This week we have been working on magazines and analysing them in every way possible, to give us the best possible knowledge on magazines and what they include. We began by looking at different music magazine covers, content and double pages of magazines from various musical genres. I enjoyed this particularly since i have a passion for all types of music from all genres. I also learned a significant amount whilst working on magazines since it was the first time i had learned about them, for example i learned about many things which editors have to take into consideration whilst making covers with the audience in mind, ie the colour scheme and choosing eye catching colours which compliment the main picture, and font sizes ect. Although i have worked well during this topic i would have done more independent research into more magazines to widen my knowledge on them.
Diary Entry 2: Friday6th/October/11
Continuing our work on music magazines and the magazine industry we have been asked to further our knowledge on Key Concepts & Magazines in greater detail, covering the following topics;
Codes/Conventions (Types of music magazines, History, Brand identity, typical features)
Audiences (Who reads them?, Why are are they popular?, Application of uses and gratifications theory)
Presentation (How are musical genres and artist represented in MM?)
Institution (Who owns magazines? How do music magazines make money? How have institutions reacted to the emergence of new technologies).
I found this particularly interesting since many of these terms where new to me and i always enjoy learning new things, also i think that the background knowledge music magazines is very important for our appreciation of music magazines
I chose the website Prezi.com to present my work, i chose this since its a new, fun and unique way to present information and to give my blog a good variety. This screenshot is of my prezi presentation so far, but it is not yet completed.
Diary Entry 3 Monday 24th October 11
We began to think about creating our own music magazine, we were able to chose any genre which we like and target the magazine to any audience which we wanted. I really enjoyed this since it allowed us to take advantage of out creative freedom and also gave me a chance to involve my strong passion for Hip-Hop and Grime into my media work since this was the genre i chose.
Diary Entry 4 Tuesday 1st November 11
Today I started to create my magazine proposal in which I will explain in detail every aspect of my magazine and its contents. This is the what we had to include in our proposal.
· Type of magazine (detailed description)
· Content of magazine
· Style of magazine
· Competition to your magazine
· Target audience (detailed)
· Business features (price, frequency, subscription, cross media synergy, new media
· Why you feel it will succeed.
I found this really interestung since although i had breifly thought about my magazine before this made me take a deeper insight into the magazine and every single aspect in which it will include. This was good because it enabled me to think about things which i didnt before and also gave me a further insight to parts of th emgazine which i had already though about.My Magazine on Prezi
Diary Entry 5 Friday 4th November 11
This week I completed a mood board for my magazine by using a variety of pictures that were related to the genre and topic of my magazine. This included pictures of artist, fashion, and many other things that would fit into the genre of Hip-hop, Grime, R'n'b and dubstep.
I found that this was a different and more creative way of presenting my work and was the perfect way of presenting a mood board since it is very visual.
Diary Entry 7
This week I finished worked on my target audience, doing this by creating a poll on my blog in order to get a clear and accruate perception of what my target audience will like in a magazine. I created a powerpoint in analysing my resuts which I found highly useful and will benefit my work immensely.
Diary Entry 8 Friday 2 December 2011
Today I completed my schedule, I feel that this is a real fundamental task in which we were issued since it gave me a real perspective of how I was doing in the course and on what tasks I had completed and where still yet to complete. Personally I feel this would give me a boost in work rate and motivation since it is a clear plan of what and when i will be completing tasks and therefore I can manage my time and effort effectively. For this task I used word to construct a table since I felt this was the best way to conduct a task such as this.
Diary Entry 9 Monday 5 December 2011
Today I completed a article draft for my magazine, I really enjoyed this task since it gave me a real feel for my magazine and gave me an idea of what type of things were going to be in the magazine. I also enjoyed this task because were given full freedom on what our article was about which is why I felt so passionate towards a task such as this. In this task it developed my article writing skills and helped me consider areas I could improve like layout and structure.
Diary Entry 10 Friday 16th December
Today was the deadline to hand in our final draft of our Front Cover and Contents page, so for the previous weeks have been working hard to ensure that I had completed my work by then, this meant staying behind after school for a few hours on a few days. I felt that I put a lot of effort in completing these task especially since I had no previous skill on Photoshop so this made it an extra struggle to complete this to a high standard, however in order to improve my skills I watched various Photoshop tutorials.
Here is my completed draft of my Front Cover and Contents Page. Also due to the school systems being down I was unable to upload my Double Page Spread, but I will be sure to do so as soon as I can.
Diary Entry 11 January10th
After handing in my drafts i began to review my drafts and consider areas in which i felt i could improve. I did this by consulting a checklist for each page and verifying key parts in which i had and hadn't included. This gave me great detailed account of my progress and how much more content needed to be included to bring it up to a high standard.
Diary Entry 12 January 17th
After reviewing my drafts using the checklist i began to evaluate them. I asked my class mates to evaluate my contents page and give any constructive criticism which will help me to improve. I felt this was important since my class mates fit into my target audience so it is key to receive their opinion, and gave me a detailed insight into how i can improve my magazine to a high standard.
