College magazine mock up

Here is my college magazine mock up I created on Microsoft publisher, I attempted to add as many magazine features as I could so it would appeal to my audience. The magazine includes puffs, motto's, captions, images, tag lines, headlines, a masthead, date line, pugs and features. I tried to put as much in because the Deyes High School newsletter was bland and uninteresting. For my images I will be using photos as I wanted the newsletter to reflect on being modern so it appeals to everyone, which is what I think Deyes High's lacked in with the line drawing as it looked traditional. I have attempted to put enough information to entice the reader, but not too much to make it appear cluttered that the audience might think its too much in detail. If it did have too much detail, then it may not appeal to students and my target audience is intended for both parents and students.

Magazine terminology

Buzz Words: "Wow", "Exclusive", "Free" are all examples of this.
Puffs: Colourful boxes promoting features inside. 
House Style: A magazine's distinctive design that distinguishes it from its competitors.
Strap Line: A slogan
Banner: Text which stands out on a coloured background generally at the bottom of the magazine.
Copy: The Main Story in the Magazine.
Anchorage Text: The way in which text helps to pin down the meaning of a picture and vice versa.
Pugs: Placed at the top left and right corners of the paper and are known as the 'ears' of the page. The price of the paper, the logo or a promotion are often positioned there.
Motto: Memorable phrase that is recognisable to a brand
Headline: Catchy Title for the main article
Sell Lines: Text on the front cover that helps to sell the magazine to the audience.
Caption: Description of the main image
Masthead: Name of the magazine
Lead: The introductory paragraph of an article. Usually written in bold or capitals.
Drop Capitals: Really big letter that starts off an article.
Bleed: The extension of an illustration beyond the type area to the edge of the page.

Break of the Book: The allocation of space for articles, features, and all material printed in the book.

Folio: The page number, date, and name of the periodical on each page or spread.

Newsletter analysis

Deyes High School newsletter

In our media lesson we had to annotate two different newsletters from Deyes High School and St Ambrose Barlow, using media terminology and weighing up the pros and cons.
The image of the Deyes High School newsletter is plain and bland, this is due to the lack of colour. The house style of the newsletter is black and white with a pencil line drawing of the school, the image is out dated and looks different as it is today, this gives an impression that the school isn't modern. The pencil drawing makes the newsletter look formal and traditional, reflecting on discipline of the school. The masthead is a serif font which reflects on being formal, but an unorganised feature of the newsletter is that it has three different fonts, for the masthead of 'DEYES HIGH SCHOOL' then for the 'Specialist Science College' and then in comic sans for 'NEWSLETTER 2 DECEMBER 2010', it makes the newsletter seem 'tacky' and thrown together. The newsletter looks like its trying to be traditional and modern with the mix of fonts, but overall it just looks incompetent. The anchorage of the newsletter is good as it has a logo for the specialist science text, this makes it seem like a puff as it is an academic advantage to the school. The logo of the specialist science college doesn't match with the style the school is trying to give off, as the science logo is a cartoon which looks like its from clipart and doesn't look professional. I think if the style matched with each other then the newsletter would look consistent instead of separate. I think the newsletter should have more magazine features such as puffs, mottos, such as the code of conduct, and colour to make the audience want to read it and to make it appeal to sudents. The colour of the newsletter could be the schools primary colours of blue, white and red, this way it gives the newsletter a memorable, recogniseable style.




St Ambrose Barlow newsletter


This is an image of St Ambrose Barlow's newsletter, as you can see there is a significant difference in how the layout is represented and it has more magazine cover features than Deyes High's newsletter. The images are photos and are in colour which gives it a realistic, modern approach to the school, the fact that they are in colour will appeal more to students. Assuming that the primary colours of St Ambrose Barlow is red with the logo in the corner, it gives me the impression that this is the house style. The masthead is eye-catching with the red and black clashing against each other, this arrangement makes the newsletter recognisable. Like the Deyes newsletter, the font of the text is inconsistent, the fonts are different in the motto, article and pug, in which I think it is an attempt of being modern and professional to appeal to young and older audiences. The motto 'Developing potential in a Christian Community' gives the newsletter a statement, hopefully something that becomes embedded in the audiences minds. The copy of 'Joanna's Garden' is clear of its purpose with the headline, since the article is about a student, comic sans reflects on a young audience being sans-serif. Another point about the copy is that the lead is expected to be in bold to introduce the article, but instead all of it is and this seems tedious to read as the lead is supposed to stand out to set the scene. A similarity between the two newsletters is that they both have 'A specialist science college' which acts as a puff,  along with the 'Summer Edition' which could be classified as a sell line.
I think there is room for improvement in this newsletter, I think all the text should be the same font and the lead of the article should be in bold to pull the audience in. The house style of the newsletter is better though as it has a consistent theme throughout of red and black which makes it unique and distinguished.

Cohen's Moral Panic

A moral panic is the feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order and conventions. Deviant groups were named by Stanley Cohen in 1971 as folk devils (them v.s us), moral panics in the media are divided into three sections; occurrence and signification, wilder social implications and social control.
Occurrence and signification is an event which randomly occurs and the media thinks its worthy to publish, the event is signified as worrying to people, which is how it gets its attention.
Wilder social implications are connections made between events which start as an occurrence and extend to a bigger story, the audience start to focus on the subject, for example 'knife crime is on the up'.

