Proposal of Ideas and Initial Treatment

Proposal of Ideas

I am proposing to design and create a cover, contents page and double-page spread of an "indie" music magazine. I'm intending to make it in paper format, with a size of 27cm long and 20cm wide, because I think to create an A4 magazine would be quite mundane and dull, and other similar texts are often of different and unusual scales.
My intended audience is females between the ages of 15 and 24, specifically targeting "indie-scenesters" in the socio-economic group C1. The intended purpose of my magazine is to entertain my audience with interesting articles containing artists that would appeal to them. I would also like it to inform them and provide information about music, including new releases, gig reviews, album/single reviews and interviews.
There have been lots of music magazines previously produced, but they are usually aimed predominantly at male audiences, rather than female audiences, as I found out in my research. This will make my product interesting and give it a unique selling point. I think a lot of music magazines cover many or a few genres as well and mine will only be dedicated to one, which will make it different.
I'm going to try and make the style of my magazine as a whole quite "arty" in that it will be visually pleasing as I'll focus on the layout and look of it, and I'd like it to look alternative and different to other magazines. I'd like the style of the text in my magazine to be informal and funny/edgy. I think this will make readers want to read it more and create a personal relationship with the reader.
I will take on many roles during the course of the production. I will set up and take the shots, chose fonts and colours, lay-out the pages and construct them. The only thing I will not be doing is appearing in the images I take, my older sister has agreed to be my model and pose as an "indie"/"alternative" artist for my cover and double-page spread. I would like to use another large image of her for my contents page, but I may use a group of friends to pose as another band to give a bit of variety.

Initial Treatment

I would like my cover to be in grey scale or have a minimal colour scheme, with a masthead in the right hand top corner. Underneath the masthead will be a website address and above the masthead I might have sell-lines in a strip going across the top of the cover. There will be one image which spans across the whole page, and I'd like it to be taken on location at somewhere "quirky" like in a field or in somewhere with lots of trees so it looks a bit like a forest. I'd like the image to look as though it's been taken at night-time, being a medium-long shot of an "indie" artist on the front dressed up with lots of bold and colourful make-up. I'd like the artist name and a sell-line underneath and in the bottom right-hand corner there will be a bar code and price, maybe another strip of sell-lines at the bottom. I don't want too much text on the cover so only 1 or 2 secondary articles will be on it, if any.
My contents page will have a different image of my feature artist on the right hand side of the page - maybe a close up of her face, which will contrast from the cover. On the other side there will be a vertical list of the content with corresponding page numbers, in colours which match the cover or the picture on the contents page. At the top of the page there will be a title "Contents". I think the background should be in block colour, with the text in corresponding font and colour to the cover/colour scheme.
My double page spread will have a large picture of my featured artists spanning the width and height of the right hand page, with an enlarged quote pulled out from the text on the opposite page on top of it or amongst the bulk of the text. There will be a small introduction on the right-hand page in a larger font than the rest of the article. The text will be placed on some kind of mock background (maybe brown paper or wallpaper or notepad paper). This mock background may be placed on a slight slant to give a "rough" image. The colour of the text will fit in with the image and the image will have a small caption in the top right hand corner in a colour that corresponds to the colour scheme.