Brief
Create a front cover and double page feature article for a new specialist culture magazine to promote your artist or band to the target audience. Length: 3 pages
Essential elements - front cover
- Original title and masthead for the magazine; strapline
- Cover price and barcode
- Main cover image to establish the identity of the new artist or band
- Main cover line relating to the new artist or band plus at least 2 further cover lines
Essential elements - double page feature article
- Feature article (approximately 300 words) to promote the new artist or band. The article should include an interview with the artist or band.
- Headline and stand-first, sub-headings, columns
- One main image and at least 2 smaller/smaller/minor images (all original and different from the images on the cover)
- Pull quotes and/ or sidebar
In order to achieve an 'A' grade, you must demonstrate the following over both pieces of the cross-media production
- Use media language to demonstrate intertextuality and/or generic hybridity
- Convey a complex representation of a social group using media language
- Subvert and challenge typical representational stereotypes
- Present an ideological context typical to an independent music label
- Create a magazine that demonstrates clear stylistic, thematic and ideological links to your music video
Your coursework is marked in exactly the same way as your essays are marked – through your expert use of media language. Just so you're absolutely clear, this is what I am going to be looking for when assessing your magazine:
- Codes and conventions
- Layout and design
- Composition - positioning of masthead/headlines, cover lines, images, columns
- Font size, type, colour
- Images/photographs - shot type, angle, focus
- Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/makeup
- Graphics, logos
- Language – headline, sub-headings, captions – mode of address
- Copy
- Anchorage of images and text
- Elements of narrative
Top tips
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| Celebrities are different from non celebrities. You should be able to quickly draw them without much effort |
- Costume, hair and makeup should be outre, over the top, and should turn heads. You are encoding a metanarrative of celebrity. Celebrities are not normal people. They are notorious and noteworthy.
- Beyond the essential elements, and make sure you have these in front of you at all times, you have complete creative freedom. Feel free to go wild in terms of props, colour, location, and typeface. Your magazine should reflect who you are as a designer, and as an artist.
- Read some magazines! Go stand in WHSmiths and dig in. Maybe even buy some. It's important to know what you are emulating!
