Drafting & Planning - First Draft

I have now completed the first draft to my music magazine including my front cover, contents page and double page spread for 'Fierce' magazine. This is the first draft of my magazine and so there are many improvements to be made that I have already noticed e.g. the lack of symbiosis within my images and text. I do feel as if the magazine is appealing to my target audience whilst also conveying the ethos of the magazine I intended.

The front cover of my music magazine includes a mid-close up of my cover star named 'Rowan Matthews' with the surroundings of a brick wall. The font I have chosen for my mast head is 'how do you sleep?' Which holds a very wild look and so assocaites with the title 'Fierce'. Additioanally the us of a pug has been included withi. The rot. Cover of my magazine as it immediately attracts the target audiences attention as the colour yellow stands out immensely against the black and white background. I chose to use a black and white effect on the photography of the image as it allows a more dramatic and profound effect on the audience while also implying how everything the magazine will include isn't just black and white and so holds an ironic tone to it. The use of a skyline I found added a more professional touch as they are found on a lot of popular music magazines. After receiving feedback from peers I found that the house style that would be most appropriate for this magazine would be something consisting of the colours red and black and so felt these two colours properly conveyed the daring and edgy ethos I feel I have partially achieved so far with this first draft. 

My content page consists of two images one of my main cover star (Rowan Matthews) and a secondary artist which I decided would be a band that I have named Wolf Islands due to the research into band names that are appropriate within the genre of music they would be in. I chose to include on two images as of the results I received from my survey monkey results 

Drafting & Planning - Masthead examples

The fonts that I have chosen here are:

1. Mandelio Di Paedre 
2. vtksposter 
3. Vtks Hunt 
4. Paranoid Orange 
5. Corner Dark 
6. Vtks Family 
7. A Box For 
8. Thunder Lord
9. The dark to come
10. Vtks road

I have researched into different mastheads I may want to use for my music magazine. Here I have looked into 10 fonts from (http://www.1001fonts.com/) I look all of them quite a lot as I do feel they reflect the fierce and edgy ethos I am trying to achieve within my magazine. I find that they are all extremely bold and and have the sense of edginess and wildness that I am trying to achieve through the ethos of the magazine.

The font I am particularly interested in is font 9 which I find both clear and easily recongisable for the target demographic yet a very unique type face which captures the aesthetic I am going for, which will then allow the audience to immediately recognise that the magazine is about going against the norm of society and revealing the 'Fierce' side to the music industry.

Organisation - Facial Expressions

I have recently experimented with a range of facial expressions that my model could use during our photo shoot. For the first facial expression I asked my model to pull a 'stern' or 'emotionless' facial expression as it is quite an iconic look used by Indie artists when taking photographs. I find this facial expression to be the most likely used during the photo shoot as it creates a sense of mystery towards the artist as well as associating with the Indie genre. For the second facial expression my model did I asked him to pull a 'happy' or 'overjoyed' facial expression. Though I find this to be a lovely photo I do not believe it to reflect the Indie genre appropriately as the facial expression does not connote with the Indie genre at all but actually slightly contrast with it as the music within the genre is usually quite deep and sombre whereas a happy facial expression would disagree with this and so I feel this may confuse or put off my target demographic. Additionally I tried other facial expressions such as 'scared' and 'disgusted' to see how this would look though I am not entirely sure whether or not I like these expressions. I do feel the disgusted one has an edgy and quite unique outtake on the Indie genre but may come across as inappropriate or just unappealing to my target demographic of 16 - 25 year olds. The scared facial expression in my opinion does not suit the genre I am going for as the artists with this genre are usually reflected as quite laid back and cool which goes against being scared and this facial expression may be a deterrent to my particular target demographic.

Target audience - Survey Monkey results Part 2

Now that I am closer to making my final draft to my final draft I have decided to look back into my target audience to ensure that the aesthetic of my magazine is appropriate. Continuing from my previous research into Target audience on Survey Monkey I looked into whether the style of my artist suits the genre I have chosen and so the questions I asked were;

For my 7th question asked on my survey I questioned what artists my audience would expect to be seen in an Indie pop magazine giving them a variety of popular artists to identify if my audience know what artists are of the Indie pop genre and what artists they would like to be included within the magazine. The most popular responses were 'Passion Pit' and 'Coldplay'. From this I can see that my target audience do understand what a typical Indie pop genre band is, and additionally my band 'Wolf Islands' are inspired from Haim and Passion Pit and so I am pleased to see that my audience would expect bands such as Passion Pit within the magazine. However, the following two largest responses with 16.67% of the responses stating the artists they would expect to be in the music magazine being Florence + the machines and 10% of the responses believe they would expect artists similar to Lorde to be featured within the magazine, both of these responses are what I was expecting and I believe I have included artists similar to these artists/bands. However, overall 33.33% of the responses did not know or identified artists that were not of the Indie artist.

