My magazine - Corrupt front cover

My magazine - Corrupt Contents

My magazine - Corrupt double page spreads

My Magazine Evaluation

My Magazine Evaluation

Who would be the audience for your media product?

After looking at a range of Rock magazines, I soon realised that the majority of them are targeted at a young audience yet focus mostly on male audiences. Some of the magazines, however, could be considered unisex by the colour schemes and pictures used. In Rock magazines the images tend to be of both males and females who look either intimidating or laid-back, which are stereotypically younger attitudes.

Rock magazines tend to be focused mostly on male audiences since most of the images are of male artists since the majority of Rock artists are male. However, as a woman I am still attracted to the genre of music. For my magazine I chose to create a magazine that appeals more to the niche audience of female fans of Rock music but also still appeals to the male audience. 

A typical convention of Rock magazines is to use images of males looking aggressive or they use images of gigs and concerts, where the artist isn’t posing. The images from gigs show the artist in their element and connote fun and excitement for both the artist and the reader. This is one of the main ideologies of Rock magazines and appeals to the readers. I have followed this convention in my magazine for images of both male and female audiences.

My music magazine has a target audience of young males and females which is shown by the images used. The target audience is aged between 16 to 19 and is therefore relevant to the content of the magazine and this target audience would have a more disposable income than an older audience.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Once I decided on my target audience, I conducted some research into what would appeal to young people and, more specifically, a female audience. I also looked into the conventions of Rock magazines and how much they would be used in my magazine.

I found that Rock magazines aimed at my target audience tend to use colour schemes that involve red, black, yellow and white.  I chose to challenge this convention in my magazine and used the colour scheme black, white, blue and purple. In doing this I still had two of the typical colours from Rock magazines but I also used the more feminine purple colour which, when combined with the blue, still looks typical of a Rock magazine colour scheme. The use of the blue also balances out the femininity of the purple, making it still appealing to the male audience. Although I thought this was the case, I also found through my research that 53% of those that answered my questionnaire found this colour scheme most appealing. 

Typical conventions of Rock magazine layouts are that they are quite explosive, with text spreading across the page rather than being contained in boxes, such as in Kerrang! I chose to follow this convention because it makes the magazine more recognisable as a Rock magazine and is therefore a typical convention of this genre.
As well as looking at Rock magazines such as Kerrang! I also looked at more varied music genres such as metal and indie music magazine to see the variation in the mode of address between the different genres. I found that in Rock magazines, the mode of address is more conversational than indie and metal. However, I also found that the conversational tone of address tends to appeal more so to the female audience yet the majority of magazines use this tone.

From my research I found that most people would not be willing to spend more than £2 on a magazine so, with this knowledge I decided to make my price £2. This would mean that it appeals to the majority of my target audience.
Within the magazine I used a combination of colloquial language and subject specific lexis so as to make the magazine appear well informed about the genre, but also to make the mode of address appeal to the target audience.

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

In my magazine I wish to challenge some of the conventions of music magazines in the way that they appeal to the target audience and, more specifically, who the target audience are. However, I kept most of the conventions because it needs to be clear to the reader what genre of music magazine they are buying. I used certain aspects from music magazines that I analysed to determine what my magazine would look like as well as the layout. 

Since my magazine is focused more on the female audience rather than the male, the colour scheme is the most affected.  My colour palette was limited to four colours, the limit of colours being a typical convention of music magazines. The use of the colour black has many connotations, for example dominance and strength, both of which are typically male traits. This is then paired with the more feminine colours of purple and white; white connoting innocence and calm.

Unlike other genres of magazines, such as RnB, Rock magazines tend to not have any white spaces and instead fill any space with text or images. I have followed this convention and filled as much of the magazine as possible to give the impression of fullness to the reader so that they feel as though they are getting the most for their money. Since my magazine is a weekly issue, it doesn't need to look as high quality as a monthly magazine and instead the reader is buying for quantity in a magazine.

