Target Consumer

Here is a moodboard I've devised of out target consumer, this being Sarah. The magazine almost screams Sarah in the articles and imagery that we've chosen to use. It fits her personality to a T so here are some things Sarah likes :)



Megan ♥

Lula inspiration

Lovely Lula Titles...

Titles are so important to me...as a reader they either grab me or completely put me of an article.

This highlights the importance of making our Article titles eye catching and a bit retro kitch, to fit with our newly discovered retro theme!

s x

David LaChapelle

This image is edgy and risque, we didn't want to take our 'druggy' shoot too far so figured just creating an image suggesting drugs was better than using fake substances to act as drugs. This however is classy as diamonds are acting a cocaine, plus it has underlying meaning, its suggesting that the model is so desperate to be part of high culture (through diamonds) that shes resorting to low culture. Interesting.

Megan ♥

Tim Walker

By far my favourite photographer. I love the mystery and fantasy he injects into his work, pure talent. These images make me smile :)

If i had the budget i'd love to do a shoot like this, instead I shall use it as my muse and hope Rose and Sarah feel the same.

Megan ♥

Photoshoot

Today we did our photoshoot to go alongside the article 'Just say Neigghhh'

Here is the moodboard devised for the shoot. Inspiration has been taking from Effy from Skins and the general underground party scene.

A video of 'the making of' the photoshoot :)

you'll have to wait for the magazine to see the results

Megan ♥

Group meeting number 5.

We generally decided on models and photoshoots today, we decided to make up moodboards for each shoot as an inspiration boards when coordinating the shoot.

We discussed articles, and spoke to our guest writer Max about being the gay best friend and his article.

Megan wrote her questionnaires for Marianne and Jimmy.

Sarah contacted Tony and also began to write her questions.

Rose also made her questionnaire.

We also discussed ideas for a general questionnaire about magazines as a whole and campaign ideas. ♥

Lula Magazine

According to the Lulamag website:

LULA is created for the real girls of the world who love fashion, music, art, & make believe. LULA is gentle, whimsical and ethereal in tone, mixing high fashion to fall in love with and interviews that feel like late night chats with people you wish you knew. International stylists, photographers, musicians, artists, illustrators and journalists work towards creating a gorgeous magazine that is not only a forum for beautiful work and fresh ideas, but that reads like the honest, funny, and aspirational best friend you dream of.

Thursday 22nd April: Seminar

Today we had to communicate which types of brandzines/fanzines/e-zines we have been looking at and create a pen profile according to their target consumer. As we have been inspired by the layout and editorial style of Lula magazine, we looked at their online scrapbook to help put together a moodboard.

We shall shortly be uploading the pen portrait of our consumer for Lula magazine and following this we should be able to create a strong idea of our target consumer for 'This Is' zine.

Over and out x

Homework from Tuesday 20th

1. Write 10 questions per contributor we wish to include.
2. Write two articles each on topics discussed by Thursday 22nd for review.
3. Brainstorm current events such as exhibitions, films etc. which we can write about.

Group meeting number 4.

Today we had a big brainstorm and had a euirka moment! We have decided to call our magazine 'This Is'... this concept will be seen throughout the magazine where we will introduce our contributers such as 'This is a photographer' followed by their name. We decided that the magazine will be in the form of a scrapbook, taking inspiration from Lula magazine. We came up with articles that we could write such as 'Double standards' 'Just say neighh' 'Childhood innocence' 'Can boys and girls be friends' (possibly called Kiss chase) 'loss of glamour and romance' 'ghetto gold' and a guest writer about being 'the gay best friend' , ' Big hair and cigarette smoke is where she hides her secrets' 'Is it ok to sparkle?' 'Whats your secret?'. Therefore we decided to go away, research our articles and begin to write them up. ♥

Sarah's Main Ideas for Zine

Ive flicked through a few magazines, here are bits I pulled out from them.

Love magazine:

• Slogan- Love fashion and fame.
• Real people on the cover even if they do cover celebs inside mag. - editors letter is fab, il scan in and upload to blog?
• People talking about obsessions...what are ours?
• Quoting " fashion goes way beyonde being an obsession its an addition...I really really love it!"from an interview with yongest blogger at the time?- maybe we could think about interviewing the lastest hot blogger? or even just one that we think is up and coming?
• Advertising?? are we gunna do it... if so who?
• I think that our mags personality will shine through in our style of writting,name, font used etc so do we all agree that lula/scrapbooky look is what we are going for??
• 'Model shop' - an article on working for hollistor...something like this we could easily do.
• Contributors page- picture, name and then whats boring and whats not to them...quite quirky cool, and easy to read i thought? nice to know a little bit about the contribs...maybe thats just us though hahah lolnext mag...
• Impact..notts uni mag. Have you guys seen it? shall i bring it in...its pretty good.-coco tang advertising! ....i think it would be easy to do ?- they had a page just with a picture and title and then ...
• Full article online go to www..... maybe this is how we link them>
• 200 things to do in Nottingham...included Lea Rosys teashop, Snug on a Sunday, drink an Alice in Wonderland tea pot in coco tang.
• Article ideas...Lost glamour
• Inspirational- people..things..ideas? I think we should aim the mag at the arty cool consumer...so bits of music, art...maybe visit an art exhibition..write it up. fashion show write ups? we need to see whats going on/whats hot. Maybe an article on the fabulous brick lane...whats going on there? I think we have a lot of fab ideas girls :) :) :)

