Welcome to my Media Studies Portfolio

Hello my name is Rachael McInerney and I am a Media Studies student at the Douay Martyrs School.

My portfolio will be based on Music Magazines, and i will be presenting my research and planning, my preliminary task and my final front cover peice with my double page spread including the contents page.

Mission Statement For School Magazine

For my Preliminary task, I had to create a school magazine for Sixth Former's.

I called my school magazine 'Martyrs Mag' and made a mission statement to describe my magazine to show what will be included, and how it will benefit readers within the sixth form.

My magazine is called ‘Martyrs Mag’. Martyrs Mag is aimed for sixth form students who attend The Douay Martyrs School and represents dedicated and hard working students. This magazine will help and benefit these students in many ways whilst they spend their time at sixth form and possibly give them the further confidence they need to push themselves to exceed. There are many goals i have with this magazine some of them are; providing information to students which is relevant to my audience, to entertain its readers, and also to give students any tips they need or are concerned about. This magazine will include many tops such as ‘Top Ten Courses’ this will help and benefit students with choosing the right courses for them and there abilities, a gossip page, where students can find out the latest common room gossip, who’s dating and who’s not, and many more entertaining and beneficial pages. The style of this magazine will be a sophisticated one with a bubbly edge to it. The layout will be well set out and clear so therefore all information will be easy to read and eye catching to the readers. The colour scheme will be suitable to the age group but not too vibrant which is suitable for young adults. This magazine will be released every week to keep students drawn to the product; there will also be special issues at times such as Christmas, Easter, exam seasons and many more. The Martyrs Mag has a promise that it will also maintain to deliver the suitable information students need, to entertain and to provide help and support.

Target Audience Profile For School Magazine

For my Preliminary task, I also created a Target Audience Profile.

The  Target Audience profile gave me a clear understanding of what my audience is like and what they want within a school magazine. It also discusses personality traits as well as hobbies they enjoy.

Target Audience

My Target Audience for my magazine will be aimed at sixth form students; male and female, within the ages of 16-18. The professional status of my target audience are still in school undertaking in full education with maybe a part time job to earn some money. 

There personality traits are outgoing and bubbly, they have lots of friends which they love spending time with, yet they are still dedicated to school making sure all work is done to keep them organised. My target audience has many hobbies and interests such as for the girls, spending time with friends, shopping, doing any sporting activities or outside of school activities like dancing or gymnastics, and for the boys there hobbies may be playing football, hanging out with their mates, and again doing any sporting or out of school activities.  Their attitudes to education are dedicated, organised, persistent to always try, always punctual and very outgoing.

 My target audience will use my magazine for when they are in the common room during their free time, to pick up, sit down relax and have a read through the weekly magazine in which will be offered to all sixth form students. This magazine will cater for to each of my audience’s needs and will refer to any interests they enjoy.

The audience of my magazine will have a variety of personalities, and these may range from an outgoing, bubbly, caring and sweet personality to a humorous, dedicated and intelligent one. Inside my magazine will include various articles and which will include studying tips, job tips if you are looking to seek work how to make the most of your free periods at school, the top ten courses to study and common room gossip to keep students entertained. All these are key things that will help to keep the audience entertained and to help and teach its audience in many different situations. 

School Magazine Mock Ups

Here are my School Magazine Mock Up's, below are the mock ups for my Front Cover, and Contents Page.

School Magazine Front Cover

This is my Final Front Cover for my school magazine. I decided to stick to three colour's for the colour scheme, these being grey, black and a burgundy colour. This is so there is a structured layout throughout the page, keeping it consistent and simple. The sell lines I used are a mixture of fun and educational, as well as some tips on finding jobs outside of school, which shows the overall purpose and feel to the magazine.

I made this front cover using Adobe Photoshop where I had the selection of many tools in order to help make my front cover piece. 

The Main Task - Music Magazine

Once I had finished my school magazine, I then was able to start my main task - creating my own music magazine.

Below are some examples of research I carried out of all different types of genres of music magazines.

Within my own Music Magazine, I will use many conventions like these magazines below have done in order to get my magazine to a professional standard.  

Mission Statement For Music Magazine

Mission Statement

Rythmic is a new and exhilarating magazine that has been created and written to celebrate the successes of women in the music industry. The name of this magazine is not a lifestyle magazine, but yet one that is completely music related with all the contents of it. Nevertheless the magazine still achieves at capturing the idea that this magazine will take notes of how far women have succeeded in the music industry as it was once dominated by men and male artists.

Over the years, there have been a numerous amount of professional, confident, powerful and talented females that have been introduced to the music industry and have succeeded making an impact not just through their talent but through their confidence, brilliance and determination and it is therefore women like this that will feature within the pages of this magazine. 

This magazine will be distributed every month at a cost of £2.50. It will be found in all newsagents and supermarkets, but it will also be available to buy in some fashion stores and music stores. I decided to distribute the music magazine within fashion stores as well as music stores as this is where the readers will be spending most of their free time due to their hobbies being mainly fashion and music. There will also be the option of subscribing to this magazine either by post of via the magazine’s website. 

www.rythmicmagazine.co.uk

Features that will be provided on Rythmic's website are polls to vote so my readers can vote on what they would like to feature within the next issue, Tour dates of some RnB artists, Celebrities that are loyal to the magazine giving readers an update on their daily lives through the uses of twitter, music festivals available in the year, a gallery where readers can go online and see images of their favourite artists and many other features.

Rythmic is mostly a music magazine and this will be portrayed through its content. Inside will be many things to appeal to the readers; new releases, album and concert/gig reviews, interviews, posters and pictures, gossip, fashion and many inspiring female artists. The readers will enjoy reading many interviews of their favourite artists about how they have had their ‘claim to fame’ within the music industry. This magazine will satisfy and meet to the needs/general interests of its target readership and will include many features such as the latest fashion items worn and favoured by female RnB musicians who will be included in the contents of this magazine. These female artists not only succeed professionally in the music industry but also are represented as trend setters who inspire many fashion choices of female fans everywhere. The magazine will display this with a page full of the latest fashion, and fashion tips also featuring accessories, hair and makeup.

Each issue of rythmic magazine will feature some sort of ‘freebie’. As a magazine we will want to reward and treat its readers for buying and reading this magazine, ‘freebie’s’ will  include; free downloads or free CDs featuring new releases of tracks from current and aspiring RnB artists. There will also be chances to win prizes within every issue of rythmic magazine such as; concert or gig tickets and meeting their favourite artists. Readers of this magazine will always have unlimited access to the magazines own website, which they can freely use whenever they wish to do so to keep them updated with any music news.

Included in this magazine will be a variety of successful RnB artists including females and males that appeal to women readers.There will be a special emphasis on the female artists displaying what they have succeeded but also portraying these women as figures of aspiration to our readers, due to their individuality, confidence and successes as performers.

Very much like its readers and the artists that are featured within it, rhythm is a sophisticated yet unique magazine. This will appeal to our readers as it is a sophisticated and modern magazine but with a seductive and friendly edge which will offer an entertaining approach. This will all appeal to young women who have similar qualities so that therefore they will be able to relate to the content of the magazine and enjoy reading it within their spare time.