New Media

Promotional Methods

To promote my magazine, I have begun to think about various, effective methods to increase the readership and circulation of my magazine. I want my magazine to have a big readership, especially when it is released as the sales need to be high and the only way to effectively achieve this is by promoting the magazine well. I need to invest a lot of money into promotion such as on billboards and buses, especially as the magazine is new and unknown to the target audience.

A prime example of promotion is billboards. Billboards are very effective as they are very large in size and attract attention from all types of people as they are specifically located in areas where people are most likely to look (eg. when in the car on a motorway, shopping centres). As billboards are located all across the country, I will need to create the billboard to the best of my ability to fit within the target audience to grab their attention. I need to make the magazine look appealing and include some sort of sell line and unique selling point to entice them to purchase the magazine. I will do some research into my locations for my bill boards because certain areas in the UK could have a different perspective on the magazine. I plan on including the release date, website and name of the magazine as well as a little teaser to increase anticipation of the magazines release.

Another way of promoting my magazine will be through adverts on buses. The bus itself is key to promotion as buses travel great lengths, through different destination routes therefore a lot of people will see the bus as the majority of people use public transport (especially those who I have targeted as my audience). Everyone keeps an eye out for adverts on public transport like buses therefore it would be a great investment for my magazine as it grabs peoples attention when the bus passes them. I also plan on using the underground/tube to promote and advertise my magazine as this will enhance the variety of those who will see and possibly purchase the magazine. People become very tedious when travelling so using escalator advertisements as well as large adverts by the sides of the train and in the train itself will be very successful.

 

I will make sure that the adverts are concise and fit within the target audiences interests. I have to make sure that the adverts and content reach to the correct market otherwise the magazine will be unsuccessful. For some extra advertise, I will start the first issue to meet Ruth, the main artist, and win backstage passes to a festival with a signed copy of her brand new single. Some of the rules of the competition will be that the person who enters the competition must be subscribed//following/liked with all of my magazines social networking sites. By doing this I can build an online audience and gain more members interacting with the magazine, which will in turn rise sales. Twitter and Facebook are extremely popular in this day and age therefore I strongly believe that combining competitions with social networking will successfully and effectively build my audience and help gain more sales.

Props / Costumes

Production Diary - Week 6

Throughout this week, I have completed many things in the project.

I started bycreating a Prezi on photoshoot ideas. This helped influence me on what makeup, poses, hair and props to use for my photoshoot which I was going to do later on in the week. I wrote briefly about each and included photos as well as including the song 'Chocolate' by The 1975, which is an indie band of whom I believe represent the indie genre well. After I had created this Prezi, I held my first photoshoot with my main model, Ruth, who signed a model release form to confirm that she is happy with taking part in the photoshoot and is able to participate in a re-shoot if necessary. I used bold hair and makeup techniques as well as her clothes and overall look to make Ruth look appealing towards the audience of the magazine, and to also fit within the dynamics of the magazine as it is very individual and unique. I also have backstage videos and images of the photoshoot.

During this week, I also created name ideas from a spider diagram around the four main types of words: acronym, connotative, phrase and compound. I found a few names that I liked, such as inD and Unsigned as I feel as though they represent my magazine well, although I am still undecided on which name to use. I also created a document on In Design which is dedicated to the masthead designs. I downloaded various fonts from ReFont and DaFont and transferred them over to In Design to decide which was the most effective and suitable font for my magazine. I liked 'Blackout' and 'Broken74'. Lastly, I created another document and In Design which was based on colour schemes. I simply created a row of 9 blocks, consisting of 4 different colours which I think would be a good colour scheme for the magazine. My favourite colour scheme was the red, matched with the monochrome black and white with grey. I like this colour scheme as it is simplistic yet powerful. I enjoyed these tasks as they helped me to develop more ideas about my magazine and were quite fun to play around with.

Backstage at my photoshoot

Model release

 

This is the model release form for my photoshoot. I have chosen who I would like to participate in my photoshoot, and rior to taking photos of my model, I had to make sure that Ruth was happy with being photographed and understood that the images are for a school project. This release form also states that, if necessary, a re-shoot is needed then the model is happy to take part in it. This concludes that Ruth, my model, is happy to take part in the photoshoot and agrees to the engagement.

Contact sheet #1

This is the contact sheet for  my first photoshoot. In this photoshoot, I focused mainly on close up shots of the model, Ruth, for the front page image. I used makeup and hair to make Ruth stand out with prominant and bold features. Ruth also used interesting poses to appeal to the audience of the magazine, such as devil horns and the illiminati symbol which both portray controversy. I used close up shots to make Ruth superior to the audience as well as shots taken from beneath her to enhance her significance. Ruth wore a buttoned up shirt to begin with, and a simple bandeau later on to make Ruth seem bare and attract to the male audience as it gives her some sort of sex appeal.

