Final Interview page

I re-created my interview page which although I was originally very proud of for the quality on publisher I was disappointed either way and began to rethink my ideas. By doing this I started thinking of and re-writing up a new interview for the magazine, as the other had been very boxy, and too much to take in, so I felt the need to make it smaller, shorter and sweeter, and a lot more reader friendly in order to keep their attention there whilst making it catchy and a lot more casual so that the reader is obviously reading something like this on the way home or during their free time and the purpose of the magazine is to give news on entertainment, entertain and to keep the reader wanting more, from this spreadpage I was quite lost at what to do, and then whilst getting dressed, I had a shirt in which there was onomatopaiea art (such as "Pow", "Bam", "Zooom" etc.) And it occured to me, that I wanted to give a more personal approach with my magazine alongwith whoever I had interviewed and inspiring the idea for poloaroid photos, which were captioned by using quote from the interview so therefore co-ordinating with the photos within the polaroid style image and acting as both captions and pull quotes. I also used a spraypaint effect which had music is my language as text within it, which helped me title the interview "music is my language". The splats in corner are used to symbolise the creativity, and the mix of colours is similar to the mix's of the DJ's. His pose is as such so that he's looking at the music is my language stamp, his ipod and pointing towards the splats. Another reason for the onomatopaeia is the resemblence of his youth. Here it is:

Final Contents page

After a lot of trial and error, and having a look at magazines, I ended up doing something conventional, since I didnt see the point in challenging the convention for the contents page, as it was meant to be one which was detailed and caught the readers eye for what elses included inside, which is not mentioned on the front page. After looking at t a RWD magazine, I saw their contents page and really enjoyed the feel of it, as I myself just based on the photos decided to actually use their layout, while added a few extras which I though were quite interesting, Heres the contents page:

Front cover final

After making re-arrangement and looking for the faults on my previous front cover I felt the need to completely re-do it, here it is:

Also by the time I had finished this, I felt the need to re-do the rest too, which meant that I had to have another photoshoot, due to the terrible quality of the previous boy model, but I still wanted to make use of the album cover for the contents page, so that was kept.

Masthead design

This was the design I used as my masthead for my refurbished magazine which I complied on photoshop, learning techniques and obtaining ideas from using tutorials in which I self tutored myself to be able to use photoshop. The reason behind the mastheads "cracks" within the word 'RAVE!' is due to the fact that in raves or in house party's things do get damaged pretty much and those cracks represent a night to remember, and in this particular case an issue to remember.

Photoshoot, 3rd one

I realised that I definately needed a few more things to be done with my magazine, one of which was to actually re-do a photoshooot, this time paying more attention to the clothing, mis-en-scene. The photos I selected were:

Interview spread draft/layout self criticism

Heres the interview spread for the magazine:

Well out of the three, I felt that the interview spread was my personal favourite and probably the best of page of them all. Reasons being that I managed to use the pictures to create a flow of text which allowed me to give a great effect which made the reader, read from left to right and drew them in. But also at the same time, the quality could have been a lot of better and the text URGENTLY needs to be purged and embedded into the page to make it shorter, because right now it is pretty much just a bunch of text, and i believe that I could express this better and also improving the way its presented showing the capabilities of the language used and more entertaining plus a lot more reader-friendly and gripping.

Contents draft/layout self-criticsm

Heres the contents:

Now after looking at this.. I felt that I could obviously change out and change up the layout a lot more. Such as moving the editors letter to the left hand side of the page since in actual fact people in general tend to read from left to right and move the main image to the right so that it is structured in a way that the more important topics within the page are acknowledged and noticed earlier so that the reader can think of what appeals to them within the magazine.

Front cover draft/layout self critique

after coming across some ideas, due to lack of time and being unable to learn photoshop well enough in order to reach better quality for the magazine, and pretty much just grabbing a lot of ideas I already had and bringing them together in order to create something rather different and at the time considering the amount of preparation taken for this magazine, it was.. just about passable, but not even close to what I thought I was capable, but on the bright side of things I realised how.. mediocre it was within itself to the point where at the end after thinking about it I was disappointed a lot in myself with what it was, although even after recieving some positive feedback about the positioning of the pictures and text on the interview page, and some of the initial ideas for the front cover. The contents was very conventional, which I didnt like, bugged me quite a bit, coming to the conclusion I NEEDED another model in order to re-do the interview pages and probably add a few more things to the contents in order to reach some ideas I had gained from looking at a kerrang magazine, which had also inspired the last minute masthead which I wish to keep, anyway enough sidetracking on the layouts for the magazine here the first drafts are:

