Evaluation Updated

AS Media Music Magazine Evaluation

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

When researching about different types of magazines I analysed NME Magazine. I decided to base my music magazine around NME, to do so I would have to use similar features and conventions to that of NME. I analysed the front cover of the May issue of NME with the Arctic Monkeys on the front. The photograph on the front of the magazine shows the entire band sat on a wall. It is centred in the middle of the page and it is in colour. All of the members are making eye contact with the viewer of the magazine. The effect on the picture gives off, quite a rustic/vintage look to the magazine. The clothes they are wearing also give off this effect. The masthead of the magazine is in a bold font, and is in red with a white outline. Red is an interesting colour to use because red connotes danger, this makes it stand out even more. Perhaps NME used this colour to give a rebellious look to the bands on their front cover. The main feature headline of this copy of NME is in a gold coloured font. This could be to show that the Arctic Monkeys are the number one band around, and are in first place, therefore why the writing is in gold. The cover lines are at the bottom of the page are in red and white. The artist who is involved is in red and information about this section is in white. This has been done to colour code with the masthead, this gives a nice flow to the magazine. I have tried to make my front cover similar to this. For example I used a bold font similar to that used in NME, I also used a similar font style and placed the masthead in the top left hand corner which is the usual convention for a masthead. I also placed my sell lines in the same place as in this copy of NME; across the picture and again in a bold font and similar font style. Also in my music magazine (MWT) I placed the barcode in the bottom right hand corner just like it is in NME Magazine. However I did change some conventions to my magazine to make it more unique. For example I changed the colour of my masthead from red to navy. I preferred the navy colour and I thought it suited my front cover a lot better than the red did. I also used a different colour for my sell lines; I used red because I felt it stood out more whereas in NME they used gold.

In contrast to my front cover my contents page challenges a number of the key conventions associated with a contents page. For example I only used one image whereas usually in a contents page you would have several. I decided to do this because I didn’t want to draw away attention from the main feature which was an article about Jake Kay. I also challenge the convention of having an editor’s letter, I felt one of these was simply not needed and it would use up vital space which I needed for important things like my image. However I did still develop some of the conventions in my contents page. For example I had an index section, page number, and also the date and the issue number.

My double page spread develops a number of the conventions, for example it has a large main image which takes up almost half of the page. It also has a drop cap and a pull quote which are also conventions of a Double Page spread. However my double page spread does also challenge some conventions like the convention of having a large headline. Mine is fairly small and I did this because I felt it was important to leave myself more room for the article itself and I didn’t need a large headline because the majority of people will purposely have turned to that page to read the article.    

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I am trying to appeal across a wide range of ethnic backgrounds with my Music Magazine. To do this I had to make my magazine suitable to all races and not try to particularly reach out to a certain ethnic background like for example some R&B magazines would do.  65% of NME readers are males so I decided that the generic type I would aim my magazine at would be the male audience. One of the ways I did this was by featuring a male artist on the front cover. This would therefore appeal to males who like the particular artist or who could perhaps relate to him in some way. Also MWT magazine is aimed more at the younger generation rather than the elder because the bands featured in my magazine are traditionally associated with younger people e.g. The Vaccines, Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane. These bands also tell the reader the genre of my music magazine as well, which is Indie/Rock. My magazine shows this in a number of ways for example the font style I used for my masthead and the image on my front cover which shows someone smashing a guitar. Even the clothes the artist is wearing on my front cover help fit the indie/rock genre because he is wearing clothes which people of this style traditionally wear. This would immediately tell the reader that this is an Indie/Rock magazine and not say a Pop Magazine.

