Contents Page

First Draft
This is the first draft of my contents page.

-I have continued the colour scheme from the rest of my magazine as this is a common convention in the industry.

-I have put hooks for some of the main stories down the side of the contents to draw the reader in.

-The boxes around the photos just emphasize the images and make them stand out more. They also tie in with the rest of the colour scheme.

-The bottom half of the page is headed with subsections for different parts of the magazine. Each heading has some of the magazines pages underneath with information on them.

- I decided to spilt it up into sections because this is what other successful music magazines such as NME do to make it easier for the reader to find the feature they are looking for.

-When I have finished my front cover I will put a shrunken down image of it at the top of the page to annotate the stories on the front cover. I feel that this is something a little bit different and will look visually attractive to draw the reader in.

Feature Article

This is the final draft of my feature article. I have altered the main photo by changing the brightness. This gives their skin a healthy glow which I think makes them look happier. Adding effects such as drop and inner shadow to the title quote of the article allows it stand out more and make it appear like it is raised on the page.I chose to use a white text on a pink background because the colours compliment each other but, at the same time don’t blend too much so that the text cannot be easily read. The font I have used is a simple Arial to make it easy to read. Originally I had the text at size 12 but I decided to change it to 10 in order to fit the full story. In my first draft all of the text was white and the only way to distinguish between question and answer was that the question was in bold. However I felt that this did not give a clear enough indication between the two and that is why I changed the questions to black and put them in italics. Also even though the article only had to be a double page spread I opted to add a third page so that more photos could be used and the so that the text could be layed out in a more attractive manner. A common convention of a magazine article is to have quotes from the piece in larger text, near the corresponding answer to tell the reader a little bit about what they can expect to read without going into any great detail. I have done this as i feel it is an effective way to get your audience to read the article.

Cover Photos

These are some of the photos which i had taken to use on my cover but decided not to for various different reasons which I will explain below.

I took this photo on gateshead quayside. The reason i have chosen not to use it is becuase there is too much glare on Lauren (the girl on the right hand side) from the sun. Also because the wind was blowing there are bits of hair sticking out.

The photo I had originally chosen to use on the cover was the one above however once it was put onto the plain background the image looked too flat and slightly distorted, so for that reason I have decided not to use it.

Another picture i considered using was this one but after looking at it closer i feel it is too dark and will not give the full impact that a front cover image needs to.

Miss-Fits Interview

Hot new girl band Miss-Fits talks about their rise to fame, life before, and, of course, their amazing debut single. Chloe, Lauren and Rachael may have only been on the scene for a few months but this talented trio are already topping the charts. The girls won our hearts on the hit TV show ‘Make Us A Super Group’ back in August with their angelic voices and even more heavenly bodies. However life hasn’t always been so sweet for the girls. We finally managed to catch up with them and this is what they had to say.

Throughout the show we learned a lot about your tough upbringing, was life really that hard?
Rachael: My mum killed herself was I was just five years old and I never knew who my dad was this clearly was devastating for me and I honestly don’t know how I would have coped if it wasn’t for these girls and their lovely families. Lauren’s mum took me in shortly after the death and raised me as one of her own, for that I am eternally grateful.
Lauren: We certainly didn’t have it easy. Growing up on a rough council estate in Newcastle constantly being told that we would amount to nothing was so difficult to hear. And with so much negative activity going on around us sometimes we thought people were right but we never gave up and that is why we are where we are today.
Chloe: Before we went on ‘Make Us A Super Group’ we tried again and again to get recognised in the business. When we were 16 we saw an advert in the local paper for a manager looking for some new recording artists. He wanted an initial fee of £500 just for us to meet him and record a demo. We were so excited about it and held loads of events to raise the money. Eventually we had enough and trekked down to his studio in Sunderland; only to find when we arrived that he was a pervy fella who wanted us to dance virtually naked in a low budget music video. Looking back we were pretty naïve to even go there but lucky we managed to get out straight away even if it was £500 poorer.

Had any else like this happened to you trying to break into the music world?
Lauren: Unfortunately it has. Not long after the first incident we went for an audition for a record label down in London. When we got there everyone else was really experienced stage school singer with their state of the art education and expensive clothes. Then there was us in our Primark gear and the only experience we had was singing in local pubs at parties. We went into the room and as soon as the producer set eyes on us he just started to laugh. He then went on to tell us that we good looking girls but were too common for his record label and should think about perusing a career in something more on our level like pole dancing. I honestly couldn’t believe what he was saying to us, we were absolutely disgusted.

That is terrible but at least now all of that is behind you. I bet it’s been manic since winning the show how does it feel to be superstars?
Chloe: (giggles) I would hardly call us superstars but you’re right, it has been mad whenever we’re out, just shopping and stuff people come up to us in the street and are like, “OMG you’re Miss-Fits. Can I have your autograph?” It’s so weird because we still think of ourselves as normal girls from Newcastle- I guess that’s going to take a little while to get used to.
Lauren: Chloe’s right but it is really fun to be noticed though.

