Evaluation of myMusic magazineBy Nicky Sahota

My music magazine follows most of the conventional codes that are commonly recognised in most music magazines. These conventional aspects of my magazine include the title block (Mast head) which is positioned in the centre at the top of the page, which is common  in most magazines as it is crucial for people to establish and recognise the title and name of the magazine they are buying. As well as the magazine title block, I also have included a date and issue number just below the title block on the right hand side. This is conventional for most music magazines as it informs the reader when the magazine is released and how many issues have been released prior to the current issue. Another conventional code of my magazine is the central image on my front cover which has a direct mode of address as the artist looks straight into the camera, which would create the effect that the artist is looking directly towards the audience. This is common in music magazines as the publisher of the magazine wants you to build an instant connection with the reader in order to help appeal to the audience to interest them into buying it. Furthermore the use of buzz words such as ‘Free’ and ‘Exclusive’ which have also been coloured different to the other text to highlight the words which will appeal to the reader and catch their eye and potentially influence their decision to buy the magazine. My contents page has all the common themes found within a music magazine such as pictures with text, heading and sub headings and so on, this is done so the reader gains ease of accessibility in finding the way around the magazine. Furthermore the layout of my double page spread was slightly less conventional in terms of the lay out and more specific to the themes and messages being conveyed throughout this specific article as I thought this certain layout would be more appealing and would be more fitting to the theme being portrayed. However despite this, throughout the magazine I kept to the typical codes and conventions of a music magazine as the target audience for my magazine is quite mainstream so as well as appealing to my target audience specifically in places I wanted to produce something that would be something conventional.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine is aimed mainly at a male audience of which the age range would ideally be around 16-21 who listen to Indie Hip Hop music. For this reason I chose an artist who fitted into this genre and into that particular style. Along with the image the anchorage text is aimed at a slightly more mature audience an age group younger than my intended target audience may only be interested in gossip about the artist. In addition my product is priced at £1.99 and I made my decision based on knowledge gained from my questionnaire from the question ‘How much would you be willing to pay?’ and I was able to get results which would be helpful to my product due to the fact that all the people who filled in the questionnaire were students aged between 16-21. My contents page goes by quite a neat conventional structure with a clear house style in terms of colour scheme developed in contrast with the front cover in order to appeal to a more mature range of teenagers rather than younger children.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The magazine institution I have chosen to publish my magazine is Bauer. The reason for this is that they are known as one of the biggest magazine publishers, publishing very successful music magazines of all different genres such as Rock and metal for example ‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q’. Bauer as well as producing magazines have created websites and radio stations in the past therefore this would be a chance for the brand of my magazine to become known through more than one form of media. Furthermore the target audience for my magazine which is Indie Hip Hop- which to people who are unaware of this genre is a hybrid of Indie and Hip Hop, new wave music, has a similar audience to NME magazine. NME magazine is distributed by IPC Media and Bauer would now be rivalling IPC for the best Indie style magazine on the market which Bauer would see as more of an incentive to distribute my magazine.

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

My intended target audience for my music magazine would be preferably a male audience however this magazine will certainly appeal to a lot of females, aged around 16-21 years old who would generally be students, and are into new wave, Indie Hip Hop (Hybrid of Indie and Hip Hop) as well as Indie and some Hip Hop music itself. However the way I have produced my magazine would ensure that people outside my target audience would be interested in the magazine. As people 21+ would also be interested in some of the features consisting within the magazine such as Lupe Fiasco and Jamie T, also as I noted before there will be a lot of people of a female gender who would be interested in my music magazine. As well as the costumes of some of the people in the photos. These especially appeal to younger audiences as teenagers are into what is trending i.e. hoodies and body warmers. This contributes to appealing to a teenager and student audience as these are the current trends and fashions, most of these clothes wouldn’t be worn by a middle aged person. The way in which I have laid out my feature article has been done in such a way to promote the indicate the youthfulness of the artist featured who is 18 years old, so of the age I intend my magazine to appeal to. The fonts used and colour scheme a long with the lay out I used in the hope it would be more original and appealing to a teenage audience. Also there is a reference to the social networking site Twitter which is very popular amongst teenagers and students which is the reason that I highlighted this quotation from the interview.

Who would be the audience for your media product and how did you attract/address to them?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Whilst taking part in this course I picked up a few new tricks with different technologies which I used in order to adjust photos and layouts and more. I used Adobe Photoshop throughout my magazine production work. Having prior knowledge of use of this software which helped in producing my magazine,  I had to learn a few new things which I picked up on the way such as use of light settings, blending options and so on, which I used in order to make my photos look better in my magazine. In addition I had to create a questionnaire using a website called Survey Monkey which was a first for me and was a very effective tool in collecting and analysing results. Finally I learnt how to create and use a blog using Blogger to present my work which I feel is a very good form presenting my portfolio.

Learning these new skills such as photo manipulation and adjustments in all the stages of my magazine production has helped my magazine look the way it is as in my preliminary task I used very simple fonts, very basic and plain colour schemes, used boring layouts and never edited my photos. The stage that I am at now I am pleased with as my magazine has a professional look to it as my images look much better, I used very appealing colour schemes, fonts and brushes and experimented with some original layouts which worked for my magazine production. In aid of this I also did quite a bit of planning and research to help me produce my magazine which was a massive contributor to the way in which my magazine looks as I learnt how magazines appeal to their audiences and so on so when creating my magazine I had a more enhanced knowledge of how to portray themes and appeal to my audience.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?