The front cover, the only few points of this I found that I actually personally enjoyed to like and found pleasing towards my eye and others who had a look at it. But the one thing that everyone had to say, and I had agreed with totally, was infact the colours I used, Blue and Orange.. Now blue I understood slightly why people may have understood it to be such as "unfriendliness". On the other hand, the orange complimented the blue and gave the image that orange was somewhat to do with fun, which is a primary element within a party, since when you go to a party you obviously intend to go and have fun, otherwise there's no point going at all if you wish to just sit in the corner and watch and neither socialise realistically. Plus there was no issue date e.g. February 2010 or price for the magazine.

the blueprint for frontpage, contents + interview

These were the important ideas i felt that had to be connoted from the magazine within itself in order to access and catch the readers eye and draw them in by looking at the front page, and these elements to be spread out within or throughout the pages:

Researching slogan for magazine

Now as quite a few magazines such as Kerrang! have their own slogans, I personally felt that a slogan was quite important and defined the magazine and its contents a lot more than who or what artist/band was within the magazine. And above that, the majority of the time the slogans are not included among the front page of the magazine, hence I want to be a bit more unconventional and include it over the front page. Now, I had to relate this to the title of my magazine and the genres which it is based upon. I chose to use "Cause We Like To Party All The Time" purely since it worked well with the name of the magazine "Rave" seeing as Rave is a party, and the magazine is pretty much a regular on clubs plus music which works with it, hence leaving me with that as the slogan.

Naming the magazine

Well originally as I had come to terms with changing the genre to dubstep, drum & bass etc.. I realised that all these genres went quite hand it hand with a lot of others.. and made me think.. it's all the same in a way but only specific sub-genres can be related to my primary genres, Dubstep and Drum & Bass which go hand in hand anyway. This led to my conclusion of expanding the genres of my magazine once again but only to a point where it simply touches the elements which are related to my genres, nothing else. So i began with thoughts on the idea of the genres which contains the elements of more mainstream genres such as: Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Bassline, Funkyhouse, Grime, Jungle, Garage, Dance, Electro, Dancehall, Reggae, Alternative Hip Hop and Alternative Rock. Now when originally deciding a genre I wished to base the magazine upon, I had thought of it simply as.. what links all of these genres together, Coming up with the plan of devising what they as a whole connoted. I ended up unable to think of a link between them straight away, BUT! thanks to a Rave I went to, I just thought.. that they all came together at one particular event as mash-ups or remixes and the original music leaving it at the conclusion, I was going to title it "RAVE!".

Contents pages

From looking at the contents page from mixmag, I recall seeing a box at the bottom featuring a free cd related to the music which was within the magazine, which made me look at it and think a bit and even got me quite interested in just the contents and above all of this, it wasn't common within many magazines to have that type of review at the bottom of the contents page.. So i got together a photo of my model(see below)

the model before

I made some edits to this and turned it into one new photo..


ALTHOUGH, i'd like to add this photo was originally as part of me learning photoshop but whilst I was doing this I was also uploadingthe contents page research at the time.. and add 1 and 1 together.. we have a new addition towards the magazine.

contents page moodboard

I had a look at some other contents pages for peace of mind that I wasnt relying totally on the mixmag and Q contents pages. From these I got a few more ideas for my contents page, and allowed me to try mix it up a little when it came to my contents page.

Interview Research

After looking through some magazines in a lesson, we were assigned to choose an interview of our choice and have a look, and learn and see conventions of interviews within magazines. I chose an interview of Kate Nash, and depicted that I had to first understand the introductory photo to the magazine, by looking and seeing how the masthead for the interview connoted and denoted what was part of the mis-en-scene and how it may have related to the artist in particular.


Now from this I learnt that interviews had to be structured as either embedded or simple Q&A, both would work BUT varied depended on the TA(target audience) who I'm trying to reach out to, which is 18-25 year olds(my reader profile has yet to be uploaded). As the interview was embedded, and my interview which i had taken was in a Q&A format, but had a lot of potential in my opinion to be embedded and turnt into one which reached the standards of language for such an age group, but also being able to reach out to them in a casual tone. For now, i'm leaving my interview un-embedded so that I can simply turn this version of my magazine into a draft, and get a better insight on how I should structure the magazine.

Genre research

We had a lesson which helped us understand the necessity and how relevant the mis-en-scene, meaning clothes in specific were important to the genre which was attempted to be represented, heres the original photo, and then a photoshopped version with implications of rap music.

