Magazine Evaluation

By James Dooley

In what ways does your magazine use, challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

My magazine is suited to the genre of dance music. The based forms and conventions are colourful or exciting. My audience is for 18-24 of both mainly for men.

The main image is portrayed as a DJ showing his fashion and style. The font colours are mainly red, black and white to make it look exciting. The masthead style I was going for is techno/futuristic to represent electronic music. Other dance magazines use bold and more futuristic mastheads. The font style is suited to the house style with added shadow and effects

Masthead

By line

Barcode/price

Main Image

Lead article

Cover lines

I placed my lead article in the middle. I wanted to use this style like the mixmag magazine by making the lead article look slanted. This feature is mainly on mix mag magazines were the lead article is slanted.

I placed a flash or a giveaway prize and placed it in the bottom left. I used the shape tool and glow to make it stand out more for readers to notice it better. I liked the idea that runs in all mixmag magazines were they giveaway a CD in every issue.

I have placed the masthead in the top right corner to make it more noticeable. The DJ magazine and Mixmag places the masthead in the top left. It is a repeated convention used in most magazines.

Main image

Information on website and subscription

Editors note

Regular article column

Features column

Masthead form cover

Secondary image

I have added the image to fill most of the contents space. I liked the idea of the lead article being the most important. Mixmag does this in the following magazine, by placing a larger image then a smaller image. I challenged the convention by placing in a different place to most of the mixmag magazines and made the other image the same width.

The layout of my contents is that my features and regulars are placed to one side and the pictures placed to the left for easier navigation. Mixmag uses the same conventions and layout in most issues.

I have added ‘contents’ as a title in the top right corner to let readers know it is the contents page. This happens in Mixmag.

I have added a small picture of my front cover with an editors note. This allows readers to see who designed the front cover.

How I challenged the conventions of other dance magazines is using a different font style instead of a more suited font for dance music. The numbers are also different side to the mix mag contents

Main image

Pull quote

MastheadInterview

Stand first Name of the DJ

I placed the main image to the right without being covered up. I done this to make him the most important in this article. He is posing with his arms crossed to portray him as a serious producer/DJ. I had recognised MixMag has a similar position and photo.

I had placed the columns in two separate alignments to make it look more neat and professional. Highlighting the questions for easier navigation. The MixMag DPS uses the columns in my arrangement however uses 4 instead of 2. I have also made my columns more spaced out instead of close together. I have spaced them out to make it more clearer to read.

I had added a stand first near the interview questions to look like it is a part of it. I liked the modern style font and made it similar to the style of he mixmag DPS.

The pull quote is placed over Marcus shoulder to make it look like it is his comment. This is similar to the mixmag DPS, with the pull quote hovering over Dizzee Rascal’s shoulder.

I had added a shadowed box behind the text to make it stand out more. I like this idea similar to the white behind the black text to make it more eye appealing.

How does your magazine represent particular social groups?

My model used in my magazine was based on the famous DJ/producer AfroJack. Why I had based him on this artist is because he looks cool to the audience with a serious/bad attitude. I had applied this attitude to my model to make him look rich and important.

My model has the similar clothing and posing in the similar attitude to make it based on him. The audience I had try to reach out to was clubbers/ravers.

By basing my model on AfroJack reaches the target audience because of his appearances on dance magazines.

The audience for my magazine is for clubbers/ravers. This style was suitable to my front cover and DPS. AfroJack is the suitable DJ for my magazine, being successful .

I have tried to give the audience a professional however cool style on dance music genre. The colours I have used are set to the house style however the dark colours give it a sense of rock genre as well. The main image is set out to make it look professional and serious so I used the shadows and darker shades to make it look serious. I had used blur to make him stand out and look important.

My aim was to get my font loud and exciting. I used large bold writing with shadows to make it look exciting. The bright red colours show the exciting aspect of the magazine as well as the different use of colours on the fonts. The second image shown on my contents show a rock side to the magazine. The colours and the dark shade of the image give it the metal rock theme.

The pull quote ‘my journey will never stop’ is portraying Marcus matelli as competitive and hard working showing his portrayal as serious. The font that is included in the DPS has a formal style showing it is for male 24 or older even professional music producers.

What kind of media institution might distribute your magazine and why?

My main target audience is dance music which means magazines that is mainly related to it is DJ mag and MixMag. My magazine was indented to be similar to mix mag however I had taken forms and conventions from NME. My magazine has the design and information of DJs however has certain styles of NME to make it look more professional/mature.

