Evaluation

My brief was to design a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread using at least 4 of my own images. During my planning and research i looked at different music magazines analysing their front covers, contents pages, and double page spreads taking into considerations of each one. My planning and research also helped me with ideas for the colour scheme, text and design for my own magazine.

I decided that my target audience of my media product would be male and female between 16 and 25. Part of the reason why i chose this age group was because i am within this age group therefore i could relate back to it my self as can my friends, whether i think i would buy it if it was on the shelves in my local supermarket. A lot of music magazine concentrates on just one genre especially rock for example Kerrang therefore i wanted to design a magazine which included all different types of genres like country, RnB, rock and pop.

When designing my front cover i tried to obey the conventions of a front cover. I took a variety of photos of 3 individual artists and one group of boys. Choosing between the photos for my front cover was difficult so i decided to draft up a front cover with my favourite on to see what they looked like. I finally came to the decision to choose the photo of the 3 individual artists stood next to each other. Therefore the main cover line was about the 3 artists in the image. The image is a medium shot which showed off their outfits, this tells us a bit about the artists themselves already. When analysing other music magazines for example Q magazine ( http://higgers24.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-12-18T06%3A34%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7 ) the clothing in which the artist/ artists wore and the way they were stood told me a bit about them before even reading into the magazine. This is what i wanted to achieve in my own front cover, therefore the person on the left of the photo i wanted to look like a clone of Lady GaGa(pop music) this is why i used netting and wrapped it around her body and slightly over her face to create a wacky costume, just like Lady GaGa's. The idea or representation of the netting over her face was to tell the reader that she isn't just the typical wacky/mad woman she is also shy inside so she is trying to hide part of her face(hide away from the public). I got this idea from the magazine with Madonna as the picture looked like she was doing a similar thing https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj76of0KEOh0stnR2Z4qZuehNUpwbDFTiQNrJmF2nCeL8452HsqadKE5hIlRKuovIMKmjVsd7i6F0ZHOfKXPm-G6WT6V79X_f-sH_PIVwFxSJ9ieSBs4Kgz5_dJsCg7ulXE3AHL9vUuOg99/s1600-h/Publication2.pub.jpg The artist in the middle is based on the rock artist Joan Jett(rock) when i see rock artists they come across to me as very big/scary, intimidating and manly this is their representation. The manly side of things may rub off because of the fact she is wearing a red and black chequered shirt which makes her look very masculine. This is why i put the rock artist in the middle and made her look slightly bigger than the other two artists. She is the dominant artist. However her face is not very hard looking, she looks quite sad. This is because in the interview on the double page spread she talks about how she is soft as anything and people should not be scared of her. This may then want the reader to buy the magazine even more as they know what's inside just by looking at the front cover

The artist on the right i wanted to have the ideology of Taylor Swift(country music). This was done by putting her in white laced see through dress which looked rather country like and also her long, blonde, straw looking hair making the ideology of her dress sense and hair, country like. Also her face looks quite innocent therefore she wouldn't be a rock star as they would have a quite hard looking expression/ face. I think the artists on my front cover are well identified to their genre.

I then decided to choose what colour scheme i would use when creating my media product. The colours i had to be similar to the background of the front cover, they also had to be sophisticated colours, not the type of colours you would see on a pop magazine(bright pink) as it may not appeal to my target audience. I decided to use the colours white, red and yellow/gold. When analysing other music magazine i found these colours were harmonious, also the colour red could represent love/passion therefore if it was on my magazine it could tell the reader i was passionate about my magazine. This is the same with the colour gold, however the colour gold i think represents 1st class/ 1st place which makes the reader think that its a classy magazine therefore they should buy it as its one of the best around.

When choosing what font to use i put my mast head in different types of fonts. To keep the idea of sophistication within my media product i didn't want anything too bold and outrageous, something that was presentable and looked nice/classy. I finally decided to use two different fonts. One for the smaller text like the date and issue number and another for the bigger text like the mast head and main cover line. I used Century Gothic http://http//www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=205644 in bold for the bigger text as i thought this font wasn't too bold and outrageous but kept the sophistication within my magazine and then for the smaller text i used the font Pristina http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=203895, the text is rather small therefore i made it bigger and added some affects to it. The pristina text is a classy font therefore fitted to the idea of it being sophisticated and also looks presentable.

