Codes and Conventions of music magazines.

Hii,
Today i have been looking at the code's and convention's of music magazine's. I found out that music magazine's are simliar but not exact to other magazine's such as gossip magazine's. I started of looking at the code's and convention's of Top of the Pops and focused on the music genre pop. I looked at the four main element's of magazine's which are layout, image, text and audience profile. The top of the pop's magazine is very girly in way's in which i will explaine further on. "Girly" suggesting the target audience would be for young girl's. The magazine's colour scheme is very simple using the colour's pink's and white's, this will be representing gender for female's. The layout is very busy and has alot of content idicator's. The layout also isnt very sophisticated showing that it is allocated for a younger generation, because if top of the pop's was very sophisticated the teenager's would have great difficulty understanding the layout and coming to term's with it, as they wouldn't be able to find what they are looking for. Looking at the text of the magazine, i found that they were using "san's serif" which is a very plain rounded text. I found this style of text made it link in with the style of the magazine, as if the magazine used the "serif" style text it would make the text from the magzine out of place, and make the text like it isnt ment to be there. Top of the pop's magazine uses a very gender specific image which tell's the reader the gender which is female. It use's a female artist, dressed up in a "Diva" dress, Lot's of make-up and her hair down straight. I think the reason for this image being used is many young teenage girl's would look up to this singer used on the image and think of her as a role model and aspiration. Also another reason for this image being used is because she is the main article in the magazine. By looking at this magazine you can tell straight away that the target audience is for teenage girls. From looking at the code's and convention's of this magazine, i have found some idea's for my magazine. It has gave me some aspiration as top of the pop's has the same music genre as the one i will use for my magzine, also it has used the same ideas that i will expand on to make my magazine competetive towards other magazine's from the same style of music genre, Pop!

Content's Page.

Hiii,
I have now started to look at different style's of content pages for magazine's. I have chosen to work with a simple layout for my content's page. The reason for this is because i didn't want to put to much information on it as i wanted to keep that for the other pages. Also some of the magazine's i researched used a simple layout. Even though my magazine is made for gossip i thought that making it over crowded by filling it with loads of text and images, would make the reader confused and unable to browse for the chosen interests. For the background i have chosen an image based from the school grounds, I didn't want a main image on the content's page as it isnt exactly a page where all the main information is placed, and i would't class the content's page as the most important. Instead i choose a simple picture that would make the reader reflect on the school itself. I am keeping my content's page simple as i don't want to over it. And i would rather the front cover have the most attention as it's the main page of the whole magazine.

Finished School Magazine Front Cover.

Hiii,
I have now finished my school magazine's front cover. I have concentrated on the code's and convention's to make my magazine just like a real one. I used the same font's for all my text on my front cover, the text i used was Myraid Pro. The reason i used the same font was because i didn't want loads of different styles of font i wanted to keep it simple. I thought if i used different style's of text it would confuse the reader. I used a simple colour scheme for my front cover, which is the school colour's. I thought this would give the reader a better link with the school itself. I have changed a few thing's while creating my front cover, i have now included the school address and if they feel the need to write to the school about the magazine they can feel free to do so. In my magazine sketch i have mentioned that i will put a badge behind the price and issue number of the magazine, this i couldn't do as it was covering my main image and would stop the reader getting full effect of the magazine. I also thought about wether or not to have content idicators as it would cover most of the image and would look like it's taking alot of the space up. But then i did think about it and decided to include content indicators as my magazine was sort of a gossip magazine, and also for teenagers from the age of 11-16. I think if i didn't use content indicators it would make my magazine more formal and this may stop my target audience from reading the school magazine. Also i have included a barcode on my front cover, even though there is no way of scanning the magazine's at school. But i wanted to have the student's feel the magazine style as all other magazine's i have researched all have bar code's included.

Sketch of school magazine front cover.

Hii,

I have started to now think about what my school front cover magazine will look like. I have now started to sketch my ideas on A3 Paper. This will give me a good idea of how my front cover will look like. I need to include the main concepts of magazines, such as bold titles, bold colours to match layout and colour scheme, main image in the centre of the page, to show what the main story will be about in the issue of the magazine etc. This is important to include all the major concept's so its just like a real magazine, and so student's will like what they see and what they asked for.

Analysing the result's of my Questionnaire.

Hii,

Today i have started analysing my result's from my questionnaires. This is important as i cant just get data and not do anything with it. I am going to do each question, and then produce an analytical diagram to go with it. With the diagram i will anaylse each question, telling you things such as "why this will help" Etc. Making diargram's help as it will show me the wide spread of result's i have got and it will show you what popular information need's to be included in the magazine. Producing diagram's will help me to analyse my results for numerical data, but i will find it hard to analyse question's that are "open" as they give unique and diverse answers.

Research for magazine (questionnaire's)

Hii,

I have now started to think about what i will include in my school magazine. I started of by creating a questionnaire to ask year 7 to year 11 students what they would like to see in the magazine once published. I started of by creating a few questions then got a peer to asses my questions and tell me what i could do to make them better. Once assesed i used the feedback to make the questions better and to think about other question's that needed to be asked. I finally got my questionnaire finished and started getting different year group's to fill in my questionnaire. I produced 30 questionnaires and got all of them back, i looked through my questionnaire's and it seems i have got a good range of answers back. This will help me alot when it comes to producing what goes into my magazine. In my questionnaire i included question's such as:

1) Are you male or female?

2) What year are you in?
- year 7
-year 8
-year 9
-year 10
-year 11

3) Would you be interested in reading the school magazine once produced?
-yes
-no

4) If no, please tell us your reason for not wanting to read the school magazine?
-not interested in school
-no spare time to read it
-don't read magazine's
-other _____

5)What categorie's would you like to see in the school magazine?
-school subject's and lesson review's
-school event's
-sport's
-puzzle's and achievment's
-horoscope's
-other ______

6)would you be willing to pay for the magazine?
-yes
-no

7)Is so, how much would you be willing to pay?
-£0.50-£1.00
-£1.25-£1.50
-£1.75-£2.00
-other ________

8)what are your interest's or hobbie's inside or outside school?
-Football
-Dancing
-Swimming
-Rugby
-Singing
-Other _______

9)How often would you like to see the school magazine published?
-Every week
-Every 2 weeks
-Monthly
-Other _______

10)Any further suggestion's that you think may help please state in the box below.


I thought these question's would help me alot this is because they were relevant to what i needed to find out to be able to produce my magazine.

Media Magazine :)

Hii,

I have recently started looking at the different concept's of magazine's, magazine's such as Look, Hello, FHM, Mizz etc. In these magazine's i have looked at the style's and layout's that appear in all magazines. And have found that all magazine's have alot of things in common, such as bold titles, bold colours, date and edition, main image in the middle etc. After looking at the different style's and layout's i started looking at the different denotation's and conatation's from the magazine's, this helped me to think about why things are put where they are. It also let me think what sort of things i will include on my front page for my school magazine.