Magazine Production

Fashion & Lifestyle Magazine Research

For my magazine production, the chosen genre I am going to produce is a fashion and lifestyle magazine. It will mirror the simplistic but high-quality approach that magazines such as GQ and Esquire follow. It will focus on both fashion and lifestyle, spreading out into subjects such as music, film and sport. I have researched numerous fashion magazine covers, specifically ones that succeed in a simplistic approach but still can draw in customers.  Such as:

• GQ
• Esquire
• i-D
• Vogue
• British Vogue
• Vanity Fair

Purpose Of My Magazine

The purpose of my magazine would encourage men that you can live a stylish life at a lower cost than most fashion magazines suggest. The world talks about looking stylish and living the life of luxury having it come at an expensive cost because the high retailed brands are the 'only' ones making these types of clothes, when in fact many cheaper options can achieve the same look.

Front Covers

From all the front covers I researched, the magazine known as i-D is the simplistic style I will be taking inspiration from. This magazine works so well in that it uses a model that everyone recognises, so its focus needs to of a large scale in contrast to the masthead and sell lines. My approach will follow this method and I will intend to make the cover model at an extreme scale with minimal text across the cover to give it a simple but artistic look.

Target Audience (Media Kit)

The target audience for my magazine will be 18-25-year-old males who either work relatively paid jobs or an average young adult looking to make his life a little bit more interesting. My magazine would also attract young females from teenagers to middle-aged women, due to the contents the magazine would include, such as Shawn Mendes. The use of this type of content would broaden the audience bubble and would have a larger scale with genders and age. 

Technical Considerations

With the magazine being printed onto A4 sized paper means quality would be a big factor in images and designs. Also, other than images and design, the text size would need to be perfect for the average reader to be suitable with, not too big or not too small. As the approach for my magazine will be on the simplistic side, the font would be basic and easy to read. In addition, it would appear nicer on the print for the idea of a customer to frame on their wall.

Analysis of Double-Page Spread From 'GQ'

The approach that GQ had with this double-page spread is perfectly contrasting. The easier spot is that one side of the page is aimed to be a light tone whereas the other is towards the darker tone, making it more pleasing to look at whilst not going overboard with colours, draining the sleek design. The use of 'Drake' as the model links well to their decision to bleed the image over to the two pages, staying with the idea that the image of 'Drake' is looked at as an important figure, with regards to how famous he is. The audience would simply buy the magazine with the awareness that their favourite artist is, hoping to read about any type of gossip possible. The double-page spread stays with the simple design as includes a single article down the left side of the page, with a small but simple font, coloured in a shade of blue over the white background, making it pop more.

Finding The Perfect Font

When finding a font, the sole decision would be for the font to be interesting to look at with the simple design and bold structure. When narrowing it down to a selected few, I wanted to see what they look like in white against a black background, hoping that the darker background would make the font pop more. After coming to the decision for the chosen font, I ended up deciding on two. For the front cover, I chose to use a more blocky font to seem more aggressive to the audience. In addition to that decision, males are more attracted to things that have a bold look. That font is called 'Akira Expanded' which is bold but has a stretched style to its letters. Finally, the main font to be used across the entire double-page spread as the articles are 'Helvetica Neue' which is a very normal looking font with a sense of futuristic and simple style to it. This would be easier to read as an article as no fancy calligraphy would distract the reader.

Images

Photoshoot 1:

This photoshoot was taken many months ago. I decided to plan the idea of using this photoshoot for my front cover or double-page spread, due to the appearance of the photos, having a Vogue feeling to it.

The model is Louie Cope.

Photoshoot 2:

This photoshoot was the one I felt most confident in having usable images. This photoshoot took place in a car park building in the town centre. The day was very cold and wet so the outdoor images have a cool colour palette that can be enhanced in the editing phase. The indoor photos were taken under stairwell lights would were covered in a slight green plastic making the white walls have a light mint appearance. The model is Greg Stevens.

These two photos came out the sharpest and after enhancing in Lightroom, they came out the most appealing photos of them all.

My final decision for the cover image will be to use the close-up image of Greg's face.

Content Release Form

My Front Cover Designs

These designs were created before the decision on what photoshoots to have.

Idea 5 is the design I will be using for my final front cover, however, I've decided to use no sell lines as the model is the main focus of the cover drawing in the audience.

My Double-Page Spread Designs

For the double-page spread, I planned to have a contrast such as the GQ magazine I analyzed. So with the use of Shawn Mendes, a well-known musician and singer, I wanted the image of him to take up the entire page. Once deciding to go forward with the second idea, I have redone the design with more detail to see what it would look like when laying it out.

Prints

Reviewing Prints

After having the idea of my prints being finalised, I had them in print form to test the sizing and quality of them both. Once reviewing my work I came across quite a few errors.

First of all, on the front cover print, I had the awareness that the information provided on the front wouldn't have gathered attention due to no real indication of what the magazine is about. Despite the name dropping of Shawn Mendes, it just created the aspect of it being a poster, with that being the intention it still required some additional information for the customers to notice. So I created a brief note on the bottom left of the cover to higlhiht the main subjects covered in this magazine.

Sticking with the minimalistic approach, the placing of the magazine contents fill out an even space across the bottom of the print, adding a little extra to draw in customers by the design.

