The housestyle of my magazine.

Within my magazine, I am keeping a certain house style throughout the front cover, contents page and double page spread as I am following the typical conventions of pop magazines. I will be showing my particular housestyle by having a strip of grey bordering at the top of each page, and by keeping the titles of the each page in the same font. The font that I am using for this is "Neon"; Groovy, taken from dafont.com. Other writing that I put on any of the pages will be typed in the font style Trebuchet MS.

I am also sticking to the colour scheme red, white, pink and grey, although this might be slightly different on the double page spread because the feature articles in most pop magazines have a different colour scheme to make the particular artist stand out from the rest of the magazine to get more publicity.

I will be using lots of doodles/small cartoon pictures to fill up any spaces on the pages of my magazine so that it looks really busy and full of fun. For example, I have used lots of love hearts on the front cover because the main statement on the front stage is, "We're just friends", so the love hearts link into this theme of romance. I have also used a lot of cartoon stars because the magazine is based on pop "stars", so there is a link here, and builds up the cheesy, poppy feel that I am aiming for the magazine to have.

Evolution of Genres.

Evolution of genres are mainly associated with the film industry but can also be applied to music magazines. There are many different stages of genre evolution:

Prototype - this includes the seminal/original texts (for example, 'NME' in relation to music magazines). These establish the conventions of the text which are carried on for years onwards.

Classic - these include the typical examples of the genre which show the conventions perfectly. 'NME' is also a good example of this because it was one of the first rock magazines and so is the one magazine that has set the genres and is going to portray them perfectly. In terms of the type of magazine I am producing (pop), 'Top of the Pops' is probably the most classic example.

Parodic - this is when classics are made into comedies or spoofs. This stage can't really be applied to pop or any other style of music magazine and is only really used in the film industry.

Revisionist - this is basically the re-writing of conventions. Re-writing happens when the "classic" examples become boring, when it becomes less popular and when styles/ideologies begin to change. This stage of evolution can be easily linked to pop magazines because in recent years since the decline of pop magazines, their conventions have changed a lot. For example, pop magazines used to be totally centred around music and nothing else, whereas pop magazines are much more based on celebrity style or celebrity relationships (as addressed in previous posts) rather than purely music.

Hybrid - this is where lots of different genres are combined. For example, 'Q' magazine covers a wide variety of different music genres such as rock, pop, indie. This types of texts generally appeal to a wider mass audience. In terms of pop magazines, different genres of music are not so much combined but the interest in music of pop stars is combined with the interest in celebrity style and relationships etc.

Post-Modernism - this stage can be broken down into different types. For example, Bricolage is the combining of old elements from different cultures and different eras to form new things. This is often applied to style and the easiest example to give is when someone is wearing a 1950's jacket, has a 1960's haircut and then shoes from the present day (or something similar). Another type of the post-modern approach is Homage. This is usually a deliberate tribute to someone or something from the past. For example, you will often find that you listen to a song and it reminds you of another song you have previously heard. The artist of the new track may be aware of this fact and may have used it as a deliberate attempt to rediscover the previous track's exploration into music, or on the other hand they have possibly never actually heard the song from the past that the new track has been related to, meaning it's purely coincidence. This then relates to the theory of memes that I have touched upon on a previous post.

Photo Edits

Here are some of the photos edits that I have created so far on Adobe Photoshop. They are fairly simple, because I want the actual quality and look of the photograph to stay the same; I just needed to make the background white so that I can place just the model onto the front page of magazine without the background.

Confirmation of magazine title!

I have now decided that I am definitely going to be using 'Tip Top Pop' as the title for my pop magazine. This is because I think the title is very catchy and slightly rhythmic, which obviously has a relation to music. It is also a bit of a tongue-twister if you try to say it quickly, and so this kind of gives it an element of fun. The words within the title can also be linked with one of the most well known pop shows and pop magazine, 'Top of the Pops'. For example, I have still used the words 'Top' and 'Pop' but in a different word order and different phrasing to 'Top of the Pops', which somehow seems to give it a totally different feel and meaning.

Photos I have taken!

I have now done my main photoshoot and so I am going to post the ones that I am most likely to use on here. Some of the photos I have taken are quite serious and clearly positioned for the camera, whereas others are slightly more fun because I just asked my model to improvise. I did this because pop is generally quite fun and cheesy and happy, so I wanted an element of fun to come across in my photos.

