Umair, who is usually in a sullen mood was surprisingly very vivacious that day. After introducing ourselves, we talked about how the band had been struggling with the criticisms regarding their music.
After I was done interviewing Umair Asif, I took some pictures that I'd later use for my magazine cover as well as my double spreadsheet.

Planning For Main Cover Story

My main cover story would revolve around the debate "Metal Or Rock?" according to Wolverine's frontman, Umair Asif. The band Wolverine has been around for the last decade and came out in year 1997 and stood out among all the newcomers that came out back then.
"We're just four guys who like to rock!", says Wolverine's drummer, Ali Butt. In 1997, after kicking around the local "Garage Bands" scene for around 4 years, Ali and Umair decided that it was time to start a serious band. Umair's powerful perfect pitch performance, even in the beginning, swept through a magnitude of emotions and Wolverine's debut single "Breathe" was a major hit and topped the local as well as international charts.
However, over the recent 3 or 4 years, Wolverine's music has been a target of criticism: Can Wolverine's music be categorized as Metal? Or does it fail to fit the criteria of Metal?
My main cover story "Metal Or Rock?", basically an interview with Umair Asif, would shed a light on this major issue.

The interview would be conducted at the residence of Umair Asif's friends where they would be gathered to celebrate his birthday. Some of the interview questions are:

1. I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times, but for our readers who might not know, can you give a little background on the name of the band and how it came about?

2. There have been rumors that since Wolverine has been facing heaps of criticism, the band has decided to quit. Is it true?

3. Why do you think that Wolverine is at this stage today that the people are questioning the genre of the music that you create? 

4. You've been touring with T.O.D and High Voltage. How is it being on road with them?

5. What would you like to say to your fans?

Initial Design Of The Front Cover

Planning

After analyzing the questionnaire results, I came up with a couple of names for my music magazine. "Rock Mania", "Rock Fever", "Rock World", "Rock You" were some of the names that I had in mind. I ended up naming my magazine Rock Mania because Rock music is loud and aggressive and Rock Mania seemed to fit the theme perfectly. The font colors would mainly be red, black, white and beige shades.
Moreover, I decided to include an exclusive interview in my magazine along with the regular monthly features like Top Charts, Upcoming Releases, news about the bands Wolverine, High Voltage, Dysfunction, Bleeding and T.O.D, plus an article covering the huge event "Rock For Peace" and a fiercely contested debate on what exactly is Rock and Metal. The magazine would have around 50 - 60 pages in total.

Research and Analysis

Questionnaire results

 1.Yes 88%     No 22%

 2. Pop 40%     Rock 30%  Jazz 5%   Hip-hop 25%

 3. Attractive pictures 50%    Title of the magazine 10%   Content 20%   Number of pages 20%

 4. Male 30%    Female 30%   Both 40%

 5.Yes 70%      No 30%

 6. Interviews 33%   Album reviews 40%   Celebrity gossip 27%

 7. Buy magazines 80%    Read online 20%

 8. There were numerous responses to the last question but the majority wanted the upcoming music magazines to give more exposure to new and upcoming music artists
It can be deduced from the questionnaire results that majority of the people are habitual of reading music magazines. Most of them are into Pop music and the first thing that catches their eye while looking for a music magazine is the pictures. Very few people subscribe online for magazines whereas majority of them go out and buy them. 

Research and Analysis

The title "Rock Sound" is very simple, written in bold letters and white colour and implies that the magazine contains material regarding the Rock genre of music. The colours used are white, black and neutral beige shades. The cover shows a band ; the tattooed frontman holding a guitar and rest of the band members have a very grim expression on their faces.
The image imbues into the mind of the reader that the main feature of the magazine must be revolving around the band.  The conventional colour of Rock music is black and hence it has been predominantly used to reinforce the genre on the reader's mind.
The font style is very simple unlike those used in Pop magazines. The main feature of the magazine "TRIVIUM: The crusade for good and evil"  has been written in bold letters so as to draw the attention of the reader. Moreover, it can be seen that the magazine features bands including Deftones, In Flames, Bring Me The Horizon, My Chemical Romance etc. The font size is relatively smaller than the one used for highlighting the main feature.

