Wednesday, 15 March 2017
Friday, 10 February 2017
Production- Final Product Updated
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- got rid of the ellipsis on my front cover
- made my bar code smaller
- added elements of orange to the contents page to strengthen the house style of my magazine
- added more features to my contents page
- added the twitter logo and details to the contents page and double page spread to make my magazine more relevant to the audience
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Wednesday, 8 February 2017
Evaluation Q6-What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
Research- Feedback from Focus Group (Adam)
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Tuesday, 31 January 2017
Monday, 30 January 2017
Production- First Draft DPS
A new up and comer, Jessica Heathworth, more commonly known by her stage name “The
Queen of Hearts” is taking the music industry by storm. Working alongside
famous producers such as Dan Auerbach and Mark Crew after being signed to
Polydor studios at the young age of 17, its comes as no surprise to anyone that
the Queen of hearts has captured ours with her playful and mischievous songs
that are shockingly promiscuous and laced with dark themes. The industry seems
to agree; The Queen has gone on to win the LOUD’s Best Female Solo artist after
just 3 years of being in the business.
Ever since she first picked up a mic it seemed that her fans
couldn’t get enough, especially the ladies. It’s not a shocker- The Queen’s
music explores female sexuality in a refreshing way that empowers women - a
stark contrast to much of what we see today. Truly, Jessica has become a role
model for young women who are looking to find themselves.
It seems as though even The Queen can’t escape the rumour
wheel. After joining Bastille on his tour around America, rumours of the pair
dating have sky rocketed and the fans just can’t seem to get enough. Some have
even taken it up to twitter to say, “Please
tell me that these two are a thing, @Queen of Hearts has been
working so hard lately… she deserves to be happy!”, “NO WAY! Dan Smith and
Jessica Heathworth are so cute!! I ship them so much!! #JESSAN #DANICA”. In
fact #DANICA was on twitters top ten trending tags for 2 weeks after their
first performance, and we can’t say we blame them!
So with all the success and fandom surrounding the Queen Of Hearts,
It was not surprising that I felt a little nervous as I took a left towards the
young star’s house, instead of the usual right to the office building. As I
pulled into her drive, it was if I had fell through the rabbit hole myself. Huge
mushroom-like structures towered over me, playing cards up to the size of doors
created a walkway towards the house and any other areas that was exposed to
light had been robbed of its emptiness by wildflowers, mosses and ferns that I
had only seen before in movies. Yet despite such strange and beautiful scenery
I was the only one gawking. Cameramen, dancers, stage directors, you name it,
were busily preparing for the young star’s new music video for her hot new
single, “Off with her head”.
Upon meeting the Queen of Hearts; my heart stopped. I had met
many famous people in my time, yet, with this young and talented musician, the
air that surrounded her did not seem unapproachable or arrogant, just simply…
unworldly.
After working up some courage, (which took quite some time),
I asked her why she chose her stage name to be the Queen of Hearts.
“Not a lot of people know that Alice and Wonderland was
actually written by a mathematician and he wrote Alice in Wonderland based on a
lot of these concepts that break or just play with logic. The Queen of Hearts is the ‘baddie’ in the
story but to me, she is a badass; hot
headed and usually get what she wants. So I took her as inspiration, worked
hard to get what I want and now people are saying what I’m doing is impossible
for my age but what can I say… I like to play with logic.”
Her answer was evident. In this huge house filled with professionals
of all different levels of experience, wonders were being made. What’s more was
that they were all looking up to the Queen of Hearts for guidance.
“You don’t seem hot headed at all, I mean how can pieces of
musical art like this be made if that is the case?”
“It’s more of a personal hot headedness” She replied with a
grin. “When I was younger I used to get frustrated easily when things didn’t
turn out how I had envisioned them to be, especially in group projects. In turn
I would leave a group to do it on my own or just do it by myself altogether if
it was possible. But then I realised that sometimes what I had envisioned
wasn’t actually that great and that I needed other people not only for their
skills, but for their passion and creativity.
