B Y G E O R G E H O W A R D

MEDIA STUDIES EVALUATIONpart 2

The reader‟s tastes

“In the questionnaire I sent out to people through Survey Monkey in the research and planning stage I asked what the

reader‟s top 5 favourite artists and top 5 albums were. My analysis of the results I received in regard to favourite artists

was as follows; Clearly these results show a wide range of tastes, from Hip hop and pop music to rock and

alternative, which is why I have chosen to cover a wide range of genres in my magazine. In regard to favourite

albums I wrote; Once again I have received a very varied range of responses for this question, which is why I want to

appeal to different people with different music tastes, but the same key philosophies about music.”

Hole in the market pt.1

“In my survey, another one of the questions asked how the reader would rate modern music journalism out of 10. I

wrote the following in my analysis of the results; The results from this question seem to suggest a dissatisfaction with

modern music journalism, and while scores such as “1 out of 10" seem extreme and not very well justified, it does seem that the average person who answered the questionnaire

feels unsatisfied with modern music journalism, as the two joint most common answers are 7 out of 10 and 6 out of 10. I

began looking for ways in which I believed I could satisfy people with a music magazine.”

The average user rating of Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

The NME review of Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

Hole in the market pt.2

“In the planning stage I found that even without much research into the music magazine industry, it was apparent that there

was not one magazine that everyone felt appealed to their needs. From my research it appeared that the only magazine trying to cover every genre of music was NME, but NME has

a style directly aimed at teenagers and young adults, and there were certain aspects and traits of NME that I did not at all want to copy (such as unnecessary strong language, use of slang throughout the magazine) so overall I really didn‟t feel

as though there was one singular magazine that almost anyone can read and enjoy.”

Examples of unnecessary swearing, all taken from reviews in NME.

Not trying to limit appeal

“I didn‟t want my music magazine to have a limited appeal, in the way that certain music magazines will only appeal to fans of certain genres of music, such as Kerrang‟s appeal solely to fans of rock music, and XXL‟s appeal only to hip-hop fans. I

wanted to create a magazine that anyone who was a fan of music in general could pick up and enjoy. To do this I

probably sacrificed the ability to hone in on a certain style and perfect it, but I think in creating the front cover, contents page and double page spread, I managed to create the look of a neutral magazine and also the sort of magazine that simply

„fans of music‟ can enjoy.”

My magazine

“I would hope that I have succeeded in creating a music magazine that anyone who is interested in music can enjoy.

From my research it appeared that the audience wanted a magazine that was intelligently written, smartly laid

out, down to earth and uncontroversial, with a wide range of articles and reviews spanning all genres of music. While my

magazine may lack a specific audience, I think it has enough widespread appeal necessary to grow into a popular

magazine read by not just one type of person.”

My target audience: everyone. Through thorough analysis of existing music magazines I feel as though I have identified a way in which to please anyone reading my magazine

“ H o w d i d y o u a t t r a c t / a d d r e s s y o u r a u d i e n c e ? ”

Front cover

“I wanted my front cover to be visually busy but without being cluttered, so I chose to use just one picture but with various

text boxes holding information coming off the side off the image. The idea was to present the main focus of the

magazine right in the centre of the page, and because the image is fairly generic I would hope that the audience would

be drawn to at least read the text boxes, given that the picture itself doesn‟t give much away about the magazine. Hopefully the reader would then be hooked by the cover lines and want

to read the magazine.”

I tried to make this picture ambiguous in its appeal, so to not put anyone off the magazine in the way they would be if the image was, for example, a man in a leather jacket carrying a guitar

Hopefully then the cover lines would be enough to raise the reader‟s intrigue

Layout of contents page

“The contents page is not cluttered, but laid out in a way that easy to read so the audience know what they are getting. I did

not want to give the illusion that the magazine was full of content in the way some magazines do by giving the contents page a messy layout, I really wanted the magazine to be filled

with content that was clear and on display. This design choice was made not only to be aesthetically pleasing, but to

let the reader see the vast amount of content, and to hopefully easily pick out something that interested them.”

The contents page is clearly laid out and clearly sectioned to help the reader find their way around the magazine, not to confuse them with the amount of content

Formal style

“It seemed obvious that to attain universal appeal I would have to write and present the magazine in a formal style. This

means not only were the articles written without the use of any slang or bad language, but also I had to keep the

magazine easy to navigate around, as I have found from experience that a messy layout can lead to a feeling of not

really knowing where you are within a magazine. I decided that I did not want to include too many sub-sections or

diversions from the main content if I could avoid including any, and tried to lay the pages I designed out in a more

traditional way.”

Left: Messy, unprofessional, difficult to read, bad journalism

Right: Simply laid out, basic but not boring

Language used

“As I mentioned before, I did not want to use any bad language or slang in my music magazine, as I think that is an easy way

to completely lose or alienate a massive percentage of the target audience. It is likely that certain readers will simply

not enjoy reading an article full of swearing, while older readers may be confused by the use of slang that they do not

understand. I tried to write in a descriptive and interesting style, but my main aim was to stay away from using any

language that would lose my magazine readers.”

Slightly stronger appeal to younger age

“Although I did not want the appeal of my magazine to be biased in anyway towards a certain age group, it did appear that throughout the production of the magazine, there were certain factors of the magazine that would appeal more to a

younger target audience than any other age group. For example my use of only teenage models for the pictures in

my contents page may be perceived as an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, when it was really more to do with the

age of the people I could get hold of for the photo-shoot. However I would hope that the images are not solely

reflective of the magazine‟s appeal.”

