Editing in Photoshop

Before editing in Photoshop

After editing in Photoshop

Above you can see the image that I used as the central photo on my contents page. The original image was shot in the studio with a black backdrop and hot lights. In order to use this photograph on my contents page, I had to cut around the subject using the magnetic lasso tool and then cut and paste the cut-out onto a new raster layer which has no background. Once I had done this, I made some other changes to the image. I smoothed out the skin tone of my subject using the clone stamp tool and the blur tool, I adjusted the curves to give the colours in the photo more depth and I changed my subject’s hair colour to give it a more red tone. This is because Elly Jackson has red hair. In order to change the hair colour of my subject, I traced around her hair using the magnetic lasso tool again. I then created a new raster layer and filled the selected area with a bright orange colour. Once I had done this, I changed the style of this raster layer to “Soft light” and set the opacity to 75%. In order to get the shadow around my model I merged all visible layers and selected the entire image so that my model was selected. I then added a shadow around her and saved my image as a PNG file to ensure that the image had no background.

Double page spread article development

Articles/interviews I gathered information from

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/23/la-roux-interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JgmjCXiF2Q&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBK5X96eBV4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elly_Jackson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLWpVlUFjck&feature=related

In order to write my article on Elly Jackson, I had to do some research on her. I decided that the best way to gather true information straight from the woman herself would be to watch interviews with her that had been posted on YouTube. Three of the links above will take you to youtube videos and the others will take you to articles/web pages that I found useful when gathering information.

Whilst watching the interviews on YouTube and reading the articles, I wrote out some bullet points on Microsoft Word which I later developed and used for my article. You can readthe bullet points that I wrote up below…

ELLY JACKSON

• Eleanor Kate “Elly” Jackson was born in South London on 12^th March 1988.
• First interest in music revolved around folk music which she says her dad played when she was a young girl. He was into music and taught himself to play guitar in his young teens; he wanted to give Elly the pleasure of being able to play as well.
• He played a lot of folk music when Elly was young such as Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King.
• Met Ben, who is her partner in the band “La Roux” at a New Years Eve party in Brixton where she was singing for Jason Bacon who phoned Ben and told him that he needed to listen to Elly.
• Likes to create music using acoustic instruments although La Roux’s music is very techno.
• In her teens, Elly’s taste in music changed when she became involved in the rave scene. She likes artists such as David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Madonna, Prince and The Knife and is influenced by these artists. She says that she didn’t want to go down the road of ‘singer-songwriter’, she fell out of love with folk music and began to dislike the sound of the acoustic guitar in her music. Because of this, her music is much more electronic.
• Elly doesn’t like what is perceived as ‘normal’ in fashion. She likes to experiment with fashion and her style has been described by many as androgynous. Jackson opposes being made to look more feminine by stylists.
• First album “La Roux” was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2009.
• It took, from beginning to end, 5 years to create the first album.

Shooting for ‘Amp’ magazine

In order to take the photographs for my front cover and double page spread I asked my friend, Rosie, to model for me as Elly Jackson from La Roux. Me and three of my classmates decided to rent out the photo stuido in our college for two hours in order to take our cover and double page spread photographs. We helped each other by modelling for one another and helping with costumes and styling. As a photography student, I had some previous knowledge of using the studio and college equipment which was quite helpful.

We decided on a time and day that we were all available to work in the studio and we booked out the time. On the day we each spent 30 minutes to take our photographs and as there were four of us, this took two hours to complete.

I decided to use the hot lights that are attached to the cieling in the studio and I also set up two hot lights on stands which I was able to move around. I set up a black backdrop behind my subject as I decided that I wanted to use a black background for my front cover. This is because the genre of my magazine is indie rock and I wanted it to fit with this genre.

Analysis of a Double Page Spread

Tip: Click the image below to see a full sized version of the double page spread analysis.

NME Cover analysis

Analysis of a front cover

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‘Amp’ masthead

After working in our groups to come up with the basic idea for the music magazine, we split and began our individual work. The first thing to do was create a masthead for my music magazine, ‘Amp’. I created many different mastheads using a range of fonts, sizes and colours. I decided to use the masthead above because I feel that the large, bold, stand-out font (Rockwell) is suitable for the type of magazine I will be producing. I also feel that the colour purple I have used is universal; it is both female and male friendly but more inviting to a female audience. The reader that my magazine is aimed at is more likely to be attracted to this colour as opposed to the strong, slightly masculine colours used in NME such as red, black and yellow. Below are some examples of other mastheads that I created during this process, using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and InDesign.

