Billboard Front Cover

The name of the magazine ‘Billboard’ is taken up by Rihanna’s head, established magazines can do this as people already know the name of the magazine and what it looks like. So even though it is partly covered people can still realise what it is. This picture of Rihanna is very dominant even though part of her body is in it, as it’s her eyes that grab the attention of the reader even though one is covered. This portrays her style and image from the way she is looking as she will want to look mysterious which is what she is putting across and that what she is saying in this interview isn’t just a ‘kiss and tell’ it is serious and meaningful. Four colours are used on this page- Black, white, yellow and red. This is a good amount of colours to use as the black and yellow are only used briefly on the page so on the bits that are coloured in that colour they stand out well as it is not used much. With Rihannas hair being so red the colours still work well around it and everything is still standing out and it is not just her hair. ‘The Reinvention of RIHANNA’ is taking up the bottom third of the page this looks effective with the bottom of the text almost fading into the background. This also implies she is the main focus of the magazine since her story and herself is taking up the majority of the page. ‘Billboard’ is taking up the top section of the front cover which is a typical code and convention and I think this is a perfect size for it to be as it is not too big but it still stands out. Other stories featured in the magazine are positioned around the picture of Rihanna; this shows her dominance on the cover as things are positioned around her. The title of each story is made to stand out with the yellow background with black bold capital font, this works well as it is simple yet still stands out due to this. And there is only a small amount of yellow so you would be instantly drawn to this. ‘Film and TV music conference’ also stands out due to this, as well as how it wrote in capital letters. The barcode is positioned on the bottom left of the magazine along with the price, this is a typical code and convention that needs to be included on the front cover.

BillBoard Contents Page

This contents page a ‘Blocky style’ as 4 pictures are used, with writing surrounding it. 4 colours are used for this page, this works well since it is on a white background because everything is made to stand out not just specific things. Bold blue writing is used for part of the line of the story; this engages the reader to read on about what is actually in the magazine if they are interested in what this line says. The contents is split up into 6 different sections depending on what they are about, this is a more organised way to do so as it breaks everything up so you can quickly find what you are wanting to read about if you just find the section. This magazine has tried to break down all information by using different techniques to portray the information as images are used to tell the story rather than text, as pictures are used with page numbers on top of them. The contents title is in a bold style this takes up a small top section of the page and is in simple back but works well as some of the people in the pictures are wearing black so it blends in well. The page is split off with a blue line on the far left to leave a section of ‘No1 on the charts’, this is taking up the whole left third of the page, and does not continue with the theme on the other side as it is in grey. This is a feature I have never seen before but I think it is different and definitely reflects the music genre of the magazine as it is quite clearly full of mainstream music, and this list will be full of what is playing in the chart. There is one main image on this page and again the text is displayed around her, it’s almost as if she is in control of where the text goes.

BillBoard Double Page Spread

This double page would appeal to both audiences I think, its just whether you enjoy ‘Florence and the machine’. I think the image of Florence on this page is very eye grabbing as the redness of her hair brings out the colour of the cloth that she is sitting on, so not only is the reader drawn to her face, but they are drawn to the full article also as the image is overlapping onto the next page. I think this image would appeal to all audiences as she has quite a wide fan base, and the way she is positioned for this photo it seems she is doing it to gain fans by the way she is looking straight forward with her full body on show with her posture, it isn’t like she is hiding away but would still be recognised. I don’t think this image is gender specific, I think it would gain both audiences of male and female, especially males as they probably wont have of heard of her before, but with her posture and legs out they will find this appealing and what to find out more about her. Four colours are used on this page- Black, grey, white and red. A small amount of area is used for each colour, this looks good though as the colours aren’t repeated a lot of times they are only used twice maximum so it makes the page look simple yet stylish. The headline of this is ‘USA got the love’ which is quite catchy due to the fact that she is known for her song ‘you got the love’ so this is a good way to draw in the reader as they will most likely know her song. USA and you got the love is in two totally contrasting fonts, USA is taking up the whole background of one page and even overlapping to the next, I like the difference in fonts and I think it almost reflects her style as she doesn’t want to be all out there in the music industry she wants to be known for her songs which she has really thought of. So I think this portrays it well with the capital boldness for USA which emphasises just how big the USA really is and the wide range of music industry it has in it , which then flows through to a smaller ‘got the love’ which is in italics and smaller which is like herself in the USA. A drop capital is used at the start of the text, this starts the three simple column structure off well and makes it more appealing to read.

