Friday 25th February 2011 - Completion of Planning and Research

I have now completed my planning and research tasks. During the two months of work, I have put in my preliminary task images, my three front cover analysis, my two contents page analysis, my two double page spread analysis, my questionnaire, my peer interviews, my final audience profile, brainstorming of my magazine names/colours/costume/props, conventions that I should use throughout my final work, two front page idea sketches, a contents page sketch, a double page sketch and finally font testing to use in my magazine. Now that I have finished planning and research, I will now start the production process...

Font Testing

I used a site, dafont.com, to find different types of font that I could use for my magazine mast head. After finding and comparing fonts I went to the first font as my magazine title font and the second font would be used for the body text.

Double Page Spread Sketch

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Contents Page Sketch 2

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Contents Page Sketch 1

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Front Page Sketch: 2nd Draft

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Front Page Sketch: 1st Draft

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Conventions that I could use throughout the front page, contents page and double page spread

Here I brainstormed a list of typical conventions that magazines use. I thought that it is important that I keep a list of them so that I become aware of when I should use them.

• Skyline
• Mast head
• Issue Number
• Issue Date
• Barcode
• Price
• Website
• Cover/Sell Lines
• Pull/Floating Quotes
• Images
• Page Numbers
• Editorial

In Depth thinking about Mise-en-scene

This is a slideshow displaying my ideas and thoughts about what mise-en-scene I could use. What I mean by is: what props I could use and what costume my models should wear. I also added a description to each individual aspect about what it was, why I chose it and the effects of using it.

Mise-en-scene

Brainstorming of possible costumes and props that I could use

Here is a list of possibilities of props and costume that I could have used. I put a lot of thought into what would look good and what wouldn't. I thought that I should use symbols that could represent Hip Hop and R'n'B.

• Microphone (singing/rapping)
• Mixing deck
• Sunglasses (setting a fashion trend)
• Headphones (music symbol)
• Guitar (music symbol. To rock-like?)
• Bling/Jewellery (fashion statement)
• Hats/Caps (fashion, caps for Hip Hop and hats for R'n'B)
• Clothes
• Jeans
• Hoodies
• Dresses
• Skirts
• T-Shirts
• Casual or Smart attire?

In depth thinking about Colours

Colours

Brainstorming of possible colours that I can use

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I opened up photoshop and tested out different colours with the text "Soundwave". After playing around with the colours I felt that red, black and grey worked best.

Brainstorming of possible magazine names

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This is a scanned document of a mind map I made on paper. Initially I thought of 6 names but then I realized that it was not enough. I thought of 6 more and added them to my list. I asked a few of my friends and peers about their thoughts on the names. Most of them rejected the additional 6 names and went with Soundwave, Rave and Sense. I eliminated Rave from the list as it sounded more like a dance magazine name rather than a Hip Hop or R'n'B one. Sense was a good name but it didn't have a musical appeal to it. So I went with Soundwave as my final choice.

My Audience Profile

After researching into existing magazines and possible audiences based on my questionnaire and audio interview, i have pulled together an audience profile. I have put a lot of thought into my audience profile but I decided that these choices would be best:

• My magazine will be aimed at both genders, male and female
• My age range would be from 14-25 year olds
• The genres that the magazine would specialize in would be Hip Hop and R'n'B