Music magazine evaluation

Music Magazine Evaluation

By Abigail Peake

For my media I chose to do a print project, on a music magazine fit for

14-16 years.

Q1: in what way does your media product use develop forms and convections of real media products?

• Every music magazine has to have specific convections in order to sell as well as the others and to stand out from the rest. Although I wanted my magazine to be different I had to follow the convections of the music magazine which fit my particular age range in order for it sell, and to have certain things in to in order for teenagers to want to buy it

Every magazine have to have the certain expectations:

• catchy title

•Famous celebrity which is recognisable to the age range

•Chatty, informal, typical speech for the reader to understand.

•A logo which is recognisable to the magazine

• big titles to stand out

•Attention grabbing front cover, contents and double page spread to grab readers attention and to sell and stand out on the shelve through different colours, fonts images

•Professional looking photography

•Colour scheme to fit with the age

•The use of other celebrities to promote the magazine

• I chose to do a magazine which was fit for teenagers around the age of 14-16 years old as I found there is a few magazines which fit that age range but not as many as older teenagers, so I thought it would be interesting and more use if I did my magazine focussing around that.

Here I have chosen two magazines which are very popular with the age range I chose to do and they both use the typical types of convections you would expect to see. There both eye catching with the colour schemes they use,

although one of the background is white it is still as eye catching as the other. They both use a celebrity with a medium close up and this is very interesting as this is the type of picture on my magazine, it is also very effective as that is one

of the first things we see as we look at the magazine.

Pictures of well known pop singers, to grab readers attention

Big titles, so that catches readers eye on the shelf

Naming the pop singer loud and clear so you would know who they are if you didn’t already

USP!Although for a magazine to sell it has to have specific convections, I wanted mine to challenge these

convections to make it different and to stand out from the rest of music magazines.

My USP (unique selling point) was to challenge other music magazines, I did this by making my model wear clothes that other girls her ages will want to wear therefore I am promoting her fashion sense as well as her music, I thought this was a good idea as girls her ages will look up her and follow her role which is wanted to happen. Although there is a lot of magazines for girls, I think the age range 14-16 years don’t have as many magazines as girls younger and older do therefore my magazine will be suitable on the shelve. I wanted my magazine to have fashion inside aswell so that it will attract the teenage girls population and not just the girls who have a interest in music therefore it is suitable for every teenage girl.

Pop magazine

Singers name in bold

Featuring old celebrities

Fashionable clothes

Big, bold title

Other fashion tips

I have chosen two magazines which are very popular with my target audience so I am going to use these ideas to put in to my magazine to make my music magazine a music/fashion magazine combined in one.

How I challenged/ followed music convections

Front Page: Big, bold titles to grab the readers attention

Picture of the celebrity they are promoting.

Featuring other pop groups and singers

Tag line, telling the reader what else is featuring in the magazine

Telling the reader what will be inside the magazine

Contents page:

Telling the reader what page, grabs attention

Picture of celebrity, the reader knows who they are talking about in the magazine

Lots of colours, so grabs readers eye as soon as they open it

Double page spread:

Name of the artist, bold which means its will stand out as soon as the reader

opens the magazine

Text grabs, to grabs the readers attention as they look at the

page.

Picture of the artist, so we know who they are

talking about

Audience feedback

if my magazine was on a shelf, would you buy it?

yes:

no:

I asked my target audience and people inside and outside of my class about my finished product and whether they think I challenged the convections and was I successful

In my questionnaire I asked my audience, if my magazine was on a shelf would they buy it? My graph states that more population would buy it if it was on a shelf.

Some other feedbacks which I got off people was:

“Pages look professional”“Pricing is right”

“Front cover is eye-catching”

“Article layout plus colouring makes me want to read on”

Q2: how does your media product represent particular social groups?

• We learn all about different social groups through different ways, television, radio, films, real life and through different magazines

My music magazines features a celebrity that I have made up called ‘Amanda’ who is the main focus in my magazine and she is a teenage, female pop singer.

