School Contents Page mock up

This is my school magazine contents page mock up. I found this useful when creating my final school magazine as a guideline as what to include into my finished work. I have included a main title being Contents page. I have inserted 3 boxes showing where I will put my 3 images i took around the school grounds. I have edited these photos in Photoshop. They all link in with the stories I have spoken about in the contents section.

Genre Moodboard

The Image below is my Mood board i have created in Word. I have created it with the Genre of Hip Hop in mind. It is clear from looking at it is a hip hop genre as I have included such images like famous artists, and high valued cars. Creating this mood board in Word was easy as i had my images saved in a file, and was then just down to inserting them into the space where i wanted them to be.

Magazine Name ideas

Through my research of my magazine, i have been looking at numerous varieties of different Hip Hop magazines, such as XXL magazine. I found helpful as i found looking at the different text style used with the masthead useful, i have now whittled it down to a few ideas, but still considering other names. My main idea is called fresh. I like this idea for many reasons. The first is that it is a name that gives the impression of new, being on top, being the best. I believe this to be helpful within my magazine. It gives off a new and stylish image so with Hip Hop this comes in handy with the image it gives off to readers.

For my second choice of names, i have chosen The Streets. With my magazine belonging to a Hip Hop genre i believe this to be a strong choice as it has clear links with the streets where hip hop began. With it being called the streets it would stand out from other magazines on the shelf. However i have found an error with this name when researching magazines. This would be that there is a band called the streets, so mistakes could be made with judgement between whether it is a fan magazine, or a hip hop magazine.

School magazine Text Ideas

For my school magazine, i wanted to choose a new more modern text to be used in its sub headings, so for this i found this text called Harabara. i found this text to be very useful for my ,magazine as it was different to more standard texts. it stands out from normal texts which has its own advantages.

For my second style of text, i found one called Optimus Princeps. i chose this as one of my options for text as it was a classic style of text. i wanted to see how it would fit in with my magazine.  i would of used it in a black style text as my headings for my school magazine.

School magazine Cover & Contents page

For my school magazine, i have designed a front cover and a contents page. I have designed both these pages on Microsoft Publisher, with this publisher I found it very easy to produce my pages as there were all the necessary tools to be used in publisher, for my first page I created a cover page, for this I inserted many images to help this page appeal to its audience. I used the schools logo and placed it in the top left corner.  For my cover photo I used a photo I took of the school previously. This photo fits in well of showing that the school is of an old style one as well. I have also included two other smaller photos at the bottom of my cover page to show what stories have been included into the magazine.

Also for my school magazine, I have created a contents page to go with my cover page. For this contents page I wanted to keep it simple as I thought if there was too much going on in the page then it would result in readers being confused and result in them not wanting to read it. So to do this I had a simple heading of Contents using a Harabara text which I downloaded. This text was simple and stood out from its white background with its mat black fill. Also to keep this interesting to the readers I have inserted 3 images which I also taken in my photo shoot.  I bordered the text off from the images with a blue rectangle which matches in with the schools colours. Finally I filled in the rest of the space with the magazines page numbers with the titles as well.

Target audience

For my music magazine, I have chosen my target audience at being an age of 16-22. I have chosen this age group as I believe it to be the biggest audience for hip hop readers, also it is the biggest age group for people to buy music magazines for. It will predominately aimed at an male audience.  But however will be attracting a female audience as well, this is because of the inclusion of female artists in my music magazine. The social class I have chosen for my magazine would be a working class, I have chosen this class because I believe it to be the class of people this magazine would appeal to. My ideal reader would be a someone who is predominately male, enjoys most kinds of genres of music but has a keen interest in Hip Hop. 

 This person is always looking out for new talent in the music industry. But also finds more original Hip Hop like Run DMC to be better. Their clothing styles are made up from jeans with mainly hoodies to be worn. With the majority of teenagers having smartphones, they will be able to download music albums in a large quantity and also have internet access to downloads to all the latest tracks can be downloaded with ease.

Magazine Research: NME

For my second music magazine research I chose to do it on the latest NME issue. Like the first magazine this one stood out to me on the shelf. It mainly stood out to me by its use of colours on its cover page. Another reason why it stood out was the use of images on its front cover and how they were layer out. The images covered the majority of the cover page only leaving a small space for pull quotes and the magazines barcode.The main masthead is in a bold block lettering with a dark gold fill to it. The main character to fill the front cover is Johnny Marr so will be well known to NMEs audience which will help them to pull in more readers. Overall this NME front cover is well designed as it displays what stories are in the magazine and who is in it as well.

Magazine Research: Q magazine

For my music magazine I have found some music magazines to get some ideas for my own magazine, to start this off I purchased the latest edition of Q magazine. When looking for a magazine this one stood out from the rest, this is to do with its colours, there is a white background with bold sans serif black text. This helps it to standout from the background. Another way that makes this magazine is its main cover photo of David Bowie. The photo takes up the majority of the photo and draws readers in with its stories. The whole layout of the cover page is simple but it some how works with it.

Magazine Mock Up

For my school news letter i have researched into the Deyes high news letter.  The image above shows my mock up for my school news letter. I have designed this mock up in Microsoft Publisher.  Creating this mock up on Publisher was simple as there is tools in the control bar which allow you to input shapes such as rectangle into your document.  I have got my idea for this from the Deyes News letter.  This image above is the front cover for the newsletter.  When researching into school news letters i found many problems with the news letters. an example of these errors with the news letter would be its target audience, it was very hard when reading into the layout of the news letter to see what was the exact age group it was aimed at, this will confuse readers because it may be set for a wrong target audience and not come accross useful.

Tomb Raider

The very anticipated arrival of Tomb raider has finally arrived this week. released on 5th March it was an instant hit with the market.  This was down to the highly popular franchise of Tomb Raider games previous.  The new Tomb Raider was developed by Crystal Dynamics being the fifth one this time.  when designing the new Tomb raider, the creators had grown up with this game so felt so did the game as well.  the new game has been revamped with a new brand image.  The main character Lara Croft has been given a whole new image, it is a more bold and gritty style than the old style with her short shorts and boob tube. The image below here shows the new modern tomb raider lara croft, she now has khaki pants. This image was the release photo of the new Lara. she is shown here with a pistol, pick axe and a long bow.  The game has come a long way from its first game on the Playstation 1.
 The new image has done a lot of growing up when in development. Her new gritty image has been highly popular among fans,  she has now become some kind of warrior survivor as she explores new regions in the game.  the story is surrounded by Lara who is search of old relics, as she is on a ship there is a major storm at port and the ship gets destroyed, she is shipwrecked and washed up on a uninhabited island away from the rest of the survivors.  This game has been highly anticipated and is already making huge profits for its developers.  the game is being sold at a remarkable £32.00.  This price for the new game is surely going to entice old and new gamer`s to it as for a brand new game and for one as popular as the Tomb Raider franchise it is most certainly a bargain, games that first come out with a huge franchise behind it are usually marketed at a £49.99 and above market so for the price of £32.00 it is definitely a bargain for anyone who is interested. Tomb raider has been virally marketed.  It has not been shy to advertise around city centers such as on the side of public buses.  word of mouth on blogs via the internet are also to pay for its profound popularity as it was a well waited for game, following on from previous games in its franchise.  Many blogs have been founded that are solely dedicated to The Tomb Raider brand.  New information on the game was always posted there so fans would then go on to share this information which would get passed around multiple websites.  overall Tomb Raider is a success, one for its franchise being a popular one, and also down to the fact it is a new modern take on the once immature Lara Croft, so the new more gritty Lara is a definite success.