Indie magazine, softer colours, double coloured lighting in studio with a main close up image and obscure or unique object/clothing choice (headphones/)

• 

• 

• 

Double page spread will link to music video, with interview from the artist – interview tells that the event in the video (car crash) was based of his life, and talk about how he’d recovered from broken arm a year earlier, ready for his tour that is being promoted this year. Use an image from earlier shoot, different to cover as well as a few others

Advert have playing the drums with dramatic spotlight lighting with tour dates

• 

• 

• 

• 

I have chosen to work on a Games Magazine, for this I have decided to focus on the newest gaming consoles that are being released in the future and the games that will  come with these consoles, these new consoles plan on changing the way of gaming through the improvement of graphics, resolution, delay and more. My Games Magazines target audience is teenage boys from the ages of 13- 19, this is because these ages are mainly the majority of the gaming community, these audiences will need to be of middle-class backgrounds, because of this large age gap my magazine will not include derogatory or adult games as readers from the lower margin of my age gap will not be old or mature enough to read this.  

The research I have done for this advertisement includes studying the general layout of gaming magazines and how they present new products to audiences on their front covers and double page spreads, I have also looked at the newest products and consoles being released on platforms and how magazines persuade audiences to buy them. Finally, I have looked at the newest games being released for future consoles and how popular they are even before their release, this was done by looking at critical feedback and reviews from gamers who have played the games early.  

My magazine will display the newest gaming consoles and what their developers plan on improving and changing to make them better than previous ones. This will include examples of software improvements and graphics changes, as well as the developer’s description of the consoles and feedback from critics, this will be displayed to give my audience the information needed when considering buying the newest consoles, I believe my magazine would be extremely popular as many gaming audiences are currently focused on buying the newest consoles to enhance their gaming capabilities, furthermore, I will also include the newest games being released on these consoles and how they differ from games on the previous consoles.  

My front cover will display a gaming character from one of the newest games in the centre of the page with the most hyped new console, the PS5, this will be done to grasp the readers attention instantly. I will also include games characters that will be made on Fuse to further show the protagonists of the new games. 

My double page spread will be professional and tidy in the way it shows the new consoles and their descriptions from their developers and critics, it will also clearly display the most popular games that will be coming with the consoles and how they plan to immerse players.  

For my game magazine I plan to make a reactionary aimed at young men I plan to do this by using dark themes with a mid-shot looking at the characters back. I’m doing this because I find the eerie look interesting and stands out compared to other magazines. I will also use dots of colour like red for the important notices around the magazine this will attract the reader’s attention which will talk about the most popular games in the magazine. My title and main attraction of the magazine will cover most of the front cover with my character image being the best as it will be the first thing to appeal to a consumer. 

The contents page will be very basic as it’s not used to try influence people to read it and needs to be simplistic, so people find it easy to get the page they need. However, I will still have some interesting details like small cut outs of characters with page numbers. These will be used as small features for the most popular pages of the magazine.  

My first advert is for a mouse which seems dull as everyone has a mouse, but I will use special effects to make it stand out to give the advert so colour and to create some interest. I will keep to the theme of the magazine by creating a black background almost space themed, but I will add an element of blue as the product has blue LEDs on it. My second advert will be an advert for a basketball game this because most people in my target audience will be interested in sport 

My double page spread will be the main feature of the game which will involve using brownish colours to link to the front cover using fire or the desert which will continue the theme throughout the magazine. 

My Magazine is aimed towards young adults and teenagers age 14-20 who are interested in games and gaming culture. This audience will be therefore mostly middle class because they will be able to afford games and the hardware needed to play them. I will focus my magazine around reviewing games and providing stories related to the gaming industry and gaming culture, informing readers of games to buy or avoid and telling readers about new developments in gaming. 

My game adverts will feature different products related to gaming: I will include an advert for an upcoming game, an advert for an upcoming console, and an advert for a gaming mouse. The adverts will be aimed towards the target audience of the magazine, but they will not necessarily follow the house style of the magazine because adverts are produced by other companies and the magazine will feature those designs. My game advert will include images of people to simulate the graphics of the game that is being advertised. This will be linked to postmodernism as I will aim to produce the adverts to conform to commercial media standard by creating a hyperreality and glorifying consumption of excess. The game also appeals traditionally to masculine audiences since it is a violent fighting game. Because of this, the advert is reactionary and conforms to the overrepresentation of games that are violent and appeal to males and the male fantasy. For my gaming console advert, I plan to again apply postmodernism in a typical way to praise consumption of the product being advertised and to attract customers. For my gaming mouse advert the language will be imperative to apply postmodern theory as well as the idea of hailing individuals in society developed by Althusser. 