“Now I’ve learnt to curve my bad habits but when I’m writing
lyrics or recording a new album and it’s not up-to-scratch, I flip out on
myself, I go crazy and I get out of hand; like the Queen of hearts. Luckily
there are people out there that I can trust to get me through these difficult
times and because of that… I’m over the moon”
Finally, I asked her the question that we are all desperate
to find out, “So are the rumours about you and Bastille true?” And with a
sheepish smile she replied, “Of course. He is the secret behind my wonderland.”
Research- Response to Questionnaire
The questionnaire can be found HERE
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| I also agree with the majority; I think that this image looks like its been taken in a studio and looks the most aesthetically pleasing. |
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| Even though the result is 50-50 I'm going to choose LOUD because it is more obviously linked to music. |
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| When I write my double page spread and creating the aesthetic of my magazine, I will take this into consideration so that it gratifies the target consumer. |
Research - Focus group
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Name: Alicia Long
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Interests:
Hobbies:
How do you access music? Youtube, Apple Music
How much money do you spend on music? £10 a month on Apple Music
How much money do you spend on magazines? None
Do you ever buy music magazines? Rarely
What genre of music do you listen to? Pop, Alternative Pop
Who are your favourite artists? Lana Del Ray, Florence and the Machine
Have you seen any artists live? No
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Name: Amy Johnston
Age: 17
Occupation: Student/ part timer in Waitrose
Interests: Art, TV shows
Hobbies: Creating art
How do you access music? Spotify.
How much money do you spend on music? None, my parents pay for my music.
How much money do you spend on magazines? None.
Do you ever buy music magazines? No.
What genre of music do you listen to? Indie rock and Pop
Who are your favourite artists? Twenty One Pilots, The Kooks, All Time Low and American Rejects.
Have you seen any artists live? I have seen Twenty One Pilots and All American Rejects.
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Name: Fleur Feeney
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Interests: Alternative pop, rock music, reading, watching TV, performing arts (watching and performing), Vogue magazines, politics, art, food
Hobbies: Reading, watching TV, Tang Sou Doa, travelling
How do you access music? Spotify, Youtube, borrows CDs, concerts.
How much money do you spend on music? None
How much money do you spend on magazines? Roughly £5 a month
Do you ever buy music magazines? Rarely
What genre of music do you listen to? Rock, Punk Rock, Indie Rock
Who are your favourite artists? Paramore
Have you seen any artists live? The Spice Girls, X-factor Live, Olly Murs, Michael Buble, 30 Seconds to Mars, Tonight Alive, Maybe She Will, Little Mix, Jessie J, Tom Jones.
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Name: Adam Rigg (left)
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Interests: Biology, food, beauty
Hobbies: Running, shopping
How do you access music? Spotify and Youtube
How much money do you spend on music? None
How much money do you spend on magazines? None
Do you ever buy music magazines? No
What genre of music do you listen to? Indie Rock, Pop, Alternative Pop, Kpop Who are your favourite artists? The 1975, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Twenty One Pilots
Have you seen any artists live? Beyonce and The 1975
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Research- Beat Magazine
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| Beat magazine has a very minimalist and artistic aesthetic which coincides with the values of the alternative pop artists and audience. Therefore, I may include elements of this magazine in order to achieve the desired aesthetic. |
Sunday, 29 January 2017
Research- Examiner's Report
Today I read the examiner's report and I realised that I need to make sure that my magazine:
- Follows the forms and conventions of music magazines
And therefore:
- Has a strong brand identity
- Uses a house style throughout the whole magazine
- Double page spread uses appropriate language (uses the lexicon of words from my genre)
Saturday, 28 January 2017
Research- Double page spread image
Here is a list of links to tutorials that I used a when creating my double page spread:
- Soft warm light effect (video below)
- Pull quotes
- Formatting text (video below)
Friday, 27 January 2017
Production- Front Cover
Thursday, 26 January 2017
Production/Research- Cover Lines
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| During this lesson I focused on the cover lines of the magazine. However I found that I was struggling with what sort of typography I should be using because nothing seemed to sit with the genre of the music. |
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| Therefore, I did some research as to the sort of fonts music magazines for inspiration. |
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Friday, 25 November 2016
Production- Front cover
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| Here is the final edited image that I shall be using as my central image my front cover. The clothes have been removed of creases and any imperfections (e.g acne) have been edited out on photoshop in order to create an aesthetic that fits into the audience's psychographics. |
The following images are screenshots that show some experimenting that I did on photoshop, creating the typography and some coverlines for my magazine.