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

When I was creating my music magazine it was important to think about which media institution would distribute my product. Due to the fact my magazine is based around NME magazine which is produced by I.P.C Media, the obvious choice to produce my magazine would therefore be I.P.C. As well as producing Music Magazines like NME, I.P.C Media also distribute a wide range of genres of magazines, being 85 different types in total. For example sport genres like; ‘Cycling Weekly’ and ‘World Soccer’ to lad mags like ‘Nuts’ as well as fashion magazines like ‘Look’. IPC  reaches two third of UK women and 44% of men. This is almost 27 million adults. There three main audiences are men,mass market women and upmarket women. It produces 350 million copies each year which would be very useful for my magazine .However choosing IPC Media to distribute my Magazine could have potential problems. The main one being that NME would be a massive rival magazine to mine, so I.P.C would probably not want to produce two similar magazines together. So perhaps it would be a better idea to get my music magazine produced by someone like Bauer Media because at the moment they don’t currently produce any music magazines which I directly similar to mine like NME is. However Bauer Media does currently produce Kerrang, but this Music Magazine is not very similar to mine because it is a heavy rock/metal magazine so bands they feature in there magazine would not be similar to/or the same as mine. So there is certainly a gap in the market for Bauer Media to produce a music magazine like mine and I’m sure they would be willing to. Similarly to I.P.C, Bauer Media produces a wide range of magazines.  They produce genres such of things like angling e.g. ‘Angling Times’ and magazines about golf e.g. ‘Golf World’.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

When making my music magazine I felt it was important to look at the target audience so I know what kind of things to include in my magazine to fit the specific age range I aimed at. Magazines similar to mine for example NME would be aimed at people aged 16-24 years old. However people not in this age bracket still buy the magazine, especially if they like the particular band/artist featured. Similarly Kerrang’s target audience is 16-25 years old, however Kerrang is specifically aimed at heavy rock music fans unlike mine. So because NME Magazine is the most similar magazine to mine, I decided to aim my magazine at 16-24 year olds. For my magazine to attract to my target audience I had to use a number of magazine key features to address this target audience. For example the title, sell lines, colours and fonts of my magazine are all suitable to the age group my magazine is aimed at. I didn’t use boring dull colours, I decided to use brighter ones like reds and purples which would really grab a younger person’s attention and make them pick my magazine up of the shelf and buy it. The font style I used would also have a similar effect on the reader. The content in my music magazine also particularly appeals to the target audience of 16-24 year olds. The artist I used for the front cover, contents page and double page spread is the same age as my target audience (16), so a number of readers could relate to him and look up to him as a role model because they could be like him one day being featured in another copy of MWT.

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

When constructing my music magazine I used a number of different technologies and learnt a lot from them. After planning how I wanted my magazine to look like, I needed to take some pictures. The camera I used was a Canon Eos 300d. When taking the photos I used a plain white background so I wouldn’t have to crop out anything in the background. Once I’d taken the picture I edited them on Adobe Photoshop by making a background copy and working on that. On here I edited away any spots and marks on my models skin by using the ‘Spot Heeling Brush Tool’ as well as adding an effect to the image. Also on Photoshop I added things like my masthead, sell lines and the date using the ‘Text’ tool. Altogether I did about three draft copies of my music magazine before I got to the finished product. My first was not very good, it had a number of the key magazine conventions missing and my masthead was not big enough. My second draft was slightly better because I added in sell lines, a barcode and a number of other magazine conventions but it still wasn’t the finished product. The third draft was better because I added in some more things but they were in the wrong place for example the sell lines. Once I had changed the things which had gone wrong on looked at other magazines for insperation my magazine front cover was finished. To create my contents page and double spread I used Microsoft Publisher. For the contents page I set out the layout as well as adding an image and text. I did very much the same with my double page spread apart from I had to add a ‘pull quote’ and obviously the layout was different to my contents page. As well as Photoshop and Publisher I also did article drafts for my contents page using Microsoft Word. To gain access to these programmes I used a Laptop and a Dell OptiPlex 780 computer. Without these modern media technologies I could not have constructed my music magazine to the way I did, it would have had to have not up to the same standard and it would have been very time consuming.

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When looking back at the preliminary task, which was to create a College Magazine it, is clear that I have learnt a lot since then.  I have improved a lot at using Photoshop; in my college magazine I didn’t edit my photo at all and I was generally not very confident at using the software. Whereas now I am far more confident at using it and this makes my work look a lot more professional.  Also since the preliminary task I feel that I have become a lot more aware of what the conventions of a magazine are. When creating the college magazine I hardly knew any, but now I know them all and the majority of them feature in my music magazine. Also things as simple as taking pictures I feel I have improved at. The photo for my college magazine was not very well taken; it was not very well cut and the college student featured in it wasn’t even looking at the camera properly. However when it came to taking pictures for my Music Magazine, they were all well framed and a lot better shot than the one for my college magazine and they fitted in with the style of the music magazine.