Taylor Momsen, age 7, in The Grinch

Social control is when a moral panic has a resolution, this normally involves in changing the law, this therefore satisfies the audience who feel empowered by the media.
Features of a moral panic are:
Concern- When a certain group or subject causes negativity on society.
Consensus- Acceptance that the group in question of moral panic will pose a threat to society.
Disproportionality- Inconsistent action by the accused group to the moral panic.
Hostility- Division in society, between the accused group (folk devils) and the rest of the population.
Volatility- When a moral panic is unpredictable and disappears due to a decline in the media.

Taylor Momsen now age 17

Taylor Momsen is seen as a social threat to mothers who think Momsen is a negative example for children and teenagers. She stars in the younger audience's programmes and films, such as The Grinch and Gossip girl. Yet only at age 17, Momsen smokes, dresses provocatively and admitted in an interview that she carries a knife around with her. The link for the interview is here. The feature for moral panic in this case in my opinion is consensus as Momsen does state in the interview, "I didn't get into this to be a role model for seven-year-olds. I have no interest in doing that.". Therefore the population has to accept this and face the consequences if young females choose to follow her. Even though she can smoke and dress the way she wants to, it is only natural for young females to want to aspire to be like her, in which she doesn't wish for. 

Feminism

Pixie Lott in FHM's music issue

Laura Mulvey created the theory called the male gaze in 1975. The gaze is how an audience views the people presented on a magazine. For feminists it can be looked at in three different ways; how men look at women, how women look at themselves and how women see other women. Mulvey thought that women played a passive part and men played an active part in any advertisement, women were seen as objects, Mulvey distinguishes between two modes of looking for the film spectator: voyeuristic and fetishistic. 
Voyeuristic looking involves a controlling gaze and Mulvey argues that this has has associations with sadism: ‘pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt', turning someone into an object to make them beautiful. 
Fetishistic looking, in contrast, involves the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. Women are often treated as an object, an example of this was Marilyn Monroe who was celebrated for her looks but got pressured by the media to becoming the perfect icon.

Nicole Scherzinger in Blender

In 2010, Lady Gaga's Q magazine photo shoot was deemed too racy and was banned in the US and in 2009 Lily Allens Q photo shoot was also seen as too provocative. When NME saw this they thought to challenge the attention and chose feminist and music artist Beth Ditto to model, this went against the social conventions and people were shocked and this was the reaction wanted. 

'Men don't know what it feels like to be a woman and be expected to look a particular way,' the Gossip star tells NME.
 Unlike these pictures of Nicole Schersinger and Pixie Lott which are expected nowadays from 'skinny' role models, Ditto's photo shoot was a statement, an objectification masquerading as empowerment. Ditto carries on by saying "I popped into my local Co-Op this morning to buy a loaf and I couldn't help notice that all the copies of this week's NME were turned backwards. I asked the manager if this was a matter of policy and he confirmed it was. "There's been a dozen complaints already," he said. 

Beth Ditto in NME in 2009 and in LOVE in 2010

Semiotic theory

Semiotic theory was invented by Ferdinand De Saussre, Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: a 'signifier' - the form which the sign takes; and the 'signified' - the concept it represents. It is how a person responds when seeing a certain imag, colour, pattern or even hearing a sound. Saussure quotes "The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary." 

Semiotics are usually divided into three catergories:

Semantics- The relation between signs and things to which they refer their meaning.

Syntactics- The relation among signs in formal structures.

Pragmatics- Relation between signs and the effects they have on people who use them.

The process is:

Sign > Signifier > Signified

For example:

The rain > Melancholic music > Depressing

For my music magazine I will be using semiotics, probably not refering to pragmatics as I want the signs and effects of my magazine to be positive. Using images, colour of background, text to be appealing to my intended audience. My magazine will be R&B based as there isn't a magazine aimed at this particular genre, I think more people would buy music magazines if there was a range in genres, the colour scheme will be bold, I am undecided of what colours I will be using on my magazine as it will probably change as the magazine processes.

Qualitative and quantitative research

When creating my music magazine, I need to research what the audience prefers in a magazine. Two methods are qualitative and quantitative research.


Qualitative research is used to explore and understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and interactions. It generates non- numerical data, for example in music magazines understanding why the audience buys them. Qualitative research can be time consuming and faces difficulties with showing the reliability when dealing with case studies, but it makes the research of better quality like using images and videos. It seeks a wider understanding of the entire situation. As it is attitudes, behaviour and experiences which are important, fewer people take part in the research, but the contact with these people tends to last a lot longer.

Qualitative research diagram

Quantitative research generates numerical data or data that can be converted into numbers, for example in music magazines, how many people buy them. This type of research reaches many more people, but the contact with those people is much quicker than it is in qualitative research. Quantitative research can contain large amounts of statistics but it will have to be explained if wanting to go into further depth with the information. Quantitative research can include market research such as surveys or questionnaires, the questions are normally closed and if your questions are linked to each other and are similar, you can build up a clear picture of what your result is to be.

Quantitative research from Q magazine

I think I will be using both quantitative and qualitative research as I want to go in depth with my magazine as much as I can to meet the audience's needs.