My magazine features a young teenage girl and this is expressed throughout the pages I have done, in the rest of the magazine it would feature boys bands and solo boy celebrities but the pages I have done just feature I teenage girl.

My magazine overall represents a solo pop singer, as I feel more teenage girls prefer pop rather than any other music category.

Big time hit pop singer, teenagers idol, fashion icon

Pop teenagers girls are very common these days as more celebrities feature pop music but also because there music is very up to date and can relate to people and how they feel.

POP style

Long dresses

Colour of spring ‘Red’

Pink, white, baby blue- light warm colours

Flowery patterns

cardigansneat

Pop princesses- very popular with the teenage population but also hit the charts with there up coming records.

• Inside my magazine I have represented my stereotype in a positive and creative way, I have done this to appeal to my audience and different audiences but also to attract attention from older teenagers and people who just want to sit down and have a good read and to be noisy and see what celebrities are up to.

POP representation

On the front page of my magazine I have represented pop girls through the fashion, poses, colours and text.

Amanda my celebrity (centre) is wearing a open denim shirt with a pink casual top underneath and her hair up in a bun with a pink band as this stereotype represents pop chicks and how they wear there fashion.

Her pose is very casual and out going as I felt like this would get noticed on a shelve, she is also smiling which shows that pop girls are happy but it will also grab the readers attention as they feel comfortable to read about her.

The colours I have used are bright warming colours which describes pop girls but they also stand out.

• The picture I used in my double page spread was a picture of Amanda stood up, I felt like this was more affective than any other shot because the reader to firstly see her fashion which is what I wanted to promote but also her pose also represents that she is an outgoing girl, and easy to relate too. She is wearing an completely different outfit than in her front cover but it still fits in with the pop girl look, she is wearing a body warmer with a long sleeve top underneath, leggings and converse which are popular with teenage girls in our genre. I also wanted to promote good role for teenagers to look up to, but also I wanted people to be able to feel comfortable about reading about her and to relate to her. The outfit she is wearing relates to pop music as it is down to earth and chilled out as pop music these days is.

Double page spread image

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• In order for a magazine to be successful and to be displayed on a shelf it needs to be supported by a media institution in order to sell in shops. Institutions are used all over in media, such as radio shows/television, films, internet, ,music and magazines. Here is the two most popular music institutions.

Ipc media or emap?

I decided to use ipc to publish my magazine as i have found that they realite to my magazine more. I did a pop music magazine fit for 14-16 years old but it also involved fashion as I found most teenagers would prefer a music that they can relate to in many different ways. They produced all the best magazine and the most popular for example: Marie Claire, look, nme which most people prefer to buy and are very popular. They use big bold titles just like I have done throughout my magazine. They have pictures on the front cover of celebrities that will grab the readers attention as soon as they look on the magazines shelf. If I was to work with ipc I think I would be able to encourage there other magazine companies to buy my magazines as it is different from the ones that they already support. I feel that they would publish my magazine as it has both music and fashion for young girls to relate to which most magazines aren’t. It focuses more on pop where as nme focuses on rock/indie and Marie Claire focuses on fashion, style and women issues so because my magazines focuses on both music and fashion I feel that there readers would buy it.

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

• To find out which audience would fit my media product I used GRASS (gender, race, age, socio- economic status) and various other ways to find out and specific convections in order to sell to my specific target audience

GRASS

Audience:

Young teenage girls

Age :

14-16

Music category:

pop

Subsidence- not in a full time job- mostly students

Gender:

female

KIPPERS: kids in parents pockets eroding retirement saving

OINKY: one income no kids yet

SNERT: snot-nosed egoistical rude teenager

• I felt like this was a good audience due to the amount of people who fit within this category. It is obviously for teenagers girls as we can tell this by the name of my magazine (solo) but also because it is focussed on a young girl so this particular magazine would not sell well with teenage boys. I felt like my magazine would see to my target audience because it isn’t expensive (£1:50) as a lot of teenage girls wont have a job so they will get money off their parents, so this particular price is affordable, my age range also don't have to pay for shopping, mortgages, children etc which is ideal because they will always be able to afford to buy my magazine weekly.

