The student designed a music magazine called "Indie Chic" using Photoshop for a class project. They created a front cover featuring the masthead and an image of an artist. An inside contents page listed articles. A double page feature included an interview with an artist in a question and answer format. Feedback from surveys showed the target audience of 16-18 year old females was achieved and the magazine's indie style was recognized.

1. “ My media Music magazine Project”

2. My project My task was to design and create a music magazine using Photoshop. We practised with preliminary tasks to help us learn new skills to develop our work. I had to produce a front cover, Contents page and a double page spread. The main thing that stands out on my magazine is the masthead “ Indie chic” I made this stand out by using a bold text and giving the text an outer line. On the right hand side of the page you have the main original image that I took and its coverline. The main image is the artist “ALEXI” who is featured on the double page spread! The main image was taking specifically to fit the purpose of the magazine. The image had to look a certain way so it would reflect the style of the magazine. I had to give the image a “ indie chic feel “ so people would recognise what type of magazine I had designed, I done some research and found out that 14 out of 17 people recognised my magazine as representing an indie style. My main image looks directly at the audience which gives the reader a feel of involvement

3. Front cover

4. The main colours that run throughout are black, red, blue. I used the colours red and black mostly because I was trying to make my magazine of a similar style to NME. My magazine is unusual and simplistic. It is clear and easy to read with only a small amount of text. The image is stretched over to form the background. The background Is dark coloured so the bright text stands out well I designed my magazine to look.. Individual, stylistic and retro! The artist that inspired me was Ladyhawke My media Project- front cover

5. Contents page

6. Double page spread

7. In what ways does your music magazine use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media projects? How does your media project present a certain social group? What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why? How did you attract your audience? What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project? Looking at your preliminary tasks how have you improved and developed to your full task?

8. Colours- Bright colours relate to my young target group For my original images I used pictures of me that I had taken- so I represented my target group The style of my magazine is younger. The bands names that I have used are all of a younger generation . How does my magazine present a certain social group? The text I have used is something you are more likely to see in a younger magazine . By calling my magazine indie chic I think that you get the idea that the magazine is designed for a certain age and style. My design is simple and not very complex so would be easy for my intended audience to understand and relate too

9. How did you attract your audience? The first way I done this was by receiving audience feed back. I created a survey on surveymonkey.com to do my research into what style of music my audience liked, how old my audience was and to get advice on what magazine I should design . I needed to know what my younger audience liked. What type of magazines did they read? What prices did they expect? What bands they liked? And also if they even purchased them at all. By researching I found out easily what my audience might buy and what styles they were into so this helped me design my magazine to what I think would sell and my younger target audience would be interested in! I attracted my audience with exciting images and free giveaways of gig tickets

10. In what ways does your music magazine use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media projects? I used other magazines to help me design my project. We learnt about all the necessary conventions that must be in a media magazine. I decided to go with these ideas instead of challenging them. I used conventions like masthead, columns, text, aligning my text to the right, cover lines! The Masthead is the same as the real media project with it centred to the left third of the magazine, it is also of a similar size and takes up the same amount of room on the page . I have used the name of my artist also in white text and with the quote going over the main image. The image is also placed in the middle just like the real media magazine. I have also used the same sort of bubble shapes with featured artists included. I have used similar colours to what nme have used and tried to use some of the style techniques that Nme use i have organised my images, my text and the layout in a conventional way I used white text because my background is dark and I wanted to make the text stand out and contrast on the background I chose the image to represent my audience. i tried to make my magazine give off an attitude Which would be suitable for my young teen audience I Have used a master head to build recognisable ability. The masthead is important because people recognise the magazine from it and its almost like the brand logo.

11. What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why? Places like whsmiths, newsagents,supermarkets might distribute my media project They would stock my magazine because they stock a large variety of mainstream music magazines It might be distributed online by a website like Issuu.com Bauer media might sell subscriptions of my magazine online.

12. What have I learnt? I started from all the basics. I learnt how to size my pages. I learnt how to size up my images and crop them I learnt how to use shapes and different texts from dafont.com I learnt how to put effects on my work. I used effects like emboss and embevelle I learnt how to organise my layers I learned how to use free transform I learnt how to blur my images I experimented with brush tools and ps brushes I learnt how to distort my text

13. My media project- Contents page I had to carry on the themes and the colours on to the contents page so that my magazine looked similar to its contents page. the main selling point of my magazine is placed on the left hand side of my magazine advertising free tickets to a gig. I made the page numbers red which contrasted nicely on the white background I also made it slightly larger than the rest of the text. My contents page is layed out in a very simple way only using two colours, bold text and two pictures. My contents page isn't very busy so it makes it easier for people to be able to find what they are looking for.

14. Going on to my double page spread this was based on the interview that I had to do with my artist. Alexi was the lead article and was placed on my front page too. The name of the bands that are in the reading line up act as a header. The background again is kept very simple with a simple white background and the black and white text. The background is simple so the readers attention is on the text and my main image. The text is spaced out in 3 columns involving questions and answers. My image had to fit in with the style and I had to edit it to make sure it stood out and captured the readers attention. I toned down the background, blurred it and brightened up the image. I had to pick the picture that I thought would most suit my double page spread and add pull quotes. My double page spread

15. My media project The main readers of my magazine would be 16 to 18 year olds. They are young teens who are interested in all the newest bands, it is mainly aiming at females I found out who my audience were by doing my primary research. I done some primary research before doing my magazine and I found out disappointingly that most people did not purchase a magazine regularly but they did download and watch music on YouTube. Lots of people had visited festivals and gigs so showed a keen interest in music Overall I had never used Photoshop before so I feel that I have become to recognise more of the tools, I have learnt to upload and edit pictures, I have learnt to use brush tools, I have learnt how to add colour, crop pictures and use the magic wand. I have enjoyed this project and hopefully I can learn more advanced skills in my second year!!!! 

16. My survey results!!!! Most people that completed my magazine were females of the age range 16-19 which is good because this was my intended target audience

17. I needed feedback on what people liked about my magazine, what they didn’t like and advice on what could have been improved. Most people said they would change the colours and the layout so perhaps I needed to change the colours so they were more feminine for my target audience. I may of needed to change my layout to make it look better. Mostly people said my magazine overall was really good and 5 out of 17 said that I made a good effort although on the downside 5 people chose the option of changing my design.

18. This is evidence that my magazine represented my target audience well. When asked who would you say my magazine appealed too… The highest choice come out as Indie which means people recognised my magazine as having an indie style. A large amount of people said my magazine was clear and easy to read!!!!

19. I was glad to see that my magazine was priced well at £1.00. my target audience are younger so they are likely to be students so I think that is was ideal to make my magazine cheap. 11 people voted to say that they would buy my magazine at that price. I needed to know if my pages related to each other, did they match? The highest results was yes but there was a few people who weren't convinced.

20. Most people I asked said that my magazine was aimed at teens which is correct!! My main images were designed to represent the magazine and the style. I wanted to know whether my audience felt that it represented well, most people said yes.