Music Magazine - Research into Rolling Stone

Rolling stone magazine is one of the most iconic American published music magazines around. Rolling stone magazine is a fortnightly published magazine that is focused upon Music, Liberal Politics and Pop Culture.

It was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner who is still the editor and publisher to date.

Their total circulation is 1.4million.

Published by Wenner Media.

Rolling stone magazine is also known for it’s political coverage – especially when they produced this controversial cover featuring (a naked) John Lennon and Yoko Ono – I have recently found out that this cover was said to be taken either the day before or on the exact day of his assassination. 

During the 1990s Rolling Stone changed it’s synergy to enable it to appeal to a younger and fresher audience – often focusing on famous actors, musical artists or celebrities.

Due to Rolling Stone now having such a well established brand image and an iconic Cover synergy – they are now on the of most popular and wealthy music magazines.

The covers featuring images of such recently famous and adored celebrities, artists and actors/actresses; have now become so popular that they are continuously made into posters (the majority of them framed) which can be hung in homes all across the world.

This is a very clever and simple way to advertise the magazine and it’s ‘brand’.

To show example of these ‘iconic’ covers such as the one above featuring John Lennon and Yoko; there were also over 30 covers that featured The Beatles, a cover featuring Janet Jackson, John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

Rolling Stone now have a well established website:

RollingStone.com is (like with NME.com) slowly becoming a very popular site - though unlike NME it is not overtaking it's circulation of magazines. This could be due to the fact that Rolling Stone magazines are now seen to be very collectable - especially a cover that features a very famous and icon celebrity and/or music star.

Rolling Stone website has much to offer - articles, competitions, interactive features, links to websites - itunes, youtube, artists official website and fan bases, picture galleries of artists and an archive of previous Rolling Stone magazine covers.

Music Magazine - Research into NME

Music Magazine Research:NME

The music magazine industry is in a very nice market – with the target audience being very small and the amount of music based publications limited in comparison to publications such as Fashion or Lifestyle.

One of the most iconic music magazines NME (new musical express) which was founded in 1952, and it almost the ‘leader’ in this industry and owns the title of being the most popular music magazine in the British music magazine industry.

NME started off as a music newspaper and then, during the 1980s, gradually started changing into a more glossier publication. It was the first british paper to include the singles chart, which was published in 1952.

Today, NME is known for it’s Punk Rock theme due to the writing of Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill.

In 1996 www.nme.com was launched, which now can claim to having 5 million users per month.

 

NME is published weekly at an average price of £2.20. NME magazine’s circulation figures have been continuously falling since 2003, perhaps due to the recession or competition from other music publications. Their total circulation to date is 33,875.

NME Magazine is now known as an almost brand – with the magazine being perhaps one of the least popular outlets. NME now host a hugely popular show and event called the NME AWARDS where they present awards to the best music throughout the year – with the winners being voted by the magazine readers.

NME.COM is slowly becoming more and more popular than the actual magazine publication itself; i feel this is due to the fact that the internet can offer you way more outlets and links to video; itunes; artists official pages and fan bases for example.
The internet is also a very easy to find and access database that for most is free - whereas a magazine you have to get to the shops and pay the price.


They also have ventured into tours in set arenas with new up-and-coming bands/artists to showcase their music to fans and the public. Published by IPC Media.

Final College Magazine Cover

This is my final College Magazine Cover that i created using all of my own imagery, Coverlines and Contents.
As shown in previous posts, it was a very lengthy process to take the images, edit them and then fit them to frame.
I am very pleased with the final result - although i would in future change the style of my coverlines.
I chose to make these with blue and green backgrounds purely to fit into the Southdowns College synergy.

College Magazine Cover Plans - Developing my Plans and Ideas

This is my Magazine Cover that i have been developing and filtering with ideas.
I have now designed and decided upon my Masthead, Cover Image, Plug and Coverlines which are featured here.
I am planning on developing this by adding more coverlines and/or imagery.


Looking at this image; i was aware that it was starting to look very 'busy' with a mixture of very interesting photographs that contained lots of colour and images.
By opening up the image into Photoshop; i tested the idea of removing the background from the image.

This is a screenshot of the image before and after i used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to draw around the image that i wanted to 'keep' and then copy and pasted that into a new window.
This was my first attempt at this, so therefore the image was a little ragged; so i used the Refine Tool to adjust both the 'smoothness' and add a 'feather' texture to the image.
Following on from that i also used the eraser tool to remove any unwanted areas.

I also experimented with the Background Remover Eraser tool; which i used simply just to 'rub out' the background and unwanted areas of the photograph.
This was a very tricky and time consuming way of doing it, so i chose to holt the process and consider the image thoroughly.


This was a very lengthy and detailed process; and i am not sure if i am happy with the result. I am therefore looking into other ways to make my cover and it's imagery less 'busy'; perhaps by using all the 'blank' spaces in the image - especially the areas that don't contain the students to place the images and text.

College Magazine Cover Plans - Fitting the Cover Image to Frame

These are my cover ideas for my College Magazine cover; i created these using the application InDesign and by placing the image into the frame.
I had to first fit the image to the frame, and then i reduced the size of the image. This is due to the fact that originally the image was a landscape picture.
I chose to try it in both black and white to see how it would work with both the Masthead and the overall appeal.
I have now decided using these samples to use the colour image - I came to this decision by asking opinions of others - after all, college students are the main target audience.

Flatplan For My College Magazine Contents Page

This is my Flatplan for my College Magazine Contents Page that i created in InDesign.

This enables me to decide and view the colour choices; layout and 'Contents' title style. 

I have chosen to include images relating to certain chosen articles and/or features on my contents page - the boxes along the Right hand side represent these images.

Flatplan For My College Magazine Cover

This is my Flatplan of my College Magazine Cover that i created in InDesign.
It shows the layout of my Cover, the images and their shapes, the Coverlines and the design of my Masthead.
 My chosen font for the Masthead is Savoye LET - i chose this due to it's style and italic feel to the font.
Depending on the cover image colouring, I will then decide what colours to use for my Masthead, perhaps black or white.