My magazine’s front page will feature an image of a friend who will act as a character in the game being featured prominently on the front page. Since this character that will be featured is a white male the cover is reactionary, without featuring a female character the cover appeals to the mainly male audience of video game media and conforms to the general representation of white men in video games. The cover also will feature insights into what articles and stories are featured inside the magazine which will attract customers and communicate what is inside the magazine to them. My Magazine’s contents page will also provide information on what is in the magazine, but the primary purpose is informational while the features on the front cover is to advertise the magazine to potential customers. The contents page will list every article in the magazine. These will not be created apart from the double page feature but will be on the contents page to create verisimilitude and to make the magazine look like an actual magazine. The list will feature an image for each article to again increase verisimilitude. 

Statement of intent: 

Music video: 

The music video I have produced follows themes of gender and identity representation and focuses on the idea of nonconformity in a conformative world. The main message of the music video as a whole is as follows: those who hold power will silence radical ideas of nonconformity, so it is up to you to find yourself and carve out an identity for yourself no matter what the world tells you. 

This product follows gender and representation theorists such as Judith Butler (who describes gender as a performance, as well as gender as a social construct). Furthermore, ideas of Jaques Lecain will be incorporated into this work. Lecain recognises that we never see ourselves, only a mirror image of ourselves. This can be argued that, if ideas that challenge the idea of gender roles are ignored, children are taught gender is a solid construct and internalise activities that do not fit their gender roles. 

 The song (Magazine) was created by Editors and permission will be sought for the use of this song. Editors is an indie band, so the music video will follow an indie perspective. Style models used for this project include: Heart by Flor and High by Young Rising Sons. The style, as from an indie perspective, will include features such as the use of low saturation shots and extreme close-up shots. Due to the nature of the song being sponsored by a headphones company, several headphones shots will have to be used. These must be relatively consistent, in order to solidify the fact that this is a sponsorship. 

Magazine: 

The main focus of the magazine is to create a house style to represent the indie theme, focusing more on low contrasted, washed-out colours designed after the indie style. This will ensure that the appropriate (indie) audience can recognize that the magazine is designed for an indie audience and therefore the magazine will appeal to the correct target audience. pictures of the fictional band will also be used here, to create anchorage for the band discussed in the articles within the magazine. The content of the magazine will be varied including the required two page band interview, the advert and the front cover. The style model used is INDIE magazine.

I will title my magazine “Gamerz Alliance’ as I want to make it short and catchy. I thought this would appeal to my target audience of males between 28-30 and new affluent workers, who have a keen interest in gaming and the world of professional gaming industry. I am also aiming to appeal those with an interested in the art and graphics behind gaming and what goes into creating games, by using high quality graphics and a simplistic artist design.

When planning my approach to my magazine and was researching style models I found that the most compelling magazines included a main character in the centre of the magazine. I subsequently decided I will use a games character designed in fuse as the dominate signifier to represent the theme of my games magazine and create to include a high quality character which appeals to audiences interested in graphics and character designs. I have chosen to size my magazine at a width 11cm and a height of 17cm, I decided this as it would fit well into someones bag and would be a big enough size to read comfortably. For my contents page I want to make this clear and simple for readers to be able to refer to it quickly and am going to create a simple clean professional design which fits with the and Target audience of my magazine. When coming up with the design and target market I research popular gaming magazines on market and was inspired by the use of Signifiers in the magazines to make it clear what its about and use of bold headlines.My double page spread will also follow the theme of being sleek and professional and will be an artist feature. Inspired by Magazine titled ‘Art of gaming” I will create a double page spread which explain the process and artist goes through to design her characters. I will include image of her process and her creating her work.

I will also create 3 adverts, one of which will be for a new gamer realise using bold text looking as if it is on fire on a plain background with the logos of the game company include. this will make the advert striking much like the one I was inspired by for ‘doom’ released in 1994 which uses a bold title as anchorage to get readers attention. I will also do this when advertising a gamers tournament using typography skills to create bold interesting titles using graphic design elements like seen in published magazines, I plan to use Glitch text going with the them of computers and gamers.

My intention for my 3 adverts are to use the following theorists,Propp’s character functions, and Peirce’s Sign Theory, or Semiotics. I want at least 2 of my adverts to have some mention of the game i created on the front cover, “oakvally”. I plan to incorporate them in a sponsor ad or a game bundle advert.

For my first advert I planning to create a game bundle advert for 3 different games. 

I plan to use out of the following 2 layouts as my display for this advert;

(competition layout of with a ^ formation of 3 games)

or

(page is split into 3 slashes showing action shots of the 3 games)

I think both of the layouts have their potential but the advert layout that’s divided into 3 might either be more eye catching to audiences or simply might fit correctly for an A4 and might work better as a landscape advert. But on the other hand the use of triangles to display the different games in the bundle could be another promising layout and will work with the A4 sizing. 

