Presspack kit

 Q is the legendary monthly magazine which celebrates everything that’s great in rock and roll. Since its launch in 1986 it has a painstakingly built an international reputation for quality amongst fans, stars and the music industry. With world-beating exclusives, definitive album reviews, outstanding production values and an inimitable sense of humour, Q shapes music in the UK and beyond.

Q has featured the world’s biggest artists – from U2 to Adele, Oasis to Rihanna, Radiohead to Lady Gaga and more – on its landmark covers. Every month the magazine creates new stars and identifies what’s coming next. With Q’s online presence, a new interactive iPad edition, social media, Q Radio, live events and of course the world famous annual Q Awards – the most exclusive event in the music calendar – the message is everywhere. Music sounds better with Q.

• Q is the UK’s number one actively-purchased music magazine.
• Q is about quality and character. Q’s readers prize its lavish photography, in-depth reporting and sense of humour.
• Q is about authority and opinion. It stands for the music that matters, the stars who make it and the people who love it.
• Q is trusted and influential. A positive review in Q can make a band’s career – and Q’s major interviews reverberate around the world.
• Q gets unparalleled access to the biggest stars in rock and roll.
• Q’s audience is younger and more affluent than any other music monthly. 97% of readers rate Q as a quality magazine. In research it outperforms competitors on measures such as best interviews, writing and awards winning photography.

The Q reader shows that the gender ratio is 68.3% males
 I added the ages 15-24 and  the age 25-34 61.8%, these age ranges have the highest percentage and therefore I will target those.

Research / case studies (Planning)

Front cover page (click image to view)

Contents Page (Click image to view)

 (click picture to view)

The image shot frame is a close up. Her make up is natural and the costume is quite simple because it is a popular music magazine and not a fashion magazine so it makes it clear what type of magazine it is. There are conventions of layouts which I analysed above. 

The genre of the music shows R&B, Pop and probably 'soul' because the artist on the front is Adele and she is popular for music in those genres. However the colour red  and black

denotation ('last request' 'Keith richards's' ) is a connotation of Rock music aswell. 

The colour scheme of this magazine is very bright; black, red and white. The denotation of 'Q' the logo text being white the connotation of passion and love for music. There are conventions of layouts which I analysed in the magazine above. 

Q magazine is published monthly in the UK. The magazine is published today by German publishing company called 'Bauer Media' It has its operations in many countries world wide.

The language is quite informal for audiences, 'flaunt it' 'blows us away' they are used to attract the audience as we understand and are captivated by what is says and will want to read more. Also 'Secret stash' the word stash is informal it simply means supply. The word stash allows the reader to immediately be convinced and will want to know the secret so will want to buy the magazine.

(click image to view)

Analysing an Existing College Magazine Cover

Masthead (logo)  

The name of the magazine displayed in the typeface in which it is designed. This is the visual branding of the title and is often done in a specially designed typeface to be very recognisable and unique. The masthead is usually used on the contents page inside as well as the front cover, and as a logo for advertising and branding purposes.

Main image  

In the case of this front cover there is a single image of the model, The image is used in a classic way, the face is big enough to stand out on the newsstand  with the model making full eye-contact

Dateline  

(June 2012)  Month and year of publication, often with the price. Note that a monthly magazine usually hits the news-stands the month before the cover date

Bar code  
Standard bar code used by retailers.



Clear Price
£1.60 (the colour is white) for the magazine and a free notebook is in black and blue. Showing it is worth the money


Caption 
Limited edition insist that the magazine is worth buying and is different from other magazines


Teasers
'Ucas tips on how to get your points up' this is a good teaser , as the colour yellow is bright and this is what an audience reads first. The teaser is teasing the audience to buy the magazine.

Selling line

 Short, sharp description of the title's main marketing point 'New start New lifestyle'

Cover lines

'Are you up to date? New fashion trend' this allows the audience to think about fashion and going back to school and 'back to college' college is in yellow so it grabs your attention.

Test run on Photoshop and Indesign Workshop 1

Test run on adobe photoshop by Vivian

1. The eraser tool can be used to rub out parts of the layer you are on.

22. Highlight the text and click on the colour picker

33. Create a new file: file  new or ctrl+n

44. Set the page  to international paper and choose A4 portrait as for indesign click on landscape if for it to be double page spread and put a ruler in the middle 145cm-160cm

55. Use the magnifier tool to zoom in

66. click view then the rulers to make a make a margin or a rule line then hover over the rulers and drag them in towards the page to create a 1cm boarder- one on each side.

