Article Draft

This is my first draft of the feature article that will appear in my magazine.

Feedback 9.2.11

Well doen Kirsty. This is excellent work. Keep this up!

Mrs A

Casting Shots & Costume Design

These are the casting shots and costume design for my band, these show that the band members will all appeal to the target audience due to them being young, stylish and fashionable yet all having their own take on the look showing little quirks and personality traits. I have decided to design my band members like this because not all young girls have the same personalities and so will not all have the same fashion sense, this will reassure them that not everyone has to be the same and they can take inspiration from the different members of my girl band.
Francesca:
The costume design for Francesca is anything that is of a vintage style and shows off her girly vintage style of clothing.










Frankie:
This costume design will be of a girly style as she is the most feminine band member and will be wearing pinks, whites and creams to show her fashion sense with a girly and innocent twist.











Gabbie:
This costume design is planned to be both girly and trendy with slight quirks with accessories to show off her personalities.












Katie:
This costume design will be the most 'individual' out of the group and so she will be wearing a mixture of vintage and high street to show off a more alternative look.










Lizzie:
This will be the most up to date fashionable design of costume with clothes from the high street, taking inspiration from many celebrities.

Photoshoots - Planning and Casting

For my magazine i have decided to create a girlband with 5 members called "The Crystalettes".  All of the members are female and young adults, which will attract the target audience because they are simelar to Girls Aloud and The Saturdays, two 5 member young adult girlbands that are very sucessful at the moment. For each of my models i have been inspired by different female singers to create a slightly different personality and look for each, but one that willl still link to my pop theme and be appropriate for a band.

My Models

                                             

Lauren: My inspiration for Lauren's look was Pixie Lott. I chose Pixie Lott as my inspiration for a band member because although she is girly she has an indie and more vintage style to the way she dresses at times. This is relevent because when i did my questionnaires, although people liked pop music as a whole, some people preferred a more indie style, which is why i have decided to include someone with that fashion style.

Frankie: My inspiration for Frankie's look was Mollie from The Saturdays. This is because they have the same charectaristics, complection and features. Mollie is very femenine and girly and this is the main reason why i would like to take inspiration from her look for my model.

Gabbie: My inspiration for Gabbie's look was Katy Perry. I decided this because when i first analysed band images for my research i analysed one of her as she appeals to the target audience appropriately. Katy Perrys music is of the pop genre and her image is very femenine, her clothes, accessories and makeup are much more eccentric compared.

Katie: My inspiration for Katie's look was Rihanna. Rihannas music is very mixed although she is one of the most popular female artists of the 21st century. Over the years her image has changed dramatically in different ways. I have chosen this look to inspire my image for Katie as i think it portrays a more wild and fun character which i believe is essential to attract my audience to the front cover.

    

                                        

Lizzie: My inspiration for Lizzie's look was Cheryl Cole, this is mainly because they both have the same dark long hair and complection. Although Cheryl is also feminine like the rest, she is more on trend and up to date when it comes to her appearance which is what makes her a fashion icon to my target audience, this is why i thought it relevent to have somebody from my band's image inspired by her.

Reader Profile

The audience reading my magazine will be between the ages of 12 and 16, female and into pop music. It will be a weekly magazine to please the audience as they will want to keep up to date on their favourite artists songs and gossip, to add to this they will also be able to keep up to date with the weekly Top 40 which is one of their main intrests as they are pop music fans. Due to the age of my target audience there will be no swearing or adult sarcasm used in my articles or throughout my magazine as it would be inapropriate although there will be humour throughout to keep the reader interested and show others, thus advertising and causing more people to buy the magazine.

Organisation

To organise my time throughout this task i will create a calendar, so that i know i will be getting all of the planning needed done and i will be on schedule.
8-11th February - Plan my photoshoots including props, costumes, models and casting shots.
11-13th February - Draw up mock ups of each page, produce reader profile and draft my article
Week commencing the 14th February - Photoshoots

My Moodboard



This is a moodboard to represent what theme my magazine will hold. I purposly chosed feminine and colourful objects and a very femenine selection of fonts which will appeal to young girls. I included current and up to date popstars that are each in the charts at the moment, these popstars and their image will help me to cast my band/artist when i do so.

Naming My Magazine & Audience Questionnaire

To help me think up a name for my magazine i looked in a thesaurus for words that linked with the themes of music, sound and femininity and added them to different words to create sayings and appropriate names.  My favourite 3 names were:
Turn It Up!
GirlPop
Poptastic!

In order to choose the most appropriate name for my magazine i created an audience questionnaire and asked 10 people from the age range of my target audience what their opinion was, here is what i found out...

