Create a proposal and pitch for a media product [U3: P1,P2,M1] [U21: P2]
Learning outcome 1: (u3) Be able to create a proposal with sample materials for an original media product for a client brief. [P1,P2,M1] Learning outcome 2: (U21) be able to create a proposal and pitch for original media product based on a given brief [P2}
Proposal-
Purpose:
My client, The London Magazine, has asked me to create a front cover and double page spread of a print based music magazine for North London due to its vibrant music scene. I've decided to move forward with idea two: Bonanza, as it has a clear link to the North London music scene and allows for creative liberties, as well as creating a premise that hasn't been taken to print. My idea is to look into the lyrics of niche genre's songs, where during interviews with artists they break down their lyrics and discuss the meaning behind them. This idea has been explored on YouTube but never in a magazine, meaning there is clearly a market for it, but there is no competition in print for the concept. This concepts purpose is to inform and entertain, allowing readers to be more informed about the music they're listening to and entertain them with comedic interviews and show casing music.Genre:
I'm creating a genre based magazine, focusing on indie pop. This is because indie pop as a genre has slowly been gaining popularity in North London, and my brief wants me to explore the variety of music North London has to offer. It also has a large fanbase outside of London and I know there's an audience for it. Indie Pop as a genre derived from Punk-Pop in the 70's and it still retains some of that edge and grime that Punk influenced, meaning its a very stylised genre and the music touches a huge range of themes and songs, rather than Pops normal- 'love' and 'break up' songs. It's ability to tackle darker themes gave me the idea to look deeper into the meanings behind songs, which I enjoy doing while listening to music in my free time, so I wanted to put that idea to print and give artists an outlet to explain their music.The mood board I've created to inspire me for this idea showcases the Indie Pop aesthetic, a combination of muted and pastel colours, graphical and illustrative elements, 80's inspired fashion and pop-culture references fuel the Indie Pop theme. I want to use as many aspects of it in my magazine as possible as I love the stylistic nature of the genre.
Competition:
However for my first edition I want to focus on Indie Pop for two reasons: it's slowly been gaining popularity in North London, echoing the clients requirements, and indie pop songs often touch sensitive subjects like mental health and death, so giving artists an outlet will help them gain popularity and help spread clarity for their message. My only real issues with the genre is it's still a niche genre for North London, despite its growth, so the demand might be small, however outside of North London, it has a huge audience, thus there are magazines that touch the Indie Pop genre frequently. My main competitors being Q, which is £3.70 per issue, Billboard, which is £7.54 per issue, and NME (which is now only online). These magazines often feature pop and indie pop artists, however none go into detail about their songs and more their personal lives and careers in general. My magazine will be significantly cheaper than theirs as it targets a younger audience. Meaning my concept is unique to the magazine industry and it's a decent price, allowing us to be more appealing than our competition.Fonts and Name:
For inspiration for fonts I looked at Indie Pop album covers and band names. They often use a sans serif type face, but altered slightly with some graphic elements. For example, Imagine Dragons use a very simplistic font, but they have certain letters in italics and remove some lines of the letters like in the D. The majority of the fonts in Indie Pop are sans serif, but play with line weight and removing lines from letters. I then looked into finding modern fonts with different line weights and thicknesses. The fonts I've chosen are Andale Mono for the body copy as it's a sans serif type face and it's easy to read, which is key for the body copy. My mastheads font is 'modern sans serif 7', clearly fitting with the sans serif type face but its bold with a thick line weight. I would most likely use the lower case for the sub heading as it mimics other magazine mastheads, such as Billboard, but i might change the colour to white on a coloured background. The cover lines are in the font 'sanserffic', a very fine long font. I would use the upper case version for the cover lines, sometimes in puffs and sometimes out. The magazine could be called 'Bonanza' as one word magazine headings are common and some of the most popular magazines in general have one word names- Q, Milk, Vogue, Time etc. Bonanza is synonymous with Treasure-trove and this magazines goal is to offer a range of new music- there for a treasure-trove of music.
