Front cover and contents page draft

Feedback of my double page spread

To get feedback for my double page spread, I came up with three questions which I asked my members of my target audience. Those questions were What do you think about my double page spread? What is your favourite part of the page? How could I improve my double page spread? I video recorded the responces and posted them to YouTube. Below I have embedded the videos.

Updated

Here is the final design of my media product. My front cover, contents Page and double page spread.

Further Updated Front Cover

The edits that I have made to this front cover from my previous is I have added a drop shadow to my cover lines. This has helped sharpen the text, making it more prominent and professional.

Another addition I have made is adding a tagline to the top of my magazine. "THE UK'S LEADING INDIE ROCK MUSIC MAGAZINE". This will attract my audience as they are interested in indie rock music, and this will now be known as the best option out of the indie rock magazines due to the positive language so they will be more inclined to buy this magazine over any other.

I have added a pug. For this I had to watch a YouTube video on how to get circle to follow a circular path. It states that with the magazine, the consumer can download a free iTunes song. This will certainly intrigue the audience to buy the magazine as they will want to have this song on their iTunes list.

Feedback

Here my teacher, Mrs Mitchell has given me feedback on how I could further improve my front  cover, contents page and my double page spread.
She has included my current level which is level 3+ and explained some suggest changes. I will put all of these suggest changes into action to ensure my production is at it's best possible standard. She has also said what has went well with my magazine such as completed to a good standard, meeting deadlines, good quality etc, and because of this has been seen as something that is well, I will continue to stick to these levels.
What my teacher thinks I could do to make my magazine even better is to make sure my genre is clear, the way I will do this is to look through my already researched documents and carry out some more research and use what I have found into my magazine creation. I will make a post on my findings and show how I included it into my magazine.
She also stated that I need to consider interactivity and awareness of audience. To make sure I do this, I will include some websites and social media links as that makes my magazine more interactive and also means I am recognizing my target audience since the age 15-24 uses social media the most.
The final 'even better if' is written communication is clear and accurate, to improve this I will ensure to proof read my work and make sure everything makes sense and is written correctly.

Updated Contents Page

Updated Front Cover Page

Double Page Spread

Here is my double page spread.

Article for Double Page Spread

CONOR JARVIS, BIG THIS YEAR.

Jarvis is living the musicians true dream, being to signed to one of the biggest labels of the decade. He is 2015's new up and coming artist and NOISE got the chance to ask him all the questions you are all dying to hear the answer to. 

NOISE: Hello Conor, firstly congratulations on signing to your new record label, Virgin records. How did you manage to win them over?
CONOR: Hello. Well, it was many thanks to Luke Pritchard, the lead singer of the Kooks. I was writing some songs with him and he introduced me, and it all just lifted from there. I played him some of my songs and he asked me to sing on the spot and he loved it. I can't thank him enough.
NOISE: Wow, well done. And Luke Pritchard? How did you manage to start writing with him?
CONOR: I have always been a massive fan of The Kooks and I have been interested in performing and writing music for as long as I can remember and I just put them together and messaged the manager and luckily he agreed to meet me and we have just got on great from there. I class him as a mate now.
NOISE: Do you see any collaborations with yourself and Luke or even the Kooks?
CONOR: Let's just say it has been brought up quite often and if you are interested in that type of collaboration, be sure to check out the new album due to come out next July.
NOISE: Oh yes, ‘happy days’. That's the name of your new album. What is the release date for your new album?
CONOR: It’s available to pre-order right now, but it is up for general sale the 30^th March. So be sure to get it.
NOISE: Oh how exciting, I am sure many will be buying it. Other than Luke, is there anybody else who has put work into this album?
CONOR: Well not to give away too much, but you will be see a few recognizable names featured in the album.
NOISE: Interesting. We have a few questions that have be sent in from NOISE readers, The first being, 'How did you find touring with Jake Bugg around the UK?’
CONOR: Jake Bugg is one of my biggest inspirations, and being his support act was truly one of the best moments of my entire life. He is to thank for a lot of my new fans, since this tour I have received so much recognition and Bugg is truly a great person.
NOISE: We have interviewed Bugg before on NOISE, he is such a genuine guy.  A question from @georgewale14 from Twitter is ‘How long did it take you to write all the songs for ‘Happy Days’?’
CONOR: Well, there is songs on their that I was writing in lessons at school, but I started to take it seriously about a year and half a go as thats when I was leaving school and had a lot more spare to and really had to take this seriously if I wanted to pursue a career in it, so take that answer how you would like to.
NOISE: Wow, that is real passion. Jennifer from Facebook asks “What made you think of the name ‘Happy Days'?
CONOR: Well, it just is down to the fact that my days are happy. I have always been happy when I am writing, listening or performing. Anything at all to do with music makes me happy. So that is where the name came from since I am now in a music career, my days are even happier. Also, the songs on this album are all joyful songs, so it links  with the type of music on the album.g 
NOISE: That sounds very pleasant.

