Double Page Spread Research

There are many different features that are used in the double page spreads of music magazines. Some magazines have double page spreads where a picture takes up a whole page, some have many different pictures of mixed sizes all over the page, and some have a main picture in the middle of the page with a smaller one to the side. They are all different and there are many features that I could use from different magazines to help create my double page spread.

This is a double page spread from NME magazine. The picture covers all of the right hand page and a tiny portion of the left hand page in the centre. The white background of the image continues throughout the double page spread and this element is taken in the pull quote. The pull quote has a black block around it, which creates a contrast, making it stand out. The black border around the quote also keeps with a colour scheme of the double page spread as it matches the colour of Lily Allen's hair and parts of her shirt. The pull quote is also very different to the rest of the text on the page; it consists of each letter being of the same font, but different sized and aligned slightly off from each other. This grabs the readers attention and pulls them in to read the article.

There are also other features that are unique to the magazine including the how the name of the artist and the writer are in red, and the date of publication of the magazine and the NME logo are placed at the bottom of the page next to the page number. I think that something like this on the double page spread of my music magazine would work well as a design feature.

This is a double page spread from MixMag. You can see that the layout of this double page spread is different to that of NME. The picture only covers half of the double page spread, and is one one page. There is a lot more text on this double page spread, and it has a more formal look as the main title is all the same font and is the same size. The way that the pull quote is used on this double page spread is different to the one in NME. This one is very plain and simply laid out. It doesn't jump out at you. The simple dark text on the white background does however make it stand out, and a key feature on the page.

Another few features that this double page spread has is the banner along the top of the page with text telling you what section of the magazine it is, and what type of article it it, in this case it is a VIP Q+A. The title text is very bold and underlined. This ensures that it is the first thing the reader sees when they open the double page spread. The artists name is also highlighted which is a feature that is also present in the NME double page spread. One other thing that differs between the two double page spreads is that the MixMag DPS has another picture inserted to look like a polaroid which is also has text wrap around it. You can also see that at the beginning of both double page spread articles there is a drop cap. In the magazines they both use the font that is consistent with the house style of the magazine, but then move on to a normal font for the rest of the article.

Contents Page Research

There are many different types of contents pages for music magazine, usually based around the genre of music that the magazine is covering. Some contents pages have lots of pictures, but some have very few pictures. An example of a magazine that has a lot of pictures on the front page is Kerrang. Kerrang is a rock magazine and it's contents page contains a lot of pictures, which makes it stand out and in your face, much like the music genre. NME and Q magazine are indie/alternative and popular music magazines respectively. They use less pictures and put more text in the contents page, making it feel more subdued and relaxed which is what the music genre tends to be like.

Based on this I think that I will add less pictures (around 2) and have more text. Some magazines have images of an album cover or album artist and have a section set aside to talk about the album. I think I will put this in my magazine as it is a very good idea, and will be a good addition to my contents page asides from just stories.

On these magazines (Kerrang, bottom, NME, bottom right and Q, right) you can see that the contents pages are split into a number of columns, usually two or three, to contain the text. I think that by using three columns I will be able to fit more stories into the contents page. If I only have two columns in my contents page the text would have to be very large to fill in all the white space, and could end up looking quite unprofessional. For this reason I will probably put three columns into my contents page.

Contents Page Design

Here is my initial design for my contents page. Overall I am fairly happy with the design but I think that if I keep exactly to the design it may end up looking quite empty. This is because I have only put in two columns of text that is quite large compared to the text on my front page design. I may re-design my contents page and split the page into three columns.

I like the positioning of where I am going to put the two photos as they will grab the readers attention, but won't dominate the whole of the page. The overall design of the contents page means that I can fit a lot of information and stories in it. I researched into the average number of pages in a weekly music magazine and found that on average there are between 60-70 pages. I will now be able to make the page numbers of the articles in the contents page seem more realistic. The border around each section of the contents page is also good as it makes each part stand out and clearly separates them from other sections.

