As Media Studies : October 2012

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Magazine Publishers & Distributors

Bauer Media Group - Research

Bauer group is a multinational media company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany which operates in 15 countries worldwide. Since the company was founded in 1875, it has been privately owned and under management by the Bauer family. It was formerly called Heinrich Bauer Verlag KG, abbreviated to HBV and usually shortened to H. Bauer.

Worldwide circulation of Bauer Media Group's magazine titles amounts to 38 million magazines a week.

In 1990, H Bauer gained attention with the launch of Take a Break magazine.

Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media Group consisting of many companies collected around two main divisions – Magazines and Radio - widely recognised and rewarded as being industry innovators

Bauer has offices located all over the world, including the following countries:

Germany

Spain

France

Austria

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Hungary

Czech Republic

Mexico

China

Russia

Slovakia

United Kingdom

Nigeria

They distibute some of the following reconized magazines:

Closer
FHM
Heat
Empire
Q
More
RIDE
Zoo
Match

They have a clear understanding of the music industry as a whole due to their production not only in magazine but radio and tv.

IPC Media - Research

IPC has more than 60 ionic media brands. IPC creates content for multiple platforms including print, online, mobile tablets and events. They engage with 26 million adults in the UK (two thirds women and 42% men). Their award winning portfolio of websites generates a staggering 25m views a month.

They write content for the following magazines:

Moutain Bike Rider
Nuts
NME
Now
Pick me up
Soap life
Look

They have 3 different publishing divisions; IPC Inspire , IPC Connect and IPC Southbank.

IPC Media is a Time Warner Company.

Future PLC - Research

27 years ago Furure PLC set out to create magazines to entertain, inform and challenge.
No.1 UK tech website
No.1 for gutair magazine word wide
No.1 magazine exporter (export to 89 countries)
No.1 UK magazine licencor
No.1 largest producer of film magazine in the UK
38 million website viewers a month
Future is the Association of Online Publishers’ Consumer Digital Publisher of the Year.
sell around 2.2m magazines every month

Monday, 22 October 2012

Double page spread 1

The house style is mainly in the image of the artist and the background colour. The background is black or very close to black and the artists t-shirt is white, this makes the artist stand out. The image of the artist dominates the whole of the right page. the artists has his two middle fingers up at the camera, this wouldn’t normally be acceptable behavior from a high profile music artists but as this is the genre of rap this is seen as acceptable. The artist also appears on the left page but the figure looks to have been faded. Also on the left page is what looks to be a small article form or about Kid Cudi. The plug at the top left of the page ‘New To Q’ signals this is the first time Kid Cudi has appeared in Q magazine. The text is fairly small and hard to read, whereas the images are clear and very dominant. The target audience would mainly be fans of rap music but judging by the huge image and small text i gather it would be mainly males.

Questionnaire results

Front cover 2

This magazine also uses a close up of the artist Kanye West, his direct mode of address show ignorance in his facial expression. The house style consists of the colours blue and pink which is great as they correspond to both sexes. This blue seems to be based around the colour of the collar on the jacket Kanye has on, the black may be used as it is a very neutral colour and stands out well on the light coloured background. The contrast of black and blue on the right hand side may have been used alternatively to make each one stand out and be as important as the other also the content of this specific text may only be recognized by the target audience as they all seem to be very high profile artists. Again the ‘VIBE’ title is covered up by the dominant image of the artist which shows the institution believes they’re established enough to do this. The target audience of this magazine would be fans of the music genre rap.

Front cover 1

One dominant close up of the artists. The artist is on the front layer overlapping all the text including the magazine title, this shows that the magazine think they’re established enough to do this and people will know the establishment from just seeing a fragment of the title. The colours used are simple colours being white, yellow and red. The body language and facial expressions of the artist show power and ignorance. The cover story’s colours are an ambient yellow for the music artists and white and red for the other information. Then when you look further down the page you see any artist name is in the same yellow text, this shows persistency in the house style. The background image of what looks to be stormy clouds gives a dark effect on the cover. The cover is fairly empty in terms of text to entice the audience all that is there to entice the audience is certain artist’s names and one cover line ‘I DON’T SEE SENSE IN RESOLVING ISSUES WITH ANYBODY’.

