1. Media evaluation of my Magazine
Q1.) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My magazine shares a similar format of the masthead of the music magazine the New
Musical Express (NME). Mine has a similar acronym Mad About Rock (M.A.R) I placed the
Masthead in the top left hand corner of the page, similar to the conventions of other music
magazines, namely the NME. The challenge was with the front cover. I only put the ‘front
man’ of the band on the front cover because the intention was to surprise the reader when
they turned to the double page spread and contents page; to see that the full band was
featured in the magazine. In my research and planning I used a mid shot like the one on the
front cover I analysed. This was to
My double page spread was based off an album cover and was an original idea, yet I still
used typical double page spread conventions such as including quotes, having the text split
into columns, showing a distinct page split, showing page numbers etc. I did this because I
couldn’t decide how to layout my double page spreads and went through a few drafts
before I decided on my final one.
I same applies to my contents page; I went
through several drafts before I decided on the An early draft of my
contents page made
final one. When I eventually did, I used
using Photoshop CS6
conventions of typical music contents pages. I
kept the written content on one side of the page
and the images on the other side, in order to
make the page seem less cluttered and more
The album that I based my double
coherent to the reader. When I analysed the
page spread on; The Crookes,
Hold Fast. NME I noticed that there was a lack of female
artists. So to break away from that typical
convention, I decided to add a female artist in my contents page.
Q2.) How does your media product represent a particular social group?
My target audience was for lovers of guitar and its genres (Primarily indie rock, rock and
alternative) stereotypically guitar music is seen as quite a ‘heavy’ of music and I expressed
this through the fonts I used. The fonts were generally quite ‘aggressive’ as well as being
distorted and squashed. This was so I could relate the genre of rock and its audience to my
magazine. I got all of my fonts from www.Dafont.com, a website that specialises in
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2. Media evaluation of my Magazine
Artists such as the Beatles and providing user-made fonts for any written piece. In order to address
Miles Kane were famous for their
sharp dress sense as well as their
my audience (apart from the fonts I used) I included images and
music features on guitars as well as interviews with famous, current guitar
bands such as ‘Foo Fighters’ and ‘The Strokes’ that were placed on
the front page to grab the interest of my intended audience, since I
think these are bands that they would enjoy. My magazine mainly
had young artists appeal to my young audience. As a result, I think
I’ve potentially alienated older people (say within the age bracket of
30+). With the music genre I have chosen it would typically exclude
females, when compared to pop music. Yet as mentioned previously,
I’ve attempted to reach a female audience by adding a female artist
to the contents page.
When dressing my artists, I generally stuck with a smartly dressed
band for my main artist ‘WunderLust’. This is to go against the
convention that all rock bands wear skinny jeans, converse etc (to be
related back to bands/artist such as the Beatles and Miles Kane)
Q3.) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After researching all the publications, I’ve decided that I would publish my magazine under
Harris publishing. This is because they don’t publish a guitar music magazine at the moment
(they did; Guitar world but they sold the rights to Future US) and all of their other music
magazines are rap and electronic music. I feel that a gap needs to be
filled as the diversity of the magazines is quite small. I think that my
audience of young, guitar-loving bands would fill the void and fit well
with the young audiences that are attracted to the other music
magazines. As a result I think Harris publication could reap significant
financial revenue from my magazine.
I would want to stick to typical music conventions and encourage
subscriptions, like what the NME, Kerrang, Q magazines do. I would
also offer additional items to tempt readers to subscribe. Since the
magazine would be published on a weekly basis, I would offer
products that are currant with the main artists of each weekly issue.
For example, with ‘WunderLust’ I would include an early EP or demo
tracks etc. Then it would change next week and so on.
In terms of distribution, I would want my magazine to be sold in
guitar music record shops such as RoughTrade
(http://www.roughtraderecords.com/) because I think this would
As well as offering subscriptions,
magazines such as the NME, directly appeal to my target audience in a place where the same
Kerrang and Q offer other
promotional products to encourage
readers to subscribe
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3. Media evaluation of my Magazine
kind of music would be sold.Therefore I would hit directly with my target audience Yet I
think that publishing solely in record stores would be to niche so I would also distribute my
magazine in newsagents, corner shop’s and supermarkets to reach a much broader
intended audience.
Q4.) Who would be the target audience for your media product?
