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Overall Evaluation

Question 1:

Before I even tried to make my own magazine – at the start of the very beginning of the project I analysed various music magazines and found many conventions that various music magazines use. The many conventions used on the music magazines were very interesting and I could clearly see why and how it would attract the audience. Now in my music magazine I used some of the conventions from one of the magazines that I found and liked it, the reason why I did this is because it looked very effective and I wanted to make my music magazine appear to a certain audience. I found out that most magazines in the music entertainment industry place their mastheads at the top of the magazine page and it looked really professional. In order to make my own magazine look really professional I emulated the same actions from the magazine that I had seen. When ever there is a photo of a person on the magazine their heads tend to cover up the mastheads – once again, it looked really professional so I emulated that action which made my own magazine look a bit the same to that of a music magazine, all I really did was place the masthead behind the model’s head in order to successfully copy the magazine convention. The font that was used in the magazine front cover was impact, I used this because it gives the magazine a more modern type of look and it gives the magazine a professional feeling which lingers around it. All of the conventions that I used made the magazine more attractive and quite interesting.

Another convention that I followed is when a music magazine locates their bar code on the magazine. During my research I found out that some music magazines situate their bar codes to the far left of the cover but most of them placed it at the bottom right of the magazine. In order to make my magazine look exactly like them I placed my barcode at the bottom right of the page and made sure that it had a price in small font since most music magazines tend to do that to not obscure their vision from the main content. By adding the barcode to the front cover of the magazine it makes the magazine more professional because it is actually a product which can be bought and it has a price, it isn’t free. During my research I saw a lot of magazines with medium close ups so I emulated that convention too on my magazine front cover. Reason for this is simply because by adding a medium close up to the front cover the magazine it makes it more attractive and it stands out more; it is the dominant image. If nothing is on the front cover except for the text it won’t really be eye-catching at all, it will be very boring to look at without any picture.

Another convention that I followed is when music magazine places cover lines on the front cover either on the far left or right. I did this because I thought it would look more professional and interesting – I don’t think anyone would like to stare at a front cover without any text on it unless the picture is really interesting. Even though I followed the convention I modified it a bit by rotating the text, making it look more rebellious since that’s what most rap/ hip – hop magazines are doing right now. The cover lines are eye-catching, colourful, cool and short. I’m sure this would satisfy the readers.

For my contents page I didn’t really follow any convention, at first I was going to do that but I decided to modify if it.  Firstly I made sure that I put the main picture with the model on the page and I made sure that it covered the whole page. Secondly I included some of the text on the right side of the page; the text is properly aligned with other text below it which actually follows just one magazine convention. Finally I included other text just in the left portion of the page. Reasons why I aligned the text together is because it looks more eye-catching, it’s more professional since it isn’t all jumbled up and it gives the hint that the magazine isn’t bad to look at.

My double page spread follows the typical music magazine style – I placed the picture on the left page and most of the text on the right page. I made sure that the text stood out on the page and I also added some rebellious text to the left page by turning the text up side down. Overall I believe that this would make the magazine look more interesting, cool and professional all at the same time.

Question 2:

I made my magazine focus on rap/hip – hop and I was prepared to make the magazine stand out to fans of the genre. The audience for the magazine are most likely ages from 14 – 26. The music magazine that I have created is aimed at a teenage audience, male and female, who listen to rap/hip-hop. I have represented the audience through the use of the images I have placed into the magazine. The model on the front cover represents the audience in various ways. As you can see below, the clothes that he’s wearing resemble that of a rapper; just at the top right corner of his clothing you can that there is an addidas logo. And if you pay attention to his head you can see that he’s also wearing headphones; the headphones tell you that he enjoys listening to music – a lot of people wear headphones out so I decided that the model should wear them too to catch the attention of the teenage audience. The type of clothing that he is wearing are normally worn by famous rappers, he is dressed like that to catch the eyes of the audience so, once they notice him they’ll think that he has style since he’s dressed like a rapper. This type of look suggests that he is somewhat devoted to music and loves to listen to rap/hip-hop. Unlike most rap-hip magazines with the models displaying serious looks I decided to make the model a bit different by smiling at the camera which suggests that he’s happy and he enjoys what he does which is making rap/hip-hop music.  I didn’t make the model have a serious expression like most models on different rap/hip-hop magazines tend to have, I did this because it would make the magazine stand out more, and I wanted to make the music magazine a bit different from the usual ones.