Megan's Main Ideas for Zine

1. Beautiful photo shoots...
2. Interesting articles about day to day life e.g. sex, drugs, body issues etc.
3. Interviews with interesting people.
4. Fashion and fashion photography- things like whats hot and whats not.
5. Lifestyle things like places to go people to see.
6. Just a thought, each of us have done essays for DVC on things we care about for example I've done size 0 and why do we buy to excess, these are things we could consider using in the magazine but also why not look through the latest glossies like Vogue and Elle and see what they think matters at the moment?
7. We are really lucky as we have a lot of interesting people that are willing to be included in this magazine and it states we need to cover fashion culture and art.... Elle and Vogue etc do not have one thing they write about they write about many things but with an overriding theme, for example ours could be something like 'welcome to the other side' whereby we get an insight into how it feels to break into industry, the dilemmas whilst in industry and insight into many things in life.
8. We said we wanted to use real people like nurses and people from the army, so this can be an idea, explaining things people don't understand or aren't educated on. Letting people see how these photographers, nurses, fighters feel. why they do what they do and why they love it so much

Rose's Main Ideas for Zine

1. Smoking article - how it is made to look cool in films, photo shoots and generally regarded as 'cool' but obviously state that this can lead to many people, particularly girls, started to smoke and out of duty mention the effects.
2. Status Quo - not sure if this will even be possible but could ask why they decided to revamp their fashion image in the 1980s, what did they say differently about themselves through the clothes pre-/post-, what they think of fashion trends today and younger generations.
3. If we can't get interview, I'd like to write about "Denim Monsters" - those that wear top-to-toe denim (generally not matching) and how many people can be seen even now wearing it on streets of Nottingham (could be could chance to get onto the streets and take photos, interview people on their thoughts...) Could tie in Quo as they are recognised for their denim attire.
4. Shoes - if you think it could fit it and be of interest, any angle...
5. Promotional article about 'Frock Me!' vintage fairs.
6. How sizing of clothes between brands varies and you can find that your measurements according to general statistics are x, but in certain stores they do not match these. Could be quite interesting article plus chance to interview women and do experiments, i.e. buy a size 10 from M&S and size 10 from Topshop and compare.

'Random' - Magazine Analysis

Looking at magazines to see different article content and visual compositions. Here we looked at the Spring/Summer 2009 edition of Random magazine. The points below are aspects which stood out to us and could further influence our design/editorial decisions in the zine:

1. In their photoshoots they do not quote a price for each garment but instead just list where it is from. This style of annotating could be taken into our zine, especially if we choose to use a mix of new, recent and vintage items.
2. Strong visual mix of colour and black/white images. Therefore whilst it may look effective to have the magazine all in black and white, making coloured photographs either pastel/fade effect or bold/brightly coloured provides a striking visual impact.

Group meeting number 3.

Monday 19th April
Unfortunately Sarah was ill today therefore this put restrictions on our work as it meant it was hard to progress forward without having the whole teams input. We each did an individual brainstorm on what we want the magazine to include, what interests us and what makes us pick up a magazine. This was to give ourselves some direction, to allow us to create something that we will all enjoy making. We also brainstormed names for the zine and asked flat mates and friends what they thought of our suggestive names. We still haven't solidified a name as we've decided we need to decide on the exact angle of the magazine and then hopefully, everything else will follow. ♥

Group meeting number 2.

Sunday 18th April
We began to discuss names for the magazine again and the direct angle that we wanted the magazine to take. We sent out emails to contributors and receieved many positive replies off people who would love to be involved in our publication. We agreed to meet tommorrow where we would set up our blog, group email adress and have a group brainstorm. ♥

Article/Spread Ideas

• Pin-board on website of images.
• Cupcake photoshoot.
• Backpage montage - face shoot (ask Heather to take photography?)
• "Here come the boys" with inspiration people for interviews.
• Under each article write out three opinions.
  

Possible Contributors

• Status Quo (music and style)
• Jonnie Craig (photographer and journalist)
• Marianne (photographer)
• Proceed (music and style)
• Sonia (photographer)
• Ravi (Future Lab)
• Adam (Future Lab & Sunday Times Style Magazine)
• Cameron Macintosh
• Bryan (stylist for Beyonce)
• Aarti (cultural aspect of fashion industry in another country)
• Miss Molly (stylist)
• Organiser of LFW
• Jimmy (music/style) - due to play at Creamfields.
• Shey(graphic designer)
• Lucy (Illustrator)

When considering interesting/inspiration people outside the fashion industry:

• Pete (rower)
• Jarret & Josh (army)
• Jodi (Miss England)
• Alex (boxer)
• Leanne (nurse)
• Lyndsay (midwife)
• Tristan (DJ)
  

Group meeting number 1.

Thursday 15th April
All three team members met up and brought along magazines to look through and gain ideas from, we only had a short meeting due to University requirements however we began bouncing ideas off each other and wrote a list of possible contributers to the magazine. We decided that we needed to contact these people in order to see whether firstly they would even consider an interview with us for the magazine. We discussed names for the magazine, however we did not find anything that suited what we wanted to do. ♥

This Is Research

This is a blog started primarily to display the research we have undergone in order to make a magazine based on fashion, arts and culture. All three contributors have individual interests which will provide a broad range of interesting articles, photoshoots and interviews.