Name: Emily Thompson

Candidate Number: 6107

Centre Number: 64315

Format: Magazine A new and interesting magazine that focuses solely on the indie music genre. With exclusive interviews, photos and news on the top indie artists to listen to, Now Magazine will stand out in the market for is individual style. I am going to produce a Front Cover and DPS (Double Page Spread) as part of a larger promotional project for Now Magazine. This magazine will be released first as a hard copy edition, it will then if gained enough readership will be published through online versions.

Working Title: The final chosen working title is Now. This title was chosen because it connotes to the reader that the magazine features up to date and the most recent news in the indie genre music industry. Additionally ‘Now’ is short and attention grabbing so will look visually appealing on the magazine shelf. When choosing the colour I created a mock-up of a colour mood board, I found that within a lot of indie culture pastel colours are very popular and are highly associated with being unique. Therefore because of this research the primary colours that were chosen for the magazine are purple, light green and light blue. These give the magazine a classic and clean look; this follows the theme of informative music content. Additionally the colour scheme will not be any way biased towards either gender; this increases the target audience spectrum.

Genre: We have decided that the genre of the music magazine will be indie; this is due to the fact of the sheer diversity and the increasing popularity of the genre. The ideology of Now Magazine is to give readers the most recent access to everything happening in the indie music industry; this includes interviews, images and free content.

Content: Throughout the whole of the magazine there will be a variation of content; this will include many interviews featuring up and coming indie genre artists. There will be one main interview that will feature a more well-known artist, they will feature on the front cover and also have their own double page spread. They will be the main feature on the front cover; the purpose of this is to gain ‘star appeal’ – (Richard Dyer). Additionally the magazine will include reviews on the latest music that is being released, here this will give the chance for the readers to become involved and express their opinions on the review through an online chat forum. Some of the best comments or criticisms will be picked out and then published in the next version of the magazine. By including this feature where the readers can get involved it entices them to purchase the next edition of the magazine to see if their opinion has been published. When the magazine becomes increasingly popular a prize will be given to the readers who are featured in the magazine.

Style or Approach: When choosing the colour for the magazine I gained inspiration from the first mood board that I

created. I thought that the best colour scheme to stick with simple pastel colours. The

presentation of the magazine needs to come across as clean and professional that displays the

genre across to the reader. After the colour scheme was decided the logo was created based off

of this, the result is a simple yet eye-catching logo that features an interesting font against a

multi-coloured pastel background. Another important aspect that had to be considered was what

the main font of the magazine will be. For the main masthead logo one major thing that had to

be considered when choosing was how easy is it to read and recognise. Additionally this process

had to be done for all of the text related items in the magazine including; headlines, cover lines,

puff promotions and the main body of text. By doing this and looking at the different styles

available for the magazine we can ensure that the font appropriately represents the genre of the

magazine.

The software that will be used to create the magazine pages (Front Cover and Double Page

Spread) will be Adobe Photoshop CS5.1. I have chosen to use this because of the wide range of

tools that are available to use, this can benefit editing images that are going to be included in the

magazines pages and also creating an interesting structure for a double page spread. Tools that

will be most beneficial to creating the pages include the ruler tool, transform tool and also the

wide range of customisable fonts that are readily available. All of these tools ensure a high

standard and professional appearance for a magazine page.

Audience: From looking at statistics from the official Bauer Media advertising press pack I have analysed that the typical Q reader is between the ages of 15-24. This is similar to that of Now Magazine due to the fact that there are some features within the content like profanities that may not be appropriate for younger ages. The spending power of the readers will also be similar to Q magazine, currently Q has a high 70% of readers that are in the socio-economic bracket of ABC1. This connotes that they are more likely to have a higher amount of disposable income. By looking at this data I am able to predict that they will be more willing to spend money on a slightly more expensive magazine based on the quality of the content. There is one difference between the statistics of Q Magazine and the predicted statistics of Now Magazine. Q magazine has an unequal split on their reader’s gender, this may be due to their gender targeted advertisements I aim for Now to have a nearly equal gender balance, this will be due to the fact that there will limited targeted advertisements and content will not appeal to only one gender. Within this new magazine we plan to include advertisements that are equally targeted for both genders, by doing this we can secure a larger readership from both males and females who enjoy the indie music genre.

Length: Now Magazine will have around 42 pages in A5 size, including the front and back cover. The magazine features this amount of pages because this magazine will be released on a weekly basis so information will be condensed and based off the week before events. Additionally there will be advertisements in the magazine these will take up around ¼ of the magazine pages. The cost of the magazine will be £1.99; it is cheaper than most other magazines because it is being released on a weekly basis so does not include as much content as others. Additionally the magazine is A5 size so will save some money on the printing costs. Although the printing costs will be cheaper the paper quality will still be high, this is because the content will be printed on gloss paper. By using gloss paper the overall appearance of the magazine looks more appealing and high quality, this is because the images and text are very clear and look professional.