Hannah Macleod

NME Magazine

Colour Scheme – Red, Black and White

NME Title – changes depending on the colour of the background but it

is normally either red, black or white to go with

their colour scheme

Images – all of the front page photos for NME the

models are looking directly at the camera

More of an edgy magazine rather than the perfect

layout style magazine

My model for my front page My front page.

Title is in the top left hand corner in big, bold font.

Models are all looking directly at the camera.

Colour – red, white and black.

Font around the outside of the main image.

Date, issue and price in the top left hand corner above

the title.

My model for my contents page. My contents page.

Bold title, centred. Date underneath title.

Text and images in different boxes.

Three column effect.

Page numbers in the corners of the text/images.

My model for my double page spread.

My double page spread.

Page is halved down the centre.

Image on the right hand side, text on the left.

Title and text underneath the title are in the top half of the

right hand side above the text.

The first letter of the interview is much larger than the rest of the

font for the interview.

Models are looking directly at the camera.

Photographing Photoshopping Mise-en-scene

Front Page Image The three girls lay on a white background with their heads together.

Cropped the image to make it fit on the front page properly.

White background

Contents Page Image (two boys)

Looking up to the diagonal standing on a bridge.

Edited the brightness of the image.

Blue sky, holding guitars, standing on a bridge.

Contents Page Image (three girls)

Stood in front of a plain background, all standing on a slight angle looking at the camera.

I put them all onto a white background.

White background.

Contents Page Image (one girl)

Stood in front of a plain light blue background. Natural looking image.

Edited the lighting for the image.

Plain, light blue background.

Double Page Spread Image

Stood in front of a plain background, all standing on a slight angle looking at the camera.

I put them all onto a white background.

White background.

Page Layout Fonts And Texts

Article Type Colour Schemes

Front Page Main image centred, text around the image, title in top left hand corner.

Large font for title, middle sized/small font for the different stories/events.

Red, black and white.

Contents Page Three column effect, pieces of text/images in different boxes, title in large, bold font centred at the top of the page, date underneath the title.

Large, bold font for the title, medium sized writing for sub heading and smaller writing for descriptions of sub headings and images.

Red, black and white.

Double Page Spread

Halved down the centre, text on the left hand side, image on the right, title and description at the top above the interview, interview in three columns.

Large font for the title, medium sized font for the description of the interview and smaller font for the interview.

Interview style, question and answer, questions are in red and answers are in black.

Red, black and white.

How my magazine represents women.The images represent women because they make them look successful and quite powerful as well especially by the way they are standing on the double page spread image. One thing about the images is that they are all wearing quite casual clothes which shows they were middle class before becoming as successful as they are now. The photos make the middle class people much more glamorous than they normally would as well.

How my magazine represents young people.The images are all of younger aged people and this shows the audience you can be successful from a young age. The clothing the boys are wearing on one of the contents images are very casual (jeans and t-shirt/shirt). The clothing makes the boys look like they are from the younger generation whereas if they were wearing clothes like suits it would make them look a lot older.

How my magazine represents the music style.The girls are wearing all black in their photos which represents the more indie style music in the magazine but the Ellie Goulding photo on the contents page represents more of a pop style music as the girl is wearing much more casual everyday type clothes.

Who would market/advertise my magazine?NME Magazine as they are the most similar to my magazine. The only reason they might not want to market/advertise my magazine would be that as the magazines are similar they might see this as competition.The advertising strategies I would use would be T.V and the internet as most people nowadays have internet and more or less everyone has a T.V so will see the advertisement at some point.

Would I distribute locally/nationally/internationally?I would distribute my magazine first of all locally to see if it was successful and if it is I would then go onto distributing nationally and internationally.

Information about NME Magazine

Popular magazine in the UK

Published weekly since March 1952

NME wrote quite formally originally but thought writing a bit more informally may boost sales figures and sure enough it did

Became the best selling music magazine in 1970

In the 60’s, bands on cover included The Beatles and The Rolling Stones

In the 60’s they were selling as many as 200,000 issues per week making it one of the UK’s best sellers

In the 70’s they were declining in sales figures

Alan Smith (editor of the magazine) handed the editing job to Nick Logan and he went on search for the press’s best writers

Information about NME Magazine

After this change NME were selling up to 300,000 issues per week

In the 80’s they seen another major drop in sales figures as they couldn’t decide on the style of music they were going to right about

NME wrote quite formally at this time and thought they could boost sales figures if they didn’t write as formally and sure enough they did

In the 90’s they started focussing more on indie style music/artists

They also started focussing more on American artists which they hadn’t been doing in the past

Information about NME Magazine

British pop became huge in the 90’s and so NME decided to focus on that style at this time and this boosted sales figures massively

Once British pop became less big, NME seen another fall in sales figures and sales became very low by the time the millennium came

In the 2000’s NME tried to extend the styles of music they wrote about such as writing about hip hop music

In 2002 they started focussing more on British bands again that produced indie style music

In 2006 NME produced an Irish version of the magazine called NME Ireland

The magazine wasn’t as successful in Ireland as it had been in the UK

In 2008 the magazine had a new design to extend their target audience to older readers as well

In 2010, NME partnered with MetroLyrics to provide lyrics snippets on its website.

