Monday 13 July 2015

Response To The Brief

My taste in music is very varied, I spend a large amount of time listening to different bands and artists from all types of genres. I have a range of social media accounts in which I follow many bands and artists which allows me ready access to see the types of themes and colours they use to promote their albums and singles, it also allows me to see the target audiences that they are aiming to promote and sell to, and see the interaction with fans alongside that, which would be helpful for writing magazine articles as it allows an insight into the personality of the artist and the way they treat their fans.

I personally buy 'Kerrang!' magazine once a week on a Friday, as many bands I enjoy listening to are featured in there often. The colour scheme for Kerrang! is mostly black, red and white, but occasionally blues and yellows are used to highlight important parts of the text, for example notable or inspirational quotes, or to make images pop from the page. Kerrang! could be targeted to a range of audiences, as the acts featured vary each week, for example there could be Fall Out Boy or Black Veil Brides one week then The Rolling Stones or The Who the week after. This allows their target audience to vary significantly, which would clearly enable them to sell more copies of their magazine and to draw in a larger profit, in terms of Bauer - the company that produces Kerrang! - this will give them incentive to want to produce Kerrang! as they are accumulating a larger profit than some other music magazines.

For the magazines we will be producing, I plan to use a theme of colours as I feel that having a consistent scheme would allow the magazine to be easily recognized on a shelf, also appealing to the subconscious want for clarity and stability throughout the longevity of the life of the magazine.

The main focus of the music I listen to is pop-rock/rock so the feel of my magazine will include those, whilst being different to Kerrang! and marketed more to a younger audience to encourage more people to listen to alternative bands and break the stereotyping of the fans that listen to this style of music. To me music is an international language that breaks down barriers and connects fans from different countries around the world, there are many societal stereotypes that are branded to in wider culture for different types of music, especially things like punk and hard-rock music, and I would love for my magazine to not only highlight the artists I love to listen to but to help break down stereotypes and barriers so everyone can discover music they love to listen to.

Some Kerrang! covers that I like:







Thursday 9 July 2015

OCR G321 Print Brief

Preliminary Exercise:
Using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.
Main Task:
The front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.