Name: Emily Thompson

Candidate Number: 6107

Centre Number: 64315

Format: Magazine A brand new indie music magazine that aims to bring the latest news; images and interviews on the genre’s greatest and most popular artists and trends. I am going to produce a Front Cover and DPS (Double Page Spread) as part of a larger promotional project for Volume Magazine. This magazine will be first published as a hard copy edition; however it also has the potential to be released as an online digital copy. By having access to the magazine both through hard copy and digital version this is generate a greater amount of readership.

Working Title: The final working title is Volume Magazine. This name was chosen as ‘Volume’ because of its strong association to the music industry known as the increasing of sound. To shorten the name for easy recognition the magazine will also be known as ‘V’. 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 was simple blues, whites and blacks; this is very similar to the magazine of inspiration Q Magazine. 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 very eye-catching royal blue that is striking against the white of the lettering.

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 V magazine is to give readers exclusive access to the latest news and information in the indie genre, whilst also providing the highest quality content at an affordable price. Content: An interview with the artist will be included in the magazine, in this interview the question will be

structured and open ended. This means that I will be able to plan what I am going to ask and the

respondent has a chance to express their opinions generated from my questions. The magazine

will be released on a monthly basis we will be able to secure a popular indie artist to feature on

the main front cover and also have their own double page spread, for the first issue it is George

Ezra. Our idea is to feature artists that have some form of ‘star appeal’ – (Richard Dyer), this is

generate interest for our readers and increase sales. Additionally including puff promotions on

the front cover that include words such as ‘exclusive’, ‘free’ and ‘special’ also can affect the sales

of the magazine in a positive manner.

Additionally in the magazine will feature extra content such as interviews, images and reviews

with other indie genre artists.

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 was simple blues, whites and blacks;

this is very similar to the magazine of inspiration q magazine. 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 very eye-

catching royal blue that is striking against the white of the lettering. 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 Volume 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 Volume magazine. Q magazine has an unequal split on their reader’s gender, this may be due to their gender targeted advertisements I aim for Volume 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: Volume Magazine will have around 80 pages in A4 size, including the front and back cover. The magazine features this amount of pages due to the fact that there will also be advertisements placed within the content. On average the paid advertisements will take up at least a third of the magazine content. Also some pages will only feature images, such as on the double page spread. This has been decided as the magazine needs to have visual appeal and not appear too text heavy to attract a larger number of readers. Another reason for the great number of pages within the magazine is because it is only released on a monthly basis, therefore it has a whole months’ worth of content and information to include. The cost of the magazine will be around £2.49; however this is subject to change. The price is significantly lower than other competitors this is due to the fact that this is a new magazine that does not have a high number of readers; therefore the price is lower to attract people. Additionally the price can be seen as expensive compared to other magazines, the reason for this is the paper that the magazine is printed on is a high quality A4 gloss paper; this gives the reader the best experience when looking at the high quality images and text.