Media final

MEDIA EVALUATION

Beginning my magazine

When I first started making my magazine, I had to incorporate all types of things that could heavily influence my magazine positively. I took research from a few magazines such as Vibe, Urban Ink and XXL. I decided that I wanted my music magazine to be called “Lyrics”, simply because music that we listen to involves using lyrics unless you may listen to classical. I wanted my magazine to feature artists that have expressive lyrics that original and their music to be very popular and meaningful. My target audience is middle-aged teenagers from 15 right up mid 20’s around 24-26. I made sure that my magazine to be very exclusive and have the latest releases including, new unsigned artists along with new music.

As you can see, I took several pictures of my model “Rico Soul” which I planned to use on my front cover. I tried to make my pictures similar to the one used on the Vibe magazine above. Instead of using seven models, I decided to use one.

MastheadWhilst making my magazine, I had to keep in mind the all the other ideas that I had gathered from other magazines I had researched. I wanted mine to have similarities to the others but at the same time, stand out differently to my target audience. I wanted the front cover to express my views and creativity.

Front cover imageI was very intrigued when I first came across this XXL magazine cover whilst doing my research. I thought that it was very interesting that the model (Chris Brown) was posing with only half his face

shown on the cover. I incorporated this by having my model cover the lower half of his face to show a similarity to XXL magazine.Colour scheme

I wanted my colour scheme to include different shades of red and black, throughout. As my magazine includes my ideas and favourites (shoes and cars), I wanted to show my colour scheme using these kinds of objects. I also think that me using red as one of the main colours is generally a great aspect because it immediately grabs the readers attention, which leads them being intrigued to read more.

Technology usedWhilst creating my product, I had the great opportunity to use one of the most popular and by far most advanced media conventions of today’s technology. I used an Apple Mac with Adobe Photoshop CS4 installed on it. With this software, it allowed my abilities to be extended on a greater scale to take my ideas of my product to a professional level.

I also used Microsoft Word when it came to the majority of my research.

ProductionMy magazine appeals exclusively to the younger generation. I am young myself so I definitely wanted to produce a magazine that can positively reflect on the music that I am currently growing up on and what is popular social-wise in our generation. My magazine may seem as reflecting on many stereotypes of today but it will be known as a very positive reflection of such thoughts. I didn’t pay much attention to the price of the magazine because I would rather have it known and being so popular than being so costly. It would definitely have to be the cheapest amongst other competitors on the market in able to stand out more.

I hope that my magazine would eventually be successful and then go onto other ventures such as going global because I believe that the potential the magazine carries is great enough to take on better ventures.

AudienceWhen it came to targeting my audience, I thought let me base my conclusion on what I know and my personal interests. I had to ask myself questions like; “what are young people into as of 2013?”, “what are their main interests?”, “music and fashion, music and cars, or all three?” By asking myself those questions, gave me the main insight of then creating “Lyrics”. Although, the magazine exclusively talks about the top artists and unsigned artists with positive and empowering lyrics, I also wanted other topics to be included in the magazine. I gathered all my ideas and information and I saw that it heavily related to the younger generation, ages exclusively at 16-24.

Looking back

I feel that I have come a very long way from when I first started creating my products. I feel that I offered a lot more with my music magazine then my preliminary task. I learnt more tricks and became very used to Adobe Photoshop. I learned how to use more tools that are available in the actual software and successfully apply them to my magazine. The extreme use of the gradient bucket tool was a great upgrade instead of having to use the same background like I did

with my preliminary task. Final product