OTHER MASTHEAD DESIGNS
Below you will see three other masthead designs that I made using Adobe Photoshop CS5. I chose not to use these designs as my final masthead as I feel that they don’t look quite right for my music magazine. I really liked the first masthead and was going to use it for my front cover. However, I decided not to as it does go against conventions of NME magazine and it would be very hard to lay a central image over the top of this masthead. I like the idea and the layout, but I don’t think it would have been sensible to use this masthead for my final front cover. The second masthead uses the font “Elephant” for the main text and “Bauer Bodini MT” for the strap line. The third masthead uses the font “Franklin Gothic Heavy” for the title font and “Arial” for the strap line font.

‘Amp’ reader profile

Jessica is nineteen years old. She goes to University where she is studying English Literature. She lives in halls, has a solid group of friends and is very influential amongst them. She also has many other friends who are a mixture of different people with a range of interests. One interest that Jessica shares with all of her friends is her love of music. She is always the first to hear about new artists and often recommends them to her friends. She is passionate about music and loves technology, too. Jessica owns an iPhone and loves listening to music on-the-go and downloading new applications.

‘Amp’ Magazine

In class we spilt into groups of four to plan the type of music magazine that we each wanted to produce independently. We felt that working in a group situation to come up with the basics for our independent music magazines would be more useful than working alone as ideas can be created more easily in a group. I worked with Natalie Leese, Rathina Gunapalan and Rosannah Robinson. After discussing the type of magazine that we were all interested in creating individually, we chose to produce an Indie/Rock/Rock-Pop magazine for 16-25 year old females. We felt that NME was a good music magazine, and one that included the music genres that we want to include. However, NME is aimed quite heavily at a male audience. Therefore we decided to create a similar magazine that is aimed primarily at a female audience of the same age group. Taking inspiration from NME, our magazines will follow similar design and layout conventions.

After producing a mind map of names for each of the magazine, we each chose one. However, after careful consideration we decided that two of the four names we had decided on weren’t suitable for the genre of music magazine we were interesting in making, so we decided to use the two strongest names. Two members of our group will be using the name ‘Amp’ for their magazine and two members of the group will be using ‘Feedback’.

The publisher we chose to use is ‘Future Publishing‘ as they are a global publishing company that produce specialist interest magazines and use a small production team. ‘Amp’ will be aimed at a 16-25 year old audience of middle class Caucasian women with a crossover audience of different ethnicities and cultures. The Social Occupational Class that ‘Amp’ is aimed at is between B and C1. The magazine will be produced nationally and cost £2.40. Following conventions set by NME, ‘Amp’ will have around 70 pages and use matt paper as opposed to glossy paper. This will lower production cost meaning that less advertisement needs to be included. Out of the 70 pages, only 19 will be used for advertising purposes. This means that only 28% of the magazine will be used for advertising which is directly proportional to NME’s amount of advertising. 

We worked in our groups to plan the type of magazine that we wished to create. We gathered a clear understanding of it’s readership and statistics and devised a reader profile and a flat plan as a group. However once the basic idea for the magazine was in place, we spilt and begun our independent work on our own individual magazines.

‘Amp’ flat plan

Tip: Click the images below to see full-sized versions of the flat plan pages.

Comparative analysis of NME Magazine and Classic FM Magazine

The magazines:
NME is a music magazine that focuses on genres such as rock, indie and alternative whereas Classic FM magazine focuses on the genre of classical music. This means that Classic FM magazine has a much more niche audience as it is focused solely on one genre of music, whereas NME has a wider appeal because it provides a crossover of different, albeit similar, genres of music. NME is published by IPC Media which is part of  Time Warner – a global publishing corporation – and Classic FM is published by Haymarket Media, which is also a global media company. In this respect both magazines have a global audience and a large readership, although NME has a wider appeal. The balance of editorial copy to imagery in both magazines is around 60/40%. NME magazine features a few sections in every issue, but for the most part the contents of each issue is different. In contrast, Classic FM features particular sections in every issue – “Upbeat”, “Features”, “Reviews”, “What’s On”and “Regulars”. The lack of structure in this sense aids NME’s anarchistic image; they don’t conform to conventions like most magazines by printing the same features each week. Classic FM, on the other hand, is clearly structured and layed out with the same sections appearing in every issue. This says a lot about Classic FM’s readership; they obviously prefer structure and sense as opposed to the uncontrolled, anarchistic style that NME uses.