The title "Zillo" once again has been written in large font and the font color is different than the one used for rest of the text on the cover. This magazine cover shows Ville Valo, -Goth rock band H.I.M's frontman- puffing on a cigarette and this reinforces the conventions of the Rock genre that Rock Stars are in the habit of consuming drugs and are usually heavy drinkers and chain smokers.
 Use of black, red and white color. "H.I.M." has been written in large font and it definitely delivers the message to the reader that the main cover story revolves around the band since the main image on the magazine is also of the band's frontman. The bar code has been placed on the top right section of the magazine cover. Since I chose rock genre as the theme of my foundation production project, I made up my mind that the model on my magazine cover would be holding a cigarette as well. This is a very simply magazine cover and it strictly follows the conventions of Rock genre.

Font:
Kerrang is a very renowned music magazine and deals specifically with news related to the Rock genre. In this particular cover, it is pretty apparent that the conventions of the respective genre have been followed.
Firstly, the title is written in bold and black font. The alphabets have been given the effect as if they have been cracked and this is in line with the tagline "Life is loud". Moreover, the font colours for the main cover story are different but again, bold colours have been used, symbolizing the bold and loud culture of Rock music.  The main colours used are pink, white, black and yellow (Bold colours).
Layout:
The title has been place on the top of the cover. The title of the main cover story has been placed in the center, so as to draw the reader's attention towards it. The pictures are also related to the main cover story.
At the bottom of the cover, names of several other bands have been mentioned and it shows that the magazine also features all these bands. Above the names, there is a bar code, which is always present on magazine covers.
The design is very simple. Photos of different musicians have been used to create a pattern and this gives the magazine cover a very professional look.

Research

Since I wanted to enhance my editing skills, I spent a week learning the advanced tools of Adobe Photoshop and tried editing a number of pictures. I had already worked on Adobe Photoshop for my preliminary task using the basic tools. So, I didn't have much trouble polishing my skills. I also browsed a couple of websites so as to get a basic idea about the conventions of a music magazine. Moreover, I designed a questionnaire to help me out with my primary research. 

QUESTIONNAIRE

l1. Do you read music magazines?

lA. Yes            B. No

l

l2. What genre of music do you like?

la. Pop           b. Rock         c. Jazz        d. Hip-hop

l

l3. What do you look for when buying a music magazine?

l a. Attractive pictures     b. Title of the magazine    c. Content

l d. Number of pages

l

l4. What kind of a model do you like to see on the front cover of a music magazine?

l a. Male       b. Female      c. Both    

l

l5. Do you think background and colors of the front cover make a difference?

la. Yes         b. No

l

l6. What kind of articles do you like to read in a music magazine?

la. Interviews      b. Album Reviews     c. Celebrity gossip

l

lDo you buy music magazines or read them online?

l

lWhat would you suggest for the upcoming music magazines?

Foundation Production

As weird as it may sound, I've always been into rock music. I like how rock stars use their real life experiences to write songs that actually mean something and connect to their fans through their music. Unlike the other genres of music, rock music doesn't just focus on heartbreaks and the songs are not just about a guy meeting the girl of his dreams or vice versa. Infact, the fans can actually relate to the incident or a story being narrated in the songs in one way or another. Since I'm very much influenced by this genre of music, I decided to make it the theme of my Foundation Production project.

Preliminary Task: Content Page

Preliminary Task : Magazine Cover

For my preliminary task, I took a mid-shot and edited it using Adobe Photoshop. Being a rookie, I did not know much about Adobe Photoshop tools and just used a few, simple ones.

AS Level

My name is Meher un Nisa and this is my AS level Media Studies blog. The media text that I'm going to be working on is "Print" which requires a magazine cover and a content page for my preliminary task. For the foundation production final project, I'm supposed to design a cover, content page a double spreadsheet for a music magazine.
This is the first time ever that I'm blogging. I'll be updating my blog on a regular basis. Stay tuned!