Secondly, when reviewing the double-page spread, the effort of the appearance seemed low. The first issue was the font of the story included on the spread. The problem was it being way too big, creating a tacky look to the print and gave off the impression that the large font was a cover for not being able to fill the space, so it had to be reduced to fit the ideal 11pt sizing.

    The next issue was the page numbering, with my decision to include the page numbering as 1 and 2, which overlooking it as being dumb. So a little tweaking of that by changing the numbers makes it seem more plausible.

    After reworking the font size of my story, there came to be a lot of empty space that needed to be filled in. The way I went around that was including the title of Shawn's album cover, giving more context being what the image is on the bottom right of the page, with there also being the rating I put forward. So I decided to include another photo of Shawn to fill out space, which came to be an issue. The issue was that the original photo I was going to use which is seen below, came out very dark on the page and despite trying everything I could in Lightroom, the quality kept getting worse and worse. 

So a backup plan was to use a photo taken from a photoshoot, created by the photographer Ben Hassett. So in pursuit to have the rights to use this photo, he passed over a signed copyright form, which allowed me to complete the page with an additional photo of Shawn Mendes. 

-The photo that was chosen and the copyright form are seen below.

Once all the final touches were made to having my prints look at their best, I printed them off to re-check all margins and sizing were perfect. After this process, the outcome was up to my hopes and standards and the prints came out with a sleek and minimalistic design that would appeal to the customers for any use.

My Final Prints

Magazine Double Spread Plan

Planning out on Photoshop the layout of the pages with the fonts.

With the page on Shawn Mendes, the planned boxed area is where I will write the article. It will talk about the pandemic, his new album and his new pet Tarzan.

On the page about aftershave, the bottles being line drawings instead to blend with the background colour easier.  

Finance

The producer is responsible for funding the film until that point and must pay any additional costs if the film goes over-budget.
The BFI uses National Lottery funds to develop and support original UK filmmakers and films.

Equipment to consider

• a mirrorless camera, DSLR or camcorder
• microphones, headphones and maybe an audio recorder
• a tripod to keep your shots steady
• lights or reflectors
• a computer with a good editing app

Crew

• Director
• Producer
• Set Designer
• Director of Photography
• Costume Designer
• Prop Master
• Makeup Artist
• Movie Editor

Clearances 

• securing permission to use copyrighted material
• personal likeness

Talent

• Use lies of social media, meaning lengths of payment to find people isn't used, using social media ranges all the talent from many people.

Locations

• The location of your film can be as easy as using the area your company is based in, meaning the amount of money sent on travel for the film crew and equipment is minimum.

Ways Women Are Presented

In the media, women have a range of different ways of being shown. Peaky Blinders for example covers a lot of the aspects of how women are shown in the media. 

One of the ways women are portrayed in Peaky Blinders is weak. A show based in Birmingham from real events in the older days of England. This can have a real feeling towards people as this is what women were truly treated. A key figure for the weak side-line is a character from Season 1 Episode 6, known as Chinn. She is an Asian young woman that has to come to selling her body for money, however it might not be her choice to do it, she may get forced but this outlines the rest of the entire show, as its riddled throughout with women portrayed as whores and prostitutes. This makes women seem weak and desperate, as she lets Inspector Campbell have sex with her so easily to make it prominent that men are in control and she cant do anything. 

However, they are not all weak, as the character in Peaky Blinders known as Lizzie went from being a prostitute, to working for the most powerful man in Birmingham 'Thomas Shelby'. This can point out that women are strong enough to make a change despite the high male authorities. In the show it is for the better because prone to the change, she is now in higher charge and can even be ruling over a vast amount of men. 

The way Peaky Blinders highlights the vulnerability of women in the real world can be shown as strong or weak. Shows that truth can shine through a character so truthfully despite being so real or so fake. It doesn't matter, women are being shown around as an object and it needs to be put through a filter and why they are, what's causing them to be so vulnerable.

diesel

Men are represented as fierce characters. In clip A men are represented as the type of people that could come across as angry. To start with, the idea fro the shaped of the cologne, which is fist shaped can reference a style of violence towards the audience. This can show that the shape of the cologne can highlight their personalities. 

Also, in the advert the use of fire can represent violence due to the ferocity of the fire, the red and orange colours can link to blood which highly suggests violence. to contrast within real society, the audience can see some correctness within the advert linking to violence as its obvious that men are the cause of most crimes and violence in the world, such as the most dangerous people in the world are men. 

The representation of men is shown as big, muscular men that are good looking. The way its aimed at them men is to push them to buy the product so it can push their looks to the limit, for ultimate attraction. As in clip A we see the man with tattoos walking through the vast amount of men and to be the only one stopped by the woman. This shows the reality of what men of that look are like in the real world. The use of women to show that men now an icon to be sexually attracted by women due to the use of the DIESEL cologne. 

Using tattoos on a man can expand the idea of them being strong and relentless. The idea of being relentless can be shown on the competitive side of the advert, with the one of the main characters being chased by many other men. This shows that men in the world are keen to get what other men have, which makes them desperate as the main reason is the idea of women. Most choices men do in life will end up with them thinking how it will make a woman end up in their life.