, the double page spread has been separated into columns to make reading the article easier. The title of the page ‘DOM KENNEDY’, is the name of the artist which the article is written about and is written in large text and a simple bold font. The colour scheme for the page is black, white and purple, this particular colour scheme has been chosen in order to make the text stand out from the background image, the colour of the text differs depending on the type of writing, the questions which are asked are written in white and the answers are written in purple this is done as it helps the reader decide what they want to read.  

Timetable

Induction Journalism