CLOSED BLOG

Centre Name: Norbury Manor BEC
Centre Number: 14343
Candidate Name: Kaneez Ahmed
Candidate Number: 9170
Unit: G321

Music Magazine- Double Page Spread

Music Magazine Contents Page

Music Magazine Front Cover

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since the beginning of the year, I have made a massive improvement since my preliminary task in both my quality of work and also my attitude to the work.

The skills I have developed were discovered by using a variety of media and tools to help and enhance my work and guide myself personally. For instance, to advance my Photoshop skills I viewed YouTube videos explaining how to use the tools.

I have learnt various skills with Adobe CS3 Photoshop such as photograph manipulation, how to use tools such the “magnetic lasso” and be able to evaluate and inspect my work. I would say that I have become more independent in learning for myself with the creation of my magazine and learnt to stimulate my thinking so that it is different and unique.

The preliminary task as you can see is a significant difference to the three pieces I have now created. My preliminary image was used for the front cover and I had no image for the contents page. The text around the preliminary front cover was one basic font with no colour scheme, style or theme occurring within the cover. There was a lack of text features that was engaging to my target audience.

The contents page did not have an image, meant that half the page was plain with that solid colour background. The text on the page were not lined up or straight and in order it looked quite messy and disorganized.

Whereas in my coursework, I would definitely say I have improved and have put much more effort into the work than beginning of the year, also becoming more eager to develop my work. Whilst learning from the mistakes and incompletion's of my preliminary task and tried to not repeat my mistakes and instead learn from it.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Linking DPS to Front Cover and Contents Page

Linking my DPS to the front cover and contents page, is reviewed so that an individual can establish the link between all three pieces and notice that it is all from the same magazine.

The colour scheme is way of establishing the link between the three pieces as the three colours black, purple and white have been portrayed throughout the magazine in so many ways. The artists and news has been made relatable and of the music genre I had chosen.

Double Page Spread Layout

 I have used Prezi, to give a detailed account of the process of developing the layout of my double page spread, which explains the difficulties and issues when creating it.

Artist Interview- Mistakes

After I had written my artist interview, I took it to my teacher so that it could be checked and overlooked for any mistakes or changes and improvements that could be made to develop the quality of my interview.

There seem to be numerous mistakes with grammar and the phrasing of a sentence or question. However, I was eager to take on the feedback and make the altercations needed to develop the written quality of the work.

This is an example, which shows one of the questions that I had created and written an answer for. It is highlighted showing the altercation I have made within the answer. The green parts highlighted means that I have added punctuation that I had missed out and have now included the, they are highlighted to show that I have changed the answer.

The highlighted words  in yellow were added in now and before when they were not included which meant that my answer was not grammatically correct or it did not make sense within the sentence.

This shows that I have made numerous changes to all of the answers.

Artist Interview

Interview Questions

1) How would describe yourself within the music industry and why?
“I think this would have to be quite a biased account of myself really, I believe I’m headstrong, different and eccentric. I want to push the boundaries of musical creativity and take it to a whole new level, where people don’t have to try as hard to appeal to their fans by being fake, I want the music to speak for itself and let that do the talking rather than who I’m dating. The music industry is not a forgiving place you know, everyone is watching and judging your every move. I think as a band we have transitioned quite well and become aware of the attention we have received and taken quite well and enhanced it in a positive way”

2) What is the inspiration and key to success for penning an award-winning album?
“Honestly, I have no bloody clue. For every person there is a different story, meaning and memory behind each song. When you do write an album, it’s not typically- oh shit how am I goanna create something the sells. To me it is writing about what I know, learnt, struggled, inspired and overcame in my life and putting it on a piece of paper and feeling like yeah this is what is art of me, obviously it may  not always be award-winning but hey that’s life, but if someone can relate to that song then that is great.”

3) A lot has changed for you, would you consider it a positive or a good?
“I really detest change…it is the sense that nothing stays that really annoys me and the fact that you just have to go along with it. In some ways the changes in my life have been immensely gratifying, I’m getting the opportunities to do things that before I wouldn’t even look at. I’m able to connect with millions of people through that one song and that really touches me.”

I get aggravated off, privacy is something that you slowly start to lose but if you try and keep intact why that should that be the case. The media is a blessing and a curse, I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be a price to fame like there is to everything else, but it is unfair when people who never asked for it and dragged into the mud. It is unnecessary and stupid.”

4) Your band has been quite the fuel of rumours lately, are any of them true?
“The rumours! No they are absolute nonsense. My band and I are one massive family, everything that we put into an album is a bit of every single person in our band. The band is like my brothers and sisters, of course we have a few odd tiffs but at the end of the day there my family, we been through highs and lows and on an emotional terrifying roller-coaster since a young age. They are the first people I talk to if I’ve had a setback or an achievement no matter what. The rumours aren’t even worth addressing because there lies.”

