Media Magazine Evaluation

Courtney Elliott

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

Question One

In the making of my magazine I used a range of different techniques which developed forms of a real magazine product. For example; I used social networks logos, the reason I did this is so that my product would pick up a wider range of audience, not only including those that are not participants of social networking sites but those who are too. The reason I used the Twitter and Facebook logos is because these are the most popular and will be the most familiar to my audience, especially within the age range of 16-20. By placing these logos where the magazine’s name was made my magazine layout seem organised and therefore appealing to the audience as everything laid out on the page was easy to see and easy to understand. Also, by placing the logos in this specific place it captured the audience’s eye and automatically showed them that we are a magazine who display themselves in a range of different media. By making clear that my magazine is in different medias, especially social networking sites it shows to the audience that

we are easy to get to and that they can pick up information whenever they feel necessary. Additionally, I brought in another technology symbol – the blackberry chip code so that my audience could use their smart phone to pick up the chip code which would take them straight to the magazine’s website. This is as well puts across the message to my audience that the information that my magazine has to offer is available in a range of different ways and is easy to get to, whether you have the money to buy the magazine or not.

These screen shots show the different conventions that I have spoke about in the text above.

…Question OneAnother convention that I used from the influence I got from looking in to other magazines is the way that the main shot on the front cover is shot. This is extremely important when trying to get a certain message across to your audience. In the main shot shown to the left on the NME magazine’s front cover the models stance reveals the kind of attitude that the artist has and this comes across to the audience. As she holds a cigarette in her mouth, this suggests to the audience that she is quite rebellious and is using the cigarette as part of her style/fashion. Also, she wears a really baggy denim shirt over a tight vest- this shows the mixture of her feminine side a long with the masculine side that she is trying to bring out and show her fans/the audience. Additionally, the colours that she wears in this shot also represent her personality and attitude, e.g. The red in her vest represents a seductive side to her personality and by matching this colour with the red in her lipstick, it reveals that the cigarette may also be a seductive symbol.

From the inspiration that I picked up from researching in to different magazines, I began to think of the way that I wanted my band and main shot to come across to my 16-20 year old audience. I decided that I would place the guitar which the band member is holding so that it is centre place within the front cover page. By doing this I wanted to put across to my audience that to this band music is all that matters. I think that this works really well as I take away the most important part of the band members pose/stance (his face) and replace its importance with something different and I think that this worked really well and as the musical instrument which he is holding is a guitar this links extremely well to the Indie/Rock genre in which my magazine is based on. I decided to have this photograph in black and white so that the white guitar would stand out a lot. The white of the guitar is really bright in comparison to the rest of the photograph and represents to purity and innocence of music and the guitar itself.

…Question OneAnother convention that I developed within my work from the inspiration of other magazines is the colour set palette. By using colour pick tool on Photoshop, this made sure that all of the colours were the same tone for example, the bright yellow of the main story headline must be the sae colour as the subheading about additional names being added to the Leeds Fest line up. By doing this it makes the whole lay out of the magazine look organised and does not come across as too crammed together or over done. The reason that I chose this specific colour palette of black, white, red and yellow is because when researching in to Indie/Rock based magazines it seemed that these were the stereotypical colours used. By then carrying this on and using this colour palette in my own magazine, it would attract the type of audience that I was looking for as they will be used to picking out these kind of colours and will recognise them from looking at other Indie/Rock genre magazines.

The image on the right shows the colour scheme used on the front cover of famous Indie/Rock magazine NME. The image on the left is a screen shot of the front cover of the magazine that I created. As it is obvious to see, bright reds and bright yellows are popular within these kind of magazines. As these colours have connotations of being dangerous this represents the personality of those with in this Indie/Rock genre of music and the way that they wish to be received by the public.

Question TwoHow does your media product represent different social groups?

As the colour scheme of my magazine are colours originally stereotyped with males, it automatically attracts the male social group and represents them more over the female social groups. However, as time goes by a lot of things change, especially the way that male and female are attracted to things and what they class as a male or female ‘thing’ to do. So, in some ways, my magazine represents male social groups because of its colour palette and the way that every thing is laid out as stereotypically, it is seen that the male social groups favour to the Indie/Rock genre of music over any other. However, in this day there are also many females beginning to favour this kind of music and are beginning to dress and want to be like these style icons. As the bands used in Indie/Rock magazines and in mine itself are mostly teenagers or those in their early 20s, it automatically represents the younger generation of the population. Teenagers have this edgy attitude about them and are really experimental with the way that they come across physically. As in the main shot of my music magazine shows a teenage boy holding his guitar as if he is performing, this shows the attitude of teen boys and the way that they are perceived to the public. The way that the bands are shown in magazines is not what you would expect the older generation of us to be doing or even be interested in and therefore this makes it obvious that these kind of music magazines are for younger people in their teen years who are willing to be experimental with their look and use music as their style inspiration.The language used in my magazine is not to a high class and is in fact quite informal, the reason that the language in which I used in my magazine is not formal is because it does not represent a class with high status. Instead it represent working class, those who do not have a huge amount of money but can still afford everyday needs. The reason that I used this kind of language is because stereotypically, you would not expect those with higher status to enjoy Indie/Rock kind of music and be followers of that and will want to read my magazine.

