Task 3 - Preliminary Task Planning

In today's lesson we started to make our contents page and front cover for our college magazine. Unfortunately I was unable to complete them as i ran out of time. I was planning on adding a few images to it to make it look more professional.

Magazine Plan

In today's lesson we learnt how to use Photoshop, which was difficult. We used it to make a plan of what our magazine will be like and unfortunately I was unable to do much as I did not understand how to use it.

Rough draft of my college magazine

This is the rough plan for my college magazine. When I make it I will add more detail to it in  order to make it more professional.

College article analysis

Masthead

It is relevant to college, this is because it is named college lifestyle. This gives us an example of what we can expect to find in the magazine.

Main Image

It relates to the audience as it is supposed to be one of them, a student. This is important as it gives them someone to relate to. His props, books, show he is ready to learn. His costume makes us think he is smart and appropriately dressed to learn.

Cover line

Relevant to college life as it is what some people will what to know about. For example on the left, in yellow, it says “make money on campus” this is important because they will need the experience for when they leave and they may need the money. The coversine’s purpose to show you a snippet of what you can find with in the magazine.

Colour

The colours of the magazine are: Yellow, black and white. This is done to make it stand out and attract people to read it.

Layout

The layout has the student in the middle to show that he is the main thing in the article. This implies that the colleges’ main purpose is to be there for their students. Also the cover line is around him to suggest that they apply to him.

The changing face of the music industry

Since the late ‘90s and early 2000s magazine have steadily had a decline in circulation figures, NME is down to 15000 copies sold per week and Q magazine has had a 21.8% year on year decline. This shows that the internet is easily taking over the music industry forcing magazine companies to either direct distribute or go online. Their audience has been moving away from the magazine industry which has become a third party for information on their artists as they can receive the information straight from them on twitter.

There many different music magazines available out there. The most notable are; Q with 158,271, Mojo with 121,746, The Fly with 109,734 and Uncut with a low 88,756. These magazines have had to expand their horizon to more than just a paper copy. They all have and online edition to increase their profits. These are the top four magazine at the moment. This was calculated via circulation (period on period). Regardless of these 100,000 readers, the artists are capable of publishing the information themselves straight from twitter. The weeknd for example has 2.74million followers. This shows that people would rather get the information directly from the artist. This is further shown via other artists who also have millions of followers. Martin Garrix with 2.25million followers, and a staggering 63.5 million followers for Taylor Swift.

The role of other forms of distribution such as; eBooks, direct (free) distribution, apps, e-zines (electronic magazine) and others have a role of expanding the artists/bands name to reach all the people. This will increase the popularity of the person and this will result in the people buying their products. These forms of distribution are also removing the need for magazines as the artists/bands are publishing things that come straight from them.

In my opinion the move to digital and free magazines is a positive thing for magazines, but it will be short lived as they are becoming obsolete. However, the music industries benefit from the magazines going online as it provides multiple areas for the people to gain access about the artist and any upcoming events. The magazines are also useful for promoting an event or something that has happened in the personal life of the artist. This benefits the music companies as it means the people will have to buy the magazines so they can read the news before everyone.

InDesign Final

Here you can see the final stage of my article. I have included a drop cap and several images, these images are from several high end magazines as they are what I was writing about and how they are in decline. You can see that on the left I have my article that I will include in a separate post. Moreover, on the right hand side there is images of the magazine's front pages and logos of the social media websites that are putting them to shame via the number of users and internet traffic being created.

InDesign

A few lesson ago I used InDesign for the first time. It was quite easy to learn the basics and I look forward to finishing my work. During this lesson I was simply using the text and coming up with an article for a music magazine. I also experimented with changing the background colourbut made no effective decisions.

TimeLine

Here you can see my time toast which shows all my deadlines. I will be referring to this when I need to know the deadlines for any tasks.

The Beginning

Welcome to my blog.
Through the following months I will be blogging about my projects in As media. I intend to make a music magazine that is as professional looking as i can make it. Here, I will be posting updates of my work and final products.

When creating the music magazine I am going to have to conduct research on my specific genre that I will be focusing my genre of music on. I will have to plan and design ideas for my magazine. i will also have to create original photos by booking a photoshoot and creating a callsheet. This will require a lot of time and planning.