Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Throughout the year, I have felt that there had been a positive progress present, which lead to the improvement of the final product. My understanding of media industry increased and my main task looks more professional and completed than my preliminary task.

As you can see the second front cover looks more professional and finished. It is very bright, white is the dominant colour and therefore it attracts the audience, unlike my first front cover which seems to be very dark.

Also the cover lines are much easier to read on the second front cover, letters are big and the contrast with the background and it is not very easy to see and read the cover lines on the first draft.
I also believe the front cover's photo is more interesting than the first one.
The front cover of the main task looks real as it has a barcode and the font size is rather small for the price and that is what exensive magazines choose, so people would not actually see the price, so it wouldn't push them away.

thinking of the title

After looking at different magazines and their ‘inside-outs’ I am now about to think and create a title for my music magazine.

First of all, why is the title important?

It brings the message to the reader – what the magazine is about, what style it has.

Is connected with any bands or music types?

My music magazine will be about rock and indie music, however, I’m planning to talk not only about music in my magazine, also I would want to develop the topic of fashion and lifestyle in it.

The title has to be remarkable and easy to remember, it also must be easy to pronounce, basically it should please audience and be ‘adopted’ to it. While thinking of a title I must consider my target audience preferences.

After producing a little mind map and brainstorming of what it could be I came up with several options:

• l'esprit

L'esprit means mind in french, and i believe it suits perfectly for the title of the music magazine. Music often becomes something much more than just a sound for many people, it could reflect their lifestyle, their fashion style or even state of mind! Its easy to explain by giving few examples from my own experience - music reflects the mood and thoughts very often. For example, the band Radiohead usually drives me to a very depressing, however calm mood and some electro music like Skrillex is suitable for some action - when you do work or when you simply walk.

• CONFESSION
  

Music often reflects our thoughts as i have mentioned before and sometimes lines from the lyrics describe the best what we feel or what we think. Sometimes people even use quotes from some of the song to bring the message to someone they need to speak to but can't find the right words.

• Quis

Quis means wanted in Portuguese. I believe that could be a very symbolic title because true fans of some bands or singers are usually becoming obsessed with them. A magazine with such title could include a lot of gossip about some musicians, their photoshoots, interviews, etc.

• Saxum

Saxum means stone or rock in latin. The magazine with such title could talk about rock or heavy metal music.

Which one do you like the most? please leave your answer in comments! thank you :)

MAGAZINES by Naomi Hodkinson (summary) part 2

Total Film

Future Publishing, £3.80 monthly. ABCs: 85,616

(ABCs – the Audit Bureau of Circulations audits the average circulation figures per issue of each magazine title over a siz-month period.)

future Publishing was started on a kitchen table in Bath in 2985 and now publishes over 150 magazines worldwide.

Its biggest are Total Film, Digital Camera, Classic Rock, etc.

Future also holds the official licence for magazines from Microsoft, Sony, Disney and Nintendo to publish titles like Official Nintendo Magazine. These associations with new technology companies can be linked to ideas about target audience and synergy.

The title has an extremely consistent format and layout. We will have noticed:

· On the cover – features which are indicated in the cover lines.

· Plus – the section on features which didn’t make the cover.

· Buzz – film news and gossip.

· Lounge – home entertainment news and features.

· Every edition starts with a planner of the month’s movie guide and a forum of readers’s letters, and rounds off with quizzes and a film-related competition.

On the Future Publishing website, Total Film is described as “vibrant, funny and accessible, mixing A-list glitz with indie attitude, instant hits with timeless classics”. The advertisements Total Film carries appear to support the idea that the magazine is targeting a predominantly young, educated, male audience.

The mode of address in Total Film is playful, masculine and youthful.

The magazine manages to avoid being either too specialized or too ‘laddish’ in its mode of address by using a knowing, assertive yet informal tone.

Total Film clearly positions its audience as young, knowledgeable film lovers with a sense of humor.

The stereotypical representations of gender it Total Film reflect the gender bias in the mainstream Hollywood film industry.

It claims that the average demographic is 75% male and is 26 years of age.

