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With the background and images done, I started to transcribe the interview I did. The sound quality wasn’t that amazing and I had to double check some answers with the band members. I realised after typing up the entire interview that it was far above the word limit, so I started taking bits out. In the end I only used about half of the interview.
After a bit of text editing, I put everything together in Indesign, moving the text boxes around so that everything would fit onto 4 pages. Then I added the headline, making it a bit bigger because I had too much space on the second page.
My article is almost done, all that remains to do is hope Indesign doesn’t come up with some random error again and put the magazine together, doing a bit of last minute editing if there is anything wrong.
We decided as a group to keep the background black and the text white. Learning from past mistakes I used different layers for each element. After making the black background I made the bar at the bottom, so that I could judge how much space I had left for the rest of the layout. Then I inserted the images on a new layer and moved them around for a bit, using text boxes with filler text to get a rough idea where to place the images.
Since the interview and the photoshoot are done, I decided to start working on the layout.
As a group we decided on the fonts to use for the body, captions, etc. and some parts of the layout, so that the magazine follows a general theme in the way it looks. We decided to have some articles with a black background and white font and some with a white background and black font. Every article has a bar at the bottom with the section, feature and page number on it. For my article it is a blue bar, showing that it is the culture section. The font for the bar is “Tall, Dark and Handsome” which we found on dafont.com, whereas the font for the body, captions, pull-quotes etc is Arial.
I looked at a couple of layout designs that people had done for magazines:
The interview went pretty well. I used a microphone that was plugged into my netbook and Audacity to record the interview. It started off with me asking a question and the band answering, but soon turned more or less into a conversation, rather than a real interview. I liked this, as they gave me longer and more detailed answers this way and it was less formal.
The photoshoot went just as well. I took the pictures of them outside on a field and I’m really happy with the pictures. It was a really sunny day, so I might have to edit some of the images in Photoshop to brighten the colours up a bit.
These are a couple of the photos I took:
After watching and taking photos of the members of Pretty Infinite, Becks and Jake while they were jamming and working on their songs, they asked me if I want to go to the studios with them.
They are planning on staying in the studios over night and recording all their finished songs. I happily agreed to join them and had a good, if slightly tiring time. I managed to take a couple of photos as well.
I had a look at various music magazines to get a feel for how the photos are done. I asked the band if they had any ideas on how they wanted the photos and they said they prefer to have pictures taken outside, so I did a quick search online.
I quite liked this photo:
As I’ve never interviewed a band before, I thought of looking at what different magazines/websites, who have interviews of bands, asked. After reading through some interviews I realised that interviews with well established bands often cut to the chase and don’t spend that much time asking them about their history, inspirations etc. So I narrowed down my search to interviews of relatively new bands.
These are a couple of the websites I looked at:
http://ashland.oregon.localsguide.com/local-music-interview-template
http://www.rockcitynews.com/editorial/interviews04/questions1.html
After getting a general idea of what questions to ask I typed a list of questions that I could ask:
- If you guys were to describe yourself in simple word choice.. what would you say?
- Do you guys have any other hobbies besides, obviously, making music?
- Why did you pick your band name? How did you form? Why did you decide to play the genre or genres you do?
- Do you write out your lyrics? Do you ever change a song’s lyrics in live sets?
- Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
- Do you think that online presence is important for fans to find you and critics to find your music to write about?
- What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
- What are your hopes for the near future?
- Who are your idols and why?
Our group decided on making a magazine on the alternative scene/events in Leeds, which will cover fashion, culture (pubs, tattoos, etc) and events.
We chose a demographic between 18 to 30 years, who are studying or working part time and have an average income.
My individual contribution will cover the music section. It will be a 4 page article on the band Pretty Infinite. It will consist of an interview and photos of the band.
For research I will start looking into photos and interviews of bands in music magazines, not only will this give me an idea of how the photos should turn out and what questions to ask, but also an idea of the general layout.
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