Music Mash is the name of my magazine and the slogan is 'mixing up the nations music'. At first i was going to call my magazine Mish Mash however it didn't really tell the reader anything about my magazine and it could have been for any type of magazine therefore i changed it to 'Music Mash'. The idea of the slogan and mast head is to tell the reader what the magazine is called and what type of genre the magazine is. I feel that i achieved this, my magazine is not just based on a certain genre it is a variety/mix of different genres therefore my mast head had to give the reader an idea of that, that's why i called it music mash, my slogan also then helped to back up the mast head on what it meant as it said 'mixing up the nations music' which i wanted my magazine to do by this it meant putting all the nations music/genres into one magazine and mixing them in a way that there isn't a section for rock, then a section for pop ect its all in different places therefore its mixed up.

My main image was of three different artists therefore i had to have a cover line that would relate to all three of the artists. This is why i thought if i talk about the no.1 it would be appropriate. Instead of using the names for the artists i wanted them to be like for example Lady GaGa i changed the names of the artists. Lady Gaga- Lady BlahBlah, Taylor swift-Taylor Drift and Joan Jett- Jess Jett. The cover line at the bottom of the page say 'plus+ exclusive photos from Beyonce's tour' i decided to add in this cover line as its linking to the genre RnB music, this means that on my front cover it identifies 4 different genres which tells the reader that the magazine is a mix of different genres not just one.

I feel my front cover i cover all the conventions of a front cover. I have a date, issue number, mast head, cover line/main cover line, main image, price, bar code, slogan, cover lines and a plug.

I feel that institutions like IPC would distribute my media product because it has an original idea. Not many music magazines include a mix of genres they are normally just based on a certain genre for example; kerrang is based on just rock music. However my music magazine includes a variety of different genres for example; rock, pop, RnB and country. Also my music magazine does not look cheap and tacky it looks sophisticated and easy to read therefore readers will be attracted to my magazine rather than any other as it is presented in a much more professional way.

When constructing my music magazine i learnt and used different types of technologies. The main technology i used was blogger. At first i found it very hard to use blogger because if you wanted to upload a picture to your blog you couldn't unless you saved it as a Jpeg and i did not realise this at first. Another thing i found difficult was making my a picture big enough for the reader who is reading my blog to see, i needed this especially for my analysis as the readers needed to see what i was analysing and when i analysed certain things what i was meaning. However i learnt how to make the pictures bigger, how to put text at certain sides of the image and how to change the colour of my text, the font and the colour/design of the actual blog. I knew sufficient knowledge about blogger to enable me to make my blog page look presentable.

Another programme i used a lot was photoshop. I used this mainly to create my finished front cover, contents page and double page spread. As i had never used photoshop before i found it rather difficult at first and had to get help from my teachers, who also gave us a hand out to help us with certain tools. However after playing around with it for a bit i was able to do most things to create my media product. I was able to edit photos and put effects on them to make them look more proffessional, change the colour of text, images and the background. I was then able to go on to zooming in on certain things on an image and deleting them/editing them to make them look better. For example on one of my photos a bra strap was hanging out down the side of her arm, therefore i zoomed into the strap and used the clone tool to clone the colour of her arms/skin onto the bra strap which made it disapear. This means when i zoomed out the bra strap could no longer be seen. Photoshop was the hardest technolgy i used when constructing my magazine however it made a big difference to the quality of my work as it made it look at lot better.

The other technology i used was publisher. I have used publisher in the past a lot, especially at secondary school therefore i already knew how to use most of it effectively. Although i did not use it much as i found photoshop did most of my work i needed to do. I used it to create my ICT drafts for my front cover, double page spread and contents page. I did use however when i was constructing my college magazine. The one thing i did learn when using it that i didn't already know was how to change the size of my paper and make it A3 ect.

I dont feel my magazine represents a particular social group however if i was to choose one it would be teenagers. This is because the artists on the front of my page are teenagers.