Photos for the interview

Now I went out.. and got another friend to actually pose for the photos.. now since my magazines themes were related to drum and bass/dubstep/garage I did a bit of thinking and thought about it simply as.. Where do I usually hear this music.. AT ITS BEST, now it'd usually be a club, but a few people i knew who listened to this music a lot more than I did said that even though its stereotypically rave music again from this those who I had asked and inquired about mis-en-scene all said to me "keep it original" and to be perfectly honest I strongly dislike conventions, since its so repetitive and on top of that there were few locations to shoot from.. So i got with my model and had a talk about where we should actually take the photos, and came to the conclusion.. of Bricky background and a park.. which was conventiently nearby allowing me to simply take the photos in the park, since the genre of music is always involving something "fresh" and new which is forever evolving and growing in popularity and even to mainstream success, reflecting on us as people growing up and learning in a place such as a park. :P

Interview uploads

These are the jpegs of my interviews so following up on the previous post, you'll be able to have a glance or a look at it. This interview was done pretty much over instant messaging, so to speak msn. But after reading through it a few times and thinking about how I would structure the interview, I felt that this itself is a good interview now, BUT it could be a lot better if shortened a bit more and possibly embedded so it wasnt so.. lets say.. "basic".

Potential frontpage photography.

Here are some of the photos which I took of my model for the magazine, unedited. The poses were pretty much inspired from the moodboard photos of LMFAO and the dress style of Chase & Status which allowed me to stretch in to a dress sense which almost touches indie as an initial look, but thanks to the research I did I can justify my reasons for touching other genres since my genres: dubstep & DnB(drum and bass) both go hand in hand to start with plus garage, and they all use the same instruments! So I dont see why they cant dress alike too, cause a shirt and skinny tie arent stereotypical.. unless it involves skinny jeans!
These were all the photos that I believe would be ideal for the frontpage, but even regardless of this, once actually completing the draft of the magazine itself, i'm planning to probably re-shoot this and hope that the camera doesnt die out after a few shots this time!

Here we go again..

I had troubles figuring out what to actually post after the questionnaire and then got caught up playing catch up with every single subject, unallowing me to allocate any time towards the blog in particular which is very very.. disappointing.
I began working on my interview page with the help of a friend, who quite essentially was the best person to go to for this particular part of the magazine, since he had a greater knowledge of the genre himself, and was the individual that got me into the genre quite frankly. So I managed to get this done along with photos for the frontpage where he himself is featured.. I figured that he deserved to be the pride and glory of the magazine for his efforts in helping me construct the magazine's interview. The structure of the interview itself was literally 6 questions with very extended answers which was quite unorthadox to what quite a few others were doing and I felt it wasnt used enough in magazines and preferred that to the simple q&a or faq style interviews. But when it actually came down to planning this interview I had to go through my trusty RWD magazine, which to be honest was my "bible" for interviews. Looking at Chase & Status's interview which was the most important one to in my opinion since they were infact artists who related to the genre, and their interviews aided me in understanding the point of view of the interviewer and the reaction to the interviewee which led to my extended interview for the interview. As the file itself is on word, unfortunately for YOU, you cant see it right now.. so just have a look when it's posted.

Questionnaire

I noticed I never posted the questionnaire I gave out while researching my reader profile.. sorry, here it is:

OK now back to the actual magazine mood board..

Right, I apologize to anyone reading this if the previous post sidetracked from what I was initially meant to be showing, but I felt it was worth the mention so.. I did.
Now, after quite a bit of research, I found it quite difficult to find a magazine that was dedicated to such genre's as this. Most likely since they're all quite underground genres of music, and over the years have begun becoming more mainstream and ever since I was introduced to this kind of music, I've been hooked. Now, the only magazine(s) I was able to find that were focused on such genres as Garage, Drum & Bass, Bassline etc. Was infact RWD (Rewind magazine), which luckily for me, I had a recent copy of. So by reading through it I came across a duo, who were well reknown for their works in this genre, None other than Chase & Status. Who had recieved recent mainstream success by working with R&B singer Rihanna on her album R-Rated, in which they produced a few tracks, and even helped with songwriting. But again, enough sidetracking.. heres the moodboard. Due to lack of artists of this genre on the covers of magazines, I was fortunate enough to have done the rap moodboard before, which will help me quite a lot when it comes down to it. As for this, it'd help me a bit when it comes to actually dressing up someone to pose for the front cover. So here it is:

Now i'd like to say from this, that I already knew there werent many magazines that involved these genres in more detail, but still, just by looking at how most of these artists were dressed, it was rather casual and not heavily based on designer clothing and to an extent rather ragtag and basic, compared to the colour co-ordinated guys on the covers of the rap magazines. Personally, I think since there isnt any magazine that focuses on these a lot, I suppose I have no template and no real standard to aim for when it comes to the front cover, but regardless just by looking at photos of the artists I'm sure I can simply step up to the task (for once) and reach a standard that i'm proud of and would atleast be following the example I'm using from the rap magazine covers, the BIGGEST difference between them? style of clothing. Simple as that, so it isnt all bad.

