1.By Joe WestallMusic magazine evaluation

2. In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions ofa real magazine? My music magazine does follow most of the conventions that you will see in todaysmagazines, I have tried to make it look as professional as I possible could through researchof other magazines. One of the main conventions of a music magazine is the masthead, this instantly identifies themagazine, and just by looking at the masthead you can immediately see the magazine type thetarget audience and the genre. With my masthead I wanted it to give off a classic feel, and reallygive people the thought of old school rock, I spent a while looking for a suitable font but this fontlooked really good and I was happy with the way it looked. It is very important to not overcomplicate your masthead as it needs to be easy to read and at the same time look good, the font ihave used is called little Rickey nf I chose this because it was clean and looked good whilst beingvery easy to read. One other main convention that music magazines tend to follow is that they willhave a really eye catching colour scheme or house style, A lot of the time/in a lot of magazines, thehouse style uses red as it a very eye catching colour such as the rolling stone magazine, this iswhy I chose red as my house style, to capture the attention of the audience, also it stands outagainst the darker background. 3. Here is an example of an NME magazineusing the red masthead against the blackand white picture, similar to my magazine,it really catches your eye and looks reallyeffective, I have found a lot of magazinesuse the colour red in their house theme.Another main convention that I havefollowed is the plus sign seen on manyfront covers of magazines, as you can seein my magazine and the NME example Ihave got, both have a plus sign to showmore content within the magazine, itmakes the magazine look like there is a lotmore going on and draws the reader in towant to find out more.One convention that i have challenged inmy magazine is the idea that mostmagazines have all there cover lines andlures in the same place or on one side ofthe magazine whilst I have them fairlyspaced out and on each side of my frontcover. 4. Here is another example of an NME magazine as anexample, this shows how I have challenged magazineconventions, as you can see most the cover lines of thismagazine are shown on the left side, I have some onboth sides. My main image on my magazine is in black and whitewith some colour, this makes it look moody andeffective, this was the look I was going for with the wholemoody looking band with the lighter, to show that they arerebellious, this effect is used a lot in magazines, to dothis I used Adobe Photoshop cs5 and edited my image tolook how I wanted, I did this with the Quick select tooland the image adjustment tool, I then modified it to lookhow I wanted. 5. For my contents page, I stuck to the conventionsof a normal music magazine, most of themagazines I researched had plenty of pictures andan area where they actually said what was in themagazines with the page numbers. Also anotherthing I kept the same is in most magazines theyhave a section that appears in every issue, this iswhy I have the regulars section. Anotherconvention that I have in my contents is thepictures coming out of the box they are in, thisreally catches your eye and looks reallyprofessional, this is seen in many musicmagazines. Also I have kept my housecolours/style the same with the blue and red, thisis because I want the theme of this magazine to beset colours. Another thing I have done that followsconventions of real music magazines is I havemade it easy to read and easy to find what youwant to read, as you can see with the clearnumbers next to the articles/pictures. 6. Here is an example of a NMEmusic magazine contents page,I have tried to base my owncontents page off this magazinewith the big pictures and pagenumbers on the pictures, alsoas you can see, on eachpicture, they have a shortsentence introducing what it is,I have done this with my musicmagazine as I have introducedeach Picture. Also, as you cansee from this picture, there is asection that says plus this haswhat is in the magazine, I havealso got something similar tothis on my contents page withthe features section and theRegulars section. 7. I feel that my double page spread has usedthe conventions of a real magazine withthis double page spread. From theresearch I did i found that many of thedouble page spreads within musicmagazines have columns of question andanswers, these inspired me to do the samewith my own double page spread, I decidedto my questions in yellow and my answerswould match the colours of the bandmembers you an see in the picture. Also Ifound a rolling stone magazine that had theblack eyed peas on the double pagespread, I have analysed this magazine andthey have the band members in slightlydifferent colours so I did that with mine,although, this could be said to be achallenge to normal conventions becausealthough on the rolling stone magazine thepeople are in slightly different colours, theyare not completely in different colours, thisis a way that I challenged normalconventions of real magazines. Although,one convention I did stick to was the waymy main image is on the left with the titleand masthead of the page also on the left, Ihave found this in many magazines. 