Download - Proposal
Proposal
Tamsin
Tolfree
I will make a cover, contents and
double-page spread for a music
magazine based around idols, a
sub-genre of Japanese music, as I
am interested in this genre so I can
write a lot on it and also it is
different from typical genres and
fills a gap in the market as there
are no other magazines, especially
in Europe which covers this
particular genre. As such, I think
that it would be popular amongst
English-speaking idol fans as such
magazines are hard or expensive to
obtain especially in English, and
the unique style may also interest
others and make them want to
know more about it.
What I’ll Do
Wikipedia:
“In Japanese culture, female idols
(アイドル aidoru) are media
personalities in their teens and
twenties who are considered
particularly attractive or cute and
who will, for a period ranging from
several months to a few years,
regularly appear in the mass
media, as singers for pop groups,
bit-part actors, TV personalities
(tarento), models in photo spreads
published in magazines,
advertisements, etc. But not every
young celebrity is considered an
idol: young celebrities who wish to
cultivate a rebellious image, such
as many rock musicians, reject the
"idol" label. The current situation
in the Japanese idol scene is called
"Idol sengoku jidai" (アイドル戦国時
代 ; lit. Idol war age).”
Idol
Seiko Matsuda (24 Consecutive Oricon
number 1 singles, Record holder for 22
years, Oricon poll Number 1 Idol of all
time. Coined the 'Forever Idol')
Pink Lady (Had a streak of nine number one hits from 1976 to 1978, with five being multi million selling)
Morning Musume (Longest running female idol group, holds record for most consecutive top 10 singles (54) for any Japanese artist.)
AKB48 (Guinness World Record holder for being the "largest pop group“)
Inspiration
Morning Musume – Kare to Issho ni Omise ga Shitai! (I want to open a shop with him!)
AKB48 – Gingham Check
°C-ute – Tokai no Hitorigurashi (Living Alone in the City)
S/mileage – Yattaruchan (Miss ‘I Can Do It!’)
Examples
My research using a survey
online found that the
majority of idol fans are
Females between the ages
of 18 and 24 that like the
colours pink, blue and
purple. The most popular
idols were also found to be
Morning Musume, ℃-ute,
and AKB48. To appeal to
this audience, my magazine
will use those colours and
have articles related to
those groups which will
interest that audience.
Target
Audience
For the magazine I will need
to organise:
• cover lines
• the masthead (what the
magazine is called)
• the colour scheme
• the cover image and other
images
• the layout
• the puffs and other shapes
• the subject of the double
page spread
Achievi
ng the
Results
I Want
To do this I will use Adobe
Photoshop CS5 and Adobe
Indesign CS5 as these will
be best to use for making a
magazine because they are
industry standard and as
such will create the best
results.
Programs I’ll
Use
The cover page will draw
inspiration from magazines
like Top Yell, KERA, UTB and
SHOXX, which are
magazines that feature
idols and music and as such
cover the same genre. It
will be a standard layout
similar to these, with the
model or models in the
centre of the page with the
masthead at the top, the
cover lines surrounding
them and the headline at
the bottom.
Cover Page
As I know no Japanese girls who I can
use to model for my magazine, I can use
English girls and as such centre my
headline and double page spread on the
idol boom worldwide, especially in
places such as the U.K, the U.S and
France. The magazine can also focus on
this side of things in terms of obtaining
music, merchandise and also how to
meet the idols (either at home or in
Japan) which could also appeal to the
target audience.
The models I have chosen are three of
my friends who are aged 16 and so
while they are not the age of the target
audience, they are the age of the
average idol and as such this will suit
the magazine more. They can wear
clothing similar to the idols and be
presented as a new, English idol group.
Cover and
Picture
Model
English
Idols
and Idol
Fans
As the magazines I used for ideas
for cover pages don’t have
contents pages (with the exception
of UTB, which I will be using), I will
use contents pages from music
magazines which show similar
groups from the U.K and the U.S,
such as We Love Pop.
It will be similar in that it will use
puffs to present the text, have
images of things within the
magazine (with page numbers on
the images), a picture of the cover
and also a welcoming message
from the editor. The pages will also
be separated by whether they’re
on the cover or not, as the pages
on the cover will have priority.
Content
s Page
The magazine’s double page
spread will be quite reliant on
colours and images I take of my
models, and these will fill up most
of the page. As they were the most
popular in the market research, the
double page spread will probably
be an interview with the group I
take pictures of, and also profiles
on them so that the reader can
learn about them. The interview
can cover idol fandom abroad, and
also the rise of the Western idol. It
will probably use a lot of page
furniture in the form of puffs and
sticker-like images, as pages seem
to be more reliant on this rather
than actual text within the genre.
Double
Page
Spread