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Showing posts from January, 2018
Naming My Final Magazine Today's class tested more than what I've learnt so far since the beginning of A levels. It tested my patience, my will power and I finally started thinking of MIGRAIN(E) as more than a fun acronym as i spent a numb-skullingly long time just thinking, what exactly would be the perfect name for my final magazine. What seems to be the easiest task in the process of planning and designing a a magazine, took me a very long time to shortlist five names I'd actually be happy with having on my magazine cover since I want everything to be perfect. After much brainstorming, I finally decided on a name that to me seemed both beautiful and matched the image and genre i chose for my final task, Rhapsody
Planning: It Begins
Survey Results After designing the survey, I spread the survey to my target market, so far receiving 60 responses. Here are the results. Lets see what the people want!  Given that over 80% of the respondents prefer reading magazines once a month. This shows how often a potential consumer is likely to opt for a magazine as resource rather than other media products. Given the tech age, the majority prefer to read magazines online. There is, however, a large number of people who make use of hard copies. This helps us better understand how to distribute our media product after production. Amongst the people who have picked a music magazine, Rolling Stones has the highest percentage of being bought at a solid 27.12%. This helps us understand the style some people may be looking for Summing up interviews and features, 40% if not more of the respondents want an artist heavy article, something I had initially planned. Looking at the overwhelming amount of people wh
 Survey Now that we've identified our target market, it's time to create a survey to understand the wants and needs of our target market. For this reason exactly, I have designed a nine question survey on survey monkey. These questions vary in content and give us a deeper insight into what our magazine should be like to sell most.
Target Market Primary Audience Demographic: Age: 20-35 year olds Gender:  All inclusive Nationality: Pakistani Ethnicity: Urban areas of Pakistan e.g Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi Status: B Religion: All-inclusive Psycho-graphic: Social Class: Middle class Personality Characteristics: Explorers Interests: Indie Music, Music Attitude: Open-minded Secondary Audience Demographic: Age: 35-50 year olds Status: A, C1 Psycho-graphic Social Class: Upper class Personality Characteristics: Aspirers Interests: Creativity, Fashion
Trending in Indie  Sound: Indie music has been subject to great change over the years. It's sound though vastly different due to different sub-genres of indie, still has an underlying base. In the last year we saw some great tracks by various artists, new and old. The sound of indie has developed a niche for conventional rhythm with unconventional sounds like Casey Dienel's, 'High Times'. The melodies are mostly a well balanced blend of directional and colour melodies and ambisonic and ambient sounds have seen a great revival in the last year or so. On top of this, these days indie songs have taken to fuse with other genres like EDM and R&B, creating more upbeat tunes. Indie artists, while retaining their airy vocals have turned to a more ferocious vibe. An apt example would be Marika Hackman's 'Boyfriend' where her music conveys a provocative mix of humour, envy and frustration. It's deceptively gentle and fragile sounding while having strong
Codes and Conventions in Indie Music Magazine Articles Now that we've explored the codes and conventions of  an indie music magazine cover page, it's time to look into what the actual magazine itself contains; the articles. Article styles and what type of articles change with every genre and this proves to be true for indie music magazines.  Let's have a closer look at these codes and conventions. Article Types Articles in indie music magazines are usually artist profiles, interviews or coverage of a recent festival or event. Other editorial pages like tour dates and album/song recommendations are present. Technical Codes Camera Work Conventionally, the anchoring image is a medium shot or a medium long shot, where the subject is centrally positioned. As exemplified above, the angle is usually eye-level with a front view. However indie music magazines don't shy away from employing high and low angles when they want to add to the fierceness. T
Codes and Conventions of Indie Music Magazine Covers Every genre of magazine has its own sets of codes and conventions which sets it aside from other genres. Similarly music magazines have their own codes and conventions but these start to differ and mutate a bit when the magazine explores a further sub-genre, in this case, Indie.  To be able to design my own successful magazine cover of this genre, we must first understand these aforementioned codes and conventions. Technical Codes Camera Work Indie music magazines conventionally employ medium close ups or full shots on their magazine covers. However other shots especially the medium long shot are not rare.       As seen above, indie music magazines often use eye level angles and central positioning of the artists except NME which has its own set of conventions namely, having the subject angled and positioned a bit to the side.They continue this for every issue of theirs. Lighting These magazi