7 7. Drag guides from the rulers: guides do not appear on print, they just help with the layout and placement.

8 8.  ctrl + T to scale an image

9 9. press shift while scaling the picture

110.  double click on text layer then windows then change adjustments colour overlay for the text layering

   11. on Indesign: I find out how to make the image clear by right clicking on the image and then going to display performance, then to high definition performance.

Test run on adobe indesign by Vivian

File Sharing Music Magazine Double page spread

File sharing and illegal downloading research

File sharing and illegal downloading.

Positives

File sharing increases the popularity and fame of the music industry, advertise artist with a wider variety of choice for music. Teenagers want everything fast with the new technology. You are more likely to save money. Music lovers reach music as it becomes released instead of waiting for a quite long period for the music to be released in retails. Media ownership is a process whereby fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media. Contemporary research demonstrates increasing levels of consolidation, with many media industries already dominated by number of firms.

Negatives

·         Gives a rise to copyright and piracy issues.

·         Reduces the sale figure of music companies.

·         If stealing an album from a music store is wrong then downloading illegally should be too.

·         Artists’ gain less money from their record label already, and you file share and download illegally your favourite artist does not gain much.

Ed sheeran – 33 million albums and 10 million singles were downloaded illegally in the first six months in 2012. In the UK his music has been rated first for most illegally downloaded music. 110 million single tracks were downloaded in 2008.

·         800,000 jobs in the creative industries out of 1.8million in total are threatened.

·         Figures show that digital album downloads have grown with 15 albums selling more than 100,000 digital copies in 2011

Shakira, the Colombian singer stated that 'File sharing is a gift’, as it brings her closer to her fans. ‘I like what's going on because I feel closer to the fans and the people who appreciate the music’. Lily Allen   'I think music piracy is having a dangerous effect on British music’ Opposing those who download music illegally "And music is a gift. That's what it should be, a gift."

In conclusion, File sharing does not have an impact on the music industry. As broadband began to grow so did artists. The internet provides more ‘shelf space’ for media or digital products and can provide for more audiences. Artists promote themselves free of charge. File-sharing enables new artists to make income for their ambitions, they become popular the effects of this is more turn outs at concerts. I have a friend who uploads his talents on Youtube, We all know that youtube has a converter site. Artists who became notices through file sharing such as Ed sheeran and Lily Allen were noticed through file sharing but why does Lily Allen oppose people who file share. She is contradicting herself because she file shares too and her courier started by file sharing. No government should have a right of shutting off anyone’s access to the internet or fining because of piracy.

Production Schedule

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/678340

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/production-schedule--45

Production schedule


The production schedule helped me to plan my magazine and keep up to date with my work.
I was able to produce my research  on my blog and improve on my work. Also if I was behind on the work I would go back to my timeline to get back on track.

Evaluation of my Journalistic Task

Evaluation

My research skills were useful, I was able to get my information through the bbc.co.uk, digitalspy.co.uk/music/news¸dailymail.co.uk, and telegraph.co.uk, and the right statistics which was tangible.  I was capable of researching the target audience genre for the press pack. My weaknesses were getting the dates of when the article was written, this was not important. It took me quite long to find which artist had the same opinion with me on file sharing.   In my Journalistic and writing skills, my strengths were to get the right information and reaching the word limit, also improving my writing so it makes sense. My opinions on the topic of file sharing helped me to write my conclusion. I was able to introduce some facts and statistics

The (ID) InDesign skills I have learnt are how to place a picture on the page; getting the font to be large. My strengths were arranging the image to be behind a text and also making the quality of the image high resolution on the page. Also I was able to use the layout and structure well, Differentiate the image rectangle to the banner box. Also I could find the preview presentation button to look at my presentation form another perspective. My weaknesses were not saving my work after I put something new in my magazine.  While I was transferring my journalistic writing to InDesign, I didn’t have enough space for my images which had a large size and was not jpeg. I did not use the whole page on InDesign. The Web publishing strengths; exporting the journalism writing strengths and weaknesses were the colours on my page looked dull and did not match the type of Glamour magazine aimed at women. In addition I did not have a captivating title.

Audience feedback was helpful because there are good critics, so I can improve on my magazine. For further improvements I can add more colours to my magazine to satisfy the audience Use the space on my magazine more, transport images after getting my journalistic writing on InDesign. The table of websites for file sharing takes up much space and it would be better if I made a colourful table or list of websites for file sharing instead. Adding a captivating title which would get the reader to read the article.