Rolling Stone Contents Page

The theme on this page is trying to portray an old fashioned style from the 1960’s; this is done by the black and white photo that is dominating the page. You can clearly tell that it was taken along time ago since no photo shop is used or effects. Since the image is taking up the majority of the page this makes it an image dominant style. ‘Johnny be good’ is placed underneath in bold black font bigger than the rest of the fonts on the page, this implies that it is the main story that is featured in the magazine since it is being focussed on so much and is emphasised by taking up two thirds of the page. Underneath this is sans serif font which goes well with the theme they are putting across (1960’s), this again is bigger than the other font on the page. It is almost like the page is split into two different sections by an invisible line, as on the left hand side which is only taking up a small amount of the page compared to the black and white image. A small square profile picture of Beyonce is used at the top of the page, this contrasts with the image next to it as you can tell it has been edited by the brightness. But this also reflects the genre the magazine is trying to portray because Rolling Stone magazine includes a few different genres in its magazine, it doesn’t just focus on just one. Three colours are used on this page of; black, white and pink. Each colour has its own type of wording it uses depending what it is for example, when page numbers are wrote they are wrote in pink- this is a typical code and convention on a contents page as it is something that must be present. And black is used for the writing, however the two main pictures have their page numbers wrote in a larger black bold font, which highlight its importance on the page. The stories featuring in the magazine are all tightly positioned on the left hand side of the page with bold larger writing used to describe the main point of the page, this is used to grab the readers attention so they can quickly find what they want to read about. Then a smaller font is used to describe more about the page, so if you wanted to read about something you could find out more information on the topic.  

Rolling Stone Front Cover

The ‘RollingStones’ magazine title is covered by the main image picture, this highlights that the title of this magazine is already well established and has a name for itself so it doesn’t need to be out there to be known. The way lady gaga is positioned directly in the centre of the cover makes her appear mysterious and makes you ask yourself ‘why is she just standing there covered in bubbles’. But this also reflects Lady gaga’s style as she herself is a very quirky woman with her own style so with her image wanting you to want to know more this will be exactly what she wants to be put across as it’s the type of person she is. This front cover has three specific colours of white, pink and grey; I feel this works well as it makes the cover not look too busy and gives the front cover a theme running throughout the page so it looks effective. However I think it gives the front cover a feminine look so may draw back male readers as they may feel it looks too pink, however the male audience could be attracted due to thinking she is attractive. ‘Lady gaga; is in capitals and is in the largest size of font on the page, this highlights she is the main focus of the magazine and that she is basically the reason for you buying the magazine. The stories featured in the magazine are positioned on the left of the magazine as well as the right, these are all in the same font so none of them stand out in font wise, but they do against the pink background. The list of stories are wrote differently to normal in this magazine as the list changes in styles of font from small bold writing to larger un bolded font, however all these stories are not more important than others, so I think this magazine just does this to represent the style rather than make important focus stories stand out.

Rolling Stone Double Page Spread

The image of Lilly Allen is taking up a whole page and is even overlapping to the next page with her arm sticking out. Her hair style is quirky and this is definitely being portrayed in this image with her black hair and black eye make up which goes with the theme running throughout the page, the red shirt even works well with the two bits of red writing stating her name ‘Lilly Allen’ in case you didn’t know who the artist was. Her posed hand on hips pose, gives off the impression that she is an established artist who is very well known. Her hands on her hips reflects the attitude she has and this is emphasised by the quote taken out of her interview which is taking up the majority of the page stating she doesn’t care what people thinks and she can say what she wants, which the image definitely backs up. I think this is an effective way to grab the attention of the readers, as the large title makes the 4 small columns of simple style font writing look less than it actually is as it is taking up such a large amount of space. The writing stands out especially well with the black thick edging around each letter; this makes the white writing stand out from the pasty white background. Again this quirky text illustrates Lilly Allen’s style, I think the person featured on the page helps the editor make the page as I have found out that the style and writing on the page is done depending on the style of the person, so every little bit of the page is about them and their style. I think this image and the page itself wouldn’t gain readership off men as Lilly Allen’s music is mostly directly at women, since she occasionally puts men down in her lyrics. The style and image of Lilly would also not be appealing to men unless they had a quirky style themselves or found her attractive.

Diary Entry week two

This week we focused on market research, i had to create a questionnaire where i would ask 25 people it and find out exactly what they liked and appealed to them in a magazine. After I had found out this information i put my information into pie charts, and wrote about why I thought people had chosen what they had and how i would follow through with what my audience wanted on my final product. I also wrote why i thought people hadn't chosen the other options in the categories. To make my information more creative when presented i am going to do a pod cast of 5 different people to see what they would like to see in a magazine

Diary entry week one

This week we have learnt exactly what needs to be talked about when analysing front pages, contents page and double page spreads, so we could go through with our task and analyse 15 of the above. When doing this I had to make sure I picked out every detail on the page and talk about codes and conventions that were always used on these pages.