Advertising in the magazines:
Unlike NME, Classic FM magazine uses inserts. There are four inserts in this issue of the magazine; two of these are coupons for free magazines, one of the inserts is a small information booklet for Saga Holidays and the fourth is a coupon for 32% off of magazine subscriptions. These inserts tell me that the readers of  Classic FM like to spend their money wisely; Classic FM magazine costs £4.85 in the UK, which is quite expensive compared to the price of NME, but the readers know that for this amount of money they are getting a free CD and coupons for two free magazines which focus on the same aspects of music as Classic FM. The advertising in both magazines relate to the audience well. NME features advertisements for gigs, new music releases, DVDs and technology whereas the adverts in Classic FM are for new classical music releases, upcoming classical concerts, insurance, music technology and art exhibitions. The advertisements in Classic FM seem to be targeted at a much higher class of people than the advertisements in NME; they are also targeted at an older age group. You can tell a lot about the target audience of a magazine by looking at the advertisements that are printed throughout, and there is no better example than NME and Classic FM whose advertising targets their audience perfectly. There are 68 pages in NME and 26 of these pages are used for advertisement, therefore 18% of the magazine is used for advertising and unlike Classic FM, there are no inserts in the magazine.  The lack of advertisements in NME affects production value, so they use matt paper as opposed to glossy paper. This is because it is cheaper to produce a magazine with matt/newspaper paper than it is to produce a magazine that uses glossy paper. In contrast, Classic FM is printed on high quality glossy paper which suggests that they have more money to spend on production. Classic FM has 100 pages including front and back covers. 30 of these pages are used for advertising which means that 30% of the magazine is made up of advertisements. This means that Classic FM feature over 10% more advertising than NME which, in turn, means that they have more money to produce their magazine. On their website Haymarket Media boast that they publish only the highest quality magazines “combining the best in content, design, production and customer services.” Because both NME and Classic FM are published by global media companies there several different cover prices. NME has four cover prices: £2.40 in the UK, $6.70 in the US, $7.99 in Canada and €3.70 in Spain. Classic FM costs £4.85 in the UK, £5.30 overseas and $9.99 in the USA. This clearly shows that Classic FM need a lot of money to keep up their high quality publishing; not only do they use more advertisements than NME but their cover price is much higher. NME, on the other hand, sell their magazine for a relatively low price as they have a lower production value and use less advertising.

The magazines’ style:
NME and Classic FM have very different styles. NME ignores typical conventions of layout and design to boost their anarchistic image, whereas Classic FM follow these conventions to create a structured, mature, classic magazine. For instance, Classic FM use the same fonts, sizes and colours throughout. They use red, orange, black and blue and a set of fonts that work together to create a similar theme throughout the magazine. Although NME tend to go against typical layout and design conventions, they do use similar themes throughout the magazine. Most issues of the magazine ignore the rule of thirds on cover; they feature unjustified lines and there is a strong similarity in layout and design of covers. Pink and black text is used with the same fonts appearing throughout and sections are broken down using bright colours like pink and blue. They use these fonts and colours to create a unity throughout the magazine so that it becomes recognisable to it’s audience.

