These are flat plans I have made from the best pictures from the photo-shoot.    I really like how these have turned out and feel they have given me a clear idea how my cover will turn out. The third one (L-R) is my favorite one, I like the composition and think it's the one that looks more professional. This is the one I will be using for the cover of my music magazine. 

                                                 

These are some photos from the photo-shoot I did, I dressed the model in black clothing like the cover of Kerrang! I annotated did as we place people in black clothing in the Rock/Metal genre which is the genre i'm making my magazine. I made sure I used a background that was plain as I will be editing it out and it will be much easier to do if the background is plain. From these photos I will choose my favorite 3 and will design flat plans for these to help me decide which one will work best as for the cover.

kerrang! annotation

I annotated a cover of Kerrang! magazine which featured the band Motionless In White. This cover used contrasting colours like yellow and red against the black and white on the cover, I think this has worked really well as it makes all the key things in text stand out. I like the idea of the black banner with bold white writing on of the bands name as people are able to see who are on the cover when walking past if it was on a stand. The members of Motionless In White's clothing are all black which is what they usually wear but it works well with the colours on the cover. The use of dark clothing also helps the readers know what genre they play as we fit people who wear black clothing and makeup in the gothic/emo category  This has to be one of my favorite covers that Kerrang! have done and I'm aiming to make a cover to this standard and genre as I don't feel that their is enough magazines that cater to people who listen to these genres.

This is a mood board I made which features Kerrang! magazine and Rock Sound magazine. All the covers have similar things on them, such as a big bold titles at the top of the page. The title is usually black or white and contrast against the background but sometimes are colours that are used on the cover. The key features are always on the cover with the band or artists name in big writing with subheadings underneath. I really like the look of these magazines and would like to try something similar with my magazine, I want to make it look similar but not make it so it looks identical to these. On my magazine I could use colours like black and white so they contrast against each other making the titles and subheadings stand out. With these magazines I like the way they use splashes of bold colours, usually vivid red or yellows. I think that technique works really well as it brightens up the whole cover, makes it look interesting and catches the readers eye without over doing it and making it look to cluttered. The way they place the key features in these magazines is different to ones that feature things like Chart music because they usually feature more than one person as most of the people in the magazines are in bands. 

surveys

After doing a survey on Survey Monkey I decided to go to town and do a survey where I went up to people and asked them what genre of music they listened to. In total I asked 52 people in town and these are the results I got;

The majority of people in town said they liked Rock/Metal/Punk music rather than Chart/Pop/Hip-Hop. I think by doing a magazine like Kerrang! or Rocksound it would make my magazine reach a wider audience than if I did a magazine that just featured Punk music (one that got the most votes in town survey). This results go quite well with  the ones from survey monkey. The only problem with doing this survey in town and asking random people was that not everyone would stop to talk and the people that did were ones that fit into a certain category of people. This doesn't reflect the whole population because I only managed to reach people who were in town that day and who would actually stop.

After doing the survey in town I thought I would give it one last go and ask people in school what genre of music they listened to. In total I asked 37 people. These are the results I got;

These results are quite different to the ones I got from Survey Monkey and the ones from town. Quite a few of the students said they did like Rock/Metal/Punk but more of the students said they listened to Chart/Pop/Hip-Hop. I think for my magazine I will stick with the idea of a Kerrang! style because overall more people said they listened to Rock/Metal/Punk than Chart/Pop/Hip-Hop. Although this survey helped because I know that my target audience may not be students at Marlwood school people who fit into a more alternative scene like town or the people on twitter ect. 

survey monkey feedback...

These are the results and feedback I got from my survey on Survey Monkey;

Question one;

From this I can see that the majority of the people who did the survey prefers Rock music to any other but Punk was close second with only one less person who voted. I could use magazines such as Kerrang! or Rocksound for inspiration for my music magazine as they are made for fans of Rock, Punk and Metal music. 

Question two;

From this I can see that most of the people who did the survey do read music magazines which means that there could be competition if my magazine was to be released. To ensure that my magazine beat the rivals I would have to see what sort of things the audience would want featured in it. 

Question three;

From this feedback it shows me that most of the people brought a certain make of magazine everytime it came out, that changed between once a week or once every two weeks depending on what magazine it was. The rest of the people who said they brought music magazines said they only brought them when they saw bands they liked on the cover. If my magazine was to be made  the audience could either send in requests or go online to say what they would like featured in the next issue, this would help ensure that people brought the magazines frequently not just every so often.

Question four;

This shows me that maybe there wouldn't be too much competition if my magazine would be released because most of the audience felt that there wasn't enough magazines that fitted the genre of music they listened to. Although it doesn't show what genre people thought there wasn't enough of.

Question five;

This was my final question on my survey and it allowed people to comment on what they would like to see in music magazines, most of the responses were things like posters, interviews, tour dates and new album releases. This shows me what the audience wants to see more of and puts me to an advantage because I now know what people want to see and can put them in my magazine. I wont be making a whole magazine just the cover, contents and a double page spread but these responses let me know what things i could put on the cover and in the contents pages.

Doing this online survey really helped me see what sort of things people wanted featured in magazines and let me know what genre was most popular with the people I asked. Although this alone is not enough audience research so I should do surveys in town and places like that so I can reach a wider audience and see what else people think of music magazines.

audience research; survey

To help me see what type of music the majority of the public liked i made a survey on survey monkey;

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WYRV5Q3

I posted the link on my twitter account and asked some of my friends who had different music taste than me and my twitter followers, to do the same so more people would see the survey and i would get a wider range of answers. By getting others to post the survey on their twitters will help to make sure the survey is unbiased as a bigger selection of the public would see it and hopefully respond to it.
This survey is a fairly basic one, just to start me off on seeing the genre of music people listened to ect. After this one I will make a more detailed one based on the genre that was most popular on this survey.

I annotated a cover of Unleashed magazine;

This cover looks too cluttered, the background is too distracting, they have used too many fonts and they don’t look good together. The designer should of used one or two fonts and made sure they suited. There is too much writing on the cover and the picture is too small. The colours of the font and the background clash and the overall cover is too dark. These are things I would avoid when making my magazine.

I annotated a cover of Billboard magazine which featured Lily Allen;

I like the way this one has been laid out, the colours go well together and they haven'y used too many different fonts. They have one main font and have changed the 'Lily Allen' to a different one to make it catch the readers eye and tells you who is the main feature of the magazine (if you couldn't tell from the picture!). It isn't too cluttered and only lists the things that the editors think is important to the magazine. They show the price, date and websites at the bottom of the page in small writing, they do this so you have all the information you need but it doesn't take up too much space and distract you from what is in the magazine.

This is my finished preliminary task cover. For this i duplicated the image, converted it to black and white and erased the parts I wanted in colour. I then made sure I used the Marlwood logo and made the colour of the font a similar colour to the one on the logo. I based the school magazine on Sixth Form students at Marlwood school and included things that we actually do and need on the cover, things like parents evenings, revison guides ect. By doing this I think I made the magazine look more official because students will actually be able to relate to it. I only used 1 font as I didn't want to over complicate it. I have managed to fit a lot of information on the cover to show what would be included but I made sure I didn't over do it and make it look cluttered. I used the actually Marlwood link under the title so anyone who saw this would be able to look up the school. I'm really pleased with how this turned out as I think it could pass for an official school magazine. The colours from the background and the font work well together and I haven't used any over the top bright colours. I could of spent a bit more time creating the cover, I could of taken more care when erasing the parts i wanted in colour because you can see part of blue around her hair from not being too careful. If I used this technique in my music magazine cover I would make sure I take my time to make sure its neater. All editing was done on photoshop.