Music Magazine Evaluation

Talisa Harness

Demographics & Psychographics

My magazine is aimed at men and women between the ages of 15-25. My magazine will follow the social groups of trendies, rebels, innovator and traditionalist. As it is a monthly magazine, people can save up £3.00 through out the weeks of the month, so my magazine falls into the C1 and C2 categories.

Survey Monkey

I found out a lot of information from the survey that I created on the online survey creator ‘Survey Monkey’. It gave me a chance to see what the public were interested in, and an idea of what to include in my magazine. It was really easy to create the survey, and post the link for people to answer it. This was a great method of creating a survey. Here is the link to my survey : http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TKNN9JX

www.blogger.com

For this section of our Media Studies AS exam we had to put all of our work onto an online blog called blogger.com. I found this an easy way to portray my work, as I could go back and edit things during the process. I would not have been able to do this, if It were in paper format.

Intentions

I intended to appeal to my target audience by making the magazine look bright, cool and interesting. I did this by using pictures that look funky and stylish. I intended for this magazine to follow the rock and indie stereotype, by getting the model to wear clothes that a person of that stereotype would wear.

Preliminary task

We were given this preliminary task to give us experience for our music magazine long production task.

In my preliminary task, I tried to aim at children aged 13 – 18 as these are the ages that are in high school. I aimed my magazine at female students as I feel females will read the magazine most.

Preliminary Task

I started my preliminary task by researching other student magazines to get an idea of the content and style. I found that most student magazine’s focused on what was actually happening in the school, rather than in the community. I also found that the style wasn’t as modern as other magazines today. E.g. – music magazines and gossip magazines.

Genre

My genre for my magazine is Indie Rock, and this decision came about after the results from my survey. As this was the highest scoring genre. The reason I picked a fellow student to photograph and base my magazine story around is because she has an indie edge to her, and her style is very unique.

Conventions

In order to achieve the best of my ability in this project, I did a lot of research on conventions in other music magazines, and applied this to my own.

Barcode

Price & Date line

Cover lines

Masthead

Selling Line

Main Cover line

Main Picture

Left Third

PhotosI took a series of photos,

so then I could choose the best ones to feature in my magazine. I used many different props to show the personality of ‘Lucy Antwiss’. All the props I used showed her to be a very outgoing person.

LayoutBefore we started to create our

magazines, we had to decide a layout for these. Over the course of making my music magazine, my ideas had changed. But here are my initial ideas for the layout and style.

Font and Graphics

I went through a series of decisions to chose the best fonts to use on my magazine. The inspiration for my chosen font for the masthead was NME magazine.

First Idea

Final Idea

Mise en scene

The mise en scene in my pictures worked well, as I used a plain background to create a more neutral feel to the pictures. I think it was better to have this scene rather than a crowded one, so the picture doesn’t look to full and cluttered.

I created this empty space, so if I were to use this for my front cover I would have enough room for the left third.

Initial Ideas

I had many initial ideas for my music magazine, these included the name ideas.

I had thought of many…- Extremeee – Music Monthly

– TARGETIn the end I decided to use

Plectrum, as this best represented the music scene.

Final Look

Publishers

The publisher that Is most likely to publish my magazine is IPC, as they publish over 80 magazines, including NME which is the inspiration for my own.

Final MagazineDuring this process I challenged most of the

conventions included in a typical music magazine. The first thing I challenged was most of the music magazines has a male group or artist on the front cover, with mine I decided to use a female. If my music magazine were to be published It would be put next to either NME or Q magazine as these follow the indie rock themes that mine does. I have also challenged the conventions by using a younger artist as most music magazines wont feature a younger band or artist. My magazine uses colours that could appeal to both sexes, as I have used yellow and red on the front and the contents, but pink inside to give it an edge.

What I have learnt

Over the course of this project I have learnt many things, including how to make a successful double page spread. As I have never made one of these before it was hard for me to think of a layout and ideas. I feel now I have learnt well how to do so.