Evaluation of Music Magazine
The aim of this task was to create a music magazine of your own chosen genre including 4 original images. The genre I chose was Dance and R&B. We had to create a front cover, contents page and double page spread. I decided to make my music magazine very conventional for a Dance & R&B magazine. On the front cover I made my masthead ‘PULSE’ very bold and simple making it easy to read and easily recognisable. I decided to call my magazine ‘PULSE’ because loud music pulsates through your body when at a club. I dressed the model so that she looks as though she is on a beach; this represents my genre as dance music is often related to clubbing holidays. I made the cover lines contrast against the background so they are easily visible. I chose to make the main cover lines match the colours used in the main image (pink) to show continuity as bright colours are conventional for this genre. I chose to add a bar code and prices to the front cover to make the magazine look more realistic and to show how much a dance magazine usually costs. On the contents page I used similar bright colours throughout to show continuity from the front cover. I chose the font of the contents masthead to be more similar to the fonts of other dance & R&B magazines. I decided to add the monthly issue at the top of the contents to show that its supposed to be a summer issue which links to the front cover main image been on a beach. I added more bright colours such as green, yellow and pink to the layout of the contents and used a different colour for each separate headings. I did this to brighten up the page and because it’s conventional for a dance magazine to be colourful. I chose to make the page numbers a clearer font than the cover lines so that the page numbers stand out from the cover lines. I chose the 4 main images carefully; there are images of an R&B artist, a ‘wild’ party, a nightclub and the model on the front on a beach. The picture of the girl on the beach shows continuity from the front cover. The picture of the R&B artist is larger than the other images as this is the dominant image as it’s the main article in the magazine. The other two images were to show the genre of this magazine. All these images are very conventional for both dance and R&B and as my magazine is a mixture of these two genres I had to use both types of images for my contents. My double page spread is very clearly spread out, one page is just the main image, and the second page is the text. I did this as it’s conventional for an R&B magazine such as ‘XL’ and ‘VIBE’ and makes it clearer to read. The full page is very blue as the model is supposed to be in a nightclub. I decided to photograph the model under blue Christmas lights to create this illusion and changed the background to a nightclub scene. I dressed the model in clothes which are usually worn by R&B stars i.e. vest, baggy jeans, hat and crucifix chain. This created realism and I think made the model a convincing R&B artist. The masthead for my double page spread is a quote from the text; I did this to make the reader want to know what’s happened in the life of this artist. I decided to use different sized typography and different fonts for the questions asked by the interviewer to make it clear for the reader that this is an interview. At the left of the artist I put his name down the side of the page to show the reader who this interview is about and advertises the artist.
Looking at my front cover you can tell that my music magazine represents my target audience (ages 18-30) as it has a young woman as the main image and the cover lines would be of interest to this audience. I also wanted this magazine to be seen as more appealing to the male gender I did this by dressing the women on the front in not wearing many clothes. I chose this target audience as it’s mainly people aged 18-30 that go clubbing and go to places such as Ibiza . It also says on the front cover that the magazine offers a club guide which would appeal to this targeted audience. This is conventional for a Dance and an R&B magazine as in my earlier research I found that all the magazines I analysed had a targeted audience of ages 18-30. From my contents page you can tell that it relates to my targeted audience as everyone in the images are in the age group of my targeted audience. The cover lines and features of the contents would also appeal to my targeted audience for example ‘best raves in the land’ would appeal to this age group because they might want to go to these ‘raves’. I think that my double page spread would be of interest to my targeted audience as they may want to know how this particular successful artist started out and get ideas on how to start out in the music industry. This audience could also relate to references included in my text such as ‘MySpace’ and may also be an ‘Eminem’ fan.
The magazine iDJ is very similar to my magazine, it’s distributed by Comag and therefore Comag wouldn’t want to distribute another magazine of the same genre. However the institution IPC media could distribute my media product as it only publishes one other music magazine which is NME and this is of a different genre to mine. NME is one of the most popular music magazines it now has 5.3 million monthly subscribers and its website is the largest magazine website in the UK
The audience for my magazine is young male and females between the ages of 18-30 who live a sociable lifestyle. It is aimed at people who have no worries and no bills to pay for and can just spend there money on going on clubbing holidays such as Ibiza . It could be aimed more at single people as they are the type to go on clubbing holidays with groups of friends. My magazine attracts males more than females as they tend to like other male R&B artists more than females do and looking at the front cover males are more likely to pick up the magazine. I tried to attract my targeted audience to the front cover as it looks as though it’s in a hot destination and the bold pink writing of Ibiza stands out straight away and makes the reader want to know what’s happening in Ibiza this year. One of the cover lines also says ‘your chance to win tickets to Pacha Ibiza’ this would make my target audience want to buy this magazine as they could win tickets that they would usually have to pay for at a very high price. The price of the magazine is very reasonable this could attract the audience as the magazine has a lot of content.
Whilst constructing this media product (my music magazine) I have learnt how to use adobe Photoshop to a higher extent. I used Photoshop because it’s easy to use and very professional as there are loads of image editing techniques available. I used Photoshop for this project because it allowed me to edit the images to exactly how I wanted them by cropping, brightening and enlarging them to the size I needed. Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. As my work was created over a period of 5 months, I used blogger regularly to post my work and keep my work up to date. This allowed other students to look at my work and allowed my teacher to see how my work has progressed over the 5 months of production and give me advice on what could be changed. I used blogger to post my selection of original images and then decided which images to choose for my magazine.
Looking back at creating my college magazine at the beginning of the year it helped me get used to Photoshop. I did lots of research into magazines to learn the conventions of magazines for example were the masthead should be and why to put images and cover lines in certain places. It helped me understand genres of magazines, this really helped me when I was creating my music magazine as I knew what to research and had already learnt the terminology. When creating my college magazine I rushed taking the images and didn’t get the images I wanted. This time I decided to take a greater variation of images and chose the best ones to use for my magazine. I have progressed since making my college magazine because now I am able to use Photoshop to a higher extent.
I created a questionnaire and printed off 10 copies and gave them to a varied audience to fill in as feedback for my product. 8/10 of the audience recognised that the genre of my magazine had a dance element. Everyone said that they would like to buy this magazine because of the front cover and the contents page. Some stated that judging from the front cover the magazine would appeal more to males but still appeals to the targeted audience. This is how I wanted my magazine to come across. None of the audience feedback suggested any improvement to my front cover this shows that my front cover is conventional for a dance music magazine. From the audience feedback I found that they thought that my masthead and main image worked well together and that the contents page had a very clear layout. The feedback for my contents page showed that the audience recognised the dance and R&B genre I have chosen for my magazine. Someone said that the contents page title could have been improved; I think I could have chosen a clearer font that is more relevant to my genre of music magazine. From the double page spread the audience feedback shows that the R&B genre is easily recognised because of the artists (models) clothes, posture, the typography being graffiti and the nightclub background which all connote rapping and gangsters. The double page spread has also been said to be targeted more at a male audience I think that this is true as they are more interested in this kind of music and that is what I intended to do. From the feedback I found that I could have improved the double page spread by including more questions in the interview and making it less brief.
From creating this media project I have gained crucial skills. I have become more confident using Photoshop and have learnt how to use www.blogger.com to post up my work. I am now confident with taking photographs and editing them in a way in which I want them to look.