The DJs suited to my magazine are like Deadmau5, Tiesto, Afrojack etc. My aim was to be in more mainstream club music instead of unknown artists. The audience for this magazine wouldn’t be younger than 18.

ABC the company for publishing MixMag may be interested selling my magazine to an audience of music producers with experience or wanting experience. It has elements of professionalism however interesting with nice colours. It is a MixMag and NME magazine crossed together.

IPC is the publisher of NME. IPC is another great example of what my magazine is similar to in style but not genre. Why IPC might choose to publish my magazine is because it has similar design elements throughout my magazine. The IPC magazine is suited to an older audience which is similar to mine.

IPC may be interested in publishing my magazine to compete against magazines like MixMag or DJ mag. However I would prefer ABC to publish my magazines instead because they have experience with dance/electronic genre type of magazines.

Who would be the audience for your magazine

By examining my results on survey monkey most people thought my target audience is for both genders aged 16 – 24. The reasons why I think most people will have gone for this answer is because my colours and design is most suitable to both genders. The age is reinforced by how young my model looks. The articles are also a way to present both gender attention.

I created my reader profile in my research for my magazine. The reader profile shows what my audience interests. I put all items of what a clubber or a young student will be interested in. I had added a picture of a festival to go towards my audience of ravers/clubbers.

I used fashion, consoles and alcohol in my reader profile to show what students at a age between 18 – 24 would be interested in.

I had also found out results of what my magazine audience will be mostly. It is that 75 percent male that are interested in Dance/R&B music.

Audience Feedback

By these results most people take my artist as a serious producer. This is a good results as I compared him to Afrojack who has a serious attitude. The way he is dresses and looks shows the audience he is a laid back artist that has a professional career behind him. These comment show how the artist is portrayed.

By analysing these results it is clear that my magazine is suited to the genre electronic/dance/ dub step. This is good to know that my Magazine is represent as these genres as my target was to design it like dance. The response of ‘rock?’ clearly shows it does have elements of NME a rock magazine.

This is about how easy is it to navigate on my contents. Many of the answers consist of being very easy to read mainly due to my colours being bright and the font being bold. The layout also helps navigation. Another answer shows that the little mini cover was effective of making it easier for navigation. One results say that the images are effective on showing the main article probably due to being a big size.

Most people enjoyed my survey with 4 good results and a 2 outstanding results.

However the good results many people thought that my magazine need improvement by adding colours and not using much space. I wish I filled up the space with more articles or pictures on the front cover. If I could redo the magazine I would improve on these points drastically.

What have you learnt about technologies?

I have added two photo shots. I used another one of the main model and kept it original with no effects. Used the grid to align the photos.

For the photo below I used levels to make it darker and brighter.

I had also used curves to make the picture look darker on one side compared to the other. This effect was useful to create dark effects on a picture.

I had created a box in the bottom left corner. I added shadow/ glow effects and put the opacity down low. This box is for a border of the text.

A website I had used for my photo effects is picnik. This website helped me put blur on the background and focus on the image. Picnick also helped me on boosting the colours by using their paint brushes on my selected fonts.

Survey monkey was a great help especially in my research to find what audience I am producing for. I used the results to tell me what need improving on my magazine.

Survey monkey is an easy way for me to get results for my magazine. It allows me to share all my surveys online on blogger, twitter and Facebook.

Blogger is a great website allowing me to post all of my magazine research, development and evaluation onto a blog. I have many photos, clips and presentations stored on my blog with work from my magazine. My surveys were posted on here and it allows you to share blogs onto Facebook or twitter.

City college media studies blog has helped me a lot form tutorials to examples of work. The blog has a lot of information for all three units. The blog helped me do tutorials on Photoshop.

What have you learnt?

I have learnt so much techniques on creating my final magazine. Looking at my old magazine first design I can see how much I have improved.

• I have learnt to use effects on photos and text

• To create better masthead• Use levels and curves to make good

shadows and dark effects• To make a better layout• And much more

The magazine I first created seemed to use too much space but now I have learnt to use layout and spacing correctly.

A2

Why I want to go onto A2 is because this year has been really interesting learning new aspects of media and learning about magazine production. I have learnt everything new and want to learn more. This has been my favourite subject to study being all very new to me. I would like to progress to A2 to learn more about magazines and other areas of media.