My target audience for my magazine would be fans of guitar music and rock bands
specifically artists such as Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes Biffy Clyro etc. Some of
my audience would play/have a keen interest in guitar since I included a section in my
contents page called ‘rocking riffs’. In comparison to other magazine audiences, mine would
be a mix of NME and Total Guitar audience, specifically the bands of the NME and the guitar
playing audience of the total guitar magazine.
Q5.) How did you attract/address your audience?
The cover lines I used I mentioned quotes that would interest fans of those bands. For
example, I said that Arctic Monkeys were set to release a new ‘heavier’ album and talking
about The Strokes upcoming album. All of these cover lines/features are written from a fans
perspective (me because I’m a fan of the bands I’ve included) so I think that these lines
would excite and encourage my target audience to read my magazine. For my front page
and double page spread I used a black and white filter because I took inspiration from an
NME front cover:
When I took the image I was adjusting contrasts, filters etc and I
decided that it would look best if it was in black and white. I also
thought that the black and white would look good with my red,
white and blue house style for my magazine. For my double
page spread I decided to stick to the black and white filter
because a convention of music magazines is for there to be
some kind of link (photo wise) between the front page artist and
the featured article. Plus as previously mentioned I took
inspiration from an album cover that had a black and white filter
on it.
The language I used was of pretty low register because I think that if it were high it would
alienate my young target audience
I used four different fonts from dafont.com. These were:
* *The images are the
name and the
example of the font
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4. Media evaluation of my Magazine
The fonts I selected are quite distorted and unclear. This is was to attract an audience of
rock-music-lovers because it shows conventions with other exclusively rock music
magazines such as Kerrang! The importance of getting the right font is critical because it’s
one of the first features that helps initially attract the target audience. If I had picked fonts
that were much more clean and elegant, the intended audience may have dismissed it as a
music magazine for a different genre and gone to something else.
I used young artists throughout my magazine to relate to my young target audience;
otherwise it could be dismissed by them.
Q6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
The whole creation for this product was done in Photoshop CS5 which was a technology
that I have previously used. Despite this I had a very limited knowledge of how to use it. I
knew basics such as adjusting the dimensions of an image, changing the colour of text and
backgrounds and adding new fonts that had been taken off other sites (such as Dafont) and I
knew how to add shapes. I think that with Photoshop it was a program that had the
potential to do everything I wanted it to do-the only thing lacking was my knowledge. I think
it’s a daunting program that seems very complicated to
exploit to its fullest potential unless you know how to use it. Below is the original image and
below that is the same image but
However I did learn how to do some things. For example I
then cropped, rotated etc and added
learnt how to put a black and white filter on pictures to my contents page
(image/ mode /grayscale) and how to crop out
images. To do this you click on the crop tool and
highlighted the part of the image that I wanted. This
would allow me to remove bits of excess images that I
didn’t need.
Image of an artist used in my double page spread.
I implemented a black and white filter, cropped
and enlarge the image as well.
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5. Media evaluation of my Magazine
Q7.) Looking back at the preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to a full product?
Preliminary task
With the task not many creative or micro decisions were needed. For example the house
style of blue and yellow was based off the colours for my school to make it more relatable to
students. My front cover picture of a student working and smiling was to connote that the
school is happy and productive. In terms of time management I got this done at fairly quick
pace because I wanted to spend as much time on the main task as possible in judging the
success of the task, I think that I was done to a fairly good standard but could be improved
by adding smaller text boxes around the text to give the front cover more ‘space’.
There weren’t any problems with the task as it was fairly basic and simple to do. In regards
to props I used well dressed actors to give a sense that the school’s students have high/well
maintained standards.
Main Task
I decided that when it came rot the actual production piece I decided to ignore the design
drafts I created earlier. This was because I felt they were too similar to conventions of media
music magazines. I felt it would be more creative if my project had more original ideas and
only developed smaller media conventions. In this task I did come across some creative
problems. The first was that when I was first making my
double page spread I wasn’t happy with it because I
thought it looked nothing like my front page (which I was
happy with and had no problems) plus I thought that the
image layout didn’t look the same and it was difficult to
identify a page break. I also wanted to include a subtle
media convention; the costume changes from the artist on
the front page to something different on the double page Above is an example of an old draft of my
spread. double page spread, made on Photoshop
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