Target Audience:
The demographic for indie music is students within higher education or university, primarily students in creative subjects like the arts and media, so from this I want the target audience for this magazine would be 17-24 art and media students. Creative students are primarily female, so my audience will lean more towards 17-24 year old women of a range of ethnicities within higher education, however my secondary target audience could be 17-24 year old men in higher education, not necessarily in art and media. Being in higher education my target costumers would have a c2,c1 and B social grade.
Art and media students are often pretty out there with fashion and presentation, this fits with the artistic tone I want the cover as well as the grungy, pastel colour scheme. My target audience would be fashionable, as the genre of indie often is, and eccentric in their appearance, thus the pink hair. My secondary audience is 17-24 year old men in higher education, so they're neatly dressed with a masculine indie pop fashion style of denim jackets and graphic T-shirts. Distribution and Marketing:
Since my target audience is primarily university students, my magazine shouldn't be too expensive, so it would cost around £2.50 for a monthly release. This means it will be relatively cheap for a monthly released magazine, but due to the student demographic I'm aiming for, they won't have as much disposable income. In order to reach my audience I will sell the magazine in a range of corner shops, new agencies and supermarkets in school / university districts in and around North London, as it related to my brief. This ensures that I can catch a consumers attention while getting lunch, shopping or on their commute to school or work. My brief requires a digital format for my magazine, therefore there will be a partnered app for Apple and Android, which will be advertised inside the magazine. The app with have exclusive videos with the artists during their interviews, as well as contain a QR code scanner that links songs to Spotify, allowing horizontal integration between my print and digital copies. In order to market my magazine I want it to have a strong social media presence, due to it's student demographic being very tech-savvy. One aspect of my magazine is the links with Spotify where the magazines account will create play lists of all the featured songs in each issue. Therefore the magazine can have a Twitter, (apposed to a Facebook page as the majority of 17-24 year olds' use Twitter over Facebook), and the twitter will also have links to the Spotify page as well as advertising the artists that will be featured. Twitter would have the tag 'Bonanza' where artists will tweet when they're collaborating with us to both boots ours and their popularity. People can also use the hashtag to discuss the top tens and artists interviews. I would also advertise the magazine with posters around music venues and school districts. In order to keep a horizontal integration across my marketing, Spotify will also have ads for non-premium users, pushing the play list and the magazine.
Resources and Personnel:
Camera- needed for taking the photos for the magazine
photoshop- creating the layout and adding in text
tripod- used by the photographer for the primary photos.
social media accounts- to advertise the magazine
printer- to make large quantities of magazines
model- Who i will taking the photo of (an artist)
Photographer- who will take the photos
photo editor and editor in chief - who will do post production
writers and fact checkers- writes the articles
social media managers- head of twitter and Spotify
project manager- time management
ad sales manager- head of advertising.
Form:
Magazine pages are typically printed in multiples of 8 due to how the magazine is folded to create an A4 booklet.The average monthly magazine has around 60-100 pages, since they are students who don't have much time I'll stick to a 60 page magazine to begin with, however as the magazine takes off we may be able to add more pages and possibly release it Bi-weekly. Most magazines have A4 (8.3x11.7 in) pages, meaning i would need to get A3 paper to print on so that when it's folded, its the correct size. I would use silk-coated paper as it's the most common type of paper for magazines and it's glossy without being too shiny, meaning the copies will be durable. There will also be an online format in the form of an app. Where interviews, videos and QR code scanners linked the magazine will have one collective place.
Layout ideas:
Using photoshop i created very basic possible layouts for the over page and double page spread layout, as this is what my brief requires I make. The colour schemes aren't set, however i think these layouts are fairly strong for my purpose and the pictures I take won't perfectly match with the images I've used for my layout ideas, which is why I've just used silhouettes instead of detailed sketches.I decided to create them digitally as well as hand drawn to get some practice with photoshop as well as to clearly show my ideas as my hand drawn diagrams aren't always clear enough for me further down the project.