The model resembles other famous rappers because they tend to wear clothes that are very trendy and they will usually have something to connote music like headphones or a microphone. If you turn to the contents page you can see that the model is now sitting down on a large speaker; the speaker grabs the audience’s attention because it connotes music. You can see the way that the model is posing – this is a convention that I have copied from a rap/hip-hop magazine. On these type of magazines they usually do some sort of sign so I made sure that the model did this – this will catch even more people to view the magazine because most of the audience who are teenagers who listen to rap/hip-hop will find it eye catching.  I feel that this has represented the social group very well since the teenagers of today that listen to rap/hip-hop can relate to the model on the front cover.

On the contents page the model is now sitting down on a speaker; the speaker here is usually associated with loud music and other genre of music but I’d say that it’s more associated with rap/hip-hop genre.

The model’s clothes is quite masculine and cool, the magazine will attract quite a fair amount of males rather than females.  The magazine only focuses on rap/hip-hop.

On the double paged spread the model is holding a microphone, the microphone symbolises that he is in control of his music which stands out to rap/hip-hop lovers because most of the audience want to be control of their own music.

Finally, I deliberately included clothes and props which are associated with rap/hip-hop because it focuses on only one culture for the audience.

Question 3:

Earlier during this term I did some research on certain companies that distribute different products, during the research stage I found out there was a company that distributed a rock magazine called Kerrang and the company is called ‘Bauer Media Group’. I think that this company is more likely to take in my magazine and promote it to the public. There are a lot of reasons why they would take in and publish the magazine. Now by Bauer Media Group taking in and publishing my magazine the amount of people actually reading their magazines will increase. I’m aware that the readers of Kerrang are people who like to rock so when the company publishes my magazine they don’t need to worry about my magazine stealing Kerrang’s audience because that won’t happen. By publishing my magazine they will have a second genre of music, rap/hip-hop, this will attract many people. My magazine also has a section where you can look at reviews on the latest gadgets and instruments; this would be suitable for the company because they have their own rock magazine with rock bands and such and people will wonder how these people play their instruments. In my opinion I think that my magazine would work well with it since it has reviews on instruments people could use to make good music. Also, this will make the company more diverse.

By publishing and distributing my magazine they will gain a great financial advantage for their company, Bauer Media Group. This is because they are publishing a rap/hip-hop magazine which will bring in a lot of people since they haven’t been trying to get an audience from that genre of music before, they’re catching more customers. My magazine is primarily aimed at the audience in the UK; there are a lot of rap/hip-hop listeners so I’m pretty sure they’ll pick up the magazine and look at the contents. Their profits will increase because there will be no competition between the two since rap/hip-hop and rock is entirely different from each other. The fact that the company could publish my magazine would mean that their company will gain popularity from the audience. Finally, this would increase their profits because my magazine has advertisements that some people might be interested in.

Most likely I’d distribute my magazine in many music stores like PLAY, HMV and retail stores like WHSMITH. PLAY and HMV are very big music distributing stores in the UK so it would make sense to distribute music magazines. As for WHSmith it would be good because it would expand their audience. Finally, I’d also distribute my music magazine in youth clubs because my magazine’s audience are mostly teenagers.

Question 4:

When I was making the magazine I originally planned that it would turn out as a rap/hip-hop magazine and it did. This magazine is targeted at a teenage audience – British teenagers who enjoy listening to the type of genre that I have selected. Although Britain is known for rock, pop and other types of genre it also has a sturdy rap/hip-hop culture that a lot of teenagers are interested in. I made sure that it fit the British theme instead of an American theme. By doing this I made sure that the model wasn’t wearing any golden necklace or ‘bling’ so that it would look different.

I decided to target the magazine at a teenage audience because teenagers nowadays are rebellious and rap/hip-hop is quite rebellious – teenagers can relate to the type of music because of that. In terms of ethnicity the magazine would most of the time catch the attention of black teenagers however there are other ethnicities that listen to the music that will also be caught. Although rap/hip-hop is usually associated with black people it isn’t specifically aimed at only black teenagers it is aimed at a vast amount of ethnicities. It targets male, female and all races equally.  By doing this it makes the magazine more popular amongst the audience, it would make more and more people get attracted to the magazine so they can enjoy the type of music. The magazine focuses on people who have a large amount of love for rap/hip-hop and it even targets people who are interested in making this type of music by themselves – it targets people who are inspired to create beautiful music.