Here is the original, unedited picture that I intend to use for the main story in my contents page. It is quite similar to the image on my front page, but the model is wearing different clothing and is in a different position. I will put the photo exactly where I did in the flat plan of my contents page as I think this is easily relatable to the image on the front page.

Here you can see the original, unedited picture that I intend to use for an album cover on the bottom of my contents page in the review section. I want to be able to make this picture look like it is from a real album cover so I will crop it down to 340 x 340 and then add in some effects on photoshop, as you never see album covers as just a plain image.

Here are some album covers that I think will work well on my contents page, so I will try to take some elements from all of them to create my own album cover.

Music Magazine Photo Research

To find out what sort of clothing I wanted my models to wear for the magazine photos I did some research into what people linked with the drum and bass / dubstep genre tend to wear.


Through looking at pictures of some well known artists such as Skream, Nero, Sub Focus and Chase and Status. From looking at these pictures you can see that they all wear quite plain clothes that aren't too formal, but aren't too casual. There is a clear style for the genre of music that will feature in my magazine so I will dress my model similarly. Most dubstep and drum and bass artists, however, are usually heard more than they are seen so I wanted to add something to my picture to make it seem like my magazine is trying to uncover these artists. I tried to add this feel into the picture I was going to use for my front cover so decided that my model should wear a hat, which is also loosely linked in with this genre of music. I think that this has made my picture suited to the genre of music and makes the front cover of my magazine look more realistic.


Here you can see the original (left) and the edited (right) versions of the photo I intend to use for the front cover of my magazine.
In Photoshop I selected my model using the magnetic lasso tool so that only he was edited. I then changed the brightness and contrast so that I had the right amount of lighting in my photo and then changed the exposure and offset in order to give the person some colour. I also left the background in desaturated which make him stand out. I have also used the spot healing tool to remove any blemishes on my model's face. After all of the changes I have made to the original photo, I now think that this picture will work quite well on the cover of my music magazine.


Here are some examples of other artists that feature in the gene of music that I am basing my magazine on:

<<< Chase and Status

Nero >>>

<<< Sub Focus

                Skream >>>

Drum & Bass Research

Drum and Bass, often shortened to D&B or D+B, is a sub genre of electronic music that consists of fast break beats and heavy bass and sub bass lines. It originated in the late 1980s in London and Bristol as a different take to rave and jungle music. The noticeable differences to dubstep is that there are a lot faster beats, and is usually slightly more vocals in a drum and bass track.


Drum and bass hasn't been a successful in mainsream popularity, much like dubstep, but has seen the popularity increasing in recent years.


Some examples of artists currently creating drum and bass are:


Pendulum

Shy FX

Sub Focus

Danny Byrd

Dubstep Research

Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that consists of "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals". Dubstep started out as mainly an underground scene, but gained more mainstream popularity in the late 2000s. More often than not, there will be limited vocals in a dubstep track, with most of the focus being on the music.


Some of the most popular dubstep artists making music now are:


Chase & Status

Benga

Skream

Modestep

UK Tribes Research

According to the UK Tribes Website, UK Tribes was created in 2005, when Channel 4 commissioned Crowd DNA to run a project called TV Glue, which looked to measure how TV could remain a unifying source in the midst of media fragmentation.

One small aspect of this project looked at youth culture and offered a tribal breakdown based on the social glues (music, sport, fashion, technology etc) around which young people gather. This is how UK Tribes was born.

The main social groups can be broken down into different tribes with five main categories that are broken down even further into smaller sub-categories. There are currently 25 different tribes in total. These are:

Aspiration Mainstream:

• Trendies
• Rahs

Mainstream:

• Ravers
• Townies
• Chavs
• Boy Racers
• Sport Junkies
• Street Rats
• Casuals

Urban:

• Get Paid Crew
• Blingers
• DIYers
• Trackies

Alternative:

• Gamers
• Emos
• Scene Kids
• Skaters
• Metalheads
• Young Alts

Leading Edge:

• Hipsters
• Geeks
• Craft Kids
• Indie Scenesters