By Luke Leeks

Before this course I was completely clueless with quark Xpress and Photoshop and had a limited ability with publisher. While constructing my product I have learnt how to edit things and the basics of all of the program. I have also spent lots of time doing trial and error just learning how to do stuff and I now believe I have a fairly strong knowledge of the programs.

Me playing about with Photoshop

My first attempting with quark Xpress at the beginning of making my music magazine.

Since my very first attempt at my college magazine and music magazine I have learnt a lot. When I began on my college magazine my mock up attempts looked awful, I had no idea on where things looked good , or how to format or structure things. Through teaching and hard work on the computers trying things out I managed to do a college magazine which I was reasonably pleased with.

Once my college magazine was finished I began my music magazine, I knew my music magazine had to better than my college magazine so I spent hours learning how to do things better on a different programs. For my college magazine I used publisher but for this I wanted to use photoshop and Quark Xpress to make it look more professional. While using these new professional programs I learnt a lot of things which helped my music magazine look far more professional compared to the college magazine showing what I had improved my skills.

When studying for my magazine I researched existing products similar to how I hoped mine to be like, for my college magazine I looked at college magazine that already existed and what they used in them. Of course most college magazines have a very small budget so I knew none of the examples I looked at would be amazing, but looking at some existing ones I saw they all tried to get students really into it, at first I didn’t use students in my front cover but after looking at plenty I decided to change it to students because I think if the students are involved issues will be bought because students want to know what other students think of the issues at there college.

I also wanted to include cell lines for articles that students would actually care about that affected them like news on the building going on and what students think of the tutors, the latter not just as a novelty story but as something they want to know maybe just for conformity reasons or curiosity.

In the contents page I kept it simple which many of the magazines had done however I also took inspiration from home magazines I had read which kept the structure simple and easy for the people to find what they won’t.

In my music magazine I studied a number of existing music magazines such as Mojo, Kerrang, NME and Q. Q and Mojo are more main stream so I was looking at them more for structure rather than content and idea inspiration.

NME and Kerrang are magazine I read more often and the style of magazine I wanted to copy with my Music magazine giving it a indie/rock sort of vibe to it. A Kerrang I looked at was very full on with a lot of things in your face which I didn’t really want however an NME and a few Q and Mojo magazines I found had the sort of thing I wanted an image and a few cell lines, no intense images and flashy effects which I felt diverted from the reason they were reading the magazine for the music, a easy to read music orientated magazine that didn’t get distracted from the main point. I developed a combination of things I had seen in all of the above magazines when creating my own.

I think I challenged your average indie/rock magazine with the way I did it, many of the magazines I saw with that similar genre were as I said in your face so I changed the normal convention in that case calming it down to an easy read.

As I said in my last slide I wanted to make a indie/rock magazine. This is a slightly more niche market however it is a growing area which is growing in popularity.

The term indie comes from the word independent so many people who are in to that style of music may class themselves as individual, so discussing big names such as Beyonce or Rihannawould not be appealing to the social group of people I was trying to attract.

Indie and rock people normally dress in a certain way as well (skinny jeans, checker shirts etc.) so another thing I had to do was for my models to wear that style of clothing.

In my double paged spread I needed to be careful what I wrote trying not to make them sound to mainstream more independent those acts that retained an outsider and underground and less testosterone-driven perspective which I think I did.

Indie and rock is always given a stigma of working class people so, aiming it at middle to high would not fit the genre.

I did a questionnaire earlier in the year were I asked 50 people what they liked most people that liked or bought music magazines were of the ages 17-21 so this had to obviously be who I aimed my magazine at.

Indie/rock was the genre of music I wanted to aim at and I would say most indie rock fans were of that age, so that was another reason for choosing that genre. My questionnaire also found that it was both sex’s interested in music rather than a particular gender.

I had to include musicians that appealed to both sex’s so for guys a inspirational guy or an attractive and for the girls a inspirational girl and a attractive guy which I have tried to include in my magazine.

If I were to do it again I would maybe include a prize or gift to appeal to the audience more so but I do not think it is hugely necessary.

For my college magazine obviously due to the quality and the content it can only be sold at college but I think that it also would be worth while to have a online version for people that either may not want to waste paper or who would prefer to read it at a later date to even refer back to for research.

For my music magazine it is going to be larger in the print market, I think that it would be sold in most news agents such as whsmith. However due to purely convenience and the way media is changing I would have it online with it’s own website so it is easy to get and I would also make a app for phones to download for people to look at it on the move.

I asked 5 people there opinions of what they liked and disliked about my music magazine.

Question: What did you think of my final front cover design?

Person A: I think that Luke’s front cover is fairly well formatted and everything is positioned in a good manner. I would say that if I would change something I think that possibly the colours would be changed, I like the idea of the red, white and blue however I think that given a bit more time he could of made it blend better. I think the image at the back is nice, it is quite interesting and simplistic, another thing I like is the cell lines at the bottom they look good, they are also reminiscent of music magazines I have seen before.

Question: What did you think of my final double paged spread design?

Person B: When I first saw Luke’s DPS I thought it’s simplicity was really cool. I like the image used as well, he seemsto have spaced the image well. The article I liked a lot, at one point I thought it was real, which obviously must be a good sign. Overall I think the DPS is well structured and easy to read just like a good DPS should be.

Question: What did you think of my final contents design?

Person C: When I looked at Luke’s contents page I thought it was easy to read and well formed. If I was to do my own contents page I think maybe lines in it more like a newspaper would of been cool but apart from that there is very little I would change , The image is good and the font is also good.

If I was given the chance to do it again I might change a few things I did. One thing I would change would be the format of my front cover. Given the chance again I would move my writing over further to the right and make it more equal in its size however this is a very minor thing. Another thing I could change would possibly be the pictures itself which I would of loved to of got of existing performers who may have already made it big.