Tuesday 17 March 2015
Friday 13 March 2015
Thursday 12 March 2015
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and
why?
After researching into all the
major publishers, I have decided to publish my magazine independently. First of
all, I looked at the benefits of distributing my magazine through big companies
such as IPC and Bauer, they offer a high platform for my magazine to start
publishing at and would allow me time to build my product from scratch, would
give a lot of financial backing and can allow me to invest in technology.
However, this does not necessarily guarantee me full editorial control over my
product. Because of this, I have chosen to publish my magazine independently. I
also have to consider what publishers would be interested in my product being
as it is such a different product to every other music magazine being published
by UK publishers and being published by an overseas corporation could be tough
to keep regular involvement with your publishers and could result in frequent
flights for meetings. This could however be tackled with the growing importance
of the internet, as Skype calls and emails can allow me to keep in touch with
my publishers on a regular basis.
The advantages of publishing my
magazine independently are that I am in full control of the product and so can
moderate the content, who I feature in my magazine and advertisements; this
would be good because I can keep the magazine the same as it progresses.
Independent publishing is also appealing to a lot of people in my target
audience because many young people now want to support their ‘local scene’ and
people who are self-employed rather than big corporations. Independent
publishing is great for my magazine’s reputation as well as being a great
marketing technique when aided by social networking. The disadvantages of
independent publishing are that I have to fund the whole production and I need
to make sure that I am financially stable enough to do so, because if I am not
I will not get as much time as I would if I had the backing of a major
publisher. I also won’t have the platform that major publishers provide in the
way of publishing, I will have to deal with where and how I distribute my
magazine, I will not be able to walk into WH Smiths for example and sell my
magazine there if I am working on it alone.
If I was to distribute my product
through a major publishing institution there would be a lot of benefits. I would
be fully supported financially and would be able to afford technology that I
may not have been able to on my own without any backing that would maximise my
magazine’s production and would buy me time to build as the pressure of
succeeding straight away is not as crucial. Getting my magazine into the major
retail spaces such as WH Smiths would not be an issue, this gives my magazine a
platform and enables it to mix in with other music magazines, offering a wider
audience as it is given more publicity and distribution from the off, Bauer,
one of the most influential publishers as an example reach over 19 million
people across their different platforms. There is also the link between major
national publishers and distribution company Marketforce (UK) which can
maximise shelf space, this connection however only applies to magazines which
are likely to be commercially successful instantly. The problems with being
published by a major publisher is that I will not be guaranteed 100% creative
control over my product, there could be disagreements over what can or cannot
feature in my magazine and I could also be forced to feature content I might
not want to and this would be frustrating for me as it is my magazine, I want
to control what I do and don’t put in my magazine and I want to reach to my
specific target audience, not display to an audience with interests I am not
passionate about. There is also an added pressure to succeed long term because
if the product doesn’t sell as expected and the publisher of my magazine starts
to lose money because of this, they could decide to drop my magazine and stop
publishing it all together.
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Tuesday 3 March 2015
Monday 2 March 2015
Location, Props and Costume Report
Location, Props and Costume Report
I have taken all but one of my images in the photography
studio at college, the image I have used on my front cover was taken in studio
at college as I could take full advantage of the green screen and lights
provided, this helped make sure I could get the best lighting possible and made
it easy to crop when it came to editing the image for my front cover. There is
not much in the way of colours other than dark red and beige, predominantly it
is black. This links to the colours I have chosen to use for my magazine. I had
my friend stand in a serious pose to show rebellion as my target audience is a
rebellious young male audience. The image I have used for my contents page was taken
at a different location – Martham skate park, being as my magazine is a hip-hop
and skateboarding magazine this aids putting across that this is the type of
magazine I am going for. I got my friend to do an “Ollie”, which is a basic skateboarding
trick off of the box, this gives my magazine appeal as a skateboarding magazine
and attracts the eye of skaters. The image on my feature article was taken in
the studio at college and is of the same person I used on the front cover, for
the purpose of this magazine made up rapper, “Erniethewhite”. He is using a gun
as a prop to signify that he is rebellious and to look intimidating, a perception hip hop artists want to convey.
The costumes used in the cover include skate brands and street wear such as
Alife and past season Tommy Hilfiger.
Friday 27 February 2015
Construction Schedule
Construction Schedule
Week 1-2: Front cover construction
Week 3-4: Contents page construction
Week 5-6: Feature article construction
Week 7: Final changes
Overall Ideas Statement
Overall Ideas Statement
The type of magazine I intend to make is a hip-hop and
skateboarding magazine. I have chosen this because this is an area that I’m in
to, I know a lot about the music, culture and lifestyle. I have a lot of
friends that are also into this area which will help me construct the magazine.
