Evaluation – Music Magazine
The brief that we received told us that we were to create a magazine cover, double page spread and a contents page. For a newly invented music magazine. In order to do this I had to research the different conventions and codes of different magazines. We were told that the magazine must contain at least four original images and the front cover must only contain original images. I had to decide which Genre of music magazine that I was going to use in my magazine. For research I also had to analyse 3 contents pages, 3 double page spreads and 3 front cover images from established magazines such as Kerrang, NME and Rolling Stones. Each of the magazines I researched had similar elements in them such as recurring fonts and colours throughout the magazine such as Kerrang which uses black and white throughout. I also had to analyse specific genres of music in order to decide which type of magazine I would do.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media products use a lot of conventions from real media products, such as the continuity of the image styles, the use of the same fonts throughout the products. And I have only used 4 main colours throughout the magazine; these are Black, Blue, Purple and White. I also consistently used a similar style of editing on each of the texts by making similar shadows throughout each section of the magazine. I have also used other conventions from music magazines such as the large dominant image on the front cover and the subjects is making direct eye contact with the camera to make the reader feel that it is addressing them personally.
How does your media product represent particular social group?
My Magazine is aimed at the Indie and alternative genres of music, and it represents this social group by having bands that are of the indie and alternative genre’s featured in the magazine. It is aimed specifically at this social group and as a result I made sure that all of the items that are featured in the magazine would be relevant to the reader, for example I put in a feature about the Foo Fighters who have an album due for release at the end of march this is going to help sell the magazine as alternative and indie readers will be interested in the Foo Fighters, but if this magazine contained bands and artists such as JLS and Justin Bieber then nobody from the target audience would buy the magazine and it would sell more to a mediocre audience who are interested in the mainstream music such as the already mentioned JLS and Justin Bieber. This would also appeal more to younger teenage girls and would probably set the target audience to more near 9 -15 year olds. I would also at represent the audience with the layout of my magazine, I have made it similar to that of Kerrang or NME, I have done this by having sell lines on both the top and bottom of the cover, and have used constant colours and fonts throughout.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
My magazine is most likely to be published by either Bauer Consumer Media who also publish Kerrang! Magazine or IPC Media who publish NME, this is because my magazine would fit in well with the magazines that they produce. My magazine has similar content to these magazines so it could be published by these companies in a bid to have two top contending magazines in a similar marketing section. On the other hand however, these similarities may mean that these companies would not want to publish my magazine as they already have a magazine in this category and their magazines are very successful. This means that a company such as Future Publishing who are without a magazine competing in this category of the market may want to distribute my magazine to try to combat the other publishing companies mentioned.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for the media product would be aimed at 14 – 21 year old male and female readers who are fans of an indie and alternate music style. I chose to market at these people because this is the widest range of people that age, and the magazine would be a kind of hybrid magazine between Kerrang and NME. This would get a lot of readers as a result of that as a lot of people around my age agree that a mixture between the NME and Kerrang would be a good magazine as it would contain the ‘best of both worlds’ from the indie and from the alternate scene. I also chose this audience because it is the audience that the majority of my friends would fit in to and this would make the task easier as I just had to imagine it was one of them reading the magazine and this helped me decide which artists I would feature in my magazine and also what kind of other things to put in such as the UK tour dates.
How did you attract/address your audience?
How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract and address my audience I made sure I followed all of the conventions and styles that I found for music magazines in the indie and alternative genre. These included having one main image taking over most of the front cover with the text, logo and sell lines etc on it. I also only had features in the magazine that would appeal to the targeted audience of 14 – 21 male and female who have a taste in indie and alternate music. I also advertised tour dates as part of my magazine as a lot of people who go to gigs and see the bands that they adore play live music. I have attracted the audience with bands from the indie and alternative scene such as Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and rise against, these are all alternative bands and will therefore attract the audience I want to attract.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From this task I have learned how to use the different settings on a camera to more effect in order to get a better image when I was taking my original images to use for the front page, contents and double page spread. I learned that if I played around with the settings of the camera I could change the focus of the image from the subject to the background and vice versa. I used a tripod to take the images in which the subject appears more than once, this meant if I took 6 images of the subject who was my fellow media student Geordan Gaukroger then edited it in Photoshop I could just copy the part of the image with Geordan in without having to airbrush it too much because it simply slotted in perfectly due to the backgrounds matching.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?
From when I did the preliminary task at the beginning of the year in which I had to design and create a new college magazine. I chose to do this on Photoshop in order to make the magazine look as professional as I could. When I attempted to do this however I realised that Photoshop is quite hard to use if you had no knowledge on how anything on it worked. After I had learned the basics I designed and created my front cover. Since doing this task I have learned a lot more about how to work Photoshop and now have an intermediate knowledge of how to do things such as airbrush small imperfections in photos and I can also blend photo’s together which I used for the double page spread. I also understand the conventions of a magazine better now and studied the conventions and styles of a music magazine so that I could follow them to make mine look as official as possible.
