Research and Planning

Research and Planning

My Audience

The audience, something that was key to remember throughout as the context of who my magazine was for, why they want is crucial to remember throughout producing my magazine in every detail. I think my audience as previously mentioned, are intelligent people with a huge interest in music, new and vitally old music to create thegreenroom as an indifferent yet interesting magazine, recognised for the brand of live music, a colourful publication with a great relationship with all of the audiences' favourite stars.For my research and planning I needed to acknowledge why I did things and to start off I thought that looking at inspiration for ideas would be one way of looking how thegreenroom became.. thegreenroom.


 Inspiration 
When I started to think about the task in hand in creating this magazine I knew the first step was to look at NME, MOJO and Q etc. All top professional publications that I could gain knowledge from and first and foremost ideas to go on and incorporate or adjust or even abolish if it was something that didn't apply to my magazine. My music genre was integral to this research, and due to my interest, knowledge and then the research I did into a magazine alike NME, this sort of publication worked perfectly alongside my magazine without my magazine losing originality or becoming a carbon copy of NME. I then needed to look at the magazine, and the bottom line of it was to look at how do they make them sell. What features. What aspects. What people. Who spearheads it. To make it sell? I looked through examples of 3 main pages that I needed to look at and intensively research in order to gain maximum knowledge of what the pages consist of. I have discussed the features previously, right at the start of my blog although looking back, the basic inspiration that came from these magazines, in reality all gave me the backbone and the magazine publication that you can see on this blog. They made it clear what conventions I needed to include, what angles I needed to come from and even down to how I needed to make the photos work. This research gave me the insight of how a top magazine appears, with that in my head as a concrete base if you like. A solid idea along with ideas from these magazines I could begin to draft out, thegreenroom

 The NME covers here have some shared conventions and ones that I admired which all acted as inspiration and ideas for myself including some features for example:
- Clear font
- Evident house style even on the special edition- you know its the NME
- The font on the cover dominates the photo in some respects - you know who the cover star is
- Audience can look at it and know whats inside
- A few boxes and splashes of colour advocate something other than the cover story
- Posters included - link to audience
- Lexical choices such as 'exclusive' - important to magazines
- Even the barcode on the below magazine adds information in an NME style, no empty space
- Use of a quote - relationship between brand and artists?

 The Q covers all have an identity which I wanted my magazine to have therefore I looked at these sorts of covers to see what aspects I liked. I have pinpointed the key elements that I liked:
- Dominant logo
- Strong cover image, bold
- Appears as if they know their stars
- Alike NME, their favourites obvious
- John Lennon edition shows limited editions, special interest in artists
- The font is clear - almost has a priority .  Small - large font
- The + shape graphology appears funky, links to audience
- Images are there apart from cover star in above image.
- varied yet controlled colour scheme

Front Cover

These are some of these examples that I looked at previously within my blog that I found particularly helpful. I noticed that within all of these examples there was a very clear convention of the main title, or logo on the page. I found this effective as it made it clear to the reader what the magazine is and also what the main feature/s are within the magazine, quickly to avoid ambiguity. Other conventions that I noticed within these examples of professional publications are that they have strips in block colour or 'banners' that sit along the bottom of the magazines highlighting the key features that the magazine includes which is just one of things that I have incorporated into my own publication.This little aspect of the magazine is important as a monthly issue, the regular features the magazine may share change every issue. 

Contents Page

 

The main inspiration for my contents page was actually to be different and because of looking at the contents (top right) as it conveyed a sexy style for a fashion magazine, originally that we looked at in class at school although I liked it as it was different, stood out from the usual layout and structure of things and the picture itself dominates the page, primarily down to the fact its a modelled photo, and clearly professional. That contents made me want to create thegreenroom as different and unique as it could be without going away from being a music magazine and making sure I still had all the necessities as seen in the alternate 3 examples here. 

The NME example has a distinct structure which appears in every new edition of NME as I have already looked at previously on my blog, the narrow font and order in the 'plus' section structures the pages whilst I admired the bold numbering with the clear, trendy contrasting colour background to the number. The photos all have connnations of a music magazine as you'd expect and the photos all appear different. Something my magazine needed to have, the aesthetics of a proper magazine, something you could tell just by 

seeing if all the photos were shot in the same place.

The MOJO and Q contents' both displayed colour and a real

freedom that the other contents I researched didn't have. With an

emphasis on the house style and general desire for colour, live 

performances and a trendy appearing magazine in general it was 

crucial to integrate all aspects of the magazine into creating 

my magazine as the greenroom. The contents for it is structured to 

a degree whilst the short sharp and pinpoint details are included just 

like in NME whilst parts of MOJO's and Q's style and colour is also

involved.

Double-Page Spreads

The main inspiration for my double-page article came from researching double page spreads from magazines again like NME and Q which were probably my two main focusses when researching, as big sellers, who inform readers about information similar to mine, the same music faces. The article I created needed to appear professional although in order to do that, I wanted to have lots of photos to choose from which I did when doing a photo shoot as well as linguistically creating an expressive and interesting read as an article. I needed to avoid the tacky , QandA to reach my target audience who are deemed as very literate. The two chosen examples (above) have a great main photo which is something I tried to re-create by having Jaan in the 'widescreen' image as well as several other angles to add a different contrast to the singer. The ratio of writing to photos is about the same considering the photo takes up about half of the 2 pages, which is something that my cover also does. The double pages' also manage to retain the same house style without looking like another cover or contents page by adding detail and small features such as page numbers and the large letter at the beginning of the article to add individuality and an official stamp from the magazine as a brand.

Creating my Shots

When shooting the photos of my magazine I had to ensure that the photos appeared to follow the conventions of the majority of photos that are used within music magazines however bearing in mind the lack of professional equipment along with the simple fact, the despite going to several gigs I couldn't just litter my magazine with live photos despite thegreenroom having that desire in places. 

I also ensured that, when taking my cover-star photos,obviously I used the same one, but more importantly each photo from the cover, contents right through to the double-page spread isn't replicated. Mainly because looking at research, the professional publications never do this, because it doesn't look professional. Even so it doesn't look right, it just looks a bit 'samey' and too false.
 I also wanted to ensure that there was a variety of different subjects such as both males and females, bands, solo singers and all the different types of music singers that there are. In order to do this I needed to consider who I could use firstly to be my cover as well as the structure needing to be evident whilst making sure that there isn't too much of something or in this case somebody. I have an array of shots, close ups, long distance shots, XCU, aswell as more interesting shots, with the model looking down, at an angle or other shots to indicate different contexts. E.g, using Jaan in the cafe to appear as if it was a personal, one-on-one interview.

The photo of my cover star was used and chosen as the mise-en-scene don't scream music although it suggests a relationship, a personal bond between brand and artist which the reader longs for in thegreenroom therefore the choice of this I believe works well as the photo still shows us the personality of Jaan whilst considering the models apparel and context. The hair and shirt appear smart, casual as he appears on the double page spread, therefore its clear that this isn't a photo just from going out with a friend.

The photo above is of a light switch in my house, although I felt it was a good and clever way of succinctly showing and getting across what I wanted ; indicating and asking the question of 'is the reader switched on?'. Ie up to date with thegreenroom and everything the brand offers, this sort of quirky photo replicated everything my magazine offers, in just what may otherwise be labelled as a photo of the switch. It was important using technology to make sure I eradicated the wallpaper in my house to retain just the socket whilst getting rid of the needless shadow.