8. Here is some examples of double pagespreads from the rolling stonemagazine, as you can see, in the Kingsof Leon magazine, there is columns ofquestions and answers, this is what mymagazine is like, so I have followed aconvention of a real magazine. Also asyou can see in the black eyed peasone, he image is on the left similar tomine and the titles and mastheads arealso on the left, my double page spreadis very similar to this one, also as youcan see the main man in this magazineis a different colour to the others, this iswhere I got the inspiration for my ownpicture on my double page spread.Another convention I followed was thefact that my questions are in a differentcolour to the answers, just like theKings of Leon magazine only in thisone the text is bold instead of adifferent colour. 9. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My music magazine represents certain social groups in a way thatdoes not generalise against any group. My magazine represents mytarget audience and social group in a good way, it shows off that theyare into old music and like to find out about all what is going on withinthere interests. Although some may say that I was representing mysocial group in a negative way with my moody looking colours andpictures and with the almost rebellious look to my main image, I didwant to show the sinister side of classic rock so I represented thiswith my dark colour scheme and eye catching images. I still think Ihave shown my target audience in a good way though as with mydifferent font types I have shown that there can be a variety of peoplewho are within my target audience, for the mast head I have fancyclassic looking font yet for my main cover line I have font that makesit seem more of a heavy rock magazine. This shows that I amkeeping my target audience open for a wider variety of people andnot slimming it down to a certain group. The image I gave acrossfrom my front cover was that it was aimed at an older audience whichis correct as my magazine would contain strong language and adulthumour. I have my models dressed in old school, cool lookingclothes which portrays my social group as fairly fashionable and intotheir old school trends, I had a lot of inspiration from the 60s whenthere were mods about, these were the likes of The Who and theKinks, this is what i wanted my target audience to be like. Also I thinki have represented my social group as a middle/working class groupas on my magazine I have a bit of bad language and in a upper classsociety this would be seen as outrageous, another thing I have doneis not overwhelmed people with information on the front cover, I havekept it neat looking and clean this is so it is easy to read, this couldrepresent my target group as individuals who like to get straight tothem point of things they are looking for instead of pointlessinformation that doesnt need to be there. 10. What kind of media institution might distribute your media productand why? The type of media institution that woulddistribute my media product would be amagazine/online publisher such imaginepublishing this is one the leading magazinepublishers in the UK that own a variety ofdifferent magazines and smaller publishingcompanies. Another publishing company that isvery big within the UK is IPC media, who ownand publish more than 60 well known mediabrands. Although there my be online publishersthat would be interested in publishing thismagazine. The reason they would publish mymagazine would be to extent their empire ofownership, in other words to say they ownanother magazine which will make them gainmore profit from more and more people buyinga magazine that they own. If they choose tobuy a magazine and it becomes popular, notonly will it make the company much more profitbut it would significantly raise their popularityleading to more publishing deals and onceagain more profit, they would only choose topublish my magazine if they knew it would besuccessful. 11. Who would be the audience of your mediaproduct? The audience for my media product would be older peopleage from about 18-40, the reason my audience would beso old is because, as my magazine is a classic rockmagazine, most of the what is in the magazine will bemusic and bands from older generations such as the whoand the Beatles, most younger people would not likethese bands now a days, if they have even heard of themat all. I wanted my target audience to be able toappreciate the music in my magazines rather than hemthinking it was dated and not good, this is why I wantedmy Audience to be older rather than younger becausethey would recognise the music and bands. This does nothowever mean that some younger people would not likemy magazine as there are a lot of younger people todaywho actually like classic rock much more than new musicof today, like myself for example, I much rather preferolder music like the Kinks and the Doors rather than anynew stuff. My magazine would be slightly leaning towardsthe male side of things with the humour and languageused but it is not completely biased and would beappropriate for all genders if they are into this type ofgenre. Although my magazine would be aimed at an olderaudience, it would however be up to date with the latesttrends and modern culture so people who are youngerwould actually understand and appreciate it as much asolder people. 