Photography Research.

Whilst also considering the target audience and codes and conventions of magazines, i also decided to research photography work for music/Magazines as Image is a major factor in a music magazine. Especially music magazines of the Pop Punk genre.
From my own knowledge prehand of the music genre itself( from listening and going to live gigs of pop punk bands)and photography work i have previously seen it is apparent that the photographs capture the pure energy and atmosphere of the music being played or the band and not just any "strike-a-pose" photograph will work for this genre.
Most pop punk band photographs have whacky themes, Such as a summer shoot a band called "Dividing the line" did dressed up in snorkles, armbands and rubber ducky rings.
As Well as band called Four Year Strong did a Micheal Jackson Thriller Promo photoshoot. These photographs capture the essence of the music that its purely for enjoyment, fun and living for the crazy moments you share with your friends aswell as setting a sort of time for the magazine, e.g. the dividing the line photograph would suite a summer edition magazine and the Four year strong would suite a Halloween/October/Autumn edition. So i will have to take this into consideration when i choose my images to take and use for my final design.

Magazine Genre Interest.

As previously stated in an earlier post my interest and enjoyment of this type of music is very high and so my interest and enticement to picking up and reading of one of these magazines would also be very high. However my own opinons and personal value judgements cannot be the same for an entire audience so i decided to do some research into the Sales figures, circulation and readership of current magazines which have the same content to see if i am making a magazine which would reach to a real market niché which already exists.
To do this i went online and first researched the circulation and sales figures for the music magazine Kerrang and found the following.

"Target audience

• Kerrang! has a weekly circulation of 70,000, and a readership of approximately 542,000.
• The core target audience for Kerrang! is 15-24 year olds with a 60:40 male/female split.
• Kerrang! readers are sharp, individualistic and above all fanatical about their music, buying on average 31 CD albums a year.
• The readers are also immensely loyal to Kerrang! In essence the brand helps provide a group of "outsiders" with a sense of community."

This shows that the magazines containing this music genre are somewhat seen as an "outsiders magazines" yet still somewhat mainstream and a large power in terms of magazine reader figures. It also shows me that my current idea for my magazine would work in a real life situation as it already has a real world market, aswell as giving me design pointers as to what age group and gender i should base my magazine for.

Current Targets;

• Create a magazine which suits a 15 - 24 age range.
• Create a magazine which is somewhat slightly more masculine than feminine as roughly 60% or more readers will be male.

Perhaps you could research and discuss the readership & circulation for AP, Kerrang and Substream? Are they mainstream or special interest?
Next you need to analyse a contents page - conventions and function? Good cover analysis. Mrs R

Conventions Of A Front Cover

Magazine Front Cover Examples.

Above are some great examples of the kind of Magazine/Front cover for Pop Punk/Rock magazines which i will be reffering to when designing my own front page.
All the Front covers have many similarities :-

• Large picture ( often on a seperate "layer" to the masthead , & Cover Title.
• MastHead , Large and eyecatching found towards the top of the front cover.
• Freebies & Barcodes.
• Main Titles ( found towards the centre or bottom of the page).
  

DTP :- Introduction to Ideas.

For the Media Coursework I have chosen to do the DTP task and create a Music magazine.

I chose to do the DTP over the film because I enjoy designing and using my own ideas to produce my own original and personalized work in this case; working in a group and filming would not allow me to add as much personalized input and ideas into the final output.

Before starting my research I chose to narrow down my choices as of which magazines to research down to Pop/Punk/Rock. This genre of music are covered by many magazines including specialized magazines which only cover Rock and Pop Punk to large mainstream magazines such as Kerrang and NME. I chose to use Pop Punk as my genre because it is a music genre i am familiar with and entertains/inspires me.

Before beginning the design of my front cover , contents and double page spread I will need to check the codes and conventions used to create each page  so that my final output looks professional.