The covers:
There are two layers on the cover of Classic FM and the masthead stretches across the entire width of the magazine, as opposed to being in a box or on the left hand side (e.g. NME’s masthead). Classic FM’s masthead is printed in simple, black, captial letters with the ‘f’ in ‘FM’ printed a bold, lowercase, red font. The masthead for Classic FM has been designed this way to show that the magazine is for a higher class of people; the layout and design of the masthead is mature and sophisticated as opposed to the ‘working class’ NME masthead which is big, bold and bright. I think that NME’s masthead has been designed this way because it represents the readership of the magazine well. NME readers are typically anarchistic, rebellious and young. The central image on the cover of NME has been layed over the masthead, which indicates that the readers of this magazine recognise the layout and design and would be able to identify the magazine even without seeing the masthead in full. However, Classic FM’s central image is layed under the masthead which suggests that readers of Classic FM prefer substance over style; they like to be able to see the magazine’s name in full. They are used to this particular convention of laying the masthead over the central image, and it’s what they expect to see on the supermarket shelf. The central image on the cover of NME is of Nirvana; a heavy rock band. The men in the picture have long hair and their clothing indicates a lack of conformity. The man in the middle of the image is holding a lighter whilst the man on his left is smoking a ciggarette which indicates that they are rebellious and anarchistic. The image itself is black and white which is unusual for the central image of a magazine cover. This suggests that the readers of NME are attracted to unique things and that they enjoy rebelling against conventions. In stark contrast to this, Classic FM’s central image is of an older man in his 50s/60s who is dress in a light pink shirt with cufflinks; he is well groomed and looks respectable and sophisticated. He is holding his finger to his mouth and mouthing ‘shhh’ which creates a serene, calm, quiet feeling; the kind of feeling that listening to classical music can create in people. From this central image I can conclude that readers of Classic FM Magazine are mature and are way past the anarchistic, rebellious stage of their lives. They enjoy a peaceful, quiet, calm life and they like listening to music that creates these feelings in them. There are only three articles signposted on the cover of NME, and only one of those is accomponied by a page number and there are four articles signposted on the cover of Classic FM, of which none are signposted with page numbers. The predominant colour on the front cover of NME is yellow, accompanied by black and white. In contrast to the bright colour used on the cover of NME, more subtle colours such as red and black are used on the cover of Classic FM. There is no covermount of the cover of NME, but there is one on Classic FM’s cover. Classic FM offer two CDs in one box on the cover of this issue; I think this is because Classic FM readers like to get a lot for their money. The cover price for the magazine is quite high and so it is important to have the free CD to draw the audience in.

The contents page:
The contents page in NME is always situated one page into the magazine on the right face and it takes up one page, whereas the contents page in Classic FM takes up two pages and is three pages in to the magazine after a double page advertisement. There are 7 images on the contents page of NME and the balance of imagery to copy is around 70% imagery and 30% copy. The images are accompanied by captions and corresponding page numbers and the contents is presented numerically with important articles being highlighted. There are 15 images on the contents pages of Classic FM as it is spread over two pages and has more room for imagery. 7 of these images are signposted with page numbers and have a small caption printed next to them. the contents of Classic FM is presented in particular sections which are then broken down numerically with page numbers. There is only one advertisement on the contents page of NME and this is for a subscription to NME. Three fonts are used on the contents page in about five different sizes and two colours (black and white). In contrast, there are no advertisements on the contents pages of Classic FM and three fonts used in four different colours and four different sizes.

Double page spreads:
There are nine double page spreads in Classic FM Magazine and only two in NME. The double page spreads in NME share one similarity in the fact that they both feature at least one small image with a white border. Aside from this, they are quite different. The first article spreads all photographs and text over the double page, whereas the second article features a full bleed photograph on the left face and text with on the right face. The balance of imagery to text is similar in both articles; around 60% imagery and 40% text. Both articles use a standfirst to give the reader a brief summary of the article but only one of the articles uses pull quotes from the text. In both articles the writer and photographer has been credited. The language used in both of these double page spreads is similar; it is quite formal and no colloquialisms are used. This is the type of language that NME readers are used to – correct punctuation is always used and the articles use a wide vocabulary rather than sticking to plain and simple language that you might expect to see in a magazine aimed at a younger demographic. The immediate difference in double page spreads in Classic FM and NME is the number of them; Classic FM feature far more double page spreads than NME which is important to the magazine’s structure and composition. We know that readers of NME like to go against conventions and so most of the articles in their magazine runs to three or four pages as opposed to the classic double page spread. In contrast to NME readers, Classic FM readers enjoy stability and structure; they like rules and conformity when it comes to layout and design because it makes the magazine much more comprehensive and easy to read. The double page spreads in Classic FM all feature very similar design conventions; all of the double page articles use the same fonts, sizes and colours. Black and orange are used throughout the double page features to create a unity in the magazine. The double page spreads use around 60% imagery and 40% editorial copy. The main point is that Classic FM follow much more strict rules when it comes to design, layout and conventions in magazine publishing whereas NME intentionally go against these conventions to create a product that appeals to a young, rebellious audience.