Music magazine evaluation

Evaluation For Music Magazine

In what ways does your media Product use, develop or challenge Forms and conventions of real Music magazine?

as they have read or heard about the magazine previously and found it appealing to them.

I decided to place main image in the centre of the front cover as this is another convention of a music magazine. I chose specifically chose my model to look directly into the camera (direct mode of address) as many of the music magazines I had researched had done this as well.. This is so that you can clearly see the main model of the magazine and this allows interaction with the audience as it feels like she is looking at them.

The majority of magazines have a multiple number of sell lines around or overlapping the image. I have my main sell line in a big, bold font with a banner. This is to bring attention that it is my main story line and make it stand out from the others. The importance of my sell lines go from the biggest font to the smallest font and this is clear as the reader will be more likely to read this larger fonts from the smaller fonts. I have put in the price of my magazine quite small next to my barcode as it is a reasonable price for a music magazine as the target audience does not get that much disposable income but enough to pay £2:50 for a magazine/ The magazine on the right really inspired me on the layout of my magazine as I really like how the main image stands our and the sell lines fall around it.

I have included many of the conventions of a typical music magazine into my own creation of a Hip Hop magazine.One of the conventions I have incorporated into my magazine is having a bold and memorable masthead. The masthead ‘Hype’ shows that this magazine is going to be the ‘hype’ of the season, everybody is going to be talking about the magazine as it is going to be the new “fashion accessory for everyone. As the masthead is in big, bold writing it stands out to my target audience so that when the magazine is placed on the shop shelves they would be able to notice it and want to read this specific magazine

CONTENTS PAGEI have used many of the conventions of a music magazine into my contents page. I have split up the sell lines into different sections as I have seen this in a number of contents pages in music magazines. I have split them into features, regulars and gigs and give aways as my sell lines fall into these categories . This will be easier for the reader when looking for a specific page as they will be able to go straight to the section they are looking for and find their page quicker. I have also added a circular banner with the main story on top of the image as this double page spread article is about the model on my contents page. This is so that if the readers are mainly interested in her article as she is a new artist they will see the banner straight away and go to page 3.I have broke the conventions of a typical contents page as I placed a banner of several images at the top of the contents page. In other contents pages I have seen images close together going horizontally down the page however, I thought it suited my contents page better if the images were going vertically across the page.

Another convention I used for my music magazine is in the contents page I have left a large space for the image of the artist . This allows the image to be quite large as I want the audience to recognise her face and show the importance of her. There is also another smaller image on the bottom right hand corner so that the artists face is constantly reminded of so the audience will be able to recognise her elsewhere from the magazine. I have kept the article to a minimum amount so that when the readers are reading the article they are not overwhelmed by the amount of writing and will not get bored of it. As my target audience are young adults they are not that used to reading magazines that often therefore they may want to pick and choose what sections of the article they want to read, for this reason I have chosen to put the questions in orange so it is clear to the readers.

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Gender – I specifically chose to target my magazine at women as I strongly wanted to break the convention that in Hip Hop magazine women are portrayed in a sexualised manner and always have their flesh on show. It is rare to see women covered up on he front cover of Hip Hop magazine as they attract a large population of the male audience. I chose to put a young female aged seventeen on my front cover, the majority of her skin is covered up except for her arms. I wanted to show that females can feel beautiful without posing or looking sexual and the way I did this was to make sure her body posture shows that she is powerful. This is an example of a Hip Hop magazine hat objectifies women. Her body posture shows that she is weak as she is bending down with most of her flesh on show. Because of images like this the status of women is going down and it seems as she is not taking herself seriously. I have asked my media class what picture they think is more appealing to them, 90% of them said that they prefer the image I have taken for my magazine to the one on the king magazine. Social class – As my target audience is aimed at young adults I have stereotyped my audience and decided that an average female aged 16-21 may not have large amounts of disposable income coming in however, from the research I had conducted previously it states that the average amount Hip Hop fans are willing to pay for the magazine will be £2:50.

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

IPC Media would be a great media publishing company to distribute my Hip Hop magazine as it is one of the UK’s leading consumer magazine, it engages with 26million UK adults specifically two thirds of women.

