Photos That Aren't Being Used

Out of all the photos I’ve took so far, these are the photos that I won’t be using at all; either because they are blurry, the models aren’t looking at the camera or they are moving rather than doing the right pose.

 

My Photos

I have recently taken the photos that will be the main feature of magazine’s cover and double-page spread. Here are a few of the photos I have taken that may be the photos that I will use:

 

While taking my photos, there were a few problems that I had. For example due to my models moving, some of my photos have turned out blurry. We, also, couldn't think of many poses for the girls to do, so it took a while to get a variety of different photos. Also, I tried to take action shots of the girls jumping in the air, but I couldn’t get the photo taken at the right time. As well as this, one of the lights we were using was broken, so the light kept flickering, altering the lighting at times and making it uneven.

Interactivity

Interactivity has become must more important for magazines over the last few years. Interactivity is the way a magazine allows interaction between the magazine and fans; the fans and artists and fans and other fans.

Most magazines now have websites, helping them to take interactivity even further than they could without these websites due to the fact they can offer technology that can’t be used for interactivity in magazines.

There is a lot of new technology that help interactivity such as being able to stream videos of interviews with artists or videos of gigs; being able to have download links to music; having comment sections where readers can talk to each other and allowing readers to submit their one reviews easily by having a review page.

Another way that helps the magazine interact with the readers is through social media websites. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is a simple way that magazines can interact with readers due to fact readers can instantly reply to the magazine. Fans can post there gig photos and videos instantly through the social media websites too, and tagging the magazines name in the post allows any fan that search the magazines name to see these posts too.

Social media is an excellent way to get the readers opinion on the magazine. For example: the editor of Kerrang!, James McMahon, tweeted asking fans about who they wanted to go on the cover of their new music special. As well as this, he also invited demos from new bands and applications from aspiring writers. This is a great example of how music magazines keep their audience by engaging them, allowing the reader to feel like they have a say in what happens.

Majorie Ferguson's Theory

Uses and Gratification

Uses and Gratification - slideshow

Naomi Wolf's Theory

In my magazine, I will be using photos of girls on my cover, as well as double-page spread. They are represented as sexually attractive women which attracts to my target audience of teenage girls because they want to be like the attractive people on the magazine.

Naomi Wolf, the American feminist (1991) says that images of attractive women are used to help sell products to other women. She means that women have been conditioned into aspiring to be like what is fashionable now, by a male dominating society.

By using attractive women in my magazine I will be exploiting her theory that an attractive model is used to sell a product leading women to think if they buy the product, they will look like the model.

Second Draft Front Cover

This is now the next draft of the cover:

I changed the shade of pink used on the cover and decided to change the title to pink with a black outline as it stands out more than the original title of orange, outlined with pink, since more people from my questionnaire didn't think this stood out. I added a header, and footer of orange, to keep in with the colour scheme and added a yellow arrow with ‘POSTER PERFECTION’on it, which is often used in other pop magazines. I kept the layout of the magazine cover the same as my first draft so far because most people who answered my questionnaire liked this.

I finish my cover page and add my photos I will keep updating the progess.

Front Cover Questionnaire Results

These are the results of the questionnaire that I handed out about the first draft of my magazine cover:

 

More people answered no to the first questions meaning they thought that my title didn’t stand out. For question 2, there wasn’t a great difference, but more people thought that the colours matched. For question 3, most people liked the way my cover was set out.

'Poster Perfection' Inspiration

After seeing this ‘We Love Pop’ magazine cover, I decided to make a section on my front cover advertising free posters inside the magazine. I used the same idea as ‘We Love Pop’ with the arrow pointing to the posters as I think it can catch the reader’s eye.

First I used the shape tool in Photoshop to create an arrow, I chose the colour yellow as it stands out from the colours I have used on my cover so far, attracting the reader’s attention.

 

I then put a yellow square over the arrow to make it wider, and then added ‘POSTER PERFECTION.’ I used the same phrase as I thought it was catchy and fun.

 

 

I then added this to my cover, alongside three posters of different artists and bands that I have took and added a pink border around them to fit the house style of the magazine.

Cover Questionnaire

I made another questionnaire talking about my front cover and am now going to hand it out to people of my target audience. This will allow me to know what people think of my front cover so far.

 

First Draft Magazine Cover

This was the first draft of my magazine cover:

 

I tried to keep to the colour scheme that was picked by my target audience in my questionnaire. I didn’t like the first draft for the title too much so decided to have a play around on Photoshop with colours and fonts for the title, as well as other colours for the rest of the cover.

What I Need To Do Now