Moodboard (rap) & why the genre changed.

I'm quite disappointed at myself, at how late i've left to post some of these, but due to an unexpected incident involving the interview questions and my interviewee, my original genre (rap) had to be put aside for something which is very different in comparison and has led to the change of the magazine's target audience, which when looking at rap, tended to be around the ages of 13-24 from people I had asked, mainly outside college and a few individuals from it to keep my selected sample both fair, and not unbalanced between gender, considering my college is an mixed sixth form with a very low ratio of boys to girls, 1:35 approximately, hence not a very good sample to choose.

But before I actually show the changed moodboard, I'd like to show the initial one for rap music, seeing as i did put the effort in to look for it, so I'd like to show it, just for peace of mind.

Well I'd just like to say before I post the other moodboard, that the reason i've still posted something which is of almost practically NO relevance to garage, drum and bass etc. That either way just by looking at these magazine covers, I could tell that there were already elements of these covers that I wanted mine to have. After having a good look, I saw that there were some similiarities in the style of the covers. Typically they had a masthead top left, usually covered by the main photo.. which personally, I didnt like so much. BUT one I saw in particular that DEFINATELY caught my eye and I WILL, adapt into either my interview page, or into my front page or even contents page, but I'd really like to find some way to be able to use this. If you have a look at the "REMIX" magazine cover, their main heading isn't placed horizontally.. BUT horizontally. Now, I believe this is quite unconventional compared to the others, but either way whenever I look at the moodboard, THAT caught my eye. Now correct me if i'm wrong but, I think we all know that the front covers are MEANT to GRAB the READERS or ATTRACT new readers.. and that definately did.

NME front cover Analysis

Prior to the comparison of NME & RWD magazine, it came to the task of a thorough analysis of a magazine cover itself; to help us get ideas, see the conventions in detail and to pretty much work out for ourselves what sort of colour themes we wanted to use for our magazine cover and make us think about what would stand out, what would grab the readers attention in the first place so that we'd be able to sell or distribute our magazine, or atleast get the customers to want to read it and be gripped from the moment they saw the front cover. In my personal opinion, one particular genre and a lot of different artists wouldnt be very wise in particular for something of the sort. I assume that one main genre, with many interlinked sub genre's would work out a lot better after having a look at NME's cover. NME is a magazine that is most often connoted with rock music, just by looking at the cover. As MCR (My Chemical Romance) are a punk rock band who have made it, seeing as they are on the front cover of the magazine. But when i saw the footer and header I saw two artists that caught my eye, making me realise that NME didnt JUST focus on one particular genre, but it touched onto a few others whilst it was at it. Artists that I caught eye of were Gorrilaz and Kid Cudi, who are both apart from alternative rock artists are alternative hip hop. Although they are also alternative rock, I notice that even though we may not realise it, a lot of artists go into quite a few genres making me start to think of ways which I can exploit this for my own magazine. But anyway, my philosiphy aside heres my analysis of the front cover for the NME front cover:

NME vs RWD annotations

Well even if i made this blog over 3 weeks ago, due to technical difficulties and a lost USB, I have finally got back on track and am able to upload my work, starting with the NME & RWD comparison, which we had to do, to see the differences between the styles, layout, colours and frontpages of the magazine. This in particular helped me realise the importance of strong colours in particular. The analysis of the RWD magazine was the most important part of this task, purely based on the fact, quite a few of the genres that were in my original plan were all connected. Meaning, dubstep, rap (usually a lot of people would say hip hop, but to make it clear, hip hop is a culture, and the preaching of this culture in the form of rap, became known as hip hop by artists such as RUN D.M.C, Public Enemy, N.W,A/N****'s With Attitude, Funkmaster Flex, Big Daddy Kane and others) , R&B, Dancehall, Funky House and Garage. From these there are other sub-genres such as Jungle, Dubstep, Drum & Bass, House and others. Just by looking at the layouts of the two, I learnt there was SO much difference between them and even the tone of language was A LOT different than my initial impression on such magazines, before i even looked at this.. So looks like this is the beginning of a whole new learning curve.