In my magazine, I chose to use a female image on the front cover, and more female images than males which is contradictry to the conventions of most Rock music magazines. Also the images are not sexual which, although not as common in Rock magazines as others, is also a frequently used image style. These sorts of images could be seen as degrading and, since my target audience would be strong, independent woman, sexual images would not appeal to them. For this reason I chose a mid close-up image of a slightly aggressive looking female. The aggressive expression would suit the genre of music as well as connote masculinity so as to appeal to the male audience. However, the long hair and make up connote femininity and the mode of address and entry point of the magazine is her eyes, which allows the reader to connect with the magazine.

The colour scheme I have chosen, although follows the typical 3 colour convention, are quite unconventional. The use of the colour purple, which isn't a primary colour is quite unconventional for a Rock magazine, the most common colours being red and yellow. However the use of the colours black and white is conventional for a music magazine of any genre since it creates a base for the other colours and also are aestetically pleasing since they do not clash. The colour blue is stereotypically a masculine colour, which is why I have used it in my colour scheme. Since it is both a primary colour as well as a bold male colour, it balances out the femininity of the purple whilst still maintaining the Rock image. The fact that it maintains this image is vital for a magazine so that it is instantly recognisable as a Rock magazine.

Finding the balance between following conventions of music magazines and challanging them was difficult since it meant I had to think carefully about all the aspects of my magazine. This was particularly difficult since I was challanging the audience of an alreadly highly established music magazine genre and in order to change this target audience I would have to change certain aspects of the magazine such as the colour scheme and style of images.As this challenged the conventions of a Rock magazine to a degree, this meant that some aspects, such as mise en scene in my images, had to be conventional of Rock magazines so the magazine wouldn't be so unconventional that its genre would become unrecognisable.

However, by balancing the unconventional aspects with convention ones, I managed to my magazine appealing to the target audience whilst stil making it clear that its a rock genre magazine.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I realised in the magazines I looked at many of the images are of male artists, represented in a way many males would idolise such as dominant and aggressive. This is a convention I wanted to keep in my magazine, but also extend this aggressive idology to the female images to address my target audience more completely.

I found that the majority of the images in rock magazines are of artists either looking very serious or during a concert where they are in their element and clearly enjoying themselves. This connotes that although rock music is a serious genre, it can also be fun and exciting. Rock artists are very rarely shown to be sexual and both male and female artists are depicted in the same way. This shows that males and females have equality in the genre of rock, unlike other genres such as RnB, where female artists are depicted as mere sex symbol rather than a music artist.

The images themselves range from mid-close up to big close-up, the main focus of the image being on the artists faces. This is a typical convention of rock magazines that I chose to follow since it connotes that the beauty of the artist isn't as important as their recognisability or their music.

In the magazine I wanted to show that rock music is a fun and exciting genre rather than a serious one and in order to do this, I made the mode of address friendly and casual so as to connect with the reader.  I also wanted to make it clear to the reader that the artists are passionate about their music and enjoy what they do. In order to achieve this connotation, I got my model to smile whilst in the interview images, but in the front coverr images however, I made the model look aggressive, serious and dominant which is a common convention of rock magazines and portrays her to look like a real music artist. However, the use of the eye contact makes the magazine look more friendly than it would have done so otherwise and therefore draw the reader in.

I chose to combate the stereotype of feminine colours in my colour scheme so I chose to use the colour purple rather than the typically 'girly' pink to entice the female audience. I used purple because I looks more typical of a rock magazine but also because most females that enjoy rock music are not 'girly' but may still be very feminine.

The language I used in the magazine is mostly informal and uses some colloquial phrases yet it also uses quite formal language which is unconventional of a magazine aimed at younger people. This is because, although my magazine has a target audience of young adults, I want to make it seem sophisticated, rather than a cheap and tacky 'gossip' magazine.

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

Many rock magazines are published by different companies and they vary a great deal in their range of magazines. For example, Kerrang! Is published by Bauer Consumer Media (BCM), which also publish womans weekly magazines. At first I thought BCM would be able to publish my magazine but then I realised that Kerrang! Is already a stable rock magazine for the company and wouldnt make a profit since Kerrang! Is already a well established brand. Instead I thought that a different company that have produced similar genres of music but for a different target audience would be the most successful. An example of a company would be Emap, which publish Q and Mojo.

