MY MEDIA MUSIC MAGAZINE EVALUATION

These are the front covers of which inspired me when creating my own.

XXL NME

These magazines have a brilliant, calm and appealing colour scheme. The background of each is in grey which is sparse in comparison to the central image. The colour red on each helps to catch the eye and draw your attention to the mastheads and the main coverlines. The names of the artists are in large font which draws our attention to the fact that they are the main story that will feature in this magazine. The mode of address for the celebrities on the front cover is direct, unlike my magazine front cover. I chose to deviate away from the direct mode of address to make my front cover have an element of enigma (who is on the front cover) and secondly, make the potential reader pick up my magazine. The positioning of the coverlines are all justified either to the right or left. This helps the reader to focus on the central image.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product challenges real media products in relation to design and attraction.For example my masthead:

Instead of using the traditional red on white or white on red, I chose to challenge these conventions by using white on black.

My masthead

The NME masthead clearly stands because of the use of 3 colours the red, white and black. The black is an outer stroke and sets off the other two colours.

The XXL masthead is simple and effective because of the use of white on red.

My colour scheme challenges real magazines such as this NME. For example, theirs is clearly vibrant with a lot of bold coverlines, pictures in a box, the positioning of each and the skyline makes this front cover quite busy. Mine on the other hand is simple with a colour scheme of grey, red, black and white and still succeeds in drawing attention to it.

I chose these colours as they blend really well with each other and succeed to represent the magazines genre of hip-hop. This colour scheme has been used on other magazines successfully. Another reason of challenge is that unlike most magazines mine doesn’t have an artist in a direct mode of address on the front cover.

Magazine mastheads are usually partially covered to draw attention to the central image and to keep the image in the foreground. This is what is seen on other magazine front covers which are well established.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For the image of the front cover I have a cut-out of a young male in urban clothing as most people this magazine is targeted towards people who would we able to relate to the character on the cover, therefore representing the youth of hip hop as that is stereotypical of hip hop. Also the central non direct outline image continues to represent hip hop almost showing a “too cool” approach.

3. What kind of media institution may distribute your media & why?

The media institution I chose was IPC media as they generally distribute successful music magazines such as NME and Uncut. I believe going would this institution would greatly benefit my media product as this company are already such a success as an individual also with the music magazines that they already distribute, this institute could represent my product perfectly bringing all attention needed.

Also as IPC represent music magazines this company should represent mine greatly, especially as they don’t represent any magazines of the same genre of mine, this would be a great opportunity for this institute, making them put in double the effort to get an understanding of this genre.

4. Who would be the target audience for your media product?

The target audience for my media product is in-between the ages of teenagers up until the ages of young adults (16 – 25) as they are the ages of which may mostly enjoy hip hop, even though there would be the general selection of adults interested.

Another audience may be people with a general music interest, as my media product is very informative for the genre, anybody who doesn’t know anything about the genre could learn a lot by purchasing my media product.

The last general audience of which would be the most obvious is of course the raw hip hop lovers, anybody looking to keep up with their favourite artists of the genre, or anybody interested in the subject looking to see who’s new to the scene.

The media product will be suitable for teenagers and above considering that is the target audience for this product.

This is represented by having a urban youthful male on the front cover of the magazine yet having a sophisticated layout

The set list is a sophisticated way for the mature audience to keep up with their favourite artists of the genre.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

By putting a youthful urban looking male on the front cover is an easy attraction to the target audience, not to mention the sophisticated layout and colour scheme to keep a sense of maturity used to attract the older audience.

The young character on the front of cover is in a direct mode of address, even though it is not obvious, it sends a sense of cool out to the audience, almost like the character is “too cool” to look towards the audience.

As well the character is just an outline, creating a sense of mystery, attracting the audience to open the product and see if they can find out who the main man is on the front cover.

The use of the colour red can attract both sexes as it is a unisex attracting colour, I have used the colour read in oppose to the simplistic white, black and grey to stand out and direct the eyes all across the pages.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

With the rule of thirds that I have learnt along the way of producing this media product, I have successfully been able to create a product which attracts and easily directs the eyes across all of the pages I have created .

Meanwhile I have successfully learnt how to use Photoshop and all of its tools in a completely more advanced way, my skill has greatly increased in graphical design alongside the ability to construct and deconstruct magazines, adverts, posters etc.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Here is my final task above my preliminary task, it is clear that there has been a great progression in skill and general magazine knowledge, as you can see I have maintained the playfulness and colour scheme throughout tasks as I believe both look simple and effective, smooth and easy on the eyes.

However I did put a greater designed image on the final task in comparison to the preliminary, fitting more of the character to the either tasks objective, there is a lot more going on in the final task as well as everything being a lot more well placed in order for the viewer to have a comfortable read instead of being confused and not know where to start.

It is evident there is a big progression between the preliminary and the final task it is obvious that the audience will be more attracted to the final.