As you can see, I have chosen to go for the "good girl" image for the celebrity in my photos because most young pop stars tend to try and stick to a clean, innocent image. Of course there are exceptions to this, and some seem to veer off and let loose (e.g. Miley Cyrus) in order to look this stereotypical image, but I have chosen to follow conventions and keep mine fairly fresh and clean. For example, the pigtails/bunches that my model is wearing her hair in connote goodness and perhaps purity because this is usually classed as quite a "young" hairstyle to have and a style that maybe primary and junior school children are likely to wear, suggesting innocence. This is also shown by the school uniform. Although the top button of my model's shirt is undone and her tie is hanging loose, she carries this off without it looking too rebellious by keeping a smile or a not-too-serious expression on her face, which makes you feel as if she is not purposefully wearing the uniform to go against rules or regulations that have been set, but to perhaps be a bit more casual and fun.

I will not be using these photographs as they are for my magazine, I will be editing them using Adobe Photoshop and then adding them into the pages of my magazine.

Front Cover and Double Page Spread Photoshoot

Today I will be doing my photoshoot for the main photo on the front cover of my magazine as well as all of the photos for my double page spread/feature article pages.

Costume and Props
- White school shirt (tied up at the front)
- Black mini skirt
- Purple tie
- Knee high grey/black socks
- White plimsolls
- Pink nail varnish
- Big set of headphones
- Microphone (if accessible)
- Pink pen with feathers/bobbly bits on the end

I want to create a school girl image in my photos because the pop star who is going to be featuring on my double page spread is a young girl, fresh out of school who has managed to break into the pop industry.
I am aim to have one photo of my model sitting at a desk with a note pad and the pink fluffy pen in front of her, elbows on the table, daydreaming, with a big set of headphones on her head. This will probably be used for the main photo on my double page spread. For my front cover picture, I want the background to be totally white (I will have to create this on a photo editor such as Picasso or Picnik) and I want my model to be bending forwards towards the camera whilst holding the headphones onto her head. I also want her facial expression to be quite serious and perhaps a little sultry. I suppose the photos will be slightly edgy, but the edginess will be brought down a bit due to the fact the model will be wearing school uniform. This is how pop magazines often construct their photo shoots. For example, in a recent edition of 'Top Of The Pops' magazine, there was a Justin Bieber feature article and photo shoot where he has a very serious expression in all of the photos, but he is carrying books and a basketball with vaguely connotes school life, although he did not have the school uniform on. The element of schooling will come across much more obviously in my photos. School seems to be quite a common semantic field in pop magazines because a lot of the new artists tend to be very young and just out of school, so I am keeping to these conventions in my magazine. It is the ideal kind of age to base my artist on anyway, because I spend my days around lots people who fall into this age category, so I have a wider knowledge of exactly what kind of experiences the artists would have been going through, and I can include this information in the interview that I create on my double page spread.

Draft of double page spread interview/feature article

Tip Top Pop magazine is extremely honoured to introduce to you...

(Sally K in huge, bold font)

(Picture of Sally K bending forward to towards the camera and holding onto the huge headphones that cover her ears).

Here at Tip Top Pop, we feel super privileged to have nabbed the very first ever interview with dazzling new pop sensation, Sally K. As Sally's first ever single "Finding Love" storms the charts and keeps hold of the number 1 spot for its third week running, what Laura Hudson really wants to know is how this charming 16 year old girl, fresh out of school, managed to rise to fame so early on in life...

TTP: Morning Sally! It's so lovely to meet you and to have you hear at Tip Top Pop for your first ever interview. It must be daunting to be getting phone calls from magazines and radio stations left, right and centre begging for interviews with you, especially at such a young age!

SK: Thanks! I'm so excited to be here! Of course it is daunting to begin with, but it's amazing feeling that the UK want to know all about me already, despite me having only released one single so far.

TTP: Can I just say you are looking particularly gorgeous this morning. Very preppy!

SK: Oh thank you! What I'm wearing right now is actually the very first item of clothing I splurged on when I started earning money for my music. (Spreads arms out wide to allow Laura to admire the beautifully designed Mulberry cropped jacket). I'm not used to having such luxuries.

TTP: Ooh that must have been a real treat for you. Have you grown up in a family with little money then?

SK: I definitely wouldn't say we were a poor family, but we had to be quite careful with money because my Dad is a self-emplyed kitchen fitter. There are times when he gets loads of work and a fair amount of money, and then other times we're scraping it a bit. It's not like I was deprived in any way as a child. Not at all! I mean, we live in a semi-detached moderately sized house and my parents always worked their hardest to ensure me, my brother and my sister had a great upbringing, but some times were just harder than others; just like they are in all families.

TTP: A fairly average family then really? Have they had much of an input into your musicality?

SK: Well, my parents are mainly into stuff from the '70's and '80's, because that's the kind of stuff they would listen to when they were younger. And then my older brother has always been into more rock and indie bands. But we constantly had Radio 1 on in the house, so me and my younger sister have grown up listening to the charts and all of the new up-and-coming artists on that.