Another way of publishing my magazine would be to do so independently, which would allow me to change and challenge the conventions of my magazine more so than if it were published as part of company. 
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The majority of the contrustion of the magazine was done using Photoshop. Through using Photoshop outside of college and independently, I already had a strong understanding of Photoshop and the tools and effects that could be achieved using it. However, throughout the preliminary task, I found how to make my product look more professional than I was able to beforehand.

Since the image is the entry point on most magazine, I wanted to make sure that the image was clear and had the conventions of more rock magazines. I chose to fill up as much space on the cover as possible as it followed the conventions of rock magazines and therefore made it look more professional.

To get the main image, I used the magnetic lasso tool and cut the image out from the original image and, after using the feather tool, I placed on a white background and blended it in. I chose to do this main image first and layer the rest of the magazine on top of the image. I achieved a similar effect by using the magic brush tool around the backgroun of the original image and using the eraser tool to remove it. However this made the image impossible to feather and therefore did not produce a professional effect.

I took the image in an area with a block coloured background so as to make it easy to edit, producing a similar look to images in a studio.

I used smaller images at the bottom of the page to create posters, using the free transform tool to resize them and make the posters looks realistic, as though they are really inside the magazine.

I did the same in the contents page to resize the front cover image to make the subscriptions option look realistic and professional.

I created my house style by making the majority of the images encased by a box shape, giving the reader a sense of closure and drawing them into the magazine such as the straplines at the top and base of magazine. I did this by using the rectangular marquee tool. To make the housestyle typeface, I downloaded it from dafont.com. I used several different typefaces before I was entirely happy with my choice.

I found Photoshop to be very useful when layering images as the image can be hidden when unwanted or moved to another layer when needed to be edited. Layering images is a typical convention of magazines and in learning how to do this, I was able to make my magazine look professional.

A major new ability I have aquired is learning how to keep an online log og my progess on a blog. Before this task, I had never kept a blog before and was very confused about what to do and how to make a blog. However, although I have struggled with the blog I persisted and have learned how to blog accurately. I also learned that this is a very important part of this task because it shows what I have done and where I have need for improvement and helped me to develop my ideas. The most important thing about the blog is making it clear and easy to read so that the examiner can easily navigate through the blog.

In conclusion, I have honed my skills in Photoshop, as well as aquired some new ones. I have also learned how to make images look more professional and have grasped the technologies and use of technologies well.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The skills I have honed in my preliminary task allowed me to create a professional and realistic magazine and has allowed me to accurately display my ideas, more so than I would have been able to beforehand. Also my knowledge of magazine conventions has allowed me to decide whether to follow or challenge certain conventions so as to make the magazine appeal to the target audience but also the look professional and aestetically pleasing to my core target audience.

My housestyle and colour scheme of my preliminary task is significantly different to my final product. This is because I thought that my preliminary task did not look professional enough as it was and the colour scheme did not tie in with my music magazine genre. Throughout my final product, the colour scheme and housestyle remained the same, creating cohesion between the pages, whereas my preliminary task changes the housestyle and colour scheme more frequently, making it look much less professional.

Although there was a colour scheme for my preliminary task, this is not clear since the scheme is not ridgedly followed, as is done in my final product.  As a result, my preliminary task had white spaces as text that did not match up with the rest of the magazine as much as I would have wanted it to.

Throughout both the preliminary task and my final product I found the marquee tool very useful, especially when making the magazine appear more professional and encasing the text or images within a box or shape which is a very strong, common convention of rock music magazines.

I also learned how to use the feather tool in my preliminary task, which I hadn't perfected the use of until I began my final product. I found the feather tool a very important tool in my magazine as it produced a very professional finish to the images.

The use of the marquee tool and set colour scheme gave the magazine a distinguished housestyle, which I found, during my preliminary task, to be a very important convention of music magazines; to be recognisable.