“ W h a t h a v e I l e a r n t a b o u t t e c h n o l o g i e s f r o m t h e

p r o c e s s o f c o n s t r u c t i n g t h i s p r o d u c t ? ”

Could you have completed the project without technology?

“It would not have been possible to complete this project without technology, at least not in the same way that I have

gone about completing it. I have used many different new technologies during the creation of the project, such as

Blogger, Photoshop CS3, iMovie and Garageband, as well as technologies I was previously familiar with such as Microsoft

Publisher, PowerPoint, Google Images and YouTube. I also used hardware such as microphones to record my interviews

for research and planning, and memory sticks to transfer files between different computers.”

What pieces of technology could you have done without?

“I don‟t think I used a piece of technology that didn‟t greatly help me with the project, but probably the least useful piece

of technology I used was Photoshop, because I didn‟t feel that I had enough knowledge of the program to fully make use of it, and I didn‟t really achieve anything with the program that

I couldn‟t have achieved on Publisher, a much easier program to use and also a program that I have had

experience using in the past.”

The finished front cover of my magazine was created on Photoshop, however I didn‟t make use of any of the advanced features of the program. I find Photoshop‟s user interface hard to understand, so it probably took me twice as long to create this front cover as it would have taken me to make the exact same thing on Publisher. On double page spread I used some more advanced effects, but the finished effect probably wasn‟t worth the time it took to learn how to use the new program.

Text

Shape

Image

Took agesto make

What piece of technology couldn‟t you do without?

“I wouldn‟t have been able to complete the project without Blogger or PowerPoint, because I think both of these pieces

of technology helped me at all times to keep all of my information in the same place. Blogger allows information to

be published for other people to access easily, and PowerPoint allows information to be presented either for my own benefit (keeping track of what I have and haven‟t done)

but also for presentations such as this one. The only alternative would have been Microsoft Word, which is good

for text but not very useful for anything else.”

What were the positives of using technology?

“The positives of using technology in the development of this product was that I didn‟t have to carry around anything

physical, apart from a memory stick. To create a physical folder containing all of the information saved to my memory stick would mean that every day I would have to carry a very

heavy folder around with me. Also the internet provided such a vast amount of information that I was able to analyse

during the research and planning stage, compared to what I would have been able to get hold of physically – for example

I would have probably had to buy the magazines to analyse if it wasn‟t for image search engines such as Google images.”

£1.95 for oneissue

What were the negatives of using technology?

“Although luckily I didn‟t have this problem myself, a possible downside of using technology is the corruption or loss of

data. As many people will know, memory sticks can fail, resulting in files being lost from them. Sometimes data

becomes corrupted, and can‟t be accessed. Also, memory sticks can simply be misplaced or lost, so it is important to backup the data in different locations, which people don‟t

always do. Another negative is the time it takes to learn how to use certain programs. During the development of my

finished pages it was recommended that I use Photoshop, which I don‟t feel was any more helpful for me

than using Microsoft Publisher would have been, with Photoshop being more of a specialist program.”

Photoshop Publisher

“ L o o k i n g b a c k a t y o u r p r e l i m i n a r y t a s k , w h a t d o

y o u f e e l y o u h a v e l e a r n t i n t h e p r o g r e s s i o n f r o m i t

t o t h e f u l l p r o d u c t ? ”

No colour scheme

“When I designed my college magazine for the preliminary task, I did not have a colour scheme in mind, and as I have

learnt while developing my music magazine, a colour scheme is very important in helping to give a magazine its identity.

As a result of the lack of a colour scheme, the college magazine looked very garish, especially the contents page. I

tried to increase the energy of the contents page by adding as much colour as I could, but I quickly realised that a colour scheme is important to prevent colours clashing with each

other. I kept this in mind while creating my music magazine.”

No consistent layout

“Another important factor in giving your music magazine an impressive appearance is being able to lay out the

information presented on the page in a way that both looks nice but also is easy for the reader to digest. The college

magazine was hard to look at not only because of the blinding colours I used, but because putting myself in the

shoes of the reader, I would not even know where to begin reading, the page is laid out so badly.”

The contents page is hard to read because of the way the page is laid out – it is hard to see which articles correspond with the page numbers, and also there is barely any content actually listed on the contents page

Technological capabilities

“While I have said previously in this evaluation that I was not very impressed by Photoshop, I do feel that just through

using technology I was able to improve what I could create on a computer. Previous to this project I would not have

known where to start when designing a magazine, as evidenced by the horrible creation that is my college magazine‟s contents page, but through getting more

experience using the technology available to me, I was able to create a much better finished product than I otherwise would

have been able to.”

The importance of research

“Before creating the front cover and contents pages for my college magazine, I was given no time to research my target

audience, so I could only source ideas and guidelines from my own personal opinion on what is good and bad. As I had

never designed pages for a magazine before I did not have much of an idea what I was doing. Before creating the pages

for my music magazine, I researched the target audience, existing products already on the market, and ways

in which to create a magazine people will want to read, which has led to me creating a much better magazine than I

otherwise could have. I think this was the most important thing I learnt from the preliminary task.”

Ability to understand target audience

“The research I mentioned on the previous slide greatly increased my understanding of the target audience, which

allowed me to design a music magazine that would appeal to a wide range of people. If I hadn‟t realised the importance

understanding your target audience had when I was creating my music magazine, then I would have probably ended up

creating a magazine that purely appealed to me, and not seeing the bigger picture. I have learnt that to design a high

quality music magazine, it is essential that you first learn who the magazine is going to be targeted at.”

E N D O F P A R T 2

MEDIA STUDIES EVALUATION

BY GEORGE HOWARD