Reader Profile

Hey, I'm Vanessa and I am seventeen year old. I live in London with my family and have been here my whole life. I love the city, the business and its creativity. At school I am currently studying English, Geography and Photography and enjoy all the subjects I take. Even though school can be stressful at times I love it as it means I can see my friends and hang out with them. Recently, we went to see Beyoncé live and I was blown away by how amazing she is. She is one of my favourite artists as I love her voice and the way she performs on stage.When it comes to my music taste it can be pretty diverse. I love R&B and POP music the most but am open to any kind of music as long as it sounds good and has a good beat. I may not have the best  voice but I enjoy singing them is the shower.

Artist's Profile

Audience Research Focused

Focus research from ishrahjama

Audience Research General

For my general research I carried out a survey that consisted of 4 questions. The reason I choose 4 was because I wanted enough question so I could get a good amount of relevant feedback but also I wanted to not have so many questions that I lost track of answers and I didn't bore the people I was gaining answers from. I surveyed 25 people between the ages of 16 and 18 as I go to school with them all but also as that is my target audience range and I want my magazine to reflect their needs and wants.

Here is a copy of the survey along with song answers I got back

 I am going to share with you some of my findings and my answers

Do you read music magazine?

The reason I asked this question was to see how many people read music magazines. With that information I could see how popular they were. My results show that 18 out of 25 of the people I surveyed read music magazines.

What feature draws you to a magazine?

 The reasoning behind asking this question was to see what aspect of the front cover, my target audience was drawn to. The most popular answer was the model. I understand this as I too think it is the most important and interesting feature of the front cover of a magazine.

What content are you most drawn to?

I asked this question as I wanted to know what I could include on the cover of my magazine to say is inside my magazine. I got an interview as the most popular answer. This wasn't that helpful as I will be doing an interview anyway.

How much would you pay for a music magazine?

The most popular answer was less than a pound. I think the reason behind this is that people of my target audience don't have a lot of money as they are students.

Exploration of R&B Artists

Here is a moodboard of some popular R&B artists. What I did was go online and search up some popular R&B artists that are currently producing and creating music. I found examples of artists such as Chris Brown, Usher and The Weeknd.

As well as the moodboard, I wanted to look into some R&B artists in detail to help me create a R&B artist of my own. I used Beyonce and Alicia Keys as they are two of the best female R&B artists at the moment and are similar to the artists I want to create.

Research of R&B Genre

Research Rationale

The target group that I have access to are teenagers, especially 16 to 19 years old due to the fact that I attend sixth form. This is useful as I can use this age group as my target audience to help conduct relevant and constructive research for my magazine. As they are the suitable age range for a reader of my magazine it will be helpful and even interesting to see what people have to say about music magazine out there. Even though I have access to 11 to 19 year old, I will only focus on 15+ as I feel like any younger and aspects of my music magazine will have to change and I believe my age range is better when I begin my audience.

When it comes to conducting my research I will conduct the research to help me gain better understanding and knowledge of my target audience's likes and dislikes when it comes to their favourite genre of music. This will be done in the form of a focus group of around 2 to 4 people so I can listen to each individual's opinion and asks as many questions. Other methods of research that I will be carrying out is asking people what magazine covers they like more, what name suits the magazine better and shot preferences. I will document all of my results/feedback onto my blog. With qualitative data you get a more in depth, detailed answer that you cannot get when using quantitative data as I will be asking more open questions.

 I will also conduct numerical research with statistics that will help me understand what suit my target audience and music magazine more. This will be useful as I can easily see the information collected instead of having to read it. This consists of bar charts, tally tables and frequency diagrams. I think the idea of having both type of data as a bit of variation in my work.

Magazine Deconstruction

In this post I have deconstructed 2 magazines, one from Billboard magazine which features a lot of R&B and had Beyonce on the cover, the other from Q magazine, it has Cheryl Cole, a pop artist. The reason behind this is that I wanted to break apart certain conventions that make up a music magazine, understand  each and every feature that has been add as well its importance. I choose to do one R&B and one pop to help me decided which genre to do.

