Magazine Mock Up Cover Two

Magazine Article, Brief

Here is my first brief attempt at my magazine article, I have done half of it because I am hoping for some feeback to check I am on the right lines with the article, here is the work in evidence so far...

The scene is a sunny but brisk afternoon in a local park in Leeds, the previous night was a triumphant return to music Liam Lennon and his and band Renaissance who set the house ablaze with a gig Leeds’ o2 academy, two nights before the release of their massively anticipated follow up to debut album Alone We Stand.

Interviewer: Right then Liam, where do I begin, sat here today you look as relaxed as you did last night when you were performing your heart out to Leeds’ finest, how did the gig pan out in your eyes?

Liam: Haha (Liam smirks) yeah you know, we erm felt really good up there (the stage) it was an electric night, the crowd were on form looked really happy, we came off stage buzzing so erm bring on the dates I guess.

Interviewer: One of the most notable things from the gig, was the crowd reaction to the new material, can you give us an incite into what we can expect from your new tracks…

Liam: Well it’s all sort of a blur now, but at the time I remember thinking, wow, these tunes are rocketing all round man which you know it what we wanted. You know we knew how important the second album is for a band like us, it can make or break your career and when we went into the studio on our first album we just got the job erm it was almost like we wanted it to sound like we made no effort, and we were just unleashing on our equipment. So we wanted to carry through to the second album, you know we didn’t want to make the same mistake as other bands and try to act all ‘grown up’ (Liam lifts and bends his middle fingers, with emphasis on the word) and really over produce the record to give it a deeper meaning, hell yeah we still want it to have meaning behind our stuff, but we aren’t four lads who studied at Cambridge, we just write about what we know, and on the second album we want the same guitars riff-ness and to feel as if we’re the same four lads off the street that we were at the time of Alone We Stand. You know man we wanted to create that same vibe with second album but spice it up a little and give it something new, something extra, but keep the no fucking nonsense attitude behind it, give it our all and keep it fresh if you get what I’m.

Straight away after asking only a few questions, I could tell Liam Lennon was a man oozing and crying in confidence, the charisma and drive in his voice, just glimmered his attitude towards making great music. His vision fir the band in clear, he wants to be the shepherd with all other indie follows his trends as the sheep.

Magazine Mock Up Cover 1

Magazine Publisher

I have the decided the company to publish my magazine will be 'Bauer Consumer Media LTD' I looked at other magazine publishers in consideration to picking a publisher but decided on Bauer because they currently produce magazines such as 'Q' and this magazine sometimes has 'popstars' such as Lady Gaga as their cover feature, and my magazine would contrast this because my magazine would focus more on a indie/alternative and Bauer would be able to publish both magazines as they could still attract different audiences.

This also helps to explain the reason why I didn't use 'IPC Media' because they already publish NME magazine and NME would include similar articles to my magazine, therefore IPC media might put more effort into NME magazine rather than mine and therefore giving it a better promotion so my magazine wouldn't sell as many copies. So because my magazine would be with 'Bauer' more expense would be put into publishing my magazine my magazine. So it might be able to rival NME in the indie/alternative magazine genre.

Test Shots Evaluation

After taking some test shots, I have decided that I am very disappointed with the quality of my tests, but it does make me glad that I actually did some test shots because I have realised some vast imporvements need to be made for when I come to do my final pieces of photography. First off I wasn't impressed with the bacground scene in terms of not having the roof of the wall cropped out, other than this I was happy with the bacground when it pure white, and you couldn't obviously tell the background was a wall. In the future if I was not to do a white background for my magazine colour, I would look into doing a countryside or forest background, to make it feel like 'Renaissance' are alone, and the only band carrying music forward Britain.

Furthermore I have decided when frontman Liam Lennon is posing on the front cover, he will be looking for the tradional 'I am the coolest person alive' expression and body posture. On a few of the tests shot with the test model, I used a few poses which included the 'innocent' I make music because I love it look. Plus the previously mentioned 'I'm the top person around here and I'm here to stay' look. I believe the latter look worked the best so I am going to try this image and do some more tests shot with the actual model who will be on my magazine cover to see if this look can be portrayed in the right way, if so I will proceed even further will this style of image.