Question ThreeWhat kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

If I was to publish my magazine I would do so with IPC Media as the famous Indie/Rock magazine NME use these as their publisher and as my magazine have the same audience that NME magazine does it seems suitable. IPC Media is a really well known publishing company and over 26 million people aged between 16 years old to 25 read a magazine which is published by IPC Media. Because they are such a big publishing business there should be more opportunity to advertise my magazine and will be cheaper as I am doing it with a big organisation. When it comes to distribution I would do it in a common way e.g. putting physical copies out to the public, selling them in newsagents like W H Smiths and supermarkets. By doing this I am picking up a wide range of audience as those wanting to buy a magazine would go straight to these places.

Big supermarkets like Tesco, Asda and Morrisons are becoming the main sellers of magazines and are the first place that people go to when buying a magazine. This is why I would make sure that I distributed my magazine to supermarkets to get a range of people seeing and buying my magazine. However, I would also have visual copies of my music magazine online and use internet distribution. There are a lot of magazine companies that are beginning to put their magazines online, so by putting my issues online too, I would be keeping up with the competition of selling my magazine to the most amount of people possible. As well, this would help in attracting younger audiences as many more young people are spending most of their time online rather than going to a nearby shop and buying the magazine from the shelf.

Additionally, the reason that I chose IPC Media to publish and distribute my magazine is because I feel that they will help me to appeal to my audience. By having a popular, branded name as your publisher and distribution you will appeal to your audience as a trust worthy, sensible and serious magazine.

Question Four

There were many different ways in which I tried to find out who would actually be my audience for my music magazine. I did a Survey monkey questionnaire where I asked a wide range of questions to people aged between 16-20 years old. Within these questions, I found out how they would describe their fashion sense, what kind of music they were interested in and enjoyed most, what ethnic they were and whether they bought music magazines and how often. This link takes you straight to my Survey monkey questionnaire:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KP3W8LF

After doing this questionnaire, I found out that 56.3% of the people that took the time to answer the questions on this questionnaire would definitely buy a music magazine and that most of them would buy the magazine from their nearest supermarket. I then asked what their favourite colour was and the majority of the people that answered said black. I then asked what kind of music they were interested in and what they listened to most. Indie was the most popular answer a long with hip hop. After asking their age, I realised that most of the people answering the questionnaire were between the ages of 17-19 years old and the majority of these people were males. This then gave me a rough idea of the kind of people that would purchase my magazine and therefore the kind of people who I needed to appeal to when designing and creating my music magazine. From these results, it showed that my audience would be young, in the teenage years and most probably male. As their favourite colour is black, I gathered that they probably like the layout of magazines like Q! and NME. As the indie genre of music was most popular a long with hip hop, I needed to work out whether I wanted to aim my magazine at those interested in indie or those interested in hip hop as the both do not mix very well and therefore I could not work with both genres of music. When knowing their favourite colour, it became more obvious what kind of people would buy my magazine, the colour black as I said earlier is used mostly in Indie/Rock genre of magazines and therefore it would work out better if I worked with this genre over hip hop. Now that I knew vaguely the kind of people I needed my audience to be I researched further in to this type of person. I did this by having an interview with a teenage girl interested in the indie/rock genre of music.

Who would be the audience for your magazine product?

…Question Four

I asked this teen a range of different questions regarding why she reads music magazines and why she is interest in the indie genre of music. After this interview I realised that she listens to this genre of music because she likes the way that it makes her feel emotionally/mentally as she said ‘I feel relaxed and listen to music when I am concentrating, like doing coursework at home.’ She also said that she loves listening to this kind of music at parties as her other friends like this kind of music too. Therefore it makes her feel free to enjoy herself. Additionally, she said that she likes to read music related magazines because she is interested in what her favourite bands are getting up to and what is going on with in their life. She said that she loves reading interviews with a range of different indie/rock bands as they make her laugh.

After knowing this information, I realised that for my double page spread it would probably work really well if I did an interview with the band featured in my photo shoot as this is what my audience like, to get to know their favourite bands and to understand what they are interested in and their views and things that may be going on at the moment and also what they have been getting up to gig/festival wise as well as life in general.

This screenshot shows the videoing of the interview with the teenage girl. You can find this video on my blog:http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2135797660472340057#allposts

…Question FourAfter knowing what my audience were interested in I realised what they were most likely to be spending their money and time on. Images below show the different types of things that my audience would spend their money on.

-Drugs

-Alcohol

-Fashion

-Music Downloads

-Albums

-Festivals

-Music Magazines

-Socialising

Question FiveHow did you attract that audience?

After researching in to what my audience liked to get up to the most, I then needed to think how I could use what I had found out and add it in to my music magazines so that my audience would be attracted to what my music magazine had to offer. As in my interview, the teen girl said that the thing she likes most about reading magazines is when they have interviews with song artists and bands I decided that my double page spread would be an interview with the band I used within my magazine, King No-One. The image on the left shows my double page spread which consisted of an interview with the band, King No-One.