Stars are manufactured by the industry: they are commodities. Star images are constructed and mediated identities, defined by their historical context and their culture.

(Demographics – this approach to understanding the character of an audience makes generalizations about social groups).

Grazia

EMAP(Bauer), £1.90 weekly, ABCs: 227,083

Grazia was originally launched in Italy in 1938. Grazia now features glossy advertisements D&G, GUCCI, LOUIS VUITTON, EMPORIO ARMANI etc.

Grazia was arguably groundbreaking because it created a new ‘news and shoes’ generic mix.

One of its taglines is ‘a lot can happen in a week!’. It cleverly creates a hybrid mix of popular genres.

Observer Woman suggests that Grazia is ‘tapping the psyche of British women’.

Grazia offers its readers narrative pleasures by constructing narratives about A-list celebrities. Narrative is constructed within the features. Narrative can also be identified in the familiar format and structure of the magazine, with its consistent design style and regular features. Season changes are also indicated and reflected in the fashions.

Grazia is more accessible to the average young woman who is interested in fashion that other fashion magazines because, in spite of its upscale brand image, it features clothes from high street staples Peacock and Primark as well as designer brands. The house style is gossipy, but includes some hard news features and a glossy, ‘classy’ mode of address which may suggest that Grazia has a higher percentage of ABC1 readers.

Stars are culturally significant because they represent shared cultural values and attitudes.

2000 AD

£1.90 weekly, ABCs 20, 000 approx.

2000 AD emerged in the late-1970s, the era of punk sensibilities, when traditional children’s comics like Wizard and Hutspur were losing readers. It was originally published by IPC/Fleetway, then Egmont, but is now owned and published by Rebellion.

The genre of 2000 AD is difficult to define because it has elements of a range of genres, including war, science fiction and action/adverture.

2000 AD features five different comic strips a week. While each story is self-contained to an extend, the strips are serialized within each ‘prog’ (issue) and often end with cliff-hangers.

Characters depicted are generally aggressive, macho, tongue-in-cheek, male and white. Settings are generally dark, post-apocalyptic, dystopian and futuristic, which links to the partly science fiction genre. We could arguably criticize 2000 AD for violent content and the way it represents woman. The absence of female characters in some editions could itself be considered a negative representation. The comic’s ideology is hegemonic, although is positions the audience in contradictory ways.

It could be argued that 2000 AD foreshadows trends with parody and political satire. Satirical tone may appeal to fans because it assumes that they have their own political opinions. Given the fluid and shifting nature of the preferred readings, 2000 AD challenges its readers and is not just for children.

The fictional editor of 2000 AD is Tharg the Mighty. This idiosyncratic mode of address is part of the comic’s appeal: understanding the language is one of the pleasures offered by the text and may encourage audience identification.

While 2000 AD’s peculiar British style and humor may exclude some international audiences, it is popular in the US, Australia and New Zealand – generally anywhere that English speakers can be found.

Today 2000 AD is less widely distributed than many other comics although it can be found in larger branches of supermarkets and WH Smiths. Back issues can be ordered online and they remain on sale at collector’s and fan’s specialist shops, instead of being taken off sale and returned to the distributor like most periodical magazines. 2000 AD will stay on sale even if it is an older issue because it is a collector’s item. 2000 AD’s cult status and relatively small circulation mean that traditional marketing methods are not necessarily the most efficient.

Conclusion

Since magazines became popular more than a hundred years ago they have been scapegoated as inferior elements of popular culture.

The content of comics like 2000 AD may have a detrimental effect on audiences.

The audiences are able to negotiate their own understandings and decipher their own meanings from media texts.

MAGAZINES by Naomi Hodkinson (summary) part 1.

This is a summary of a section “Magazines” from the textbook “Exploring Media”.

This section explores three magazine titles which together investigate the areas of genre, narrative and representation. It will also look at the relationships between them, and builds on those understanding in a text-led way.