Key Examples

Magazine Typography

Theses are a selection of various magazine mastheads from music magazine. The reason behind this blog post was to see what logos were out there and get any ideas for  style, lettering, name and overall appearance. As a whole, I can see that they are all quite different from one another in terms of their fonts. Apart from "Opera", "The musical times", "BBC music" and "The rolling stones", they are sans serif. Most of them are all in capitals to show importance and there are varying colours with black and red being the most popular. I think from this I will be making my masthead in a black bold font as that's what I think most suits the vision I have in mind. Titles like "Vortex" and "Kerrang" portray the brand through the typography, shown the audience clearly that Vortex is more electro and Kerrang is more heavy metal themed with the addition of the exclamation mark to help explain it further.
It was quite interesting discovering the ones that I liked and disliked so I will share them with you:
The ones that I liked were "Billboard", "Rolling Stones" and "Clash". With Billboard I find it is very simplistic due to the standard, narrow sans serif writing which makes it a good and sensible choice for a logo if I was to let it influence me. The Rolling stones logo has a very retro feel to it and I find that different and unique and that's what interests me to it. For a logo is its quite decorative, hand written and the black shadowing gives it a bit of an edge.Even though it is my favourite, I'm not sure I will use it as I don't the vibe of my music magazine.  The Clash logo is the logo I am most inspired by as it is a classic. Its sans serif, in bold and can be read and understood easily.

The magazines that I wasn't much of a fan of were "Bad Sound Magazine" and "4Q". The reason I did not like Bad Sound Magazine was because I found it quite childlike and garish.The ghost like effect on the font seems to me over the top but I understand how it could be use as a long on a magazine and recognises that the reason it looks like that is to show the genre of the magazine. I didn't like the "4Q" one as it looks more like an image than a logo. Also the fact that the '4' and the 'Q' come of the edges can mean that it might be difficult at times to read.

Music Magazine Moodboard

Moodboard from ishrahjama

Here are 4 mood boards I put together as part as my research based on 4 music magazine that are currently publishing. I did this as I wanted to see how some front covers, contents pages and double spread pages looked like and gain some inspiration from them.

First I looked at Billboard magazine. It is a US media brand, first published in 1894, which focus on news,events,opinions,style and video. It was the only American magazine I had a look at but I felt it was important to see how American music magazines still looked like as it could still give me some inspiration. Out off all the 4 magazine I found the layout to be to more of my style. It mainly features an artist with minimal text, sometimes just a few lines, and their logo going across the left hand side. The artists that are featured are more mainstream music such as Ariana Grande and Katy Perry as the magazine has a "Billboard 200" section which highlights the most listen to tracks. I like this style of cover as it isn't as stereotypical as you think, but comes across as clean and tidy, however when it comes to making mine, I don't think I would include such little cover lines and text. I really like the double spread page of their featured artist that I included as the picture is suitable and the text is neatly organised into columns.

Clash was the second magazine I looked at. It is a UK publishing magazine and is released weekly. The magazine shows artists that are alternative in the style of music but are still popular and successful in their own right. Artists included Rita Ora and The 1975. The theme of the magazine is quite retro in terms of the costumes and colours which is something I like. The mastheads are often white but some may be black as well as the cover lines. the content pages are spread across two pages which is not something I will be copying as I find it unnecessary.

My third example was Q magazine, founded in 1986. Out of all the magazines I found it the most mature and formal. For my target audience I think its grown up. Whist studying it I realised how all the magazines have the Q logo on the top left hand corner and the feature colour tends to be red too to match the masthead. its interesting how they use that as the feature colour and not a colour that comes from the photo itself. The cover lines placing and amount vary from magazine to magazine. With the contents page, I included one main image with a smaller image and text. I like this idea and may possibly use it on my own magazine cover. With the double spread page of Ed Sheeran, it is a nice idea to have a main image that covers the double spread and a white text box for the interview.

Lastly I looked at NME, a british magazine that focuses mainly on puck rock. I found that I didn't like this magazine as much as the rest in terms of its overall style. the front page was fine as it conforms to the stereotypical conventions of magazine. it tends to have its logo in the corner with a close up of its featuring artist as well as lots of text and cover lines. I didn't like the contents page though. To me it looked more like a newspaper with the text below the picture and the contents list along the side. Their double spread though was standard and predictable which isn't bad, just not exciting.

The brief, inital ideas and feelings

In this post I will be sharing with you the brief, initial ideas and my feeling on the new project, a music magazine. What I have been asked to create is a front cover, contents page and double spread page of a music magazine that will feature an artist I have created, for a music genre of my choice. At first I was exited to be starting my coursework as I enjoy listening to music in my free time. It means that I am able to show my interest creatively and with my own twist. But also I was a bit nerved as it meant that I had a lot of work to complete in a short about of time but as long as I keep track and on top of my tasks, I think I will be just fine. When it comes to the actually genre of music, I was thinking of either doing pop, R&B or film music as they are the three genres music I listen to the most. I choose to not go with film music as even though I love it, its is too generic and has a larger target audience than I want. Therefore I will decided between the other two. With my target audience, I think I will go for the ages 13 to 19 as they are a suitable range for the magazine I have in mind. For the layout and design side, I am still unsure of what I am looking to create but hopefully with the research I am going to start to do, I will be inspired.