For my second advert I want to do a sponsored advert of a console sponsoring my game oakvally. Examples of possible companies I could use to cross platform are, PS4 or twitch. These two companies would have different effects in sharing the game across audiences. Using PS4 would give the intention for audiences to buy the game and can give a good wide reach across different audiences for users who have a PS4. this is still very useful but it wouldn’t engage the audience as much as being sponsored by twitch as it would reach a wider range of audiences who enjoy indie games and would be streaming the game playthrough through the platform which then is more free promotion and engages the audiences and can mean there more likely to buy the game since there favourite streamers have played it. The target audience would be the same age range of  young teens for oakvally and followers of PS4 or twitch.

For my third advert I want to attempt to use silhouettes for a more simplistic but effective style for video game characters. This will be an advert for a separate game that would be coming out on PS4. I want to see how simplistic I can go with the advert but still have it look professional and realistic to what you would get in a video game magazine. I’ve seen this stype be used on PS4 covers and I think it displays a more subtle but effective show of strength and confidence of the character without having to physically show those emotions on their face. It’s a good way to make the audience, instead, focus on the body language of the character because, that is the only thing the designer has allowed them to see.

(the PS4 advert reference for advert 3)

front cover layout references

content page layout references

double page references

colour scheme references for part of 2d advert

3rd Advert References

I am doing the NEA 2 which is the games magazines and adverts. I will do this by creating a radical product using a man as the dominant signifier in a war themed video game. This is radical as it is stereotypical having a man character being represented as the protagonist in an action genre game. I will use a Fuse man gamer on the front page as it conveys the message that it is for a specific target audience, the person will be wearing a headset and holding a controller with stereotypically big arms. My contents, I will then include pictures of animated characters to advertise a new game and screenshots from this game. For the double page spread I will use one image of a fuse character that will take up a lot of space on the left side, this corresponds with Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative. As the game is a cross between skating and war which are both typically male dominated. The style model I have used for this is:

For the three advert prints I will be advertising an online football event. To communicate this I will use a background of a football stadium with bold writing to show the date and time of the event. This could appeal to a niche audience that enjoys football games as well as action. This is playing on the assumption of what men in this target audience would enjoy and what else would appeal to them. My next print will be an advert for a new games controller with voice recognition, the colours are blue and white which mocks the stereotypical colours associated with the male gender. This would appeal to a gaming audience as it is a new technology that is easier than using headphones with a microphone. My 3rd advert is for a new game called ‘Action Adam’ which is a game that features a typical action figurine-looking solider, who is based in a city doing different tasks. This game/advert would appeal to the audience as it fits within the action genre and in terms of representation, the target audience could identify as ‘Adam’ and give a sense of secured masculinity. The background will show a landscape of buildings to give an understanding of the setting within the game and have the avatar ‘Adam’ as the dominant signifier.

For my NEA I will be completing the second brief; aiming to produce a front cover, double page spread, contents page and three adverts for the gaming genre. My ideas will be influenced by a selection of already-produced gaming magazines that share similar codes and conventions to the ones I wish to use to attract a certain demographic. My magazine is predominantly aimed at a younger audience of 10-12 years. I aim to produce a product that is attractive and inclusive of all genders as this would likely increase circulation of my product as well as profit; many gaming-based products are targeted at a male audience. Ideas proposed by theorists such as David Gauntlet; his theory on gender fluidity suggests that whilst in the past the media tend to convey singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of male and female identities, the media today offers us a more diverse range of icons and characters from whom we may influenced by, meaning that gender identity is less constricted, this is what I aim to achieve.

I aim to target this specific demographic as they are highly impressionable, as they are seen as ‘mainstreamers’ they are also more likely to follow popular trends, especially in areas such as gaming which allow for a form of escapism. As the form of gaming is presented in a physical, literacy-based form this product will also act as a device to reinforce and enhance their use of lexis and vocabulary. The style of language and register that I will use is a mix of colloquial and slightly more formal as I want the magazine to be professional and factual in relation to its contents. However, it should also be appealing to my target audience through the informal language; they would use in everyday life so that they can relate to it, using the magazine as a form of escapism, interlinking with the uses and gratification theory.

My product is also going to be highly influenced by ideas surrounding postmodernism – the idea that reality is not reflective in human understanding, but rather constructed by individuals based on their own collection of fragmented thoughts. Therefore, my product will reflect these ideas as it aims to influence the audience to construct their own opinions based on individual interpretation, also linking in with Habermas’s theory on the ‘Public Sphere’ whereby individuals can share individual thoughts and feelings globally without intervention from higher institutions such as government.

I will also use the san-serif font – ‘Acumin Variable Concept’ – an informal font would be more eye-catching to a younger audience who may want to rebel against formal fonts that are dominant in more reactionary or ‘adult’ texts such as ‘The Daily Mail’. The font also act as anchorage for plugs as they will use similar styling. I also wanted to incorporate a retro theme to my magazine and used 8-bit characters and a tabloid size, similar to popular 80s magazines, with a width of – 27.94 CM and height of – 43.18 CM.

[Word Count = 500]