I have used magazines such as XXL and Thrasher Magazine for inspiration and aim
to make a crossover of the two. Specifically there aren’t many, if any skating
and hip-hop magazines. Because of this I feel that this is a new original
product, tailored at a young male audience that is slightly rebellious and
could be a successful product.
Fonts and Colours Moodboard Analysis
Fonts and Colours Moodboard Analysis
I have chosen the colour and fonts accordingly to my target
audience, young males that are slightly rebellious. To fit that audience I have
used aggressive, masculine fonts that you won’t see on magazines such as Q and
NME, as opposed to conventional neater fonts seen on some magazines that can be
classed as more feminine such as Vogue. I have seen this done on other
magazines such as Thrasher magazine so I know that this will work. My magazine
doesn’t need to conform to the simplistic styles as NME as it doesn’t have to
appeal to the masses; it’s stylised and has a specific target audience. I have
chosen bold strong colours, instead of soft pastille colours. Being as my
targeted audience is slightly rebellious, challenging traditional conventions
will appeal to them more than a magazine such as Empire magazine.
Thursday 26 February 2015
Target Audience Moodboard Analysis
Target Audience Moodboard Analysis
Overall, if you look at my moodboard you will be able to tell
that that is targeted at a young male audience that is slightly rebellious.
Certain images such as the Nike, Thrasher and Instagram logos will tell you
this. I have picked Supreme to be on my moodboard because Supreme is a clothing
label that is marketed towards predominantly a young male audience, consisting
mainly of skaters and hip-hop fans and is one of the biggest brands for this
target audience. Social networking logos such as Twitter and Instagram have
been put on to signify that it is for a younger audience as these are
recognisable logos and the audience are up to speed with modern technologies. I
have chosen to put Mac Miller’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off album cover
on because this is the music that my specific audience will listen to.
Advertising Moodboard Analysis
Advertising Moodboard Analysis
Overall, if you look at my moodboard you will be able to tell
that it is targeted at a young rebellious male audience. Brands and logos such
as Nike SB, Vine and Fanta connote this. I have picked Domino’s Pizza because
being a young audience, they’re probably going to eat a lot of pizza. I have
picked HUF as one of my advertisers because HUF is one of the biggest skating street
wear brands and the target audience is likely to wear HUF clothing. I have picked
Netflix because the audience are likely to spend a lot of their time watching TV
shows and films on Netflix. I have picked Soundcloud because this is a likely
platform that readers are going to use to stream music without having to pay. I
have picked the social network Vine because younger audiences are more likely
to have Vine accounts.
Wednesday 25 February 2015
Tuesday 24 February 2015
Thursday 12 February 2015
Wednesday 11 February 2015
Overview of the Magazine Industry
Overview of the magazine industry
In Britain alone there are over 8000 titles published which
can be categorised into the following: Consumer (general and specialist) these
are sold in newsagents and available online, business/trade/professional – for people
at work, customer magazines that organisations distribute amongst their
customers as a marketing strategy, staff magazines which inform staff about
their company, newspaper supplements given out free as part of a daily or
Sunday paper, academic journals for university-level discussion of all sorts of
arcane topics and part works – a set number of issues building up into an
encyclopaedia on a specific topic.
Consumer magazines make up the most part of sales in
newsagents. They can be either general titles that aim to entertain and inform
such as Loaded, Elle, Radio Times or consumer specialist titles aimed at
specific interests or hobbies i.e. Car, Total Film, Gardener’s World.
The biggest consumer magazine publishers are: Bauer, Time
Warner, BBC and Hearst. In 2014 there are over 3,200 different consumer titles,
compared to 1980 when there were only 1,383 – this is more than half the amount
of what there is today. 1.4 billion magazines are sold each year, compared to
2.1 billion in 1970 and 1.2 billion in 1992. 85% of the population reads a
magazine, advertises spent £745 million in magazines in 2008, consumers spend
£2 billion on magazines annually, an average of 500 new magazines have been
launched every year in the past decade and only 3 in 10 titles survive for more
than 4 years.
Information on Magazine Publishers
Information on Magazine Publishers
IPC Media
With over 85 iconic media brands, IPC Media (now known as
Time Inc. UK) creates content for a wide variety of audiences for multiple
media platforms. IPC Media goes across print, online, mobile and tablets; this
ensures IPC is accessible by anybody of any age across any media product. New Musical Express (better known as its
abbreviation NME) is one of IPC Media’s most established and acknowledged
publications having been around since 1952 (although IPC haven’t always had the
rights to the publication) along with “Marie Clare” which is the other most
popular and most regularly purchased aiming towards a more niche target
audience. IPC Media (The International Publishing Corporation) was formed in
1963. IPC focuses on three main audiences: men, mass market women and upmarket
women.