As I’ve said before, the audience’s age will be ranging from 14 – 26. Reason behind that is really because the magazine is quite colourful; the text is colourful and short. If the text was long the magazine would seem quite boring for the audience since they’re young and the age range would have expanded by quite a bit. Another reason behind this is because my magazine also has topics focused on teenager’s life styles, how they got to where they are right now and how does it feel like. There are topics that discuss the latest news on the new hit rappers, what’s going on today with music and very interesting topics guides. Although my magazine is aimed at a young audience I’m pretty sure that it will get people who are a bit above the age range because it has factual guides on how to be the next ‘Big Hit’ and how to catch a dream with a ‘dream net’.

Question 5:

Using the research I conducted on the audience of today I found out a lot of things and used most of them for my magazine. The first ever technique I used to capture some of my target audience was the photograph which is displayed on the front cover of the music magazine; this is a vital part of the magazine because without a photograph on the front cover everything just becomes stale and the possible reader wouldn’t like to check it out, it needs to be eye catching. One of the ways I used to attract my target audience is the model on the front cover; the model is a teenager and he’s around the age of 16. Reason why I did this is because my target audience are mostly teenagers and the teenagers can relate to model in the photograph on the front cover. The model is a male so this is going to attract even more people because a lot of males today can relate to the male on the front cover. The boy on the front cover is wearing addidas clothing that represents a particular style that is appealing to the audience. The reason why he’s wearing the addidas clothing is because addidas clothing is normally associated with ‘today’s gear’, a lot of people who listen to rap/hip-hop like to keep trendy. Now if you pay attention to his head he’s wearing headphones, these headphones provide a sense of style; somewhat ‘hip to hop’. Nowadays a lot of people wear headphones as they walk on the street listening to their own choice of music, this will attract people because a lot of people can relate to the model who is wearing the headphones on the front cover.

Another way is that I stuck to the rap/hip-hop theme which can be rebellious; I did this through the use of the cover lines on the front cover. One particular cover line on the front cover has been rotated a few degrees to add a sense of rebellion to the magazine cover. In addition I made sure that I inserted different artist names into the front cover of the magazine, I’m pretty sure that the audience wouldn’t have heard about them, reason I did this is because a lot of people may want to find out who these artists are and some people may want to find out if they make good music.  One of the artist’s names on the front cover is made out of a big font and it’s quite colourful because I believe this will attract a lot of the audience.

On the contents page I made sure that the model was posing; the way he posed was quite ‘streetwise’, I believe that this will attract even more people to the magazine because a lot of teenagers that listen to rap/hip-hop today will enjoy the pose. The pose is just like a trend setter. In fact, the pose could be a trend, everyone could be doing it.

Another thing that will attract the audience is the powerful bold text, this is because the bold text stands out more and people won’t hesitate to read it when they see it, it’s like an urgent call – right in their face.  The colour of the text blends in with the background very well so it isn’t hard to read which a good thing is because people won’t be attracted to the magazine if they can’t read what’s on it.

Question 6:

During my journey in media studies I found a lot of information about the technologies that help promote the media, I have used the technology to help make my music magazine. After I had constructed my first ever magazine I had to take pictures, so along the way I learnt how to use a camera which is Canon EOS 400; I used this camera to take all of my images that you see on the magazine. When I used this during my first ever attempt at creating a magazine I didn’t know much about the camera except how to hold it, now during my second creation of my magazine I found out a lot of information about the camera and why the camera is effective at taking photos. All of the photos that I had taken were all taken in different places, the first task was outside a school and the other task was captured in a building. During my time with the camera I had to make sure that I was taking it from the right angle to give off the professional look that a regular magazine would have. In nearly all of my pictures I utilized the zooming and zooming out feature of the camera. I had to take into account where I was going to take the photographs and how bright or dark would the area will be. It was quite easy to capture high quality photographs because I could use the flash feature of the camera to enhance the photo. Overall I enjoyed using it and I didn’t have a lot of problems but there was just one. I had a problem with connecting the red dot from the camera lens with the model’s eyes; my hands were shaking a lot so I struggled to get a still image – focusing the camera was quite tough. After some quick practice I managed to connect the red dot with the model’s eyes, I could have made this process a lot faster if there was a tripod nearby but there wasn’t enough time for that.