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When producing my school magazine I used the colour scheme code and convention throughout the front page and the contents page, to do this I used 3 main colours and repeated them throughout the page to not make it too busy with colours. I chose blue to be my main colour as I thought this suited both genders and was not directed at just one so it worked well. Another main code and convention I used the big bold main headings for the name of the magazine and the contents header, I took this inspiration from ‘Chill’ magazine. I thought this was good because it makes the page stand out well and you can immediately see the text which is the main feature on the page. When I did my magazine my titles took the top section of the page. When looking through the different contents pages of the magazines not many of them featured many images and if they did it was only up to 3 images, so I decided to only feature two on my contents page as I thought this was an average amount and this is also what ‘Chill’ did and I thought it looked good when only a few images were placed on the page. Another main feature of the contents page was the page numbers, each of the magazines I looked at had a line of what was included in the page, ‘Chill’ magazine used this well and I followed through with what they did. Even though none of the magazine front covers used the ‘rule of thirds’ I did this on mine as I knew it was an important code and convention, by doing this I placed my text on the far left with my image on the right and my title taking up the top third of the page. Finally I used a basic font on both pages; all magazines did this I think this was to make it look more simple and easy to read instead of looking too fancy and making it hard to read. This inspiration was taken from the ‘George Stephenson’ magazine, because I thought it looked appropriate and simple.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? 

When taking a medium close up you had to focus the camera, to ensure that it didn’t end up blurry. After this was done you were ready to take the photo if you were in the right location. Depending on whether the place was dark and gloomy or not depended on whether you used the flash, since the place were I took my medium shot was dark I used the flash to ensure you could see the  image I was trying to capture. When I was constructing my magazine I used the text tool a lot to add text on to my front page and my contents page, from this I began to edit the style of the text by making it bold and navy. Since I had lots of layers it was good that I could move them around and could do last minute changes, which I did do by adding a background image that I took of Whitley high school. When doing my layers I could change the order of where things were positioned on my page. I used the lasso magnetic tool to cut out what I wanted from my main image that I used on my front cover, this let me cut out exactly what I wanted from the image and leave the rest. The move tool also allowed me to change the positioning of things on both of my pages; I played around a lot with this to see where I could place my images and my text to make it look better, especially in my contents page since there were a lot of pages to include. I used the clone stamp tool on my main medium shot on the front of my cover to get rid of blemishes and make the picture appear better.   

Front page and contents analysis

Front page analysis

Throughout all magazines bright bold colours are used; this grabs the readers attention and would make it stand out on whilst it appears on the shelf since there is such a variety to choose from today.

Again on all magazines there 2 or more photos featured on the front cover, this makes the information on the front cover more interesting and the text becomes more appealing to the eye. Because if it was all writing nobody would want to read it especially since all these magazines are aimed at teenagers. ‘Fusion’ is the only one with one central Image, however this is appropriate since it is a music magazine and makes it more edgy.

All magazine names on each of the magazines are bold and mostly in capitals, when you write in capitals it is almost like you are shouting at the audience so this is a good technique to use to approach readers.

‘Bishopbriggs’ and ‘Evolve’ are the only two magazines out of the selection that do not have any paragraphs of text on the front cover, this would be more appealing to the target audience as they just get straight to the point of what the magazine includes instead of writing loads of text. On the rest of the magazines the text is placed on either the far right or left of the magazine this presents the cover better and makes the text look more approachable to read as they are only small little paragraphs. And if the text was scrambled all over the page it would look too much.

None of the magazines use rule of thirds on the front covers this is probably because they haven’t used proper programmes to create them it looks as if they have just used word.

On each of the magazines a colour scheme of only two colours is used, two colours being ones that go well together, which they all do. This colour scheme is followed throughout the page with the text in one colour and the background in another; this makes it look more professional and less busy because if there were loads of different bold bright colours you wouldn’t know were to start.

Contents page analysis

One main feature on a contents page is ‘Page one’ then a line or a couple of words to say what the page is about. All of these magazines do this apart from ‘Top Terrace’ which doesn’t have one. But is definitely a requirement in a magazine.

Another feature is the colour scheme; this is normally repeated throughout the page and normally tends to be up to 3 different colours. They usually bold bright colours which are appealing to the eye.

There hasn’t been many pictures featured on the contents page of magazines, there is only one magazine which includes them. So I will only use up to two images on mine, these pictures are normally of school children doing something do with what is in the magazine and they normally tend to be having fun in the photo. These photos are normally an average size and don’t take up much of the page.

The fonts on the magazines tend to change throughout the page with different sizes and boldness for different headings. The fonts are not fancy because then that would make it hard to read so a basic one is normally used which makes it look simple. The font of the title ‘Contents’ is the biggest on the page so readers are aware of what it is, it is normally big and bold and takes up the top of the page, it is one of the main features on the page.

Boxes of a certain colour are used for each different section in the magazine, e.g. sport- green. This makes it easier for you to pick out exactly what you want to read about, instead of reading through the list of what is in. It also makes the page less busy and easier to read. The ‘George Stephenson’ magazine does this, however none others do. ‘Fusion’ magazine also does this but to highlight main points as since the background is white the 3 different colour boxes stand out with the main information they want to put across.

Each magazine has their own signature picture that is placed on the contents, this isn’t a digital image. It is almost like a cartoon which represents the magazine; this image normally takes up a small amount of space and is positioned at one side of the page. However the one in ‘Fusion’ takes up the top third of the page but still looks effective. ‘Chill’ doesn’t do this but instead uses clipart shape tool to add effects onto the page to not make it so plain.

School magazine front cover

School magazine contents page