12. How did you attract/address youraudience? I attracted my target audience by making this magazine look and seemrebellious, I did this by making it look really moody and the main pictureshows one of my models holding a lighter, this could be seen asnaughty and would attract the attention of many. Also the use of badlanguage and eye catching quotes would of attracted my audience tothink, wow this is shocking I really want to read this. I also think thebright colours in a magazine are the first thing people notice so thiswould also draw them in. I addressed my audience in a informative andalmost friendly way but just as if it tells you what is there why and themain points, I think its best to get straight to the point so this is how Ispoke in my magazine with direct easy to read responses, this wouldattract people as it doesnt seem like much to read and looksinteresting. I think a main thing that attracts my audience is the pullquotes used on my front cover, they are so outrageous that it justmakes people want to know more, people love it when bad thingshappen and to see quotes like F*ck the establishment or midgets andstrippers were all over the place really makes people want to find outwhat is going on, thus drawing in the audience. 13. What have you learnt about technologies from theprocess of constructing this product? From making my music magazine I have learnt that it takes a lot more thought and considerationabout the layout and content of the magazine, a lot of research has to be done to get it right. I havelearnt that to get the best picture you have to have a high quality camera and the lighting is veryimportant to make the image look the best it can. One main use of technology that I have learnt touse from creating my music magazine is the program called Photoshop cs5, this was used to modifyand manipulate pictures and images to make them look how I wanted. I used a variety of tool whilstusing Photoshop such as the spot-healing brush tool, the polygonal lasso tool, the crop tool, andthe clone stamp tool. Before doing my magazine I had no idea about how to use Photoshop butnow I feel I am confident and good at changing pictures and editing photographs, I find this programreally fun to use and really helpful in the production of my music magazine. I have learnt that withoutthe use of programs such as Photoshop, it would be significantly harder to create the emotion in animage and capture the exact look that a person is looking for, it can make a picture look soprofessional and effective, I would use it on any photo to make it look better. Another thing aboutwhat Ive learnt is that it actually takes a lot of time to properly edit an image and to get it to lookgood, originally I actually thought that Photoshop would be easy to use but I was mistaken, it takes alot of time, patience and effort to make sure it is up to the standard that you want. Another thing I learnt about technologies from the process of making my magazine was the programMicrosoft publisher this program really helped me to get my magazine to be lay out correctly andget everything in line and looking professional. Publisher really helped in the layout of the magazineas you could put guidelines on it to make sure everything was aligned. This program really helpedme complete the task well and correctly. 14. Another use of technology I learnt to use wasblogger, I used this program to upload all my workand keep it in order. 15. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt inthe progression from it to the full product? I feel I have come a long way sine mypreliminary task, as my Photoshop skillshave greatly improved and my idea ofwhat a magazine looks like has got a lotbetter. When I did my Preliminary task Ithought that the more that was on thepage meant it was better, I have foundthat this is not the case as magazinesactually looks a lot better if they haveless on and are cleaner. One major thingI have learnt is that colour schemes arevery important and the colour used willmake a massive difference to themagazine, it is good to get a theme andstick to it. Another main thing that I havelearnt is that the picture needs to be ofgreat quality and the best picture youcan get, in my preliminary task thepicture wasnt great as I dont believe Itook enough pictures, this is why I learntto take as many pictures as possible soyou have more to choose from, the morethe better. 16. Here is my final front coverand my preliminary task frontcover, as you can see my finalfront cover looks so muchbetter than the preliminarytask, it looks a lot moreprofessional and just milesbetter. The colour scheme formy preliminary task doesntreally go and it isnt set outvery well at all, also the pictureis not of very good quality. Myfinal picture on the other handlooks very good and the layoutis much, much better, in myfinal I now have a house colourof red and blue were as in mypreliminary there was no realtheme to it. Also from researchinto magazines, I found that inmy preliminary task, my bar-code was not in the correctplace as this is never seen inany magazines, this was fixedin my final piece. 17. Here is my preliminarycontents page and my finalcontents page, for a start Ihave learnt how to actuallymake it look like a magazine,my preliminary task did notlook at all like a magazine butmy final does. The imagesare clearer on my final this isbecause I learnt to take mytime with the pictures andmake sure I got them right.Another thing that I learntfrom researching magazineswas that they actually have alot more pages than Ioriginally thought as in mypreliminary task I hardly hadany pages, I made sure toadd many more in my finalpiece. Also I added a lotmore picture just like in realmagazines. I think I haveprogressed a lot since mypreliminary task and i amvery happy with the out comeof my final piece.