First draft - Masthead

Once I started my first draft, I decided that the first part I would draft/design should be my masthead. Below is a picture of my first draft of my masthead.

For this first draft, I decided to use the Geometr885 BT font because of the large bold text that can be filled with colour to make it stand out against the white box. The masthead has been boxed out with a white box on my draft so that it stands out against the background which is a mixture of dark and light greys. I chose to use these colours for the masthead because they I thought they worked well with the rest of the colours on the page. The I.R.M has been written in full underneath the acronym so that people can identify what the acronym means, and it could also be used as a slogan. This text has not been filled in in grey yet but it will be as the draft progresses.

Music magazine - Planning

Here is a link to my presentation with my planning information on it:

http://prezi.com/fxgbymaqkxji/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Product placement

My target audience for my magazine is young people, mainly male, aged between 19-28 years. I have chosen this as my target audience because the results of my questionnaire have shown that this age bracket was the one that liked the rock/indie/mix all of genres as the theme of the magazine. This target audience has also been chosen because it is similar to the audience demographic of the magazine NME which is similar in style to my ideas. The average age for an NME reader is 25 years old and 73% of the readers were male. This information helped me to make the decision for what my target audience will be. I found this information from a presentation of slideshare.net:

http://www.slideshare.net/jacksierbien/nme-media-pack 

Two of the big media production companies are IPC media and Bauer media. These companies both distribute music magazine. IPC distributes the music magazine, NME, and Bauer distributes Kerrang! and Q magazine. Because both of these producers are very popular, they will sell their magazines in most music shops and they will most likely sell their most popular magazines, NME and Q, in supermarkets. These will also be distributed all across the country. Their magazines are also available digitally via subscriptions and on the magazines respective apps. This allows them to reach more customers and appeal to the increasing amount of online readers. The magazines are generally advertised on billboards and on bus station/train station advertisements. This is so that a lot of people see them and they are in high traffic areas. The magazines companies will also have their own social media accounts so that they can advertise their magazines online, where a lot of people will see it. Social media also allows the magazine to be shared much easier because people post about the magazines for others to see, or they can send the adverts to friends.

As the publisher for my magazine, I would choose Bauer media because after looking at their website, I saw that they own a lot of radio stations. This would be good because my magazine can be advertised via those radio stations. Another reason why I would choose Bauer is because they currently only distribute two music magazines, Q and Kerrang!, meaning my magazine would give Bauer more competition in the music industry. I would place my magazine in music shops such as HMV and also major newsagents such as WH Smith. I would not place it in large supermarkets because a supermarket is not the ideal place to sell a music magazine unless it is very popular. The magazine would only be sold in supermarkets if the sales of the magazine were high. Although magazine sales would be high in a supermarket, I feel as though my magazine would have to gain popularity in smaller shops first before it was sold in larger shops. I would also make my magazine available online so that the magazine can is available to a wider audience. Social media pages would be setup for my magazine on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This is so that the magazine can be advertised to many people and it is easy for people within the target audience to share the magazine with other people within the target audience.

NME magazine analysis

Here is my analysis of an issue of NME magazine. This includes analysis of the front cover, the contents page, and a double page spread.

Q magazine analysis

Here is my analysis of an issue of Q magazine. This analysis includes the front cover, the contents page, and a double page spread.

Questionnaire - Analysis

As part of my research, I made a quick questionnaire on Microsoft publisher. This survey asked people about what music they like and what kind of things they think about music magazines. I sent out 15 copies of my survey to people I know and these are the results.

For question one, eight people were male and seven people were female. On its own, this information is not much help. 

For question two, eight people were aged 17-20, five people were aged 21-24, and two people were aged 25-28. Again this is not much help on its own but it does tell me that the results I get are from people within my desired age brackets. 

For question three, the most popular answer was rock music with eight votes, then the next most popular answer was the ‘other’ option where five of the six people who said other specified indie/alternative as their favourite genre. Finally one person said pop music as their favourite genre. This helps me a lot because it shows me that rock and indie/alternative are very poplar genres of music.

For question four, nine people said that they do read music magazines regularly, two people said that they sometimes read music magazines, and four people said that they do not read magazines. This shows me that the majority of 17-28 year olds do read music magazines. 

For question five, one person said that they pick up a music magazine once a year, two people said they pick one up very few months, six people said they pick one up every month, and two people said that the pick up a magazine every week. This shows me that people within this age bracket are more likely to purchase a magazine weekly or monthly rather than yearly or quarterly. 

For question six, three people said they would be willing to pay less than £1 for a music magazine, seven people said they would pay between £1 and £1.99, and five people said they would be willing to pay £2 to £2.99. This shows me that the average amount of money people are willing to pay for a magazine is around £1 to £3. 

For question seven, four people said they would want to see gossip in a music magazine, five people said they wanted to see information on new releases in music, four people said they wanted to see exclusive interviews, and two people selected the option ‘other’. These two people both specified that they wanted to see suggestions for music events in the magazine. This gives me a good idea of what articles will be most popular within he music magazine.

Because rock music was the most popular choice for question three, I will most likely base my magazine around primarily rock music since I know that it appeals to a larger audience within my target market. Because the most popular price range was around £1 to £3, I will be displaying the price of my magazine as a value between this range so that my target market would be happy with it. For question seven the votes for the different article were all fairly equal which means that my target market would be happy to see a range of features. Because of this, I will try to include a range of these features in my magazine.

These results have been very useful for me and I will be using them during the design to help me make my decisions for which features and designs will suit the target market the most.

Questionnaire

Here is an image of my target market questionnaire: