Evaluation

The brief was to make a new music magazine and a new artist, including a double page spread, contents page and front cover, it had to relate to a certain audience and make a new artist stand out. We had to use our own images, and new fonts. Choose colour schemes and lay it all out similar to another music magazine.

When I produced my music magazine I tried to think of the conventions that real music magazines have, I analysed a music magazine (Q Magazine) and looked at what they put on their front cover, double page spread and contents page and tried to incorporate them into my magazine.

On the front cover I made sure I put a price, this is because if it doesn’t have a price on the front cover then people wont want to buy it, it could be more expensive then they think or cheaper, but because they don’t know, they wont buy it. All magazines also have a main image on all pages, an image that is the main focus point, so I Incorporated this into my own magazine, by making sure that the main image on the front page was clear and stood out, I put a main image into the double page spread too, the contents page doesn't have a main image though, as it has more than one story, so I made sure that it had more than one image. I put the same font on throughout, to make it look like it has had more than one issue, and that it could change just even something little like the colour scheme, each month. I also have most conventions of a real music magazine like the header and the barcode, these are on all music magazines, and without them it just wouldn’t look realistic unless it was a web magazine. The magazine also has parts of it that look really realistic like the way things are laid out, they are laid out in a way that most magazines are laid out like the header is at the top and the way the article is laid out in the double page spread, this is of something that a normal music magazine would have.

I also analysed other magazines, not just music, I analysed a fashion magazine too, because the fashion in a music magazine also has to suit the genre and target audience. When I analysed the fashion magazine I saw that they had an ‘On The Cover’ section, so I put this into my music magazine contents page, this is so people know what the cover star is wearing, and might buy it themselves. Because my music magazine is for girls aged 16-25, I thought that I would add this in, because there isn’t a music magazine out there already for girls that involves music and fashion, so I still added in a few conventions of a real magazine but just not a music magazine.

The way I designed my music magazine is also the same way a professional music magazine would design there’s too, as they use Photoshop top put effects on images and create the actual magazine, they also use the internet like I did to do certain research. I tried to make my photo's also look really professional and I dressed my model into clothes that I thought would suit the magazine, this is what real music magazines do, they style the model to what ever photo's they are doing. I also chose the model I wanted to do my magazine photo's as this also is what real magazines do, I picked her because she really did go well with my genre of magazine and represented the target audience really well. I thought about everything I did really well and made sure that everything I did was something that would be in a real music magazine that is already on the shelf. Of course every magazine has to be original and that’s why people buy it, so I made sure that I didn’t use all the same conventions as other music magazines and If I did I tried to make them look different, so that my magazine stood out from the crowd.
In real magazines too they always have things like websites that you can visit for further info or facebook and twitter pages in which you can add the cover star or any of the actual magazine on twitter where they add updates of what’s happening on situations to do with the magazine. I also wrote the article so that teenagers could understand it, if you wrote really long words and language that teenagers couldn't understand then they would buy it again, so I made sure to stick to language they knew.

My music magazine does represent a certain social group, this social group is teenagers. My magazine represents them because it involves things they do and use. For example, in my double page spread I have a little section of the magazine that has the cover stars twitter and facebook address, this relates to this certain social group because teens are always on these websites and are always using the internet. Another thing is the competition, I did some questionnaires and researched a certain group of teenagers and 50% said they would like to see Rihanna the most out of these female solo celebrities; Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jessie J and of course Rihanna, so I did a competition where you could see her in concert, this was targeting the needs of this specific social group, making them want to buy the magazine to find out more. If you picked someone like Rod Stewart, people are not going to buy the magazine, because teenagers rarely listen to him and its not the genre for the music magazine. The clothes that my model is wearing on the double page spread and on the front cover are really up to date and relate to the magazine genre, they also relate to what teenagers wear now, so a teenager will pick up this magazine and want to know more. If the model was wearing really out of date clothes then people think that the magazine was out of date and that it doesn’t have any new music or news in it, the model portrays more than you think. The model is also the target audiences age, so she represents teenagers today in a really good way, as she has made a life for herself.

The price also is really good for the magazine, as when you look into what teenagers buy on a weekly basis, especially female teenagers, its usually clothes, bus tickets, food, cinema tickets and magazines, so £3.50 a month doesn’t seem expensive to this particular social group/ the target audience.
If I could have any institution distribute my magazine it would be Bauer Media, this is because they only have men’s music magazines, and music magazine for genres like Indie and Rock, they need a new music magazine that reaches out to females and this would work really well. This magazine still has conventions that Q magazine has but they are a little bit different, if you let a magazine company distribute your magazine that already has a magazine similar to it, that magazine is going to do better than this new magazine, and no one would want to buy it if they was really similar so going with a institution that doesn’t have a magazine like this already would be really good, they could finally reach out to different audiences. They also do really popular fashion magazines for females so I don’t see why a music magazine for females wouldn’t do really well too.

The audience for my music magazine would be females 16-25, this is because there isn’t a music magazine out there for females, most music magazines are for males and involve rock or indie music so I thought id do a new pop/indie music magazine that targets women, I did a little fashion section on the contents page to make women when they flick through see that it is a women’s magazine and isn’t for men. When I did some audience feedback I asked 20 people who they thought the magazine was for and 14 out of the 20 said that they thought it was for females, so I think that I have given the right impression on my magazine.

I attracted my audience by making the magazine different, I did the effect of it looking like it had being drawn, not done on the computer. I also made colourful fonts and did good pictures that made it obvious that it was for a music magazine, when I asked people in my audience feedback questionairre, I also found out that 10 of the 20 people liked the colour scheme but the other 10 thought that it was lacking in colour and needed a bit more, I also then asked 20 people if they liked the handwritten affect on the magazine and 17 people said yes, only 3 out of the 20 said no, so this must have attracted people to the magazine, if something is really different is stands out to people. I tried to address the audience by showing a new artist too, if the artist is old people wont care and wont even look at the magazine

When creating this magazine, I though that using Photoshop was really easy, sometimes it would be hard to construct and blend things together but it did seem really easy to do. I used brushes for things like the stars and microphones and had to download fonts onto it and it wasn’t made complicated, but I did find it hard to cut around images and have empathy for the people who have to do this on magazines and who have to edit images. I have learnt that if I did do it again then I would cut around the images a lot better and take more time, to make sure that it was cut out more perfectly, I would also experiment with more brushes and types of blends and fonts. I also leant that technology can crash, so making sure that everything was saved constantly was key.
When doing the preliminary task I learned that in this new music magazine, I had to experiment with fonts more, as on the college magazine I stuck to the fonts that Photoshop provided but found out that professional magazines don’t do this, they use original fonts to make it stand out more so I did this myself. I also leant that I have to take more photo’s to get the right shot, in the preliminary task I only took around 10 photo’s and thought I got a perfect shot, so on this music magazine a lot lot more to make sure I got a variety of shots and took them in different locations so that I could use them in different parts of the magazine too. I also took a lot more time doing this magazine then I did the college magazine, making sure that it looked more realistic, and something you would defiantly see on the shelves in a shop.

When doing the questionnaires I found out that my magazine got a really positive response, there wasn’t a lot of bad comments, I am really proud of the end result. I think that my music magazine does have the same conventions of a real music magazine and would be really good in shop on the shelfs.