Finally although I didn't believe the tests shots went extremely well and I want to improve them, I still believe it did give me some answers, for instance the pose I am going to put on cover star and it has also narrowed down what the backdrop will be to the front cover.

Media Test Shots

Golden Spiral

Using the basis and theory of Geometry, the golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral that has a growth factor b and is related to the 'Golden Ratio, φ' The Golden Spiral gets wider, or further away from it's starting for every quarter turn that it takes.

The main theory of The Golden Spiral is that the spiral shows us where our eyes are automatically attracted when we first look an image and the part we find most aesthetically pleasing, and quite often the place we are attracted to straight away is the eyes, so therefore if the eyes look promising then the rest of the image has increased chance of impressing.

Renaissance-The Men behind the Music

Renaissance-Four lads who've embraced out of the brooding moores of the city of Leeds, at currently 22 years of age, they have really started to take the music industry by storm of recent date, the flamboyant band with cultured with the typical 'giving it big' on stage esque and when performing live Frontman Liam Lennon enjoys working the crowd in a similar fashion to Damon Albarn and attpemts to prance around the stage like a man on a mission searching for his lost ark. If not then he will be jammin' out on his guitar in the style Paul Weller would when playing with The Jam in 1980.

They've drawn inspiration from these artists as well as other iconic figures from the past, and feel confident they can become the next big act in the long line of greats from The Beatles to Oasis, as well as taking inspiration fron m other bands who never reached their full potential such as Super Furry Animals and The Charaltans, and inspire to go a step further and reach their potential and become the 'biggest' band in Britain.

They made their music breakthrough among music fans when they completed a full tour supporting Manchester outfit and large inspirations 'The Courteeners' who also critically acclaimed 'Renaissance' and because of this success more the band signed up to record label 'Independiente Records' and released their first EP with recieved positive views and got a good reaction from critcs. Renassisance then started to get a reputation within the music industy and later that year Renaissance released their debut album, 'Alone we Stand' which lived up to expectations and entered at number 5 in the British album Charts. Renaissance followed this by completing their first headline playing dates around the academies of Britain, plus gigs around Europe and America.

Since then Renaissance have gone back into the studio having signed a lucrative deal with Polydor Records to create a follow up to 'Alone we Stand'. This could be the make or break moment for Liam and his boy's...Renaissance, are we looking at the future of music?

Band Profile

When naming the band of put on the front cover, I tried to give my band a name that would fit the criteria for my target audience, I wanted a band name that you could imagine having seeing at the top of the bill at Glastonbury. I wanted the name to have a meaning behind it, a band to bring back 'proper' guitar music back to the country and take away the electro/'quiff indie' from the frotn covers of magazine, and from their sell out gigs.

Obviously with the band I'm trying to create, the band new band based on iconic bands of the past, 'The Clash' 'The Jam' and 'The Who' but with a difference that none of these bands had. I decided that my band have a name that expresses they're the new people on the scene. For instance I want to give the band a name so that when they first came onto the scene it would almost feel as though music had been given a reincartion, such as what The Strokes did 10 years back. This is when I thought of the name 'Renaissance' and the reason for this is because the world can mean that something had had a re-birth, therefore by naming my cover band 'Renaissance' it portrays the image that the band are going to a forefront a new era of music.

Audience Questionnaire

For the planning of my magazine I did a survey on 6 different people to find out what their views on the media and magazine so I could gain an insight and hopefully get some advice on the proceedings I should take for my magazine. I asked 8 (not including name and age) questions and did the survery on the following people...

1. Dan Morrow, male, 17
2. Lydia Bedford, female, 16
3. Tom Lamb, male, 17
4. Sara Zanjani, female, 16
5. Jacob Kench, male, 16
6. Pat Mills, male, 16

Now here the are the 10 questions that I asked...

1. Who are your favourite musical bands/artists?
Dan: Foals, The Maccabees, Enter Shikari
Lydia: The Courteeners, Kasabian, Mumford and Sons
Tom: Arctic Monkeys, Foals, The Courteeners
Sara: Mumford and Sons, Biffy Clyro, Kasabian
Jacob: Kings of Leon, The XX, Mumford and Sons
Pat: The Maccabees, Foals, Arcade Fire

2. Favourite Films?

Dan: Home Alone
Lydia: Superbad, The Hangover, Due Date
Tom: Shaun of the Dead, Juno
Sara: The Lion King, The Hangover, Inception
Jacob: Convoy, Shawshank Redemption
Pat: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc.

