Start of the production

From today onwards i will be starting the production of my magazine for coursework. I will start off with my front page as the colour scheme will be needed to be kept the same throughout the whole of the production. My first task will be taking photos to be placed in the magazine for front voer, and throughout the articles.

Look Magazine front covers

Look magazine has become a massive hit in the UK since it's release in 2007 which made it the most successful launch in 17 years. A quote from wikipedia sums up the magazine quite well; "It’s the first weekly high street fashion magazine for women and has tapped into today’s consumer society, in particular young women’s appetite for shopping"


Looking through my 5 Look magazine's i currently have placed infront of me, it's clear to see the representation of women, even just on the front cover. The only celebrities placed on the front cover of this magazine are all beautiful, famous and creditable celebrities. This could already be percieved as a negative representation of females as the audience immediatley look at these glamourous women as soon as they pick up the magazine.

Fashion magazine ideas!

Following the change of direction, i thought a good place to start for planning my magazine including having to construct 5 pages to go in the magazine. I thought a good place to start would be to look at different colour schemes that I may be able to use for my magazine. My magazine will be released in winter and therefore i thought it would be appropriate to have darker, 'winter' colours. After doing some research from the magazines "Look", "More", "Glamour" and "Cosmopolitan", there was an obvious trend in feminine colours, and predominately, pink! I had a look on the internet for some colour scheme ideas...

- I loved this colour scheme but found it was too summery for a Winter edition of the magazine 

 - This colour scheme is suitable for a Winter edition of the magazine but the colours don't look feminine enough!

 -I like the purple and the blue in this colour scheme, except the black may be a bit too dull, I may change this for another colour.

 - I love this colour scheme, i think the colours are both feminine and suit the winter theme of the magazine. I will most probably be using this colour scheme for my magazine and front page.

Change of plan...

During the summer my idea for my coursework has had a slight change! Instead of creating an advert, I thought it would be more appropriate to create a magazine spread because of my research! After brainstorming, more ideas will be added in the next blog...

Further research

In order to achieve the best background research possible, i've been looking through both primary and secondry research. This includes reading magazines, articles, essays and reading books for information. So far this is going well and my knowledge on the representations of females that the media produce via female magazines is improving, especially from my secondry research of finding evidence of the pressure that these magazine's hold.

Whilst looking on YouTube, i came across this video which was again, from Dove's beauty campaign, i came across a video which focusses on the exact pressures and stereotyped looked that the media has represented for the female population.

Sub advertising

I've focussed my main ideas for my coursework on to making a sub-vert advert. This means that the advert I'm going to create is highlighting the oppoisitional readings that most beauty brands don't want their audiences's having. This will be significant for my idea to create a campaign as i want to raise awareness for the effects on the media's pressure on women and their appearance. By creating a sub-vert this will help to highlight the campaign's views.

Representations

My first idea and my main idea is to focus on the negative representations of women, and how they are expected to look perfect all the time.

This includes the pressure that the media have created by making women feel like this. I’m going to look at examples of how the media, particularly in magazine create both the representation and pressure towards women.

This video was found from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbN2Lb8G9-c&feature=player_embedded) and shows Vogue models talking about bodies and saying that everyone has insecurities and feels the pressure to look perfect. This is a positive video for women to watch as it shows even models from the highest fashion magazine, have insecurities and dont think they fit the perfect stereotype. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1214799/London-Fashion-Week-stylist-resigns-designers-decision-use-size-14-models-show.html. In contrast, this is an article from the daily mail explaining that in London Fashion week, some of the stylists refuse to do their job when they were told that they were using sized 12 and 14 models. This is a very negative representation as it reflects not only the British population to be listening to the media’s representation, but also re-enforcing that everyone should be slim and that’s only what is accepted.

Coursework ideas

This link is to the Youtube video for the dove beauty campaign advert. In it, it emphasises on the pressures that the media holds over women and the way in which the media represent women. I like this advert as it is trying to raise awareness of how negatively the media represent women and i think that it highlights the issues effectively.

I would also like to produce something similar to this for my second piece of coursework, but am a little unsure on what sort of production to do! The advert has inspired me to do something similar to this narrative and representation of women.
 Below also is some screenshots from the advert that i found was most effective.