16-25 year olds Both boys and girls (although colours suggest more girl

based)

People who like indie/pop /rock music

Interested in finding out about new music/artists

People who prefer informal style magazines

People who like going to music festivals/concerts as

the magazine has all the dates for upcoming music

events

From my research what I found out about what the audience want

Colour – red, black, white, bright colours

Music Style – indie/rock/pop

Information On Contents Page – most people said images and

tour dates

Cost – £2-£3

Contents Page Text Or Image Dominated – nearly

equal split between the two

What addresses these features in my magazine?

Colour – double page spread text and contents page, also

text on front page

Lots of information about tour dates and some images on the contents

page

More text than images but still a good number of images

Cost - £2.50

Music Style – indie/pop

Rough Cut Feedback

Make the title bigger.

Writing in the top left hand corner needs to be bigger.

Make background behind the girls white.

Black writing above the band name cant be read.

Some of the white writing is hard to read.

Don’t need the exact date.

Spelling needs checked.

Make barcode bigger.

Improvements

Photo layout.

Range of fonts.

Layout.

Good use of space.

What the audience liked.

Rough Cut Feedback

Two photos very similar.

Need less text.

Need more images.

Need more captions for images.

Bigger range of fonts.

Don’t need bullet points.

Don’t need full date.

Images need to be spread out more.

Improvements

The use of colour.

Bold title.

Page numbers in the boxes stand out well.

The images.

What the audience liked.

Rough Cut Feedback

Caption on the right cant be read.

Font for the title.

Girls need to be doing the same thing.

Lighting on the image.

Interview must be longer.

Improvements

Layout.

Three columns.

Colour.

Colour for question and answer layout.

Organised.

What the audience liked.

How do the images attract my target audience?The clothing that the models are wearing are very casual on all of the pictures and so this shows that the magazine is quite informal. Also the way the models are standing on the double page spread and contents page image of the girls shows they are the younger generation but also quite powerful as they have now became successful.

Language in the double page spread article.The article is a question and answer format and the language is more informal than formal. I decided to do this because my style model (NME) use more informal language than formal language.

Different parts to the camera:LensLens capStrapShutter releaseView finderTimerShutter speed control

Different kinds of shots:Mid shotClose upExtreme close upLong shotTilt shotMedium close upCutawayTwo shotOver the shoulder shotPoint of view shot(I used medium close ups and mid shots for my images)

Lighting:ArtificialNatural(I used natural for the contents page image of the two boys and artificial lighting for all of the other images.

Adobe Photoshop Elements Tools:Rectangular marquee tool – helped with shaping images.Crop tool – to make images fit the page better.Healing brush – to make the model’s skin look more perfect.Clone stamp – to make the colour all exactly the same.Zoom tool – so you can see the images and text in more detail.

Work on my blog:Diary entries for each week of the projectPreliminary task (school magazine)Analysis of music magazines – NME, Q, Kerrang etc.Initial ideas diagramQuestionnaires and evaluations and graphsSketches of magazine front page, contents page and double page spreadRough draft of photoshopped magazineAudience feedback on rough draftsPlan for taking imagesOriginal photosFinal magazine

Front Page:

Making the photo the background rather than having a colour on the background then a photo over the top makes the magazine look better.

Lots of information around the main photo looks effective.

Don’t have two photos with the same people on, on the same page.

Make the main story and title of magazine much bigger than the rest of the text.

Contents Page:

Don’t crowd the page with too much text.

Have the main story slightly bigger than the rest of the text, also central draws the readers attention straight to it.

Having a good range of fonts makes the contents page more interesting to look at.

Don’t use bullet points on the contents page for each little piece of information.

Double Page Spread:

Making the models pose in exactly the same way makes the page look better rather than them all doing different things.

The font needs to go with the style of your magazine.

The lighting on the image is important as if it isn’t very good it can make the models look either too bright (orangey colour) or too dark and both of these make the models look a lot less naturalistic.

What I have learnt from the preliminary task and my rough draft of the music magazine.