3. Do you currently buy a music magazine? if so please elaborate.
Dan: No
Lydia: No
Tom: Sometimes NME
Sara: No
Jacob: Never
Pat: NME Occasionally

4. How much would you be willing to pay for a monthly magazine?
Dan: £5
Lydia: £3.10
Tom: £4
Sara: £2.60
Jacob: £2-£3
Pat: £3.50

5. If you were to base your image on one celebrity who would it be?
Dan: Pharrell Williams
Lydia: Fearne Cotton
Tom: Yannis Philippakis (Foals Frontman)
Sara: Katy Perry
Pat: Orlando Weeks (The Maccabees Frontman) David Bowie

6. Favourite Colour/Colours?
Dan: Orange
Lydia: White, Blue
Tom: Red, Silver, Gold
Sara: Purple, Gold
Jacob: White
Pat: Black, Lime Green, Serolium Blue

7. Would you rather buy a weekly or monthly Magazine?
Dan: Monthly
Lydia: Monthly
Tom: Monthly
Sara: Monthly
Jacob: Monthly
Pat: Monthly, as long as the size difference from a weekly magazine.

8. Where are your favourite places to buy clothes?
Dan: Wellgosh, Topman
Lydia: Urban Outfitters, Sara, Topshop
Tom: Wellgosh, Urban Industry
Sara: Zara, Topshop, Selfridges
Pat: Urban Outfitters

Magazine Title-Record Collection

I have been thinking long and hard on what I am going to name my magazine, I biggest aims when picking a good title were having a title that had some sort of meaning behind it and relevance.

A strong theme of my magazine I was trying to attempt to have was to have bands included that have had a clear influence, for instance a band who've taken a interest in culture. For instance this could mean including bands who've had a legacy passed down from other cultural and iconic bands, for instance from The Jam to The Smiths who were followed by The Stones Roses, when Oasis next appeared on the scene and continued this wave of imagery through the country, so in my magazine i'd like some bands similar to this who are ready to carry on the baton of great and keep this sound of music alive.

So when it came to picking a title masthead I didn't want to call it something obvious like 'Culture' because it has already done and I want to call it something such as 'Legacy' because the wrong messages would be portrayed. This is when I came upon the name 'Record Collection' and I thought in my opinion it had a ring to it and could be considered eye catching. I agreed on the masthead title because the meaning behind it was that the bands within the magaizine would a group of bands you'd expect to find in somebody's record collection, therefore making the magazine a record collection.

Magazine Contents Page Analysis Three

As Britpop Contents Page Analysis

Magazine Contents Page Analysis

Q Magazine Contents Page Analysis

Contents Page Analysis One

Media Britpop Analysis

Important Notice.

For the above contents pages analysis' on my blog, I have uploaded the posts with no pictures, because I needed to take pictures with my camera but I am experiencing difficulties with my camera, so as soon as I fix this I will edit these posts and upload the pictures.

Magazine Cover Analysis Three

Media Britpop Analysis

Magazine Moodboard Animoto

25 Word Pitch

After futher updates with my magazine here the 25 words I would use if were to do my now...

Vinyl, Indie/Alternative, Male, Female, Black, White, Denim Blue, Influenced by Mod Culture, Retro, Funky, Festival/Gig go-ers, Target Audience 16-36 Predominantly, News, Reviews.

Magazine Font Ideas

For my magazine cover the scheme that I am in the process of choosing, I have decided that I will definitely use black and white. These are both shades and do not tend to make a bad contrast with most other colours, if used correctly. For instance if I put black writing onto a white background this would make the writing stand out, therefore helping me to get my message across because it should grab the readers attention.

 For my third colour I believe I am going to go for Light Blue Denim like colour, this is because the colour could be considered a primary and is diverse compared to black and white. Hopefully the contrast will work to give the magazine an extra edge, compared to going with the typical magazine colour shceme of recent times, black, white and read, so I tried to want to try and give my magazine some originality.