Additionally, because I know that my audience age range of 16-20 year olds are not on an extremely good wage I thought that it would be a good idea to advertise on the front of my magazine their chance to win free tickets. Tickets for gigs can be priced around £50 sometimes and this means that teens are missing out on seeing their favourite bands because of the price. By advertising this competition it makes teens want to buy the magazine as they will want to take part in the competition to get free tickets to see a band that they enjoy and to be able to get tickets that realistically they would not be able to afford if they were going to purchase them themselves.

Question SixWhat have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing their

products?

During the production of my music magazine I have learnt a lot of new things from the programmes/software that I have been using. For example, when using Photoshop I have learnt how to use the colour picker so that all the tones of red for example are the same, so that the page does not look disorganised and cluttered but instead looks organised and smart. As well, I have learnt how to use the noise effect. This effect made the photographs that I was editing for my magazine appear really old looking and gave them a vintage edge. By changing the amount of noise in the photograph made it look older or younger depending on how low or high the percentage was. Another things that I have learnt is that when shooting at a gig, when the band is performing it is important that you have your camera shutter speed high so that it does not take long to capture the shot so that you can move on and collect more shots because if the cameras shutter speed is too slow it restricts you from getting the shot that you may have been aiming to get. Additionally, I have learnt how important every photograph that you take for the magazine is as each photograph must be there for a reason and must be displaying some kind of message that you want to put across to your audience whether that may be a certain fashion/style or an attitude- the photograph must have meaning and be valid to what you want your magazine to come across like when it is published and viewable to your audiences eye. As well, I have learnt that the colour palette used when designing and creating your magazine is really important. The reason why this is so important is because certain colours have certain connotations and therefore are seen by the audience in different ways. For example; colours like pink are associated with very feminine and angelic things; however colours like red have connotations of representing danger. If I was to use colours that were extremely feminine like pinks and lilacs then this would change my target audience altogether and would not suit the indie/rock music genre that I was basing my music magazine on. An audience who is interested in the indie/rock genre of music and like to read magazines to do with that kind of music will not be looking for colours like pinks, instead they will look for more dominant and bold colours like red and black as they are stereotypical colours of an indie/rock magazine.

Question SevenLooking at your preliminary tasks, what do you feel you have learnt in the

progression from those tasks to the full product?When doing the preliminary tasks at the beginning of this unit, we did not do any audience or market research so we were basically clueless of what our audience were looking for and what they wanted to see in the magazines that they were buying. However, when doing the preliminary tasks I did not value researching in to products and did not feel that it was valid or important in what we were doing. However, after doing my audience and market research I realise how important that is in getting an understand of your audience’s needs as a reader of your music magazine and this helps in realising what their interests are overall. Additionally, this helps in getting an idea of the way that other magazines display themselves and what they include in their magazines. When viewing other companies magazines it gives you a vague idea of the competition and this is important in making a magazine that is unique and a magazine that is going to succeed and be popular within its target audience. When I planned my preliminary tasks I did not take in to account how helpful the planning would be, I did not take much time and therefore the outcome were not as good as they could have been. However, in the making of my music magazine I drafted my double page spread; this was really helpful as I could keep going over it and making sure the wording came across the way that I wanted them to and definitely made sense. As well, by taking photographs earlier in the stage of making the music magazine gave me time to edit them and see if they worked well and were exactly what I wanted for my magazine because if they were not at least I was giving myself time to revisit them and go take more if they were not suitable or did not work for my magazine. After taking the photographs, I then realised that they needed editing so that they all worked well along side each other and complimented one another so that through out my magazine looked organised and well thought through. So that all of my photographs worked together, I edited them all the same using Photoshop. When editing the photographs I increased the noise as this made the photographs look older than what they actually were and gave them a vintage, edgy look. Additionally, I changed the photographs from colour to black and white. I got this influence from a magazine I researched named Indie.

…Question SevenAfter doing the preliminary tasks I realised that the layout of my music magazine was really important. If I did not think through the way that my magazine was to be laid out then it would not have the same effect that it could have and would not be as successful as a magazine. This taught me that I needed to be organised and think thoroughly through where I wanted all the photographs that I have taken to be and whether that place was suitable in the overall look of my magazine pages. It was also important where I laid my text as I did not want the text to take over the photographs the same way that I did not want the photographs to take over the text. I wanted every thing that was on my pages to have equal amount of value so that things did not begin to start looking over done and cluttered. Overall, I am really happy with the out come of my magazine as I got the result that I wanted, the pages look organised and they overall look reflects that of an indie/rock music magazine. I think that the choice of colour palette works really well along side the black and white photographs and did not clash, instead it gave the magazine a bit of sophisticated look which made my magazine unique in comparison to other indie/rock music magazines as normally indie/rock music magazines have nothing sophisticated about them and in some cases can look a little bit messy and over done.If I was to change anything about the way that I made my music magazine, I would change the double page spread so that it did not have as much text on and instead maybe had bigger photographs and quotes in a font size bigger than the rest of the font so that there was not too much to read and subjects on the page were spread out so it was not as hard to read and the reader would not lose interest and get bored.