Artist Interview Research

This required me to look at other magazines inspired by my music genre and observe their writing style and layout within the magazine and take inspiration from it. It made me decide what kind of style I wanted to write in and how I planned to show and display it on the double page spread.

Double Page Spread

This is my final double page spread which has been created over the last two weeks and is the final piece for my magazine. It is an interview with the artist who I featured on my front cover of my magazine. This was the most enjoyable piece for me as it gave me the possibility to create a personality and identity behind the fictional indie rock artist.This piece tied the whole magazine together and is probably the piece I myself am most proud of.

I like the layout of my magazine and I am very glad that I stuck to my plan, and was consistent throughout the creation of the three pieces to feature my magazine's colour scheme.However, I would change the image I chose for my double page spread and instead take a larger amount of images to be able to use.

Double Page Spread Image Choices

Double Page Spread Research

NME Double Page Spread:

The Vaccines- NME Double Page Spread

The image is featured on the left hand side and dominates most of the page. It is a picture of the whole group, with the front man being the closest to the camera and the rest of the band members surrounding, they all have angle of gaze towards the camera so that it attracts the reader and slightly intimidates them.

The text and interview is placed on the left hand side and looks organized and clear. It is set in two columns, with the font being at either "size 10 or 9". The colour that is featured in the double page spread and colour theme is the baby blue colour. The blue is used for the first letter of the paragraph and is much more larger than the rest of the text to stand out and draw attention. Furthermore, the rectangles and the quote are both baby blue and compliment the double page spread nicely.

The title is large and spread out across the right hand side in black and instantly catches the reader's attention and is clear and concise as to what the interview is about in the introduction.

There are geometric shapes, such as blue and grey squares which are featured around the edges of the page quite subtly and create a nice effect and enhance the image and the pose of the band.

Overall, to me personally I quite like the double page spread as the image was interesting and clear and different to other shots and gave an idea of what genre the band were in immediately rather than making them look like a pop-star.

The shapes were quite different and added colour on to the page, to not make it look dull. However, I thought that the text was slightly cramped to me and looked a bit too small and that the picture had probably taken more priority.

Contents Page Final

The final contents page.

Contents Page- Colour Choice

My colour scheme was largely influenced by image on the front cover and also my flat plan. My colour scheme consists of three colours, which are purple, black ad white. I wanted to make sure that they were consistently featured through the three pieces I had to create in my project.

For the contents page, I made sure that the colour scheme was incorporated within the text and layout of the page and could easily be identified as the contents page to my front cover.

The masthead featured on the contents page and the font of the text remained the same but at a smaller size. I added it to the page as I wanted their to be a  contrast in the two text which were both quite different, yet met the theme of my magazine. I kept the colour of the font as it was simple and yet effective and stood out.

This is the layout of my features in the column on the right. I made the page numbers and text in the same font, which was "Napa Heavy SF" , although there was a variation in the size of the font. The page number was much larger compared to the text to stand out and guide the reader immediately to the page. The textr was in black as I thought it would loom better the simpler it was.

This text was following the two colours which are purple and white. To make a link to the front cover, this text was a summary of what is to come within this months issue of the magazine and give a brief overview.

Contents Page: Reviewing

During the process, as I was coming closer to completing my contents, I wanted to make sure that there were no mistakes at all or imperfections. I realised that the alignment of my text was not straight but quite wonky and that did not look good or professional.

I had already done spell check on my texts and was frequently doing it, so that there were a minimal amount of mistakes. I had created a thick line which was yellow to stand out against my colour scheme, image and texts as a sort of ruler to check if the alignment of my texts were straight.

The ruler helped immensely as it made it easier to align the text and make it look much neater and clear on the page in a column, and allowed me to know the space I wanted between each feature and avoid it being cramped.

Contents Page Corrections

When I had printed the page out to see whether any of the text had been cut off or it looked crammed on the page and to see whether there were any errors. I noticed that there were a few grammatical and spelling errors in the text. In a professional magazine, there would be no grammatical or spelling errors as it would look unprofessional.

An example would be that one of the main features that is being largely advertised within the contents page, had numerous grammatical errors and did not make sense. When read the text, I realised that it was not clear and would need improved and redone to meet my personal standard.

In order to save myself time, I read each piece of text myself and annotated on the print out of any errors in spellings or grammar. I then used the “spell-check “tool on Adobe Photoshop, to check and correct the errors I had made, and then read through it again as I wanted to be absolutely sure there were no mistakes again. This made it seem more professional and would hopefully prevent me from losing marks due to sloppy mistakes.

Contents Page Featutres

Previously I had done a prototype to see whether I would like a black box to be featured behind the name of the band or artist, with the font colour being white. I asked other people and people of my target audience which they preferred and they thought that it looked better with the black box as it made the text it white stand out compared to the rest of the other text, and also it made the contents page look more organised and it was easier to find what they were interested in. It also fitted to the colour scheme as black was one of the three colours featuring on my front cover.