IPC Media’s wide spectrum of magazines covers all genres such
as; women’s magazines, men’s magazines, home and garden, sports and music. IPC
Media for the most part produce magazines fit for women and appeal to them most
with a variety of magazines for the female target audience such as “woman”,
“woman&home” “woman special series”, “woman’s own” and “woman’s own
lifestyle specials”. On the other hand, IPC Media offer a range of other
magazine genres such as sports with publications such as; “world soccer”,
“cycling fitness” and “golf monthly” and “yachting monthly”, predominantly
aimed towards the male target audience and inferring the target audience is
wealthy as one of the key ideologies suggesting they are interesting in boats,
yachts and may be in a financial position to afford to own a boat.
Bauer
Bauer Media is part of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s
largest privately owned publishing group. Bauer is a worldwide media empire
which offers over 300 publications in 15 countries. Bauer is a multi-media
platform with an offering of online and print publications, TV and radio
stations. Bauer Media joined the Bauer Media Group in January 2008 following attainment
of Emap PLC’s consumer and specialist magazines, online, TV, radio and digital
businesses. Cooperatively, the group employs 6,400 people.
Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media group
consisting of many off shooting companies focusing on two main media platforms,
print magazines and radio. Currently, Bauer Media, widely acclaimed as industry
innovators, has over 80 influential brand names ranging varyingly from Heat,
MATCH!, CAR and Parkers.
Bauer Media publish a vast range of different magazines, as a
result managing to provide for numerous diverse target audiences ranging from
men to women, to teenagers. Bauer Media’s women’s collection covers a comprehensive
choice of interests entailing such items as celebrities, lifestyle, health and
fashion. This would include magazines such as heat, which distributes “MUST
READ” celebrity news and gossip, as well as real life news. Other magazines
targeted directly towards women are more fashion based GRAZIA and Closer. Bauer
Media are among forerunners in music and entertainment with titles such as
Kerrang, Q and Mojo. Q connects the music and lifestyle audience, Mojo focuses
on “timeless music”, whereas Kerrang branch to the rock and metal genre. Entertainment
wise for a younger audience is Empire, the movie magazine with record breaking
covers.
Conde Nast
Conde Nast, founded in 1909, is a global multi-platform media
company that produces high quality magazines, websites and digital content.
Conde Nast’s target audience is predominantly high class adults, usually women
due to the high quality magazines published. Because of the quality they have a
tendency to be more expensive than average magazines picked up by the working
class, thus making them unlikely to be affordable to the working class. Conde
Nast do not publish magazines aimed at lower class target audiences as they are
a high end company.
With 263 million consumers in 30 different markets, the
company’s magazines include some of the worlds most respected and high class
magazines such as GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Architectural
Digest and Vogue to name a few. As well as the 143 magazines and 130 websites
published, the company expands out to restaurants, education, film, television
and premium video programming. The company even has “Conde Nast Entertainment”
as of 2011, which develops film, television and digital video programming.
Conde Nast also delves into the fashion industry owning FFM (Fairchild Fashion
Media) which publishes titles such as WWD, M, Beauty Inc. and website
Style.com.
There are around 1000-5000 employees in Conde Nast to date,
with its headquarters situated in the world trade center in New York. Like many
other publishers, Conde Nast have their own website. This aids attracting a
larger audience due to its wide accessibility on many different platforms and
furthers the promotion of their magazines and sponsors.
Tuesday 10 February 2015
College Questionnaire Analysis
College Questionnaire Analysis
From the results of our questionnaire we underwent I found
out that 60% taking part in the questionnaire were females and 40% were male.
100% of people asked did not read the current college magazine, this clearly
shows that the current product doesn’t reach its target audience. 50% want it
for free, whereas the rest were willing to pay inbetween 50p and £1. Because of
these results, I am going to test out selling the magazine for 50p. In terms of
how often the magazine should be published, 45% of students said they would
like it monthly, with the other 40% opting for an even split of either
fortnightly or every half term. With these results, I am going to be releasing
the magazine monthly.
We asked what students would like to see in the magazine, the
most popular choices were film, music, events and competitions. Fashion,
technology and sport were also popular. Going by these results, the magazine
will include film, music, events and competitions on a regular basis. When
asked what colours they would like to see on the cover of the magazine, people
most frequently chose red, blue, green, black and white. Because of these
results I am going to try out black, white and red as the main colours featured
on the cover. Students said that the things they would like to see come with
the magazine most are vouchers for things such as clothing and food, therefore
I am going to throw in a few vouchers for outlets such as Subway and Top shop.
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