Jamie's Media Blog - Music Magazines

I was given a task to create a music magazine of my choice where I had to think of an original name for a music magazine then design a cover, contents and a double page spread. In order to make the magazine look authentic I followed the conventions used in other music magazines. The music magazine which I looked closely into was ATM, ATM is a magazine that was created for people who listen to drum and bass which was the same target audience as the magazine that I was going to create. I work in a group of two, so that I could share my ideas with my other team member and discuss how we could improve on our ideas etc. In order to create the pages for the magazine we used a variety of software on the computer, but the main two software in which we used were; Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.

As my magazine was made for drum and bass listeners I knew that it was going to be quite had as I could only find one music magazine which we had to look in numerous different shops before we actually found it. When design the magazine we had to follow the conventions in order to suit the target audience so taking this in mind I knew I had to make the magazine look ‘underground’ as Drum and Bass music is seen as what some people describe as underground music. Underground music is music that is popular through word and mouth and not through things like music videos. Taking this in mind I designed all the pages so they followed the conventions of Underground music, In order to make the magazine look underground I had to use dark colours, and pictures that looked ‘street’, Also I had to consider fonts and textual language that would appeal to the target audience. I also realised that I needed to make sure that I had freebies that would appeal to the target audience so I designed the magazine to come with free glow sticks which would appeal to drum and bass fans as they like to go ‘raving’.

My Magazine represents a social group which is known on the street as ‘Ravers’ which just represent people who like to go to legal and illegal raves, the reason why my magazine has to represent that social group is because drum and bass is the music they mostly listen to and the music they play at raves. I decided to use the drum and bass duo, Chase and Status for my magazine cover and my double page spread because Chase (Saul Milton) and Status (Will Kennard) are really big in the Drum and Bass scene at this moment in time. Although the pictures I used wasn’t actually of Chase and Status as I wasn’t allowed to use pictures that were not taken by me, so instead I found two volunteers that I thought would be suitable for a Drum and Bass magazine then I took my own pictures of the volunteers and told them to stand in way that I thought would suit the characteristics of a Drum and Bass Magazine. Also for the double page spread article I wrote about Chase and Status’s Career this was because if the target audience saw the front cover and wanted to know a bit more about the duo as there name is not that recognisable and not as well known in the mainstream music but Drum and Bass fans would most probably heard of the duo as there career is growing immensely in terms of record sales.

If my magazine was a real magazine it would probably be published by Planet Media Publishing LTD as the only other Drum and Bass Magazine I could find ATM was also published by Planet Media Publishing LTD, and therefore they would be the first company I will try to publish my magazine. Planet Media Publishing is a small publishing company as they don’t even have a website, so they us Warners Group LTD to sell their product. Another publisher that I would consider to publish my magazine would be RWD Media LTD as they published RWD Magazine which also deals with ‘Underground’ Music.

The Target Audience for my magazine would be DJs with the interest of Drum and Bass then my secondary audience will be Drum and Bass fans age group 15 – 30. The reason behind this was because DJ who mixes Drum and Bass would like to know about what tracks are ‘hot’ (good) at the moment. I decided the secondary audience to 15 – 30 because that is the age group that I would imagine to listen to Drum and Bass the most and would be drawn into the magazine.

In the front cover I attracted my target audience by using dark and contrasting colours (which were Black and Dark Blue). This would attract the target audience because Drum and Bass is usually referred to as music that is played at raves and raves are usually in dark room with strobe lights. I used a picture I took where the two ‘models’ where standing next to each other but one was looking towards the camera with a serious look on his face (which shows his serious about his music) and the other model looking slightly away from the camera with a serious face. In my opinion I think the picture works very well with the magazine and it looks really trendy for the target audience. I used white writing behind black backgrounds so that the writing stands out. This is also why I used white writing for my main heading. I used a different theme for my double page spread because I decided that I wanted black fonts for all the magazine articles because it’s conventional. So what I did instead was put a white see-through frame around the text therefore allowing you to see the picture and also see the text clearly, as the black font would contrast with the see-through white frame that it is displayed on.

I have learnt a lot about the technology I had to use in the process of creating my magazine. The internet was great help when I was researching about other magazines because I could find the information in needed to know in a couple of minutes. I learnt a lot about the process of taking a picture and adapting the image to a magazine cover, as I went through a lot of different stages; capturing the perfect image, uploading the image, editing the image, placing image on to the magazine design using an Adobe software called InDesign. I learnt a lot of techniques of editing a photo in Adobe Photoshop; I learnt how to crop images perfectly without it being ‘ruff around edges’, I learnt how to use different filters over the image to give different effects and colours to the picture. I also learnt a lot about InDesign and I realised at it is a lot different to Photoshop when it comes to editing pictures. I also created a Blog where I posted all my work and progress up onto, so that others can comment on my work and give me hints and tips to improve my work.

Previously I created a college magazine as a preliminary task, and I feel that I have learnt a lot from the mistakes I made whilst creating the college magazine. My preliminary task was very basic I used a very basic house style of using three main colours; Black, Red and White, whilst using a yellow colour for my banner so that it would stand out from the rest of the design. Overall I think that the preliminary task was successful as the college magazine looked good in my eyes, but doesn’t look professional. This is why I feel I had improved a lot and I learnt a lot from that task because my final magazine looked like as if it was professional. I learnt that if you want a magazine to look good you cant just jump straight into production you have to carry out a lot of research, and planning before you can even start the production.