My contents page i felt was the hardest to construct. I knew that the colour of the background and text had to be similar if not the same as the front cover and the double page spread. With the colour of the background of the front cover being a brownish colour i knew my contents background had to be the same colour. Therefore i went onto google and looked at textures and found two different ones i thought would be appropriate and what i thought looked rather class and fitted into a magazine background this is the one i decided to use. http://httphttps://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mxxQJb_TSd_Dl-tN14iyz_BB8zRvWG40iYQEszBD645JG5Y0VG8k5ZnlAveZNY1HT2PkOcuoHUPe1UDJHprIxL7-X7eyZfTGcl2pz75IOVgSzbyrUOqly3SOTJIVrVMy4LoKUJF6ar2M/s1600/background%5B1%5D.jpg The images i used on the contents page i took myself. There are images of 3 boys stood together, these boys i made to be like a boy band. This genre i wanted to be pop, therefore i made the boy band a pop boy band like JLS, i named them JPS. There were also three images at the bottom of the page of Beyonce. I took these when i went to Beyonce's tour concert therefore thought it was appropriate to use them in my contents as an RnB artist. This meant that so far i had covered most genres in my music magazine. The other photo was of the artist i created named Lady Blah Blah. The idea of having a number of images on the contents page was to attract the reader more as when they open the magazine the first page they see is the contents page so if they saw more images of other artists it will draw them in to buy the magazine and carry on reading. When putting down the page numbers i took into consideration how much i had priced my magazine at, therefore i could not put that there was only 30 pages in the magazine as the reader would think that £1.99 for 30 pages is a rip off and would not buy the magazine. I decided to put that i there were just over 60 pages, i felt that this was a sufficient enough number of pages for the price of the magazine. To make my magazine more professional i added a little information underneath every page number i put onto the page, this also will attract readers as they will have an idea of what they are going to be reading if they haven't already seen it in the front cover and the images. I did not put every page number down as there would not be enough room on the page therefore i put the ones that i felt would catch the readers eye and were the most important stories.

The title of the contents page is the biggest font on the page, this is a convention of a contents page. Another convention is to put the name of the magazine somewhere on the contents page as well as the front cover. I also obeyed this convention by putting it in the right hand top corner in the same font and the same colour. I feel i achieved my target for the contents page which was to make it look similar to my other media products and to also obey all the conventions of a contents page.

My double page spread i feel is my strongest page. I think i have obeyed all the conventions of a double page spread well. Like the contents page i kept to the same background and the same colour scheme, this is so the magazine kept its sophistication(classy). I made sure that the first thing you see when you open the page was the title. The title was also the main cover line on the front cover, i did this to enable readers to find it easier if they were flicking through the magazine. Underneath the title was a little slogan about what the double page spread is about, following on from the title. I then decided to cut the rest of the space up into three parts, for each of the artists. The first section was on Lady Blah Blah, the second section on Jess Jett and the third on Taylor Drift. For each section there was a photo, a little bit of information about the artist, a quote from the interview and of course the interview. The interviewer and the artist have different coloured text for when each of them spoke, this is a convention of a double page spread. I also included the page numbers in the corner of the pages and the information about the artists were in italics. All of these were conventions of a double page spread.

Finally i created a questionnaire about my music magazine which i gave out to 20 people of different genders and ages. Below are the questions i asked:

Are you male or female?

Are you aged between 16-18, 18-21 or 21-25?

What genre of music do you prefer? Pick more than one if needed

RnB, country, pop, rock, other

Does this magazine catch your eye, attract you to it?

How much would you pay for this magazine?

What would you change to the magazine to make it more professional/presentable?

Do you think my magazine is classy/sophisticated?

The results i got in were as follows:

There was 12 females and 8 males

4 females and 2 males were between 16-18

5 females and 3males were between 18-21

3 females and 3 males were between 21-25

12 of the people who took the questionnaire said that they don't prefer any particular genre, they like all 4 genres that were stated, 1 person said they like Rnb and pop, 2 people said they like rock and Rnb, 1 person said they like country and 4 said they liked just rock.

8 of the people said that they found my magazine very eye catching, 6 of them were aged 16-18 and the other 2 were aged between 21-25. The rest said they thought it was eye catching however there could be things that could make better.

18 people said they would pay between £2-£2.50 and the other two said they would pay between £1.50-£2.

8 of them said that there was nothing they could really see what would need changing however the other 12 picked mostly up on the fact that there was not many cover lines therefore they had to flick over to the contents page to find out more, they also picked up on the fact that the colour may have been rather dull however they understood that the colour was meant to be sophisticated which they agreed with.

All of them agreed that they thought my magazine had class.

To conclude the results found from my questionnaire i would say that people of a similar age to me preferred the magazine more than others older than me. This is what i had thought in the first place as i knew i could relate to it myself to make it how i would like to see it. There was not much difference in whether they were male or female as whatever the gender was they all seemed to agree the same. I was happy with the fact they priced it at a very similar price to what i did and also the fact they picked up on the couple of things that maybe i might have picked up on if it had not been my own product. Overall they thought it was a classy magazine and it was eye catching which was my target at the very beginning of the construction process.

I feel that throughout the process of my task i have learnt a lot. I have learnt how to use certain programmes better, i have learnt all about the conventions of magazine covers, contents pages and double page spreads, what a good magazine is and what a bad magazine is and also to listen to others when they are giving me advice on certain things. My research helped me a lot to construct my product and would certainly do more planning if i was to repeat this task again to make my product even better. I feel i have achieved the task/brief i was given and have done it well.