1. Are you male or female?
M -
F - //////////

2. How old are you?
12- /
13-///
14-
15-/
16-////

3.  Which name do you prefer?
Turn It Up - //
Girl Pop -  /
Poptastic - ///////

4. What type of music is your favourite?
Pop - /////
R&B - ///
Indie - /
Rock -
Other - /

5. Which band/singer do you prefer out of the following?
Girls aloud - ////
Ellie Goulding - //
Lady Gaga - ////
Taylor Swift -


Because my questionnaire results came out as they did, i think the best option for my name would be Poptastic as it clearly got the most votes. I am also very confident with this choice of name because the people i asked were both at the top, middle and bottom  of my age range and so this is shown to attract my whole target audience.  The survey also shows that my target audience prefer pop music to any other,  particularly liking Girls Aloud and Lady Gaga, this is also helping me with my choice of feature artist or band as i now know which styles of music and personality and look of artists they are more attracted to.

Planning: Technology and Equipment

In order to produce my magazine i will be using many different technologies and equipment. These will include:
InDesign
Photoshop
Studio Lighting 
Digital Camera 
Studio
Tripod

Finding An Institution

After researching into the different institutions that i could find that would distribute my product, i finally chose IPC. IPC produces over 60 media brands and with print alone reaching almost two thirds of females in the UK, 42% of UK males - almost 26 million UK adults. My main reason for choosing this institution is because of the huge figures that show they appeal to females and because my magazine will be aimed at females alone, this reassured me that there would be a high chance of my magazine maybe becoming a best seller.

Analysing Appopriate Artist Imagery

This photograph is taken from the Girls Aloud album booklet - Out Of Control. I believe this image is appropriate for my target audience because it includes a young girl band, simelar to what i would like to feature in my magazine. The girls in the band all have a very different look to them , wether it be their skin tone or hair colour they do not all look like clones of one another. This is a good tip because it will not teach my target audience to think that they have to look like each of their friends, but that they can look good by looking like themselves which is not portrayed enough in the media at the moment. The image also follows the colour scheme of basically neutral, black, white and grey shades, although this could be seen to some as not very eye catching or attractive, i believe it compliments the way that the girls are positioned. This is because they are each standing in very eye catching positions and then placed together in a more creative way than just a line, and so if the colours were too bright and bold i believe the whole picture would look too messy and confuse the reader at their first glance.

This is a poster advertising Katy Perry's single "Teenage Dream". I believe this is a good representation for my target audience as the cover is playful and eye catching. The colours of the singer are again mainly neutral shades, black and white although due to the more experimental and colourful fonts in the bottom corner they work well together by being eye catching but not too bold or colourful to confuse the reader at first glance. I think by having the celebrity in a playful and fun pose and not too sinister will also attract my audience and as i found out in my survay , most of the target audience will be first attracted to the magazine by the celebrity on the front cover, and so by making them look approachable and playful (even though this particular cover does not use direct address) it will make the reader much more attracted to the magazine.

Target Audience in Detail

After all of my research into my target audience and their preferences, most of my most important information came from my previous questionnaire.
Phsycographic profiling: I have decided that my target audience will be a mixture of mainstreamers and aspirers, as 40% of the market are mainstreamers and because my chosen genre of music is the most popular they are very likely to be included under this title, and the rest willl be the people that will follow the latest trends to stay popular and up to date, therefore if pop music is the latest trend and what most people are in to, then they will begin to like and follow it also.
Demographic profiling: To put my target audience into demographic profiling i have placed my target audience in the C1 and C2 segments, i have chosen these two C bands because the SEC will mainly have to depend on the audiences parents as most of the buyers will be too young to be put into a certain SEC segment due to them being students. (Although if some have a job they will most likely be in segment D, but this will not apply to the majority).

Age: 12-16
Gender: Female

SEC (Socio Economic Status): Student
Race: All races

My Audience Questionnaire & Identifying Target Audience

I created a questionnaire to help identify my target audience and appeal to them as much as possible when producing my magazine.

1. How old are you? 

14 - /

15 - /

16 - ///

17 - ///

18 - //

19 -

2. Are you male or female?
Male -
Female - //////////

3. How much do you spend on magazines at the moment?
£2-£2.50 - //
£3-£3.50 - /////
£4 +  - //

4. What is your favourite genre of music?
Pop - /////
RnB - //
Rock -
Indie - ///

5. What would attract you to a magazine?
The front cover and featured celebrity - //////
Free gifts - //
Featured articles- //

6. Would  direct address attract you to a magazine?
Yes - //////
No - ///
Not sure -  /

After collecting and reading over my results i have realised that my target audience will be for 14-18 year olds as after researching i dont think that most females above that age will be as demanding or as interested in a music magazine as the 14 to 18 year olds. I have also decided that it would be a good idea to keep the price around the £3 mark, make a very attractive and eye catching front cover and persue the theme of pop music for females as this again proved to be the most popular genre out of the ones listed.

