Planning

Double Page Spread:

Interview Questions:

What kind of year have you had?
What music are you listening to at the moment?
How long have you been involved in music?
Has where you live effected your music?
Plans for your next album?
How did you form your name?
How do you guys know each other?
Are you pleased with the success of your single?
After looking at some editorial style features in Mojo, I decided it would be more interesting to go towards this style. I really like writing in descriptions and felt that a questions and answer article wouldn't have enough detail.

I asked some other sixth formers which style article they would prefer reading and most replied with saying they prefered the Q&A style as they can't be bothered to read the longer ones. However, I much prefer to more indpeth articles where you find out about the artist, their past and their future and little bits of their life that they have chosen to share rather than being asked to share. These tend to show that the writer has done their research and a closer relationship with the artist.

Double page spread planning:

Types of Bands:
• Young folk with an edge –5 quid CD with 7 tracks sold on Amazon.
-Been around for a while online surfaced after live gig.
• New punk/alternative band
• Old soloist- resurfaced/trippy techno
• Electro/alternative style

Double page genre:
• Article about artist
• About interview and life
• Interview
• Review
• Playlists

Plan:
• Softly lit coffee shop- small arm chair
• Fresh scent of coffee beans and sweet cakes- latte and fairy cake
• Before a small concert in the small town festival
• Independent artists- creates own tracks solo with her own instruments and overlays her own voice- keyboard is her favourite to use
• Own website
• No record lable
• Friendly, quirky
• Lots of small gigs, festivals, some pub gigs in the area
• Electro style with eerie voice, subtle meanings and a pleasant sound
• A blend of Echo Slightly and Portishead with a dash of Sarah Slean and Imogen Heap
• Sitting across from her, her hands wrapped securely around her hazelnut latte, our eyes avert upwards as one of her songs floated softly from the mismatched speakers dotted around the room. She smiles. ‘They must have seen me come in. I know this town well and this place has bought my more lounge-style CDs.’
• Jazzy electro indie style, female vocalist
• ‘One of my recent achievements was getting a page on last.fm. I always looked on there, found interesting artists and engaged with other users, but now I am someone people will look for. Who needs a record label when you’re on there?’
• First track released on Myspace, with the sounds of the hoover and a cat meowing in the background. ‘Yeah, I was 16 at the time and getting some peace and quiet was a tad difficult’.
• Summer festival in full swing, a small stage was set up on the large grassy area in the epicentre of the village shops. Small, make-shift,
• Eloise Smith- had French grandmother.
• Bath?
Studies at Bath Uni. – living with friends in rented house, family nearby

Quotes:
• ‘I don’t mind being unknown; there is something special about being a community star.’
• ‘Myspace is great. It has been my home for the past 5 years.’
• Keyboard next to her- ‘Couldn’t bear losing this baby [pats keyboard] We’ve been through so much [laughs]’

Layouts:

I have combined different positioning of images here with the different styles of presenting the pages, eg central on the first, but changing on the second and using a collection of images instead of one strong one.
I really like the ones which have one strong image, however, to be able to include a variety of shots, I would have to include more. I also experiment with the different wasy of presenting the title and the introductory paragraph. I quite like the central one as it brings the focus to the centre, and with a strong image underneath or on the other page, this would be really effective.


Contents: Layouts

These sketches of layout and composition plans were inspired by the magazines that I have analysed previously. (Click on image to zoom in and see some of the annotation). I have drawn in where the images would be, however, am not sure what these will be yet. These designs combine a mixture of layouts from the mags. I have used the multiple photo collage effect on the second layout, whilst on the first I have used the more minimal look, including only one image and centring the page.

I will be using these plans a guiudlines but depending on the photos depends on which layout I will use. I tend to base my pages heavly around the images (which probably isn't best as this means it is likely to not have a house style, but this method works best for me).

Front Cover:

Most of my front cover plans were started on publisher and evolved from those small plans. I deid draw these basic plans though, but they are very rough and I very much prefer to work around my images so will wait until then to stick to one design.

These designs play with the positioning of coverlines, plugs\puffs and masthead.

Planning:

Headlines-

• Eloise Smith... the face & voice behind the computer screen.
  
• The Pow- their/his fight to the top.
  
• Sarah Slean- her chill picks.
  
• New! Edge's top albums that you want to hear!
  

The Name:

When thinking of some names, I only really came up with a few, snappy, one syllable names that would work for my magazine.

The Edge/Edge
Mix
Or other play on words.

When I asked others about what they think would work for my genre, they agreed that 'The Edge' would work well. It's catchy, simple and rememberable. With this title, I had also worked out a tagline:
'Bringing you all the latest music, with an edge'
which basically summed up what my magazine was about.

I used dafont.com to find some fonts that I thought would work as the masthead. As I don't know what my front cover image will be yet, the font will obviously have to go with it or it won't look right.

I asked for my group's opinion on which would work best. I personally favoured 2 and 3 but felt each was unique and would work well if the right photo was picked.

Most agreed that 2 was the best and gave a classic and a similar 'Mojo' style. Therefore I used this one to apply to my layouts and used it as the basis for choosing which images would be used.

EDIT: Although the 2nd font was favoured, I was using the photo of Jack for the front and Abs for the contents and decided that will this combination, the 3rd font would look better. I really like the grid effect and how this would create a structure in the layout of the magazine.