Three magazine titles to be explored are “Total Film”, “Grazia” and “2000 AD”. You need to be familiar with the media terminology associated with magazines to:

· to investigate briefly the state of the magazine industry and each title’s position within it,

· to understand the ways in which magazines target and appeal to their audiences and

· the ways in which different audiences respond to different magazines.

Magazines come in a wide range of sub-genres which include:

· Lifestyle magazines;

· Comics;

· Online editions.

(SUB-GENRES – smaller classes of a larger genre.)

How do magazines differ from newspaper?

· Magazine coverage is often more detailed but with less timely information.

· A newspaper covers the day-to-day story; a magazine will explore and profile the issues and people involved.

· Magazines are weekly, fortnightly, or monthly while newspapers are daily and cover topics of general interest for a specific geographical area.

· Magazines are more permanent: we keep the for longer, pass them on, etc.

· Magazines content and audience are more specialized and focused.

· Magazine consumers appreciate information which is specifically aimed at the needs and interests.

You will need to familiarize yourself with the conventions of the magazine genre and to use the appropriate media terms.

On the cover may appear:

· The title;

· The tagline;

· Price;

· Date of publication;

· Main image with anchorage;

· Possible straplines;

· Sidebars;

· “Puff” trailing features of cover lines.

Most magazines will have a contents page and editor’s section and most carry advertisement.

Analyzing a magazine: the cover

A magazine’s cover is its ‘face’. You can generally tell at a glance whether a magazine is for you.

To understand how we make these judgments, we should consider a range of elements.

· The magazine’s title.

What connotations does it carry?

· The strapline or tagline.

These can be linked to brand identity/house style and to the title’s values; and so to the ideas about target audience.

· The fonts and colours used.

What do they suggest about the title’s brand identity and target audience?

· The main image: often a male or female gazing into camera.

How femininity or masculinity are presented?

· The anchorage and cover lines.

These will reveal a great deal about the title’s ideologies and target audience.

What kinds of story does this magazine cover?

· How else does this magazine cover seek to persuade the consumer to buy?

Analyzing a magazine: between the covers

· The contents pages.

Are they formal and traditionally laid out; image-led and colourful?

· The editor’s letter.

What assumptions does it make about the intended audience?

· Two-page spreads.

Primary unit of design, but how are they laid out?

Traditional grids work in a two or three column format and are formal looking and book-like, but a more edgy or modern title might use horizontal, modular lines as well as the traditional, vertical grid, sidebars, text wrapped around photos and images which bleed across the grid lines.

· The advertisements.

The advertisement they carry is also precisely targeted.

Look at the proportion of advertisements to content and the kinds of brand which appear.

What do they suggest about the target audience of the magazine you are analyzing.

Major magazine publishers include the following:

· IPC – American-owned and part of the biggest media conglomerate in the world, Time Warner, which also incorporates the internet provider AOL.

Titles in its stable include Now, Nuts, Sugar, Pick me up, InStyle, etc.

· EMAP – previously a major player in the industry, but sold its magazine business to Bauer in December 2007.

· Bauer – a German company whose titles include FHM, New Woman, Empire, Heat, Bella, etc.

· Conde Nast – in the UK, its titles include Vogue, Glamour, Tatler, GQ, etc.

· NatMags – owned by Hearst, some of its titles are Cosmopolitan, Prima, Esquire, Men’s Health, etc.

· BBC magazines – a good example of commercial intertextuality or synergy. They include the Radio Times, Gardeners World, Top Gear, etc.

(SYNERGY – means ‘working together’ and refers to the way different arms of industry support and benefit one another.)

Many popular commercial magazine titles are global and are published in different countries. This globalization of the magazine industry suggests that magazine producers make stereotypical assumptions about their audiences.

Magazine titles have a clearly defined and focused target audience. They target these audiences with a mode of address which ‘speaks their language’ and may contain preferred readings which their target audience is likely to agree with. This precisely defined readership enables publishers to ‘sell’ their audiences to advertisers who then buy space, which is how they make most of their money.

Competition remains fierce among the main publishers. Magazines need to keep up-to-date with new technologies: most have websites and at least some of their content is available on mobile phone downloads.