Popular Music Genres: Top 40 Download Chart

After researching into the popular music genres of today, i very quickly found that the type of music that i am focusing on for my magazine is in fact the most popular type of music in the UK. On the Radio 1 website i found the top 40 singles of this week which all could potentially feature in a magazine of my chosen genre. Although pop music is the most popular type, Radio 1 also do the top Indie, RnB, Rock and Dance charts to appeal to all audiences.

Analysing The Journalistic Styles of an Article

In every music magazine there will be many articles written by journalists throughout the magazine, but there will always be the main feature article, the one that is usually the main focus of the front cover and that they will have spent the most time and money on. These feature articles will have been written by the magazines top journalist of the moment and so will usually be to a very high standard.

This feature article is from the magazine Q, which is very similar to the style of magazine i will be producing. The article as a whole is very eye catching however the journalist and layout designer have specifically chosen particular parts of the spread to catch the readers eye and interest them. 

There is one main photograph of the star in the article, Florence Welch. The size and the colour scheme of this image is very striking and will capture attention of the audience. The bold USA title in the background has been used to attract attention as most readers will know that Florence is a British singer and so buy using this as a title, it will attract readers to read the article and see what relevance the singer has to the USA. The caption "you've got the love" is a song lyric from one of the most famous and well known songs of 2010 and so if the reader does not recognise the star by her photograph then they will more than likely realise who she is by the song lyric included. "So why is Florence Welch lying on her floor attacking herself?" is a very striking rhetorical question to use at the beginning of an article and will immediately encourage the reader to read the article and gain the information to answer the question. All of these features in the article help to make the story more interesting and eye catching and i will be using many of these and more, in the article that i am to soon produce.

Circulation Figures: Magazines of a Similar Genre

For each magazine that is on the market, someone will be taking into account of how many copies have been sold. These figures are then compared to other magazines of a similar genre and so we can see which magazines are in more demand than others, these are called Circulation Figures. I found out from the Guardian online that on the 11th February 2010 it was posted that Mojo magazine (a popular pop/indie music magazine) over taking Q magazine. Kerrang and The New Musical Express's figures dropped a significant amount. "Bauer Media's classic rock magazine Mojo had an average monthly circulation of 98,484 in the second half of last year, down 2% year on year but up 0.8% on the previous six months. It overtook fellow Bauer title Q, which fell 8% year on year and 5.4% on the first half of the year to 94,811." 

Although Kerrang is not exactly the same genre as my magazine, the top magazines "Mojo" and "Q" include very similar musicians and artists in as in my genre and so this reassures me that there is a huge demand in the market for Popular music magazines and there are a wide range of people that will want to buy this kind of magazine. 

USP: Unique Selling Point

I am going to be pursuing the idea of a pop music magazine, making it as colourful and attractive as possible. Although as to create a unique selling point for my magazine i will be aiming it at females only, around the ages of 14 to 19. I have chosen to do this because there are not many pop music magazines currently produced and the few that are on the market at the moment are aimed towards young boys and girls around the ages of 10 to 14. In conclusion as i know that there is definitely a market out there to buy pop music magazines, i believe my unique selling point will boost the attraction of my magazine.

Analysis of a Feature Article

This is a feature article from the popular music magazine Mixmag. This is a good example of a feature article as it includes a story and you can be easily drawn into this due to the interesting caption "I don't believe in being embarrassed" taken from the story in the article. There is only one main photograph taking up most of the page, this will catch the readers eye and even if they don't go on to read the article, they will have studied the picture and not just ignored the page all together. Also, there is a mixture of font types to save from boring the reader and instead capture their eye to read the article.

Analysis of a Contents Page

This is a contents page from the same magazine as my front cover was taken from, Billboard. Billboard is a magazine. This contents page follows many of the conventions and styles of a contents page. Although this page has many different images and colours of fonts, it still has a house style running through. This is because the main colours in the picture are black, red, blue and yellow which are also the colours incorporated within the logo.  The magazine also includes many relevant imagery, for example above the "Music" title there is a photo of the musician Katy Perry, showing that there will be an article about her and so giving the reader more information about the magazine without going further than the contents page. also to re-enforce the music genre, to the left of the page they include the top singles, albums and new releases of the week.