Another technology that I researched and found information about was none other than Photoshop. During my time with Photoshop I picked up a lot of skills and techniques from it, I now know how to increase the quality of a photo, how to make it black and white, how to remove blemishes/pimples with the spot healing tool, adding certain effects to the magazine, adding in custom fonts and most importantly I learnt how to create a magazine. I had some certain problems with the Photoshop CS3 so I was forced to use another version of Photoshop which was CS5. Personally I found CS5 quite easy to use, it had a lot of features that CS3 didn’t have which was amazing. There was a time when I had to delete the background out of the picture, CS3 didn’t simply allow me to do that and CS5 allowed me to do this with the picture extract tool. By using this tool I was able to cut out the model from the background and place him in another background. I did this because having the same background all over again seemed boring, I wanted the model in a different one because it would seem more interesting to look at and people would wonder how I have did this.

In one of the pictures I had taken I noticed that the model had a lot of spots so I used the spot healing tool to remove the spots and replace it with the model’s clean skin, I was able to achieve a great effect with this.

During my use of Photoshop I picked up on another useful technique that would add some sort of style to my magazine. I decided to rotate my text around so that it would look like there’s a mirror between the two texts. I also added some lines between the texts to give the magazine a professional, organised type of feeling.

I also learnt from Photoshop that it isn’t important to always save a photo as a JPEG because the quality would reduce and it was the only image file format that the blogger I was using accepted. JPEG has been the only image format that I have uploaded to the site, I’ve did this loads of times now.

Question 7

When I was first assigned my first ever magazine project I absolutely didn’t know where to start so I just rushed into it without giving any thought. I recognised that I was doing something wrong with the magazine, from my knowledge it didn’t look like a regular magazine at all. In order to fix this problem I went on the internet and searched up different type of magazines, I noticed the conventions that they were using so I decided to try and emulate them just to make my magazine look good just like theirs. As for the second task I approached this task calmly, I knew what I was told to do since I had developed skills from the previous task that I had done. I did not rush into it; I took it slow and added some of the conventions that a regular music magazine would add just to give it the professional look, to make it look eye-catching and interesting to look at. From task to task I have developed my skills; I have learnt how to increase the quality of the overall magazine, as you can see anyone could say which magazine is better. The first one I ever didn’t have good quality at all and the second one I did had better quality. For example, I didn’t put the masthead behind the model’s head in the first task, although I did this in the second task. It made the magazine look weird, it made it look like an advertisement poster that you’d usually see on the walls of a building – I didn’t like that.

At first I was a bit hesitant about finding a model but I had to get the job done quickly so I organised my time and made sure that the model I selected was in so I can take a picture. Actually, I did this rather quickly because I didn’t want to waste any time.

The first task only had the front cover and the contents page which wasn’t that much compared the recent task. The first task lacked a double page spread. During my experimentations with Photoshop I finally found out that using a ruler to organise text in a magazine was quite useful. I was a bit hesitant with using the grid feature of Photoshop but I discovered that it really helps you a lot if you really want to align some things in the magazine.

If I didn’t have any ideas for the tasks I wouldn’t have created them in the first place, luckily I had some good ideas. When I was randomly searching up the web I found loads of images of magazine covers which immediately caught my attention. Most of my ideas came from the magazines that I had seen in Google images, mostly Vibe. The layout, framing, anchorage, mode of address and register were all influenced by the many magazines in Google images but mostly the Vibe magazine. Apart from that I had conducted research on which type of magazines that my friends like, they gave me a whole list of what they would like to see in a music magazine and I did what they had recommended.

I had to deal with one problem which was image editing. The model that I had selected had some pimples on his forehead and I had to take care of that by using the spot healing brush tool. My first attempt at using the tool went incredibly bad, bits and pieces were all over the place. I had to watch YouTube Photoshop tutorials to get a better understand on the brush tool. After practice and practice I finally removed most of the spots from his forehead.

I personally didn’t take part in selecting what the model had to wear; all I said was what genre the magazine was focused on. I took part in selecting which prop the model was going to pose with and wear, I think that I managed this quite perfectly.

Without any drafting for the magazine I wouldn’t have learned all of the techniques that I have used in the final magazine. Making magazine drafts help you with your Photoshop knowledge and it ‘levels up’ your skills and techniques.

Magazine

Actual magazine



Spread

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Contents drawings

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Magazine drawings