Catch Up

Taking my pictures did take some time due to certain problems with my model and did not get it right the first time. But I did take pictures but my Nikon camera gave me soo many problems that I had to borrow a camera from my school and continue taking pictures with that :( but still I managed to take them and I am extremely happy with the result!
We then were given a picture from our teachers and we used that picture to play around with it on photoshop to get used to the software.. the picture I edited I have attached below :)

I think one technique on the software I really liked.. the air-brushing, although using the clone brush takes quite long it actually made a hugee difference and I have started to use it for the photos for my magazine. I wanted it to be very attractive and appealing I think it worked, I had a few girls that wouldn't stop staring at my images of my model. I guess that is a good sign :)

We were asked to conduct our interview for our double page spread. How I went about it was I put myself in the reader's point of view and thought if this was an artist I am a fan of what would I like to know about the most and began from there. I then used my model (Shakir) to answer the questions and then used the answers to complete my interview.

I have already began to create my front cover for our magazine and shall be unloading the finished result  very soon to my blog. Exciting! :)

Image Evaluation

We were asked create a table, and write about what images we plan to take and how we plan on taking them, including the location, the mise-en-scene, the type of shot and what equiment will be needed.  I plan to take my pictures in the  location IKEA because this location has lots of different types of lighting there, giving me alot of variety of shots I can take and has different already designed rooms which I can use to help find my right backgrounds :)

Flatplan

Below I have pictures of my flatplan and I will use this as a guide to creating my magazine

Magazine analysis

Recently I was asked to analyse key conventions on a magazine (analysising the front page, contents page and double page spread) that had the same age group for their target audience as I have for my future magazine. In this task I created a powerpoint with an analysis of a contents page of a magazine called Hip-Hop.
From analysising this magazine I have decided I would use more writing and less text so that the reader does not loose focus due to alot of text; also the convention of having big page numbers and bold sub-headings for the straplines. I have attached a link of this below of my analysis of my contents page
http://www.slideshare.net/TaarSA/contents-page-analysis-7086773


Image of my double page spread analysis

Analysing

Hey hey :)
Apologises for not posting for a while... In class we have been analysing the conventions of magazine front covers and double page spreads; studying the different techniques used by the editors- presentational and linguistic.

From studying front covers the key things to make sure your cover has are:
- The logo/masthead must stand out so in a store it would be bold and visible. It also must be original and maybe put on a colourful background - dependent on your magazine.
-Spacing on cover: it is best to have less spacing HOWEVER, make sure the magazine is not busy or cluttered this could make the magazine look unattractive - but avoid leaving big blank spaces.
- Lettering: The most attractive magazines do not have too many fonts - having too many can lead to magazine looking busy. It is ideal to have one each for: headings, logo and bulk text.

I will ensure I consider these points when designing my magazine so that my magazine will appeal to the audience.

Reader profile

Jasmine, 18, from London

Jasmine is an 18 year old, living in London with her two older brothers, sister, mum and dad.
Jasmine, is a very modernized British Asian girl who enjoys having a good time out with her mates but still is a devoted A level student.
Jasmine and her siblings listen to modern music from many genres but is a regular Britasia (Urban Bhangra music channel) listeners and always manage to get carried away when listening to it and begin to dance in the typical Bhangra way.
However the Bhangra she does listen to is not really traditional, it is more modernized with genres such as hip-hop and rap merged with it.
Her parents love to see them embrace part of their Asian culture, however wished they did alot more than they do now as they believe that Jasmine and her siblings do not know much about Punjabi culture and that they are forgeting their asian culture.
She loves to attend the London Asian themed Mela’s (which are commonly known as a festival, where you can enjoy music by Punjabi artists - pure Punjabi or modernized artists aswell as asian cuisine and a fairground; which take place annually in the summer) were she enjoys seeing and singing along to her favourite artists- especially the males singers she has major crushes on.

Jasmine is not much of a girly girl; however she loves chatting to her mates to to keep up with the latest gossip on her favourite artists and when there is no magazine prints of particular artists she always tries to find ways of searching it, one thing she likes to do is going onto facebook and become a fan on their pages.

Market research

We were asked to create a questionnaire for our target audience - mine being 16-21 year olds. This was in order to get a better understand of what the audience like and dislike in a magazine and what they believe a magazine would be like, to help us build enough research before creating our magazines.
My Questionnaire involved 11 questions about what the audience prefer in a magazine and I asked 18 people. After collecting both qualitative and quantitative data from the questionnaire I used it to produced pie charts showing the questions and results.

 After asking this question I realised that what matters most to my target audience is the colour. This has helped me and now I know to make sure I pay alot of attention to my colour scheme making sure these colours are bold and work well together. I was quite surprised because I thought what would be most wanted to see was lots of pictures.

 

This question gave me a varity of different types of colour schemes. Black was a frequent colour and made me released that most my target audience prefer one of the colours in a magazine to be black. This is a key point that I think I will use for my magazine and use it as a key colour for my colour scheme. By looking at this question I can see my audience like a mixture of dark and light colours and will be taking this in when chosing my colour scheme.

This has made me realised that when creating my front cover I will have to ensure that I have eye catching bold headlines and focus on the headlines more rather than having lots of images on it. Maybe have one main images and lots of headlines all around it but I will have to make sure it does not end up looking too busy.

This question showed that more than half of the target audience asked like to read celebrity gossip and interviews. Which is a good thing because it was what I wanted to include into the magazine.

The second question I asked was to find out further which they would prefer more, as more than half of them chose interviews so from this data I think I will include interviews but turn it into a cross between an interview and gossip however there was still a small amount that chose stories so may make it have a slight story feel to it but may just focus on interview/gossip as it was most like to read.

Asking my target audience what they liked most was good because now I know they like articles the most and second best is freebees.. What surprised me was that not many were keen on the competitions so I think for my creation of a magazine I will not include them.



This question helped me realised that my target audience do not like to see tips for any problems or factual information the most. This is making me consider not including these in my magazine. Advertisment was also not liked by the people asked - which I am not surprised... sometimes in a magazine its not what I like to see either.

This is very important because I needed to know how much my audience were willing to pay. No-one said they would pay more than £3; just over half said they would pay roughly between £1-2 however there was still a large number that said they would pay less than a pound. I will have to make sure the price I chose for my magazine match the prices prefered.

This question was just to see how many people knew what the genre was. This showed that almost all of the target audience asked knew what the genre is.

This question shows that just over half the amount that said yes do actually listen to Bhangra. However, there is still quite a large number that said they didn't. I believe that this magazine I create will be a platform to help people that do know the magazine to be able to learn more about this genre and maybe even get a bigger audience and make this genre become more recognised.



This was to get a rough idea of what artists my targeted audience were familiar with. It showed that the most known artist was Imran Khan and H-dhami. As these two artists are most recognised I think I may used them in my magazine

From this questionnaire it has helped me build a rough idea of the things I should and shouldn't include within my magazine.