Magazine Plan

I have decided to make my magazine a dance magazine. I have chosen this genre as this i looked at a dance magazine in lesson and also dance music is my favourite so i think i will be able to produce a magazine that targets the audience as i know what other people will want to see.

Plan

On my front cover i plan to advertise at least 3 small stories with smaller images and one main image with a large image taking up most of the front cover.

I am going to use bold headings with bright colours, my front cover will also include a bar code, a date, a price and an issue number. The main picture should be bold and stand out.

For my contents i plan to use at least 3 pictures, one of which will be a picture of the "editor" alongside an editors note. I will use symbols next to the story's that are on the front cover to indicate this. the magazine itself should have a bright fresh look.

For the double page spread i plan to use at least four images, one of which will be a large image spreading over the two pages. It will have a bold heading with a paragraph or two of information about the artist and then a question and answer piece with the artist. The double page spread will also feature a CD plug of the artists album/EP.

For the magazine in general i MUST remember to use the same fonts throughout with the same styled headings to maintain a house style and make the magazine recognisable.

Magzine Plan

(Click to enlarge images)

As You Can see here is my drawn up plan for my magazine. I think this will work well. However i am aware that as i begin to create my product i may feel that the plan does not work quite as well and so i am prepared that my magazine may not end up looking like this.

Magazine research

As research for my magazine I've looked at mix mag, as it targets the same audience I'm looking to target, Clubbers in their late teens to early 20's and Dj's or people who are inters ted in how the music is made. All the covers are bright and stand out, i especially like the cover with moby and the "20 years of acid house" cover, as i think they really stand out and they give the effect that I'm hoping i can get my magazine to give. I have not yet decided on a name for my magazine but I'm going to read some dance magazines and use a term that is common to the audiences of theses type of magazines, such as "rave" for example.

Music magazines

When looking at a dance magazine i would expect to see alot of things relating to that music, i wouldn't really be sure what age market it was targeted at but i would presume it would be teens. I'd expect to see bright colours and adverts for clubs and raves/gigs. I think the cover would be appealing to the eye and really stand out. I'd also expect to see images of things relating to the clubbing culture such as glowsticks, whistles alcohol, lasers etc. I think there may be a fashion page or maybe even a section but it would be clothes relating to dance music, such as t-shirts with bright colours and slogans, i wouldn't expect to see fashion as you would in a fashion magazine for example.
After looking at the magazine mixmag i wasn't really surprised at what i saw, alot of it was pretty much what i expected, bright colours, alot of photographs from events at clubs, and the use of club lights in these photographs. There were lots of adverts raves/events and a section on the best clubs in London, Manchester, Glasgow etc. There was a small fashion section and as i predicted it wasn't typical fashion it was clothes and accessories relating to the music. The main feature of the magazine was the front cover article with the dance group The Prodigy. The front cover also featured a large picture of them taking up a majority of the cover and again as i expected this cover was really bold and stands out. The one thing that did surprise me was that the magazine was more aimed at ages 18 and above. When i thinking about i should of expected it because of the legal drinking age and any of the clubs advertised would not be suitable for under 18's. The language used wasn't simple, not that it was difficult to read but it used proper English and not many terms that a reader who didn't know much about the dance scene wouldn't understand. The magazine it self was layed out well. There was alot of information but it was layed out neatly and so it was easy to read, it didn't appear cluttered and if there were more than one articles on a page relating to a different subject then the articles were separated by lines, the magazine was easy on the eye.

Evaluation

Above is my final front cover and contents page of my school magazine. I am quite pleased with my final piece. With my front cover i think it is how i wanted it to look, however as i used the front doors to the school as the back ground there is refelctions of feet and puddles, which makes it look a little messy. I did not think of this at the time as i would of edited the refelctions out. Also with thr headlines, looking at them now they look a bit merged together and look as thoguh they are all one story, this iis in effect a good thing thoguh as it has made me aware of it and to look for thing like this befroe i decide that my music magazine is final. Other than that with the front cover i am quite happy. With the contents i am relatively happy, i think it does looka bit empty, and whilst i tried to keep a house style with the same font for contents i relaised that it only half worked, as i should of kept the text the same size. I used different colours for story titles on the fron than i did in the contents whereas i think i should of stuck to the same colour on both pages. All in all, as a practice i am quite happy with how my school magazine turned out.

Images for School Magazine

Above are the images i have taken for use with my school magazine. I am not going to use all of them and have decided on using images 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8. I do not like images 2 as you cannot see the students face. Images for doesnt look like a smart photo, the student is leaning to the side and it doesnt look very professional. I prefer images 7 rather than image 6 as you can see more of the piano and i like image 8 because you can the see students face and the work he is doing quite clearly.

School Magazine

I have looked at various school magazines/newspapers. Many of the magazines i have looked at dont seem to be very colourful, and use grey black and white throghout. Because of this its not very appealing to the eye. I want my magazine to be colourful and eye catching. I understand that other scool magazines and newspapers have used mainly black and white because of publishing costs. My magazine would hold fundraising events to raise the funds for the magazine making it a "free" magazine. I am going to use a font for the title that is similar to the school logo, making it recogniseable to the school.
My school magazine is aimed at students of the school in years 10+11, who are preapring for and sitting their exams. My front cover will be eye catching and bold.