TTP: What about the school you have recently left? Did they have much of an influence on your decision to try and break into the music industry?

SK: They definitely aided me in my decision, yes. I started off in the choir when I first joined the school and then went on to perform a couple of solos in school concerts and things like that. It kind of felt natural to me I guess. I decided to go on and take music at GCSE level, and that's when the teachers become really interested and involved in pushing your musical talents.

TTP: And our secret spy (aka, your mum!) told us that you got an A* in music, you brainbox!

SK: Haha! Trust her to say that! Yes, I did, but only because I worked really, really hard. I suppose it affected some of my other subjects like Maths and Science because I didn't concentrate so hard on them, but it has helped me to get to where I am now, so I have to be grateful for that.

TTP: We've also heard that you've got a bit of a romance going on with fellow teen star James Bell. Can you confirm if these rumours are true?

SK: I've known James for a couple of years now, but we're just really good friends. We understand each other because we've both launched pop careers from a very young age and sometimes it feels like we've been thrown in at the deep end. It helps when you can talk to someone with similar experiences to you.

TTP: So definitely no romance? Just friends?

SK: Yes, just friends.

TTP: Is there anyone else on the cards that we don't know about though?

SK: No, seriously, there's no one. The main reason is because I literally have no time for boys at the minute. I'm so busy with making new music and promoting it that I don't have any spare time and it wouldn't be fair on whoever I was with.

... for now, I am going to leave this as it is, but as I begin to construct my double page spread and know the sizings of columns etc, I will be able to decide whether or not I need to add some more to the interview to fill up any extra space.

As you can see, I have based a lot of my questions on non-music related topics such as style (comment on her appearance) and love life (question about fellow teen star) to show how the content of pop magazines have evolved and are now much less music based.

Risk Assessment of main photoshoot location

My main photoshoot is going to take place in a classroom because the pop star I am interviewing is fresh out of school and new to the music industry, so I am planning on having her wearing a school uniform and standing on a school desk, singing into a microphone.

Therefore, I need to ensure that the tables she will be standing on are sturdy and not wobbly so that there is little chance of the table causing her to wobble and fall. I also need to make sure that any other people in the room are out of the way so that there isn't a chance of her being knocked or pushed, causing her to fall off the table and possibly injure herself. Sharp objects such as chair legs or perhaps pens and the prongs of plugs need to be out of the way in case a fall occurs, to prevent any major type of injury. Although I do want my model to be posing in some way whilst she is standing on the table, it needs to be a sustainable position so that she is not struggling to hold it and she so that she doesn't stagger and fall.

Tropes and Memes

Tropes

A trope is a recurring element which is repeated over time and forms a common convention.

For example, we can pick up on the typical vampire tropes:

- They can't go out in the sun/ their skin burns in sunlight

- They sleep in coffins

- They have extremely pale white/grey skin

- They are allergic to garlic and crucifixes

- They can be killed with stake through the heart

- They can transform into bats and wolves

- They wear long black capes

More recently, these tropes have evolved as vampires have been introduced back into the film industry. For example,

- They no longer burn in the sun, they just sparkle

- They have super strength and super speed

- They feed off animals to get rid of their thirst for human blood, and sometimes they don't feed at all (this is the complete opposite to what vampires used to be like)

- They live in the normal world with normal people

- They're not only seen as monsters but people who blend into society

This can be related to pop music because it typically has ideological tropes such as being non-sexual, focusing on love rather than

hate, being clean and fresh and quite cheesy. Nowadays, it has evolved just like the vampire tropes have and it is now much more sexual, perhaps due to influences from different genres such as R'n'B or hip hop and also due to changes in society. For example, people are much more aware of sex these days, and are less likely to be shocked by anything they hear in song lyrics. In addition to this, the tropes of pop magazines used to completely revolve around the music that new pop artists and bands were producing, and nothing more. As pop magazines have become less and less popular and begun to diminish, the tropes have acclimatized (just as the vampire ones did) to suit their target audience's preferences. These days, pop magazines such as 'Top Of The Pops' have tropes which largely involve celebrity relationship gossip and celebrity style information, which is a total contrast to the solely music-based tropes of the past.

Memes

A meme identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. Memes are like the "genes" of culture and often somehow appear in the media simultaneously without given reason. For example, Pixar released the film 'Finding Nemo' and several weeks later Dreamworks released the film 'Shark Tale', which was immensely similar, yet there had been no connection or copying of content between the two. It was totally unexplained. In the music industry, Lily Allen and Kate Nash came about at the same kind of time and their general sound was fairly similar. They both had the "Mockney" style of singing which really emphasized the fact they were both from London and had Cockney accents. In addition to this, they both had fairly controversial and rude song lyrics, which was completely new to the pop industry and had never been explored before. These type of ideas become memes which eventually form tropes. For example, there are now the likes of Eliza Doolittle and Jessie J who are similar to Lily Allen and Kate Nash to a point.