In particular my target audience is at young women as I specifically wanted to increase the amount of women that buy Hip Hop magazine. Many hip hop magazine represent women in a sexualised way and portray them as objects as I stated in the previous slide. My aim was to break the convention of the way women are portrayed in Hip Hop magazine so that it hopefully encourages females who are interested in Hip Hop to buy this magazine so that they feel comfortable reading it.

Even though IPC does not specifically distribute Hip Hop magazine I strongly feel that there is a gap in the market for Hip Hop magazine especially aimed at women.

Who would be the audience for your media product?As I beefy stated in the previous slides the target audience for my Hip Hop magazine is young females aged between 16-21. I chose this specific audience as I feel that there is a gap in the market and not many magazine are aimed at this particular audienceThroughout my magazine I feel that I have met this specific target audience as the type of vocabulary I have used is not too complex and is suitable for those over the age of 16 to read, putting complex language may complicate the readers therefore I have kept it to a minimum. I have also tried to relate the topics to my audience as much as I can, I have put in places were they can go to get cheaper tickets to see their favourite artist perform as the majority of Hip Hop fans enjoy going to concerts.

The demographic profile of a stereotypical fan of Hip Hop fan would be a young female aged 17 studying in college and may have a part time job. Her hobbies and interest would be that she enjoys going to concerts, socialising with her friends rather that staying at home but when she is at home she will be up in her room writing lyrics as she is interested in becoming a music artist in the future.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I think that the title ‘Hype’ attracts the audience because as soon as I hear the word hype I think of something exciting, as if there is something new and interesting in that season . Young adults are energetic the majority of the time therefore it reflects there personality through the title.

To address the audience though my image I made sure that the mage of the artist brought through type of clothing a typical hip hop fan would wear therefore they will feel interacted with artist.

I thought I could attract my target audience through the sell lines as I put free things in the magazine. This is because they may not reverie that much disposable income therefore they may benefit from free items in the magazine and cheap ways to see their favourite artist. A typical young hip hop fan likes going to concerts to see their favourite artist perform therefore this may encourager them more to buy the magazine.

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

Throughout the process of creating the magazine I have learnt many skills, techniques and my knowledge in using Photoshop and blogger has increased.Whilst constructing my magazine Photoshop has a massive impact on the outlook of the magazine as it helped me with making the magazine look more realistic for instance I had learnt how to manipulate images so that I was able to erase the unnecessary backgrounds and only have the model in the image. I had learnt to use many tools that helped me with this process. Photoshop allowed me to play around with the different features it had so that thecontrast and brightness of my images were perfect. It also brought out my creative side when deciding the layout of my magazine as any type of layout is possible. My knowledge on blogger has increase during this process as I had to constantly upload images/research/text to show proof of my research and planning, I learnt the importance of research , keeping up to date on the process of my magazine and how to organise my posts into different categories so that when the examiner is going through my blog they are able to go straight into the section that they need to look at.

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

Looking at the front cover of my preliminary task I feel that I have learnt a lot about the construction of magazine front covers and found that it helped me want to make my music magazine look more realistic as I failed to do so in my preliminary task. Some of the things I have learnt :•The main images needs to reflect the genre of the magazine, the ‘hype’ magazine is a hip hop magazine and the artist on the front cover reflects a hip hop artist however, for my school magazine the main image was not thought through properly as the model is not looking at the camera therefore it lacks some sort of interaction with the audience. •There isn’t a constant colour theme throughout the school magazine however, I Carefully thought about the colours I wanted to use for my hip hop magazine, •The way the sell lines are set out

on my hip hop magazine looks more professional than on the school magazine, not much research was done on the layout of front covers for school magazine therefore the sell lines were put all over the place and did not vary with different fonts and sizes.. Because my school magazine did not look realistic and professional I had to do more research on how magazines look and the conventions of them.

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from your preliminary task to

the full product?In the progression from my preliminary task to my hip hop magazine, there is a big different on the outlook of both contents pages. When constructing the list for the contents page I was not aware that the order of pages did not go chronologically but were split up into sections so that it is easier for the readers to pick what topics they wanted to read. The main article was put on a banner on the image of the model, this instantly attracts the readers attention and informs them what page to go if they want to read that specific article. I did not think about these features when producing my school magazine but when I was aware of this I put it onto my contents page. For my school magazine the layout looks too simple and the colour scheme was not constant for the front cover and the contents page however, the colour scheme was constant throughout the whole magazine which makes the layout look appealing and though through.