Music Magazine Evaluation

In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines?

My magazine uses conventions from other music magazines, the conventions I used are the basics that all magazines have such as a main image and also anchorage text and sell lines these are what I used because without these it cannot be a magazine. I also made sure my front cover, contents and article have the same colour scheme, my main image has been framed by text on my front cover and like some magazine contents pages my main story has a picture to go with it. The title of my magazine is “Smashing sound” and to go with it, the background image is a distorted set of colours to make it seem broken. So I have also made my title part of the magazines overall look which some magazines like “Kerrang” also do. I used red and green as my colour scheme to make a slight clash of colours I also copied the convention that Kerrang usually has which is depending on the image changes the colours for the background, so for my magazine I thought about the colours a little more just because of my main image that I’ve used.

How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

The social group represented in this magazine is teenagers that listen to rock I haven’t represented any social group in the stereotypical way however, in most rock magazines the pictures look aggressive the image used on my front cover for my magazine is far from aggressive it’s closer to an image people would find relaxing due to it being laid back, with a folded arm pose. This might make some people think that not everyone who listens to rock or metal is aggressive or violent. My magazine wasn’t originally supposed to support that theory the image used was taken like that to go with sell line I already used for the front cover of my magazine however looking at in depth it does in fact show not everyone who listens to this music is this way. The contents page which does look plain also has a certain representation to it, the background for those with keen eyes would notice it’s the same image as my front cover but edited in a different way this could represent teenagers into artwork simply because different music genres can inspire different types of artwork to be created.

Who would be the audience for your music magazine?

The target audience for my music magazine is the same as the groups represented so male and female teenagers around the ages of 13-18, 5 years can change peoples tastes in magazines or anything in general but my magazine is still targeted at that group, so the content in my magazine covers stuff 13 to 18 year olds might be interested to read about or talk about, of course this doesn’t stop other age groups from reading the magazine either. I have found that in most cases people around 13-15 all like to read about the same thing so they have something to talk about so my magazine covers that quite easily however 16-18 year olds who are extremely interested in music regardless of their friends tastes might look into music more deeply. My magazine is aimed more at people who look at music as a whole and not judge genres on a few artists or bands so I used the Korean band “N.E.X.T” because of this bands unique name people would immediately look at it and think “who is this?” This I know by personally asking a large group of people that I know. But that’s exactly what my magazine was trying to do because the target audience it is aimed at they might be more likely to buy it to find out who this group is and may even end up liking them. In whole I believe if you are that interested in music if you find out there is a band or artist that might be popular elsewhere you will go and find out about them, and teenagers listen to music more than any other age group around this is the reason I targeted teenagers around the age of 13-18.

How did you attract / address your target audience?

To attract my target audience this is teenagers. I used my questionnaire response, although metal was the main winner for music rock was a close second and a favourite of mine. So instead I mixed them together, I also checked what attracts people to a music magazine, and I was told by my questionnaire results that the contents page doesn’t really help the audience decide at all so I put all my effort into the front of my magazine to make that stand out towards my target audience. Bright colours do and don’t attract people to magazines my results say so I blended both, a dark green with a more powerful red although the green takes up the majority of it; the red has a large impact on the cover anyway. I also made sure there’d be things on my front cover like “N.E.X.T” to attract people who like to find out about people they have never even heard of.

What kind of media institution might distribute your music magazine and why?

Kerrang might distribute my magazine, because music genre is still practically the same, but not only that reason I think that it might help that my magazine branches out to bands and artists not usually heard of by people out of their home countries. This would be a good thing for Kerrang because then while Kerrang focuses on the artists and bands that are doing well in that music genre, my magazine would be talking about those making it big elsewhere and therefore giving more options for the audience. Also the age group is not much difference either, this would be helpful to their company, this is because I know many teenagers that go and buy Kerrang, and many adults do too. My Magazine is aimed at teenagers around the age of 16 mainly so it would just be like having another magazine to go with Kerrang. So I think this would be why they would consider distributing my magazine.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your music magazine?

Making a magazine has a lot of technological things to it; Photoshop works wonders when it comes to creating or editing pictures and is used for many different types of magazines this is because you can do anything to a picture on Photoshop, it doesn’t matter what type of picture you have or get given you are able to edit it to any extent. Illustrator helps with the layout for the magazine and gives more font options this is helpful to use because that means if you need your font in a certain way you can get it done, even if it you need words in random locations of a page. There is also a lot of technical things used as well such as debating and deciding what picture to actually use on your magazine or what colours should be used, these all tie together to make the magazine which is important but the main technology used even though I learned to use it in the past already was Photoshop because of all the options I had for it.

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from creating the school magazine (preliminary task), to creating your music magazine?

In creating my school magazine I have learned that the text and colours really play an important role, because without the right use of both the magazine will look far from professional, which could be a problem. Also my school magazine Is extremely plain it looked as if I just got a picture and wrote on top of it, so I learned that, that doesn’t work at all I needed to change quite a lot and experiment with colours and layouts for my music magazine to come out how it did, but I’m happy with how it came out in the end. The contents page for my school magazine was atrocious when I look back at it. But I didn’t really know anyway how to layout a contents page without first looking at other magazines, this helped me construct the final contents page for my music magazine. So I think it did actually help me to do the school magazine too because it gave me some basic knowledge how to create a magazine. So I believe I have learned quite a lot doing this because now I know how to use colour and text effectively and make them merge with a picture or background so everything is not only readable but goes together like a big package.