Deconstruction of possible titles

Several of my titles have the word "pop" in them. The word "pop" is monosyllabic and begins with a plosive which makes it seem as if it's bursting with energy and and quite in your face.

"Pop" is a contracted form of "popular" and also fits in with the modern trend of shortening words, which we tend to do with most things (e.g. R'n'B is a contracted form of rhythm and blues).

The title "Tip Top Pop" kind of relates/reminds me of the sixties, which is when pop music properly came about (with the likes of The Beatles etc), so this has a definite relevance to my magazine, and is probably the title I am most likely to use. "Tip Top Pop" also has a rhyming kind of ring to it, which can link in to the pop style of music because pop songs are stereotyped for having a lot of rhyming words within the lyrics, unlike some other music genres such as indie or perhaps rock.

Possible titles for my magazine

As I am producing a pop magazine, I am quite convinced that the title of my magazine needs to be fairly cheesy and slightly cliche. Pop magazines (and almost every other type of magazine) tend to have titles which relate to their particular genre. For example, 'Top of the Pops' and 'Smash Hits'.

Here are a few title ideas I have come up with so far:
- Pop It!
- Hit Pop
- Music Now
- Chart Buster
- Tip Top Pop!
- No. 1
- Teen Pop
- Pop Tart!

If I struggle to decide on a name for my magazine, I could possibly set up another survey so that people can vote on their favourite title, or I could even set up a survey simply asking for possible titles, just to give me a broader range of choice. The title of a magazine is extremely important because it is one of the main factors which affects whether or not a person actually picks up the magazine. The title needs to be catchy, "poppy" and fun to ensure an excellent reception and a high level of consumption. The more people that buy the magazine, the further afield the magazine can be distributed as well as allowing more money to be put into the production and marketing of it.

Ideas for photos and locations

Front Cover

I need lots of different images covering different topics on my front cover, so here are a few photos for ideas of the kind of thing I want to be shown, e.g. celebrity relationships, celebrity style.
For example, I will include this photo (or something similar) on my front cover because my target audience have stated that they are interested in finding out about celebrity relationships, and so this type of picture needs to be clear on the front page of the magazine.

I am also planning on taking some more photos showing a desired celebrity style, and I will add this to my front cover too.

Contents Page
The contents page needs to contain photos from further on in the magazine. So for example, there will be a photo of a celebrity and then the page number that the particular article can be found on will be listed below. I could use some of the photos I have used on the front cover, but I would prefer for all of the photos I use to be different because it makes the magazine look much more professional as a whole. I just want the contents page to give a clearer idea of what the magazine includes through the use of photographs, because this is often all that the readers look at, rather than the writing. To fill in any gaps on both the front cover and the contents page, I will be adding in doodle-resembling pictures such as love hearts, stars, flowers and swirls because these will link in with the kind of cheesy, poppy feel that the magazine needs to have.


Double Page Spread
Here are some very basic ideas for the photos for the double page spread of my magazine. I had the idea that the artist being featured in my article will be a young girl straight out of school that won a singing competition like 'The X Factor' and is featuring in her first feature interview/article. I had the idea that the photo shoot could take place in a classroom and the artist could be dressed in a school uniform which is styled to look cool (undone top button, tie hanging loosely, short skirt, knee high socks, little plimsolls). I want her to be standing on a table and singing into a microphone. This will be the main/largest picture on the double page spread. I have not yet decided on a model to play the part of the young, new artist, but I have a vague idea of what I want her to look like.


Thankfully, this is not the photo I will be using as I will not be modelling for my own magazine, but I want my model to be in the same kind of positioning (maybe a bit more confident looking and her body more open to the audience) whilst wearing a school uniform to show that she is fresh out of school and straight into the music business.

This is the type of setting/location I want my photoshoot to take place in. I think this type of environment will really relate to my target audience (young girls) because they are all still school students and by having a celebrity being a part of a photoshoot in a classroom, this gives the girls hope or maybe even faith that they too could be lucky enough to breakthrough and achieve exactly what they want to, just like my feature celebrity will have done.

Another photo I could have is a close up of the young star's face holding a pen and daydreaming while listening to head phones and looking longingly and hopefully at a poster advertising the singing competition that she eventually went on to win. Towards the end of the article, I would have a picture of her holding up her debut single with a huge grin on her face and looking very happy.