Photo shoot planning

Now that you have started to produce the mock-ups for your front cover you need to begin planning for the photos that you will need to take for the front cover in your own photo shoots.  These photos will need to feature people that will be convincing as musical artists. They will also need to feature props and costumes that will make them look relevant to a music magazine.   You will need to consider the location and how to light that location. Using a white sheet as a backdrop can be an effective tool to create the illusion of a photography studio.  You will need to try a few ideas for camera shots and try different costumes and looks.  You should aim to take 3 different approaches that you can then develop into mock-ups.  You should take many more photos than you need.  

Use the template below to help you plan these photos.

  

Homework

To complete 6 layout ideas for the front cover of your music magazine.

These need to be different to the designs you produced for your school magazine.

Please complete and upload to your blog for Tuesday 22nd November.

Mock-up for front cover of your music magazine

We are now going to start generating some mock-up ideas for our front cover for the music magazine.  Using a photo of a music artist that we source from google images we are going to layout the information for the front cover to follow the key conventions.  Select an appropriate font, colour and house style to suit the sub-genre of your music magazine. Make sure that you experiment and try things out.  When finished uploads the ideas to your blog.

NME brand identity, ideology and Q magazine

Developing a Brand Identity and Brand Values for your music magazine

All of the magazines featured on this blog have a very distinct and definitive brand identity.

Brand identity is how all the elements that contribute to the visual appearance work together to distinguish that brand in the mind of the audience/ consumer.  This could be the  use of colour, fonts, style of imagery, layout and house style.  All successful brands work very hard to establish this recognition within their audience/ target market.

How is the brand identity of the magazine presented?

Is it cool, sophisticated, minimal, elegant, opulent, young, messy, informal, modern, tasteful, controversial, interesting, unusual, challenging? 

Your job is to do the same for your music magazine.  You want it to be original, unique and distinctive from other brands.  You want it to make a clear statement that is going to appeal  to your target audience and you want it to display the core brand values. 

Brand values are things that are deemed important by a brand, the things that it stands for and it represents.

For example; youthful, fun, excitement, future, modernity, fashion, style, technology, charity, generosity, establishment, originality, ideas, culture, social activity, edginess

In relation to a music magazine it is clear that it will value the genre(s) of music it represents. Consider how NME establishes its brand values.

It is built upon a love for new music, for supporting young and upcoming talent that are true to the basics of live music.  It values the joy that music brings to life and the excitement of finding new artists that inspire and innovate.  Think about how they approach this.

You now need to start to establish the brand identity and brand values for your own music magazine but before that do an analysis of the brand identify and brand values of one existing music magazine other than NME.

Moodboard for photos for your music magazine

To create the look and feel for your music magazine you will need to ensure you capture good quality photos that are relevant to the style and genre of your proposed magazine. They will need to be clearly relevant to the genre of music magazines.  This may mean the use of instruments as props.  You will certainly need to consider the representation of your subject with the use of hair, make-up, costume, location, lighting etc.

The moodboard should be a collage of images that you might potentially use as inspiration for your own photos.  It should include a wide range with a variety of shot types and angles.

Refer to to the examples below to help develop your ideas.