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Thursday, 17 November 2016
Production- Double Page Back Story
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Artist Back Story
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Name (real name or adopted stage name)
General connotations of this name
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Queen of Hearts- love, games, Alice in Wonderland, power, spoilt, somewhat selfish
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Point of their career
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Relatively new but nonetheless successful artist. Teamed up with producers such as Dan Auerbach
Label- Polydor
Winner of British female solo artist award
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Purpose of DPS
What is it about?
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The DPS is to advertise the release of her new album and she reveals the subject of her album, a lover/new fling. Confirms rumours of her dating lead singer Dan Smith of Bastille. Met while being a support act on one of his recent tours
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Audience positioning
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The DPS aims for the audience to be in awe of the artist and respect/ come to like her if they didn’t already do so. As coming from a similar middle-class background with restrictions from her parents, she would have had to make it her own way into the music industry and because of this, other the middle-class audience would make a connection to her seeing as she has a similar background however they will aspire to be here due to her current position/success.
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What are you encouraging them to do?
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Go see the artist on tour/ buy her album/ buy her merchandise
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Representation
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Gender and sexuality- coming from a conservative and old fashioned background, she was not allowed to explore her sexuality in her teen years unlike her surrounding friends who had much more relaxed upbringings. (However she doesn’t see this in a negative or positive way). So upon discovering artists like Florence and The Machine, Lana Del Ray and Marina and the Diamonds, she was able to explore and learn about her sexuality and what it meant to be a woman through their music.
She is not depicted in the magazine through the male gaze emphasising her feministic qualities and her belief of equality. She wants to be a good role model for other people her age and younger saying that you don’t have to have the perfect body/ fit into society’s standard of beauty, instead, one’s creativity and mind is the most attractive and beautiful thing anyone can have.
Ethnicity- White woman, not ethnically diverse. This follows the codes and conventions of the alternative pop genre that most artists are white males or females, strengthening the genre/ brand identity of the magazine.
Disability- no visible disabilities however she did suffer from anxiety when she was younger and music was her way to get by.
Class- comes from a middle working class; father was a doctor and mother was a housewife. She was taught to be conservative and she thinks in a way it was a good thing because without this she would have never really been interested in the artists that moulded and shaped her into the musician she is today. However, she wants to teach teenagers and young adults that there is nothing wrong with exploring the path to adulthood and if anything encourages it in the most playful but dark way through her unique style of music.
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Songs/albums
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Wonderland, Off With The Head, secrets and lies, forbidden pleasure, joker etc.
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In order to create a piece of text that flows seamlessly, I
made sure that this backstory would
have lexical cohesion and that it
would have an appropriate semantic field
so that it would fit into the house
style of my magazine and gratify
the target audience’s expectations
of an alternative pop music magazine.
A lexicon of words
are groups of words that are associated with a topic. Therefore cohesion is the
grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text
together and gives it meaning.
Tuesday, 15 November 2016
Production- Lexicon of Words
- Musician
- Artist
- Singer
- Band
- Solo
- Art
- Modern
- Popular
- Trending
- Collaboration
- Indie Rock
- Indie Pop
- Influences
- Track
- Album
- Single
- Lyrics
- Title
- Record
- Guitar
- Synthesizer
- Drums
- Vocals
- Harp
- Electronic Keyboard
- Beat
- Rhythm
- Riff
- Chords
Friday, 11 November 2016
Research- Billboard Magazine Covers
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