Research into article writing

For my double page spread, I will have an article on this page. Because of this, I have done some research into article writting. The type of article I am writing will be a question and answer interview style with a new, up and coming artists.

Here are the articles I have looked at for inspiration:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/raekwon-talks-scope-of-cuban-linx-doc-reveals-crowdfunding-perks-20150309

This article isn't set out in the way I like but has gave me an insight of what sort of question to ask and the type of language that is used. In this  article, their is a video inserted about the article. I have taken this as inspiration for a link in my magazine which will include a bar code, which can be scanned by smart phones, to an exclusive video about Conor Jarvis.


http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201502/sam-smith-new-rat-pack

This article I have found is in the style I would like. A question and answer style. It has given me inspiration of the layout and also has given me ideas of questions such as things to do with why they started to make music.

http://www.qthemusic.com/9649/qa-jane-weaver-q-at-the-great-escape-2015/

This is another article which is in the layout. Also at the end of the article, the interviewer has left their twitter username. I will do this for my magazine as it will be more adaptable to my young target audience.

Results for new masthead

Here is the survey results for the question I asked to help me decide which magazine masthead to use. I had designed 3 mastheads, all called NOISE. However, they all use different fonts found on the website dafont.
The winning vote was 'KG Second Chances'. This received 7 votes which was 70% the votes. That is a considerably high amount of votes. In comparison, Appleberry and Copy Paste did not receive many votes with 2 voting for Appleberry and only 1 single person voting for Copy Paste. This shows how the masthead using the font 'KG Second Chances' is the preferred by my target audience I will therefore use that now for my magazine.

New masthead

From designing my first magazine front cover draft, I have realsied that I need to create a new masthead. This is because currently, my masthead doesn't fit well on the page and looks forced and not neat. Also, from my feedback of comments on the blogpost, the target audience stated they didn;t like the style of the masthead, although they did like the name of it. I will continue to use the same name, 'NOISE', as this is something I know that my target audience like, but I will change the style.

To help me decided, I have created a survey on SurveyMonkey.Com and this will be sent to several candidates of my target audience. When I receive enough responses, I will analysis my results and finally choose a new masthead for magazine.
 To overcome the problem I previously had, I tested out all of the mastheads on my magazine draft already so that I know they all fit well and look good. I have aimed for my mastheads to look more fun and youthful and that is something I want to carry out throughout my magazine as it is aimed at quite a young demographic of ages 16-25.
 Here are the current mock ups of my possible mastheads:

1) KG Second Chances


2) Appleberry

3) Copy Paste

Here is the survey I created:

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Target Audience Feedback

Here are some comments that my target audience have left explaining their opinions on my first front cover draft. They have said what they think is good on the magazine and what I should do to improve it.
From this, I can use it to identify how to make my magazine more fit to my target audience.
Firstly, all the comments do not seem to like the masthead. This shows how there is a decision needed to change the masthead. I have read comments and I need a masthead that fills the top of the magazine and one which looks more professional. I will use a survey monkey to help decide which masthead to use.
Something that people like about my magazine is the style of the image, however they say it needs to be better quality photo so I will retake my images with a better camera, but in the same positions.
They like the anchorage text so I will keep it generally the same.

Analysis of a double page spread

This post shows how I have analysed two double page spreads of my genre. This allowed to me to research into typical convention of a rock magazine and will help me to create a double page spread which meets their wants. I have used the website thing link for the beady eye cover and used power point to analysis the bitten by the bugg cover.
This analysis has made me decided I want a headline that uses capital letters, an introduction to the article that is separated to the main article, a pull quote which has a different colour background. And a image that takes up majority of a page or a full page.

Front Cover Draft

FOR TARGET AUDIENCE PURPOSE, PLEASE COULD YOU COMMENT ON THIS PHOTO WHAT YOU THINK IS GOOD AN WHAT YOU THINK I SHOULD DO TO IMPROVE.

Layouts of a Double Page Spread

Double Page Spread Mood Board

Here is a moodboard I have created for research into double page spreads. It included images of differernt types of double page spreads from magazines of similar genre.
I particularly like the bottom two. I like the look of the image filling up an entire page and the article being on the other page. This seems a similar feature throughout the magazines I have seen. I like how on the Jake Bugg page (bottom right), the colour of the writing changes as it goes onto the image. On the bottom left image, I like how the pull quote is massive and uses a variety of font sizes.

Questionnaire

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Contents Page

Editing on fireworks

I used fireworks to do some editing of my masthead and my main image.






MAIN IMAGE

Above is the original photo before I have put any filters on it.

I clicked on to the photo and at the bottom is the option to add filters. I firstly converting the image to alpha. This made the photo black and white. I like this design as it looked good on previous magazines I have seen and is common for indie rock genre.



Next, because the black and white colours looked dark, I edited the brightness and contrast levels, still through the filters. This allowed the image to look more bright.

MASTHEAD

Here I have edited my masthead by adding a drop shadow. It is of a blue colour, that appears throughout my magazine. I think it gives some character.