Sunday, 26 February 2012

Mood Board (Advertising)

In order to gain an understanding of the type of advertisers that would be attracted to my magazine, I had to break down my target audience. For example, my predicted readership would roughly be 75% female, 25% male. Broken down further, it would have a median age of 16 and would mainly attract students or the employed. This helps to determine the types of advertisers that would want to be included in my magazine. In regards to psychographics, my target audience include three main social stereotypes, this includes: Hipsters, Trendies and Indie Scenesters. From this, I've been able to identify certain buying habits which has helped me to identify certain brands they'd be interested in. For example, clothing and grooming products proved to be the most common purchase in my audience research; therefore brands like Bedhead, Levi's, OPI, converse and Dr Martens would all be very popular with my target audience. However, age is another important factor as my target audience age range was from 13-19; therefore varied brands/advertisers could be used. For example, alcohol could be advertised for the age of 18 and above, but Red Bull and Starbucks could also be advertised for the younger teenagers. To link the advertising closely to the music magazine, I've also found that brands like Apple and Beats are popular with my target audience. For example, the Apple iPhone provides you with iTunes which is a quick and easy software to store thousands of songs. Beats by Dre are also a popular brand as they are headphones that can provide high quality sound. Demographically, the teenage age range would also mean fast food would be a successful advertisement as most of young people's income is wasted on food; therefore I've considered brands like Mountain Dew drinks and Mcdonalds.

Mood Board (Fonts)
















Before creating my magazine front cover, I created a mood board of fonts to find something that would work well as my masthead. I wanted to find a font that would connote/suggest a certain theme or genre to my target audience; for example, you can see one of the font I've circled is slightly eroded and looks worn which could suggest the magazine is slightly vintage or not ordinary. Although this font suited the style of my magazine, I felt it was too masculine as my target audience were teenage girls. Therefore I tried other fonts that had curls to connote femininity (circled above). However, I felt that the font was too feminine as my magazine was about women with power. I also decided to try something that was more formal, for example you can see I tried a serif font which again looked quite old but I felt that it would appeal more to an adult audience. In order to find something in the middle I tried using a more conventional font similar to what I'd seen when researching existing magazines. You can see the last font I circled is a sans serif font which makes it more informal. It is also quite soft with rounded sides to connote the idea of femininity without being too 'girly'. Overall, I felt that this was the most successful font.

Mood Board (Colours)

In order to find colours suitable for my music magazine, I tried creating a mood board of different colours. Keeping my target audience in mind, I also considered conventional colours other existing magazines used. For example, NME gave me most of my inspiration and they use colours similar to red, yellows and blacks. However, Billboard also have a target audience of young girls and they use pastel colours like pinks, blues and yellows. However, billboard's target audience was a far more conventional view of young girls that are 'girly'. In order to find some middle ground and ensure that the colours I chose would appeal to teenage girl with an alternative edge, I tried mixing different colours like reds, blacks, whites and yellows as well as adding some graphics that were pink or blue.

Details of Locations, Props and Models

For my three main products I organised three separate photo-shoots. The first photo-shoot I organised was for my main band that would be featured throughout all three products; this photo-shoot took place in my living room where I used a white backdrop and some lights. In terms of props, I had the models pose differently using a microphone and a guitar. The models used were teenage girls; I asked them to wear black torn tops, Denim shorts, Dr Martens, American flag tops, Red jeans, Floral print jackets, Bandannas, black rimmed glasses and red lipstick. I had initially decided that I wanted my magazine to fairly professional and glossy; this is why I thought using a white backdrop would work best as it would be easy to edit out the space surrounding the models. The lighting used was to also highlight certain features and make the main aspects of my images look professional. However, the music genre I wanted to include in my magazine was pop rock, therefore I felt it was necessary to use instruments as props to demonstrate that the band are all about music rather than just the auto-tuned sounding pop stars. Prior to the shoot, I had decided that my target audience consisted of: ‘trendies’, ‘hipsters’ and ‘indie scenesters’, due to this I ensured that the models in the band all wore items of clothing that were popular with these stereotypes. For example, the Dr Martens represent the ‘hipsters’, whereas the black rimmed glasses represent ‘indie scenesters’ and the floral print represents the ‘Trendies’. All of these representations used entice my target audience of fashion followers/mainstreamers with that alternative edge into buying my magazine.

However, I also wanted to ensure that my magazine would appeal to a small male audience and people more interested in rock music; therefore my second Photo-shoot was slightly different. This time round, I decided to use two male models one of which would appeal to the male mainstreamers and the other would appeal to the male ‘rockers’. Again, I used a white background, however this time I used a white wall; this was to keep the professional, glossy appeal to my magazine. However, for the male ‘rocker’ I used a real guitar as a prop; my main aim was to make the instrument much more prominent than I had done before to emphasize the idea of being a musician. I also paid attention to detail by ensuring I used a model with long swept hair to connote rock and a plain white shirt to suggest the idea of old school or classic rock. The other part of this photo-shoot was for male mainstreamers; for this I decided I wanted to try and make my model look like an old school rapper, again, this was to go for the vintage/retro style. Therefore the costume I used was a big over-sized jumper and a woolly hat. I also tried a different way of using the microphone, by raising it slightly and having it pointing down from above it demonstrates how a rapper would hold their microphone.

My third and final photo-shoot was located in my bedroom where I used my feature wall as a background design. To ensure my magazine still had a sense of ‘grunge’ and ‘rock & roll’ I wanted to stop using plain white backgrounds. In order to put more emphasis on the links to my indie target audience, I decided to use a model that was very thin and dainty with two toned hair; this is very representative to a typical ‘indie kid’. For this shoot I used no props/instruments and this was to suggest to the audience that this artist was mainly about the voice. To highlight the dainty, innocence of this model I decided that their facial expression should have a ‘puppy dog’ look; as for the costume I decided on tights with stripes and a long, khaki, suede shirt. Again, this represented the ‘indie scenesters’ but it also added to the vintage style that was demonstrated throughout my magazine. 

Process of Construction (Double Page Spread)

Contents Page Draft