Throughout my questionnaire I studied, it helped me to decide the age range, and how much to sell it for and also whether they would buy a magazine depending on celebrity was on the front this helped my greatly as that way I was able to get ideas on my magazine.

70% said they would buy a magazine if the front page was colourful

70% said they would prefer to buy a magazine weekly rather than monthly

Only 20% said they prefer to read music magazines, I think this is because most music magazines don’t fit particular age ranges but if they do they don’t offer the kind of

music they prefer to listen to

80% said they prefer looking about pictures inside a magazine rather than reading the articles

• More and more teenage girls are listening to pop music so I wanted to make sure my magazine fitted that contents, I had to make sure my text, colour, photos didn’t exclude any girls that like listening to pop music. I made sure they was a wide range of other groups/solo artists to grab the readers eye, for example; Cheryl Cole, The Saturdays and JLS

• The feedback I got for my particular target audience was very positive which meant that I met my target and provided something that teenage girls would like to read.

Q5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

Featuring different artist makes us want to read and find out about them.

Big, bright title to get readers eye. I decided the name solo after thinking long and hard about names but I came out with solo because Amanda is a solo artist so describe her.

Picture of another celebrity to give us an idea what else will be starred in magazine.

Word ‘win’ makes people want to buy it for the prize and articles

Image has to bright and powerful to sell, lighting, mise en scene, poses all play a bit part in selling the image. Amanda is looking very girly and happy and giving direct address which grabs the readers attention

Gives us a idea what the magazine will be starring Bright text to grab readers eye, appears

exciting and sells to product

Big, bold title so as soon as the reader opens the magazine it will stand out.

Warm, summery texts for each heading to indict something new and where abouts you will find them in the magazine, they also stand out more.

Led down picture of the celebrity, looking directly at the readers to give direct address and to make you feel more comfortable reading the magazine.

Different colours for different celebrities so they stand out but also to break

the text up abit

Telling the reader exactly what we have done to make the magazine easier for them, but we have also told them to enjoy which will make the reader more comfortable and to relax

Title in bold text to stand out, but also in the colour red to grab readers eye

Text grabs so once the reader opens the page they will see it and it will make them want to read on

Small picture of amanda posing this one isn't giving direct address which makes her more of a celebrity

Amanda stood up looking at the camera, we get a idea of what fashion sense we have but we can also relate to her by her facial expressions and we feel more comfortable to read on, it is also big which means once you flip the page over you see the image and want to read what she has to say

Different columns in the text so it breaks it up

Background colour, starts off light and end up darks to separate this page from the rest and to make it eye catching for the reader

ideologies

• Throughout my magazine I have mostly positive ideologies so that it will sell, to keep my readers

attention I have to infer some negative ideologies aswell.

This is negative because it tells the reader that because Amanda is a celebrity she cant do what normal teenage girls do, so she is telling them what she feels, which makes us trust her more.

This is negative because she is telling her fans exactly what she thought at the time that the trends weren’t right for her, this makes us trust her and feel more comfortable

Positive ideologies

Tells the reader what she did, and believed throughout

Telling the reader what she feels, helps us to understand her.

Telling her fans what she think of them which makes the reader comfortable because she isn't snobby and down to earth

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?• Throughout creating my print product I have used and

learnt a lot about different technologies and programmes, for each part of the project (research, planning, evaluation). I used normal and modern material to do this..

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Planning- creating my blog

In order to create my blog, I had to go on http://blogger.com/ this enabled me to keep straight on what work I had done and what work I had to do. It also meant that I was able to keep my work neat and tidy, and it also gave the advance that I could look back at any time of what work I had done this meant I could store ideas of what I wanted my magazine to look like and it also meant that I was able to upload pictures on and text and not having to worry about losing them or crossing anything out which makes it look untidy.

Research

Nearly all my research came from the internet which played a very important part in my research. The information I found was a lot quicker than having to go and look it up in books and I was always able to find the information from looking on the web, and it was much quicker. The only disadvantage of using the internet is you have to make sure you find a reliable source because the internet isn’t always right.