I think that now I can understand the conventions of different music genres and the magazines that accommodate the genre. This knowledge had allowed me to create my own media product which fits the conventions of a rock magazine whilst appealing more to a female audience than most rock magazines. I realised the most important aspect of a magazine is to appeal to the target audience. I also noticed that the magazine should have certain aspects and features that make it clear to a reader what genre the music and that the magazine should have its own distinct housestyle for example having the masthead behind the main image. I didn't do this for my preliminary task and found that this made the magazine look slightly unprofessional and therefore chose to do this for my final product.

My research and questionnaires helped me to understand my target audience and how they will interact with the magazine for example how well they need the contents page to be contructed to be able to understand and find what they are looking for. My preliminary task achieved this to a certain respect since it was releitivly clear to the reader what they were looking for, yet it looked very unprofessional. Also the images used in my preliminary task did not accurately match up to the images  on the page. Using this knowledge, I made sure not to make the same mistake on my final product. I used less images on my final product than on my preliminary task because too many images made the magazine look too crowded and unprofessional.

In conclusion, my skills have improved considerably since the preliminary task, mostly though my analysis and also through my research on other magazine conventions. The knowledge of these conventions allowed me to think more clearly about the positioning of the mastheads and coverlines and has made me think about how the audience would react to the ideologies of my final product.
Through my preliminary task, I have learned how to make my product look more professional and therefore attractive to my target audience.

My Magazine Brief

Magazine brief

I have decided to create a magazine for the rock genre which will appeal to young audiences such as teenagers to young adults. In order to achieve this, I will follow certain conventions of the rock genre and focus the design at people that are adverse to the mainstream and enjoy rock music. This magazine would have quite a lot of competition with other magazines of the same genre such as Kerrang! or NME since this is a very popular genre. However, to make my magazine successful, I will aim it more at the female audience, using a more feminine colour scheme to attract them.
Although the main genre of my magazine will be rock, I will also branch out to indie and metal music so as to attract the widest audience possible. I will ensure that my magazine is eye catching and colourful as well as full and explosive. This will attract the audience of rock music as it will reflect the rock music; loud and aggressive. I will make sure that my colour scheme, although more feminine, will reflect this.
I feel that there is a gap in the market for female magazines, more specifically rock music magazines. However, I will not alienate males from the magazine, making it still appealing to them, just more so to females than typical rock magazines. This would provide my magazine with a unique selling point and in doing this I will double my audience.

My magazine will provide the audience with many guides and reviews of gigs, as well as album reviews and a list of what is popular now. Although this is not a common convention of a rock magazine, I think it will create a bond for the reader with the magazine and therefore allow the reader to identify with it. Also my target audience would be very passionate about music and want to know what music is right for them.  I plan to run features and interviews with artists so that my target audience can feel close to the artists, a common convention of music magazines.
The target audience of this magazine are teenagers and my magazine will reflect this. I hope to appeal to both genders and in turn double my target audience which will also double my profit.

Magazine analysis - Report

After looking at the a range of different music magazines ranging from the rock focused Kerrang and the hip hop and Rnb focused Vibe, I have found a range of different techniques that the magazine uses to portray different ideas and that small changes can be made to the front cover to make it clear to the audience what genre the magazine focuses on.

The majority of magazines had one main image on the front that dominated the front cover. The image was always related to an artist that was currently popular in the specific genre. I also found that the image used helped the audience to understand what age group the magazine was aimed towards. On the front of all the magazines the artists were looking serious which is a typical convention of music magazines because it makes the artists look cool and uncaring, something which is attractive in music artists. The main images had more of a sex appeal when clearly targeting an older generation. However rock magazines such as ‘Q’, focused more on the music rather than trying to appeal to the audience through the glamour of the artists. The image used on the front of ‘Q’ magazine clearly portrays the rock genre however it doesn’t show the artist (Mark Potter) as being ‘sexy’ or appealing to the opposite sex. Instead it shows the artist being cold and cool, typical rock star qualities.