I also plan on doing another shoot at school, where props will be my main focus. I plan on using guitars and microphones as it represents the genre of music and entices the audience into purchasing the magazine. I am also going on location to Camden to shoot some more photos of my models, a popular place that people of the indie genre are interested in visiting.

Colour

These are the various colour schemes that I have created for my magazine. The colour I like most, and am most willing to use is red. Red is a gender neutral colour which connotes both love and danger, whilst having a very powerful, strong and bold tone as well, especially when paired with the monochrome colours of black, white and grey. Very successful magazines are very fond of this colour scheme, including Q magazine:

 Q magazine uses the red colour scheme very well, using black and white contrasting colours paired with the extremely bold red tone which captures the audiences attention. The red, in this example, signifies Cheryl Cole's sex appeal which foreshadows the audience that the magazine is targeted towards. The red logo of Q follows the house style, however the taglines and main headlines are featured in red too, moreso highlighting Cheryl and her dominance. This is a very successful way of using graphological features to manipulate the audience into purchasing and buying the magazine, and I plan on persuing the same thing.

 

 

I also quite like the blue/navy colour scheme paired with black and white, however this colour scheme could seem derogatory against female readers and put them off purchasing and reading the magazine all together as they could think that the magazine is very masculine. An example of a magazine targed more towards males with a blue colour scheme is Vibe:

 

 

Vibe has a 37% female readership, compared to males with a huge 63%. This is reflected in many ways, however just the colour scheme alone simply portrays how the magazine is more influenced by the male audience. As my magazine is targeted to both genders, using a blue colour scheme will contradict the audience that I am to target my magazine to therefore it is quite ineffective.

 

Masthead designs

 

These are my masthead designs. I chose these fonts as I feel as though they represent the magazine and the indie/alternative genre well - connoting the individual, distressed and wrecklessness of the audience. I like the 3rd font from the top, Blackout, as it is simple yet eye-catching. I also like the 4th font from the bottom, Broken74, as it is a destroyed-looking font which will stand out completely from the page whilst also representing the nature of the magazine. I am still undecided on which font to use however I will be adding more fonts if I see any that I like and deciding upon the font I would like to use for my masthead once I develop more ideas.

Name ideas

 

 

I began to come up with some ideas for my magazine's name, and I chose these name ideas because I felt as though they represent my indie genre well and will entice the audience to purchase the magazine. I found this quite difficult as I didn't want to go with something too typical of music magazines as I wanted mine to be unique in some way, and it was hard to come up with something without all of my ideas being definite. In order to come up with some ideas, I started a spider diagram of ideas, with 'name ideas' in the middle and everything that I associate with it around the centre. From this, the first idea I wanted to stick with was 'Unsigned', but I later decided against this when I came up with 'inD', as I preferred a shorter name to a longer one. I believe that a shorter name is more effective than a long magazine name as it is more memorable. I am still choosing which name to use for my magazine name as I want it to be the best that I can come up with.

Photoshoot ideas

Production Diary - Week 5

In the last lesson, I begun to create name ideas and masthead designs. I did this by simply creating a spider diagram; featuring four different sectors of words to use for my name ideas for the magazine. These included acronyms, phrases, connotative and compound words. I chose around 35 name ideas - I liked the name inD and Unsigned as I feel as though they represent the magazine very well and are a key signified of what the magazine stands for. I'm still undecided on which name to use as I was to be 100% sure on the name and I feel as though I'm not quite there yet. After I had created name ideas, I went onto DaFont and ReFont to select fonts that I like to use for the masthead. I downloaded these fonts and transferred them onto InDesign where I created a long list of the fonts and compared which one I like most. Again, I'm still quite undecided as I want the masthead to be to the best of my ability as it is one of the most important factors of a magazine as it can make or break it. 

In the next lesson, I plan on possibly choosing my final name and masthead design so that I can effectively move on to the next task, and select shots of what images I would like to feature in my magazine to help influence me. 

Names and Masthead analysis

Production Diary Week 5

Mood board

Key concepts

My research into the key concepts of the indie genre and music magazines in general has helped to develop my understanding further and is extremely helpful for me to look back on for information surrounding all of the relevant topics for this course. I feel as though it is mandatory for my success in the course as research is key for everything and I now have a greater understanding of the genre and key concepts within the media, therefore my magazine will only benefit from this.

Preliminary video

I have captured videos of my preliminary magazine on CamStudio which has enabled me to, one by one, highlight each factor of the magazine and bring it onto the screen. I selected the region that I wanted to record on CamStudio and then selected each segment in each layer to make them pop up. Creating this preliminary video is effective and helpful to me because it allows me to be able to use more programmes and portray my magazine in a different way whilst indicating which order I made my magazine in.