Evaluation

I used technology such as printing, photocopying and scanning in able to get my audience feedback, this was much quicker as that way I didn’t have to do different copies one by one for people which saved me plenty of time and got the information out and in a lot quicker.

Planning and production

I had never used in design before and actually never heard of it either. It gave me the chance to make my pages a lot better and more professional. I found the software quite easy to use once I had a idea how to use it. It was very effective and made my magazine look miles better than what Microsoft publisher would of done

Photoshop gave me the chance to edit photos how I wanted them to be done. I had never used Photoshop before this, and I found extremely difficult at first to come to terms with the different elements of it, but once I edited a few pictures I was able to understand the basic of Photoshop. If I hadn't used Photoshop to make my pictures better than they wouldn’t have looked as effective as they do which would of made it look less professional. Photoshop enabled me to edit any picture I wanted to and to make it how I liked it so it came me freedom to express how I wanted things, after using Photoshop and looking at my result I am happy that I got the experience to use it

Even though I have used different cameras before, using a camera to take pictures effectively and to produce professional looking photography was great. I throughly enjoyed the experience of using a camera for useful, which made me happy

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from it to the full

products?

Looking back at my preliminary task and my finished product, I can clearly see that I have made a massive improvement which shows that I have clearly learnt something along the way.

I made my preliminary quite quickly and didn’t really think it as much as I did with my finished piece. It is very plain and doesn’t really stand out which means that it would do very well in the magazine company where as my final piece catches your eye and would do well in the magazine company.

Very plain and boring title.

Very standard picture, doesn’t look like it has been cut out well though

Main caption is very standard and doesn’t stand out from rest of text, doesn’t grab reader eye

Very standard captions, doesn’t tell the reader much or make the reader want to read on

My finished product is a lot better than my prelim product in many ways, it has got lots of colour, big title that will catch the readers eye, cut of picture, barcode, and lots of different style of fonts and my prelim didn’t have any of them features therefore I can tell I put a lot my effort in to thinking about my final piece rather than my prelim.

Conclusion

I am very happy with my final piece, it turned out a lot better than I ever imagined it would do. When I finished started with this piece I couldn’t grasp how to use Photoshop or in design and I got really stressed out with it, but as I started using it more I finally came to terms with the basic things I need to know which helped me to create my final project. I managed to create some really nice, professional looking pages and to do this I took lots of professional photography and different shots that would be typical for my chosen audience. The images that I used was different on every page, on my front page the image was a medium close up of Amanda and this was effective because as soon as we look at the magazine we saw her standing out and this is the effect that I wanted it to have, it also made us want to read on about her because she was smiling which the made the readers feel more comfortable.

The second image on my contents page was a lot different of Amanda as it was still a medium close up but she was led on the floor which created the ‘pop star’ look, it also worked very well because it was like she was holding up the contents and what was inside the magazine.

The final image on my double page spread was completely different to both of the other images as it was a long shot of Amanda showing us exactly what she likes to wear which gave the people that look up her a idea. It worked really well because as soon as you flip over the page that was the first thing you saw and it made you want to read on about her and what she had achieved.

The front page was very colourful which grabbed the reader eye as soon as you saw it, and I hope if it was to get published that people would buy it. I liked the colour scheme that I used throughout my magazine, the first page had a white background but with lots of colourful text on it, as did the contents page which made them two similar. The double page spread however had a purple background which broke the colour scheme up and made the double spread stand out, throughout the article the text is standard black but I inverted two text captions they were very useful as soon as you look at the page they would stand out and make you want read on about the celebrity.

Overall I am very pleased with my finished product, and I hope it would sell if it made the shelf but I am very impressed with my feature article story as if I was to buy this magazine I would want to read the article and find out how Amanda became famous. I have to admit I found doing my magazine very hard work at first and I actually thought if never do it as sometimes I had no motivation but when I came down to it, I completed it and really enjoyed doing it. I am very impressed with my finish product and I feel like I have achieved something.