No direct mode of address                                                   Unconventionally, the main

                                                                                                                  focus is on the masthead

The cool metallic colours of the

background connote coldness

When using one main image on the front cover to dominate the page it makes the magazine seem more expensive and has a better finish to the magazine as it looks more organised and structured. However depending on the target audience’s age group that the magazine is trying to attract depends on the amount of images used on the front cover. For example the front cover to Kerrang!, is very busy with many different images and captions covering the page giving the illusion that there is a lot of information and articles featured inside the magazine. It also appeals to the target audience because it is exciting and it reflects the nature of the magazine. The kind of front cover also becomes very eye catching but is also clearly trying to attract a younger age generation.

Calm, metallic colours                                                                                                

Typically sexy woman,                                                                                            posed seductively                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                              

Bright, Bold colours

Typically unattractive woman, also posed seductively

The representation in the two magazines is significantly different, which is shown by the front covers. Vibe is a very serious magazine, which focuses greatly on appearance, where as NME doesn't so much, making it seem like a more 'fun' magazine. These representations would appeal to the target audience of the magazine since people that focus on their appearance and are worried about what other people think would be more attracted to Vibe.

It is important to choose a colour theme that reflects the images and genre of the magazine. Magazines targeted to younger age groups used more colours that contrast against each other, however the majority of magazines focused on three or four colours that contrast against each other, but more subtly, making the magazine seem sophisticated. The colour schemes from the different magazine differ significantly depending on the target audience, as well as the music genre. For instance, the classical rock magazine Rolling Stone used more subtle colour on the contents page as well as greyscale images, with little colour throughout the page. A sharp contrast to this is Kerrang!, also a rock music magazine, which uses vast amounts of colour and bold text throughout the magazine, as well as the contents page with the focus of the page being on reflecting the nature of the music, which is often loud and explosive. This is because of the difference in the age of the magazines demographic, with Rolling stone being aimed at an older target audience and Kerrang!'s audience being young adults.
Another contrast in colour schemes is Vibe and NME. Both magazines are aimed at roughly the same aged demographic and yet the colour schemes are very different. The Vibe colour scheme is of calm colours, which blend together flawlessly and create a flow throughout the pages such as metallic blue and silver, where as NME uses bright, bold colours which create a very eye catching effect, such as red and yellow.

While researching and analysing contents pages I have been able to realise the importance of using a colour theme similar to the one used for the front cover, to show the continuity between the pages and to show that they flow together and are part of the same magazine and create a house style. Along with the importance of layout and spacing as over crowded contents pages can show different genres depending on the images that are used. For example for the Kerrang! Contents page, it is very structured however is also crowded with all the information present on one page.

The images used for Kerrang! Are all very natural, there is nothing posed or modeled about the shots, they are just taken as snap shots of the artist producing there music, showing that the magazine is focusing more on the music itself rather then on the artist producing it. This makes it very clear to indicate that the style of music being portrayed is rock. However other magazines such as Vibe and Q spread their contents pages out over a double page spread, making it much more simplistic however easily readable, and easy for the reader to identify the aspects that are of main attention to them. The simplistic view makes the magazine look more sophisticated and more expensive, as it is not over crowded.

The Vibe article and the Q article put a lot more into the article and cram as much on one page as possible, unlike the Kerrang! Article which spaces out the text more evenly. This is because Kerrang! and other magazine that are aimed to a younger target audience try to make their information 'bitesize' and easy to read, so as to appeal to the 'MTV generation' and stop readers losing interest.

The language used within Q and Vibe is more sophisticated than that used within Kerrang! and NME so as to appeal to the younger audience, whereas the more sophisticated language would be similar to that of a newspaper and would appeal to an older audience.

The contents pages on all the magazines I looked at showed that there were lots of writing and headings across the page, indicating exactly were to find the articles, and giving page numbers to each of the images, making it easy and understandable. In Kerrang! And NME, the contents was all on one page unlike Q and Rolling Stones where the contents is spread over two pages, making them easier to navigate around and understand which would appeal to older target audiences.

In conclusion, I have found my research into other successful music magazines on the market now has helped me to understand the conventions of music magazines and which ones I should follow in order to create a successful magazine. However, I have also learned that I can change certain conventions in a magazine, such as an unconventional colour scheme or language style, and still create a magazine that would be successful in today's market.