Miss-Fits is a really cool name which one of you came up with it?
Rachael: It was actually Chloe’s big sister Hannah who thought of it. When we were younger and just messing around we used to have loads of ridiculous names, but when decided to get serious we had to think of something good. We spent ages trying to think yet nothing seemed right. Hannah had been out with friends and when she came in she was so excited; she was “You are going to love me! I’ve thought of the perfect band name.” Miss-Fits it’s good because we’re un-conventional in that we don’t really have the same tastes and also because, and this is not meant to sound big headed ‘coz we so aren’t, but it’s supposed to show that we are three ‘fit’ girls.

You guys are really close; do you have any bad habits?
Chloe: OMG Rachael is the messiest person I have ever met, during the show we shared a room in the contestant’s house and you couldn’t even see the floor for all of the junk.
Rachael: That’s not true it wasn’t mess ‘coz I knew where everything was.
(They all laugh)
Lauren: It’s not really a bad habit but Chloe is so ditsy. Rachael once asked us if we would do a triathlon with her for charity so we both said yes. Chloe got really excited but it turned out she thought we doing a three legged race! I’m sure she should have been blonde.

Wow Chloe that’s, um, impressive. Is there anything else stupid that she’s done?
Chloe: I really don’t think you guys need to know that.
Lauren: Actually it’s true if we were to tell you all the stupid things she’s done we would be hear all day.

Okay lets talk about you’re debut single ‘Love is not enough’ it went straight to number one when it came out last month how did that feel?
Rachael: It was so amazing we were actually travelling down the A1 at the time in the car when we heard them announce it on the radio. Lauren was driving; we all got so excited that we had to pull over into the lay by. As soon as we stopped we all got out our phones to ring our mum’s to see if they had heard they news. They of course had and were screaming down the phone at pitches only dogs could hear. (Laughing)

Did you do anything special to celebrate?
Chloe: We had a huge party with all of our close family and friends at my uncle’s bar in Newcastle. It was so much fun. We also went to a red carpet event in London and met loads of celebrities.

You’ll be partying with celebrities all of the time now. You’re all stunning girls, is there any room in your lives for sexy celebrity boyfriends?
Lauren: Well Chloe already has a boyfriend but Rachael and me are both single at the moment.

Chloe how long have you been with your boyfriend?
Chloe: It’s coming up to three years now and we’ve never been happier. (Grinning broadly)

Aw how sweet. What about you girls if you could date any celebrity who would it be?
Lauren: You’re going to make me sound really childish hear but, I love Aston from JLS we met the boys last week at a party and I thought I was going to pass out when he hugged me.
Rachael: I don’t really know if I’m being honest.
Chloe: That is the biggest lie I have ever heard, she is obsessed with Peter Andre ever since she saw him on I’m A Celebrity.
Rachael: (shoving Chloe in the arm) Thanks Chloe I actually think I hate you now.

I’m sure I could put in a good word with Pete for you after all he is a single man now. Your first tour starts in December are you excited?
Lauren: It’s our first tour with us as the main headlining act but we have already been on tour with the rest of the guys from the show. It was absolutely brilliant. I mean we performed in front of an audience in the live stages of the show but nothing compared to the buzz we got from performing in our own town to over 50,000 people at the metro radio arena.
Rachael: December is going to be such a busy month but we can’t wait to be performing. At the minute it’s all still pretty hectic trying to get everything ready and we’re all nervous ‘coz we want it to be brilliant but I’m sure as soon as we get out there on the stage all of the nerves will disappear and we will just enjoy it.
Is there going to be a supporting act on tour with you?
Chloe: Yeah there is and they are absolutely amazing but you’ll have to come along to one of our shows to find out who it is.

What about your album what is it called and when can we buy it?
Rachael: The album ‘Taking Control’ is out on the 25th of November. It has loads of cover songs we sang on the show as well as an exclusive collaboration with a phenomenal solo artist. And of course our number one single ‘Love is not enough.’

A collaboration with a solo artist can you give us any clues as to who it is?
Lauren: No you’ll just have to wait and see when the album comes out. What I will say is that we were so honoured to work with this person and it is by far the best thing we have done yet.

You can see exclusive clips from our live interview with the girls, as well as all of their tour dates at www.harmonymagazine.co.uk

Example Feature Article

This article has many common conventions of a magazine article. The title is bold and eyecatching, it is a quote from within the article and therefore tells the reader what they can expect to read. Underneath there is then a short introduction, also in bold and much larger then the main body of the so that it catches the readers eye. The article is set out in coloumns which is typical of a magazine so that it is easy to read. Pictures play a huge part in magazine articles because they accompany the story and allow the reader to see whatever is being talked about. Putting quotes throughout the article, in bold and a different colour is also common and draws the audience into the article before they have even started to read the main body of the story.

Q Contents Page

Another example of a music magazine contents page is Q. Like NME it has a straight forward layout with consistant fonts throught to make it easy to read. There is a large image of a band which takes up most of the page. They have done this to hightlight a main story inside, the text box near the bottom of the image tells us a little bit about it. This is common in magazines. The features are split out up into sections to make it easy for readers to find what they are looking for, this is particularly usefull for regular readers. The coloured bars inbetween sections stand out against the plain background grabbing the readers attention.