The Making of 'BUMP!' Magazine

Friday 26th Sept. 08 [FIRST DAY OF THE PRACTICAL – SHARING IDEAS]
In Dan’s lesson, we were divided into our groups for the making of our music magazine cover. I was put in Group 40 with Susan, Chris and Ali. With my group, we first discussed the genre of the magazine. That being R&B, because we all listen to this type of music, therefore we knew we would be able to brainstorm more ideas. We came up with the masthead ‘BUMP!’ and the slogan ‘BOP TIL U DROP’ because it sounded catchy, edgy and appealing for R&B fans. We also decided the title to be in capitals with an exclamation mark, so it could strongly attract readers’ attention. As a group, we knew that the magazine would target teenagers mainly and also other R&B fans aged in their twenties. Knowing that our photo shoot was going to be next lesson, we talked about what to wear, the location and what props to use. Our group talked about wearing black, and a different colour of our choice with lots of jewellery. This is because we wanted to match our outfits but not so much so that we would look like a typical group band. We all wanted to stand out individually. The location of our photo shoot decided to be in a recording booth with the props already being there e.g. a microphone. As a group, we wanted to present our audience that we were a new formed talented group, and so we thought taking pictures in the music department would be perfect.

Tuesday 30th Sept. 08 [PHOTO SHOOT]
The day of the photo shoot, we were given a digital camera from Mary and we were told we had an hour of taking as much pictures as we could. Susan came in wearing black and mustard, while I was wearing black and silver. Unfortunately, both Ali and Chris didn’t obey the dress code and forgot to wear what we discussed. Moving on, we had another down point as we were banned from taking any pictures in the music department so we had to improvise a lot. We took pictures individually, as a group and posed with no expression to show our confidence and arrogance of being part of the music industry.

Friday 3rd Oct. 08 [EDITING]
In order to produce two issues of the magazine, we decided to split into two pairs. Chris and Ali worked on their winter issue and me and Susan worked on our summer issue. In that lesson, Susan was absent so I worked by myself editing the main cover picture of us sitting on the stairs and the image of Chris and Ali with their backs against each other. I used the ‘wizard’ tool in Photoshop to delete the original background of both photos. I then chose the background for the group photo. It was two faded colours of mustard and black, to relate to the tops Susan and I were wearing at the time. I rearranged and resized both images to fit the cover. I used the image of Chris and Ali to give away as a ‘free poster’. After doing so, I included our title ‘BUMP!’ and our slogan ‘BOP TIL U DROP’ on the top of the page.

Tuesday 7th Oct. 08 [MORE EDITING]
In Mary’s lesson, we continued editing our magazine cover. Susan and I, both thought about what the main cover line and other cover lines would be about. We acknowledged the fact that most music magazines focus on the best new acts and gossip of the artists. Therefore we came of a story line to sell to the audience about a new group artist called ‘CASE-Y’, represented by us. Another cover line included was about Rihanna and Chris’ relationship presented in an exclusive interview.

Friday 10th Oct. 08 [LAST DAY OF EDITING]
It was the final day of editing our cover and me and Susan gave the magazine its finishing touches by adding the bar code, price and issue date. We also used the time to change the style and the colour of our font to make it bold and brash. Then, we printed out our cover and went to the library to begin our evaluation in advance than others.