Contents page 2

The house style of this magazine is 99% grayscale with the one red love heart. The artist takes up 50% of the page showing his significance. On the very back layer you can just make out a ‘V’ possibly the same ‘V’ from the title ‘VIBE’. The title ‘CONTENTS’ is split into three as the artist’s head is dominating the space. The ‘Feature’ section that gives the reader an insight to what’s in the magazine is rather small. Again the selling point may be the artist used Kanye West is a very highly successful artist in the rap genre so the institution may have used Kanye to represent their level of success as well.

Contents page 1

A very simple house style has been used consisting of the colour red black and white. The white background used really shows the significance of the artist ’50-cent’ due to the black clothes he is wearing. The artist used is dominating 50% of the page and the other 50% is used for the contents section. The pages simplistic layout is very use full as the artist gives the reader an insight straight away of what the magazine may include. Also the red used for the page numbers catches the readers’ eye straight away, making it easy for the reader to read and navigate.

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Music Research

Music Questionnaire (Rap)

1. Are you familiar with the genre Rap?

2. If so what are your opinions on the genre?

3. Do you consider yourself a fan of Rap?

4. How many hours a day do you listen to Rap?

5. Do you read any Rap magazines? (please state which _____________________)

6. What would like to see more of in a Rap magazine?

- Reviews

- Interviews

- News

- Quizzes

- Up and coming artists

7. How much would you be willing to pay for a Rap magazine?

- £1

- £2

- £3

- £4

- £5 +

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Contents Page Evaluation (Preliminary Task)

The first stage of producing the contents page was researching existing Excel contents pages. I looked at the simplistic layout and the way the same features reoccurred on each contents page. With ‘Excel’ being a school magazine it is clear the target audience is young people in the age range of 11-18. I then researched a few more magazine contents pages which there was a lot more going on, magazines such as ‘Empire’. From looking at the different range of magazines I realised most magazine have the strip on the left saying ‘Content’ and that they included a range of images and text giving the reader an insight of what is inside the magazine and also on which page to find the article, from noticing this it influenced me to include these features in my design. I then sketched out 3 templates on paper and chose the design I thought was best to carry on and produce on Photoshop. I then opened Photoshop and began to use the tools to sketch out the template which I would develop into my final piece. Having already used Photoshop to produce the front cover I felt comfortable using the software. I started adding the layers for each feature and then went on to take the photos I would need for this cover. I then created the contents strip which I included the page number for the article of the specific topic. I then inserted the white boxes where my text and images would go. I continued the house style form my front cover and carried the mast head and logo over. I then began adding text and images. Once I had roughly finished I added a few effects such as the low on the edge of the boxes just so the plain black background didn’t stand out as much. I then angled the image of the photo on the bottom left to fill the space more.

Front Cover Evaluation (Preliminary Task)

The first stage of producing the front cover was researching existing Excel front covers. I looked at the simplistic layout and the way a dominant image was used on every cover with the mast head carrying the same house style on each magazine. With ‘Excel’ being a school magazine it is clear the target audience is young people in the age range of 11-18. I then researched a few more magazines which there was a lot more going on, magazines such as ‘Empire’. From looking at the different range of magazines I realised most magazine have a dominant image a mast head also a strapline, from noticing this it influenced me to include these features in my design. I then sketched out 3 templates on paper and chose the design I thought was best to carry on and produce on Photoshop. I then opened Photoshop and began to use the tools to sketch out the template which I would develop into my final piece. As I became more familiar with the tools on Photoshop it became easier to use. I began adding layers for the dominant image, mast head, strapline puffs and the barcode. Once I had added these layers I began taking photos. I chose the photo on the magazine as I could work round the figure and insert the mast head above. I started with just the dominant image as the very back layer, I then added text (the mast head) I began exploring the features of Photoshop a little more and added a few effects on to the text. Once I had designed my front cover had to make further developments and re-arrange where my strap line and main puff was far to close and the house style of them both clashed. Also I decided to move the white background form the Armthorpe Academy logo as it made it stand out too much. The black outline around the circle was far too big so I reduced the thickness of that in order to make it look although it should be there.