Genre Research:Pop Music

History
Modern pop music originated in the 1950s, coming from rock and roll. The term popular music can cover multiple styles of music and the genre is based off what is in the top of the charts at the time. It borrows elements of urban, dance, rock, Latin country. Nonetheless the core elements of pop are the medium to short length songs, written in a basic format, usually verse chorus structure as well as the use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes and catchy hooks.

Artists
Good example of Pop musicians and artists would be Micheal Jackson, who was titled 'The King of Pop' in his time. More modern artists would include Elyar Fox, One Direction and Miley Cyrus.

Magazines 
Pop music magazines include 'Top of the Pops', 'Billboard' and 'We love Pop' they are all aimed at the relatively young audience of 10-15 year old, mostly girls.

Magazine Genre and Ideas

Music Magazine Genre by Elliot Daniel on GoAnimate

Magazine Conventions

Front Cover:
Main Image - Subject's face can be seen easily and clearly
Masthead - Short and memorable magazine title
Date - Date and price of release of magazine issue
Barcode
Plug - Competitions, free gifts or offers, Normally boxed
Teaser - Teasing contents/what's inside
Anchorage - Language techniques used to anchor articles and pictures meaning

Contents Page:
Page numbers - Conventions
Adverts - External advertisement from other institutions or offers
Clear font - Easy to read, large text
Featured story - Main stories from the front page. Must read or big stories
Editor Information
Quotes from Articles - Makes people want to read the full article
Continuous colour scheme - What the reader expects or is used to seeing
Regulars - Usual content, e.g. reviews, charts, readers  section.

Double Page Spread:
Introduction - Conventional, leads you into the article at the slower pace.
Articles itself in columns - Clear font and easy to read
Overlapping pictures/text - Fills out the page with the product or person/s
Pictures relating to article - Keeps the product or person in your head and want to buy their products
Continuous colour scheme - Expected, Conventional
Certain quotes enlarged - Highlighted opinions

Examples

Main Brief

Preliminary exercise:

Using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of an new music magazine, featuring a photograph of an student in the medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the content page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

Main Task: 

The front page, contents and a double page spread of a new music magazine. all images and text used must be original, produced by you - minimum of four images.

Final Cover

Unused Pictures

I did not use this image because it looked too long looking down all the lockers.

Posters in background would interfere with masthead and shot is too long.

There is too much empty space in this image

Model is not pulling a happy face, and the shot is taken from too far away leaving empty space.

Magazine Ideas and Paper drafts.

Masthead: Wyke College Magazine, College Logo
Main Image: Happy Students with college as the background.
Main Story: New block opening next month.
Side stories
Audience: Students, Parents and Staff.

Contents Page Mock-Up