I incorporated the black box and changed all the names of bands and artists to white in font colour. This made a significant impact, as the layout looked clearer and more simple and less complicated or crammed.

This is how it looked overall, after I had made the altercations, it looked aesthetically more appealing and worked well within my colour scheme.  For the description of the features, I thought that this information I had given was a bit too vague and lacked a concise and clear summary.  In order to make it seem as professional a possible, I did some research on each band itself and looked into current news of the artists and bands and put it into my own words.

Contents Page Features

During the process, of creating my contents page for my magazine, I am recording and documenting each but of the process as I go along to evaluate and criticize the page, in order to improve it further.

This is a print-screen showing that I am currently adding my text in and relating the features to the genre I have chosen by creating it about Indie or Indie Rock Artists on the music scene.The bands and artists are all of or linked to the genre I have chosen ad the news is realistic and relatable to music, as I had intended.

I am trying to keep within the colour scheme of my magazine front cover and not divert it away. The page number are in larger font size at "24", it is is of the same shade of purple featured in my front cover magazine.

The text describing the feature is in size "8" as it should be and not look too large and overcrowded, however clear. I decided to keep the font style the same, as I liked the font and thought it kept the page quite relatable to the front cover.

However, I evaluated my front cover and requested opinion from my target market. The name of the artist or band did not really stand out, and you could be able to differentiate between the description and name of artist.

So I gave the name of the artist a background text box and changed the font of the artist to white, so that it would be clearer and stand out against the description. Furthermore the font size had changed to be slightly bigger than the description, to attract the readers attention.

This print- screen, shows the large difference between  the two separate features. I only altered one of the features, to see what it may loom like and also to gain other peoples thoughts and see what they prefer. All of the people that I had asked said that the first feature was much better as it stood out and complimented the partition lines featured across the magazine.

Contents Page Image Choices

For my contents page, I needed images of other people apart from my model to feature in my contents page. In order to have a variety, I searched for people who I thought suited the genre and look of my magazine. However, some of the pictures do not meet the expectations I had hopped and wanted, so I may retake them and try the same poses with a selection of models and choose between them.

This is an image of another artist, which would feature in my contents page.I took numerous amount of shots, at different angles and also different poses. Some turned out to be quite good, however some images were rather blurry and unable to use. I wanted the indie artist look to remain consist throughout the magazine, although it had been quite difficult.

The person who was modelling for me, is an avid fan of indie rock music herself and buys music magazines monthly. I asked her her opinion of the photos, and which she liked and took the advice given.

Some of the images had disappointed me as they were below my personal expectation and standard.So in the future, I may retake some of the images, in order to gain better quality of the images and to be satisfied with them.

Contents Page Layout

For the construction of my contents page, I relied on my flat plan which I had created to help direct the layout of my contents page. From my flat plan design, I had categorized different events or articles within section to make it clear and able to read. The sections were parted with black lines going across the page.


I decided to draw the lines first, in order to make the rest of the process easier when adding pieces such as images and text within the boxes rather than later.

This is a print-screen, which shows that I created new layer, in order to draw the boxes that would be divisions between each category.. I created a new layer for each line partition, so that if I wanted to alter the layout later on in the process, then I would be able to do that effortlessly.

The print screen on the right, shows that I have names each layer in accordance, to what order each line partition go in, so that it may help me understand the order of my layout.

To draw the line partitions, every time I produced a new layer, I would use the select tool and draw the size of the rectangle I would like and then press the keys “ALT” and “BACKSPACE”. This would automatically change the fill of the box to black.

That is a print screen of what the layout of my contents page looks like so far. My design is the exact replica of how I had planned for it to be in flat plan. In spite of this, I may amend and modify the layout as I add in the text and images throughout the process.This will a guide line for the text and images yet it may need further construction and I may gain opinion and advice from my target audience.

Contents Page Research/ Deconstruction

This is the deconstruction of a contents page, the process should help me understand how I will do my own contents page for my magazine.

This is a contents page from Q music magazine, which features a variety of artists from different genres. Some the features in this specific contents page are based on indie artists. I chose this contents page, as I admired the layout and clarity of it, which made the page work well.

The magazine has kept in style with its own colour scheme of the masthead, showing and demonstrating the importance of the masthead and magazine itself, as well as the artist.The colour scheme is of red,white,black and also gold. Each colour is specifically chosen to give a suggestion of what it may be and the level of importance of it. For instance, the "Oasis Special" is featured in the middle of the column in capitals, which implies that it is key and exciting within the magazine.

The images are of various sizes, as the image of "The Courteeners" is the largest image featured on the page, with a pull quote beside it to attract the attention of the reader and to make them see the significance of the band. Whereas, the second image is much smaller, compared to the other one and another long shot image. The magazine label it with his name and nothing else as it not as important as the main feature.

The text is organised in various compartments, in order to make it easier for the reader to follow and scan what features may interest. This works particularly well, as it does not look cramped but clear and concise.