Question 1:LifeStyle and Fashion, were the genres I chose for my magazine. This is because, those genres are ones of the most popular and mainstream among magazine readers. Some of my inspirations in this genre were “GQ”, “Esquire” and “Men’s Fashion”. Something that attracted my attention of these magazines was the importance of clothing, and lighting used, especially for the front cover. On my front cover first draft I decided to use a young male model, as the target audience I wanted to reach are male between 16 and 24. I decided to use more informal clothing, trying to convey the mixture of maturity, but youth at the same time, as this theme is sometimes quested by these magazines, because the idea of looking younger is very present in society, so I wanted to show that, however, I didn’t pay as much attention to the background of the picture.Therefore, I retook my cover picture, with a plain background, which is more usual in those type of magazines, as well as more conventional mise en scene elements such as more appropriate clothing, gestures and other accessories, like the watch for example, which conveys more “seriousness” and “Grown-Up” connotations. The shot was a mid shot, for the audience to pay more attention to the direct address of the model, which helps the audience visualize the cover and get a better idea of the magazine’s theme. For the coverlines, I decided to use the “typical” coverlines, the audience are used to see in lifestyle magazines, such as interviews, fashion tips, and healthy life. This is why I decided to use Navy Blue for them, which conveys masculinity and is also associated with health, power and control. The masthead is ‘Style Today’, I chose this name because it is direct and clear, and just by reading it, you can know the genre of the magazine, and it helps the audience to identify it easily, making everyone know that ‘Today’ could be the time to change their style. This name also gives an idea of being aware of the newest trends and news up to ‘Today’. The font used for this masthead was ‘Impact’, as it continues along the lines of being direct and clear, and keeps the idea of masculinity. After trying out lots of different colours for the masthead, I decided to use this type of grey, with white underneath, to make it stand out and look more three-dimensional, like the idea of superimposing the model over the masthead (use of overlay) which I think is an interesting way of making it stand out. For my contents page, I took inspiration from other magazines, some of the same genre , and other different genres too. My two main inspirations were GQ, from where I took the idea using the rule of thirds and organizing the text in columns depending on its theme because, in my opinion, it is much easier for the reader to know where to look the themes they are interested in. Also Cyclist magazine, from which I took the idea of having my pictures forming sort of a mosaic. I liked this way of arranging the images because It gives the audience a very clear and direct idea of the magazine contents. I initially had this green and orange colour scheme for my contents page, but finally I changed it to follow the cover colour scheme, and make it look more serious and sophisticated. For my double page spread, I decided to have the text in columns, and one page, for images and a sort piece of text which is a preview of the interview on the next page. One of my images is a full shot of the celebrity, who is a rockstar. I have chosen a rockstar, because it conveys that idea of youth and wildness, and music is linked directly to fashion and lifestyle, so I decided to have a full shot for the audience to see his look. As the model is between 16 and 24, it will make the audience feel identified with him, and will keep transmitting the idea of unlimited youth. My other image is a panoramic view of the landscape where the interview is set in, which gives more colour and freshness sensation which characterizes this genre of magazines. Question 2:To determine a target audience, I made several surveys to get different ideas of the age, gender, favourite magazine genre, and favourite contents in a magazine, such as interviews, tips, adverts…Finally, It came out that the majority of the surveyed people were male between 16 and 24 years old, with main interest in interviews, who consume fashion and lifestyle magazines weekly, although they are also interested in sports. My audience’s social grades A, B and E, who are mainly succeeders and mainstreamers, like high managerial people and students. These kind of readers are represented by magazines of this same genre, such as GQ, Sharp and Men’s Fashion. In my pictures, I included some “high-class” mise-en-scene conventions, such as suits, posh watches and vintage cars, as well as some peculiar places, which convey the social status of the magazine readers. Another important convention was the direct gaze used in many of my pictures, which captures visual attention and makes the audience remember the product they are looking at. My magazine would be available in physical stores, however, there will be a digital platform, where the readers could receive the magazine through a subscription, wich will also include special editions that could not be found in physical shops. This is because my main audience are male between 16 and 24, therefore, they will be used to manage new technologies, and media, and will probably prefer it. But it will also be available in physical shops for the secondary target audience, which would be older male. Question 3:By doing this project I developed various skills, mainly editing, with programs such as Pixlr, and the importance of the combination of colour schemes, fonts and mise en scene elements, such as clothing, gestures, camera angles, lighting and direct address to reach a certain objective. Especially in the genre that I have chosen, where usually pictures are taken in interior settings, with high key lighting and mainly mid shots. Something very important is clothing, which is usually formal clothes like suits, and a pose that conveys self-confidence. As I said, the main editing software that I have used for my layout and editing was Pixlr. With this software I have mainly edited some pictures, to change contrast, brightness or colour balance, as well as cropping unwanted elements of certain photographs, to make it more plain and uniform, or using the stamp and the colouring and rubbing tools to retouch different details. I have also learnt how to make different effects, such as the overlay effect, by rubbing out part of the masthead to make the model look as if he was standing out from the picture. I also used platforms like DaFont to get a much bigger variety of fonts to make a decision that could adjust better to my ideas. So , in this project I developed this variety of different skills, but also a big amount of knowledge, involved in Fashion and Lifestyle, which I achieved by research and by trying out different options for certain purposes. Question 4:The main software used for the whole editing, as I said, is Pixlr, which I found very useful, and it allowed me to save my work as editable layers, to continue working on it, or as full resolution images, to be able to upload to my blog with better quality, you have a very different variety of tools and options, and one thing that I found very useful was that I could open several images I was working on, to compare how different options looked.
I also used Powerpoint, to have a greater variety of fonts, but in specific cases I downloaded them from DaFont, to get more ‘artistic’, or simply ‘original’ fonts, as different users upload their fonts to this site, and it is very difficult to use the same one as somebody else, therefore it makes your work more exclusive. For the research of my target audience I used Google Forms, to make a survey, and send it out to different people to know about their preferences as magazine genres; or basic information about them, like the age and gender of the surveyed people, this was what defined my target audience. Then, on weebly I made my plan getting all of these Ideas together, to get to the final finished product. The equipment used for the shooting was a Lumix DMC-FZ28, which is a bridge camera, and for the most spontaneous shots I used my mobile phone camera, which is a One Plus 5t, in which I used the PROMode to change the ISOs and WBs depending on the brightness and warmness I wanted to achieve in each picture.
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