Content:
I want my magazine to break down song lyrics from popular songs with a confusing or personal meaning. This will allow for artists to connect more with their audiences and get audiences more invested. There for one idea I have for the double page spread is a lyric break down page, as shown by my little mock up. It would take either the verses of the song or just controversial lines and allow for the artist to discuss them in an interview format. Overall this would allow for my artist to connect with audiences, possibly boosting their slowly growing popularity around North London, as the brief wants to show off North London's music scene.
My second idea is an interview that focuses more on the type of music the artist creates, rather than focusing down on one song, allowing them to be broader with their answers. It would probably have a similar layout to the previous, but with more interview space rather than song lyrics. This idea would have a similar outcome to the first, connecting North London audiences more personally with the artists.
As a unique selling point I would like to have connections with Spotify, where monthly we release the music discussed in each edition so that people can listen to the music their reading about. This can be acoplished in two ways, either just adding our account name so that people can look it up, or having QR codes for people to scan and be taken straight to that months playlist. In addition to this idea I could have a double page spread show casing the genres 'top ten' songs which will also be featured on Spotify and the top three could be the songs that we discuss and breakdown.
I want my magazine to have a strong online presence, so along with Spotify, the magazine will plunge our Twitter account, where people can suggest which songs we break down next and make offers for the top ten. And to keep everything connected, the Twitter can link to the Spotify, Spotify links with the magazine and the magazine plugs them both.
The front cover of the magazine will have a picture that I've taken as the brief requires that I have created my own content, however I also want to add some graphical elements like adding graphically created illustrations to the photo or magazine name. This will be visually appealing and create consistency between the style of the magazine and the artist genre of indie pop.
photoshop- creating the layout and adding in text
tripod- used by the photographer for the primary photos.
social media accounts- to advertise the magazine
printer- to make large quantities of magazines
model- Who i will taking the photo of (an artist)
Photographer- who will take the photos
photo editor and editor in chief - who will do post production
writers and fact checkers- writes the articles
social media managers- head of twitter and Spotify
project manager- time management
ad sales manager- head of advertising.
Form:
Layout ideas:
Using photoshop i created very basic possible layouts for the over page and double page spread layout, as this is what my brief requires I make. The colour schemes aren't set, however i think these layouts are fairly strong for my purpose and the pictures I take won't perfectly match with the images I've used for my layout ideas, which is why I've just used silhouettes instead of detailed sketches.I decided to create them digitally as well as hand drawn to get some practice with photoshop as well as to clearly show my ideas as my hand drawn diagrams aren't always clear enough for me further down the project. Content:
I want my magazine to break down song lyrics from popular songs with a confusing or personal meaning. This will allow for artists to connect more with their audiences and get audiences more invested. There for one idea I have for the double page spread is a lyric break down page, as shown by my little mock up. It would take either the verses of the song or just controversial lines and allow for the artist to discuss them in an interview format. Overall this would allow for my artist to connect with audiences, possibly boosting their slowly growing popularity around North London, as the brief wants to show off North London's music scene.
My second idea is an interview that focuses more on the type of music the artist creates, rather than focusing down on one song, allowing them to be broader with their answers. It would probably have a similar layout to the previous, but with more interview space rather than song lyrics. This idea would have a similar outcome to the first, connecting North London audiences more personally with the artists.
As a unique selling point I would like to have connections with Spotify, where monthly we release the music discussed in each edition so that people can listen to the music their reading about. This can be acoplished in two ways, either just adding our account name so that people can look it up, or having QR codes for people to scan and be taken straight to that months playlist. In addition to this idea I could have a double page spread show casing the genres 'top ten' songs which will also be featured on Spotify and the top three could be the songs that we discuss and breakdown.
I want my magazine to have a strong online presence, so along with Spotify, the magazine will plunge our Twitter account, where people can suggest which songs we break down next and make offers for the top ten. And to keep everything connected, the Twitter can link to the Spotify, Spotify links with the magazine and the magazine plugs them both.
The front cover of the magazine will have a picture that I've taken as the brief requires that I have created my own content, however I also want to add some graphical elements like adding graphically created illustrations to the photo or magazine name. This will be visually appealing and create consistency between the style of the magazine and the artist genre of indie pop.
Comments
Post a Comment