Initial ideas for my music magazine

After looking through all my research and analysis, i began to form ideas about my own music magazine.
Firstly i decided that my magazine would be very much like ‘Q’ magazine which appeals to a mature audience and features a variety of music. My main theme in terms of layout and images would be Indie/Rock, with a simple colour scheme which would be white, grey and black. I would then use a splash of colour for any straplines and coverlines, to attract attention otherwise i don’t think my magazine would stand out from other magazines. I wanted to design the colours like this because i wanted it to look classy and professional, and i think that if i used too many colours then i would have been in danger of appealing to one gender or making it look unrealistic of a real music magazine. I decided to call my music magazine, “Lyrics” this was because it related to the music idea, and also because i wanted it to symbolise that its the Lyrics which create meaning to songs, so it would show that my magazine is showing the meaning of music as it has all the latest news and information about anything to do with music.
I wanted my band to be a girl band of five called “Red Blush”. I made notes of possible names for my band but finally decided on ‘Red Blush’ because it sounded unusual so therefore would match the theme of my band. Yet instead of them being a typical pop sensation girl band like ‘Girls Aloud’ or ‘The Spice Girls!’, i wanted my band to be the first ever indie/rock girl band who all play their own instruments and came together on their own when they were young instead of being produced like many other bands. My band were going to be completely original and unique which the world have never seen before! I also wanted my band to have been around for a good few years so that they were well known and credited for their talents and music. Another difference between my band and other girl bands is that i wanted my band to just be about their music, instead of about how they look and their style. Whilst i wanted to give them a real indie/vintage look and style so that i could have an idea of how they looked when i created my photographs of them, i wanted the main focus of their image and interview to be focused on their musical talents and their live music gigs. I also wanted to show how highly acclaimed they were in terms of their music by showing in the interview, how they have done duets with some of the best in the industry, from the likes of ‘Mick Jagger’ to ‘Al Green’. I wanted to be this detailed when thinking about my band because i felt that it would help me when i created their interview because i would feel like i really knew them so could answer the questions like i felt they would if they were real.
In a strange way i felt like i really knew my band, and i could even tell people what each of them ate for breakfast! I gave each band member a name and their own personality. There was; Arabella (the lead singer of the band) Francis (the lead guitarist) Lou (the drummer) Sienna (guitarist and singer) and finally Mia (who could play four instruments including the piano, acoustic guitar, saxophone and…flute!) All of the members of the band can sing as well, which creates fantastic harmonies! I also wanted to have a band that had had turbulent times in terms of drug and alcohol problems. This was because lots of bands today have issues like that, and whilst it is sad to hear that they do, it creates talk and gets the band noticed. It also shows that the band have more dark sides to them which people then want to know about. See i told you that i knew them well and had thought this through in detail!!!
Along the way i kept looking back to the ‘Q’ magazine that i had analysed, because that was where i had got lots of my influences from.
I decided to keep my layout simple too, so it kept in co-ordination with the general style of my front cover. I wanted to have just a few anchorage texts so that the magazine cover didn’t look too messy or cluttered like a ‘Top of the Pops’ magazine.
I decided to sketch out designs of how my music magazine front cover could look. I added colour so that i could start to think about colour schemes and whether they would all match and look co-ordinated. I also wanted to think about how my images would be displayed and positioned, and what effects i could use which would make them look more professional and stand out from the background. It was really important for me to make a plan of my music magazine front cover first before i started to make it. This was so that i was well organised and i knew what i was doing and why i was doing it before i began creating my own music magazine.