For my 8th question I asked my audience to rank the titles of my music magazine in order of what they believe to the most to least appropriate. The five titles were 'Fierce!' 'Grime' 'IPM' 'Urban Chaod' and 'Ludicrous'. The most popular response was 'Fierce!' with more than 39.13% of the responses placing this magazine title first, which was the reason why I decided to name my magazine 'Fierce'. However, 'Urban chaos had 34% of the votes and so it was a very close decision as my audience enjoyed both names but I decided a shorter name would be more beneficial as it would become much catchier and easier for the audience to read/remember.

For my final question I asked my audience what clothing would they would expect the main cover star to be wearing on an Indie Pop magazine. After looking into my research I found that 40.63% of my audience expected my main cover star to be wearing something 'laid back and casual'. This is beneficial as I believe I used a more simplistic approach to the clothing of my models so they seemed much more approachable to their audiences. However, though this was the most popular answer some of my audiences members such as 7 of the 33 respondents expected the main cover star to be wearing something 'formal and sophisticated' though I do appreciate this I don't feel formal attire for my main cover star would properly suit the rebellious and edgy aesthetic of the magazine.

Drafting & planning - Publication plan

Publication plan

Title/Masthead: Fierce!

Selling line: 'The home of great music!'

Frequency of publication: Monthly
Price: £4.99

Who will will distribute your magazine?: Bauer Media Group who distributed 'Q' magazine into the whole European market and so could distribute 'Fierce!' magazine into a wider market than just the UK.

Rationale (What you magazine does - what it offers):

• Interviews
• Revealing the best songs/albums of the year
• Gig reviews
• Chances to see music artists for free
• Q and A's

Style (Who is your target audience)?:

The target audience for my magazine is for teenagers around the age of 16 - 25 year old who are interested in the newest and upcoming artist in the music industry 

Conventions:

• Puff/pug
• Selling line
• Skyline
• Main cover lines / other cover lines
• Left - third masthead: Bold and Red to compliment the house style that I will use

Contents page

• Feature content: Artists such as 'Austin Matthews', 'Wolf Islands', 'Lady Marina' ect...
• Regular features: Q and A's, Top 50 songs of the month ect...
• Supporting stories: 'Wolf Islands' 'Silver Haze' 
• News: Stories like 'Music today' 'Melanie and the dolls' take the world by storn ect...
• Subscription offers: 'Subscribe to www.Fierce.co.uk today and recieve the next issue free!'

Target Audience - Social Media

 I have researched into my target audience for my music magazine through social media. I chose a range of friends off the social media site Instagram to receive a variety of opinions on the Indie genre, which allowed me to identify my target demographic. Both of my friends decided that a Indie Pop Music Magazine would be most enjoyed by those who are of 15 - 21 years  old which is similar to what I discovered within my Survey Monkey Questionnaire and so supports the idea that my main target demographic will be for teenagers as they are the largest fans of the Indie Pop genre.

 After this I received two different answers for 'what colours would you associate with the indie pop genre?' Abi believed that bright and bold colours such as red and black would be most effective since the Indie Pop genre is quite a bold and daring genre whereas Nathan thought that more 'dull and deep' colour tones would be most successful to reflect the slightly moody atmosphere Indie Pop music creates in their opinion. For this I found both of my friends had strong points but Abi who believed the colours red and black would be effective indicated that the house style of the magazine would imply the edgy and daring ethos I hope to achieve with my magazine and so decided that this would be the best house style to aim for.

Finally, I asked both of my friends whether or not they would be interested in a magazine combining both the Indie and Pop genre and if not what target demographic would they believe would the magazine suit. Nathan stated that fans of the Indie genre would find the two genres to clash and so not enjoy the magazine as much as those who enjoy pop music as artists within this genre regularly experiment with other genres and so would be more accepting of other artists within the magazine. However, Abi said she would enjoy a Indie pop magazine as she enjoys both genres of music and finds that there is a gap in the music magazine market for an Indie pop genre magazine.

Drafting & Planning - Band name generator

Here I have researched into band names that I find might be suitable for the band I will have included on my contents page. I decided to use (http://heavystrife.tekcities.com/namegen.html) to find Indie band names used with words that are very popular and come up quite frequently in the Indie pop genre, Of the many that I found I was most interested in these three since they are quite original yet reflect the genre very well since the words used in all three names connote to other bands which are popular within the Indie pop genre (E.G Wolf Alice). 

The generated band name I am most interested in is 'Silver Haze' since no popular indie bands have used either word but there is a certain association to this name which I particularly like such as 'silver' implies the band is a great but isn't the best or most popular, revealing its uniqueness and non-social conformity. Additionally the use of the word 'haze' creates a sense of mystery and vagueness to the band which may imply that the fans of the band don't really even know them which will then intrigue them to find out more about them. 

However, I too also like 'Wolf Islands' as the band name since there is a sense of daring and dominance suggested by it through the use of the word 'Wolf' which indicates how the members of the band are extremely close similar to a 'pack' but then the word 'Islands' contrasts with the previous words since an island implies loneliness and so may therefore reveal that the band is isolated from the outside world and nobody actually knows them, making them even more mysterious and interesting to their fans.