evaluation

evaluation

Before even starting on my main task, I had to do a preliminary task that would help boost all my skills I needed to do well with my music magazine. For my preliminary task we had to make a school magazine. This was useful to get an idea of how to structure both a front cover and contents page, it was also useful in practising the skills I needed to use photoshop well and get the best out of it.

evaluation

My genre of music that I wanted to focuse my magazine on was indie. So before I started my magazine I needed to research into a magazine that also focused on the same genre of music. The biggest magazine in the country for this kind of music is New Musical Express (NME). Researching this wasnt that hard as I usually read the magazine anyway, but I took a deeper look at how they structure things within the magazine and the sort of language they use.

evaluation

Before I could start the production of my magazine I needed to look at the history and present of a music magazine that I hadnt previously done much research into. For this I looked at Q magazine. This would help because you need to have an idea of the history of a magazine to understand why it does the things it does in the modern day and how they came to publish things on that genre/genres of music.

The front cover is essential to get the audiences interest, this is has to be eye catching and sum up that issue of the magazine otherwise the audience will never even think about buying the magazine. You need a clear title and listed features so that people get an instant feel of what the magazine is and what is inside that weeks issue. The picture is key to representing what kind of magazine it is and showing what is the main feature without having to even read the contents, title or any of the feature inside.

evaluation

For me, the sole purpose of the contents is to help the reader find what they want quickly and easily. So for this reason it needs to be as easy to read and understand as possible to help the reader find what they want. The plain background make it easy for people to read and the bold heading helps split up the contents into sections which makes it even easier to find what you want, this is very similar to what they do in NME.

evaluation

I felt that the most important thing on my double page spread was the black on white contrast. I feel it needs to be this way because it needs to be easy for the audience to read otherwise they just wont read it. If the colours dont stand out well against each other it will make it difficult to read and you will lose the interest of the audience. A clear headline and an obvious quote from the text also help to get the attention of the reader and give you a good idea of the text. This is like what NME do with their double page spreads.

evaluation

Before you can attempt to attract your audience, you need to know who your audience are. The slide above lists the typical person that I believe the audience type is based on. I got these ideas from looking at a magazine I think is most similar and looking at its audience.

evaluation

It was key while making my magazine, especially the front cover, that I knew how to attract the audience. The ways I used to attract my audience are shown on my presentation. To attract my audience I first need to get their attention, this is done by using things like bold colours, clear title and clear text. Once the persons attention has been gained it is important to sell the magazine to them and things such as free offers and a well related picture help to interest the audience into buying the magazine.

evaluation

While making my magazine I used various different technologies. The main one I used to construct my actual magazine was Photoshop. I found Photoshop quite difficult to use because of all the icons and different things available to do on it, also before this project I had never previously used Photoshop. After my preliminary and practise tasks I was better at using photoshop which allowed me to use it fairly well while constructing my music magazine. I also used various music websites to make research into how to make my magazine and I used powerpoint for things like this presentation.

evaluation

Looking at the publishers, I think that the best oppourtunity for my music magazine would be with the publisher emap. As far as I could find, emap dont currently publish a major music magazine. Both Bauer and IPC both publish major magazines already and so this would be difficult for them to start to publish my magazine in the first place and then starting to compete with these magazines in terms of sales would be even harder.

Music Magazine - front page

This is the front cover for my music magazine 'The Scene'. I wanted the front covers main focus to be on the picture of Billy Lunn and I think that I have done that. The black and white fonts stand out clearly and are easy to read while they dont take away the focus from the picture. The title and information circle being in green help to blend in with the shirt Billy is wearing in the picture so they blend in rather than stand out. My only problem with the front page is the free offer square in the top right corner. The colours of it dont really go with the rest of the front page and if I had the chance to do it again I would do it with another colour apart from red.

Music Magazine - contents page

This is the contents page for my music magazine 'The Scene'. This also is a very basic layout placed on a white background to help make the pictures and text stand out. The layout of the contents page is very simple which makes it quick for the reader to find the page or pages that they want to look at. The green and white section headers make each section easy to find and then once youre on that section, the red font makes it easy for you to find the text that you want. My only problem with the contents page is that bits of it, particularly the right hand side is a bit bare. I could have done with adding a bit more information to fill it out a bit more.

Music Magazine - Double page spread

This is my double page spread for my music magazine 'The Scene'. The double page spread is set out with the title in bold black font. This setting is what makes up the whole two pages, black on white is a simple setup that makes it easy for the font to be read while also making the black stand out which helps to make it more eye catching for the reader. The font is also a bold and plain which makes it easier to read. These are both traits that a magazine aimed at an older audience would normally have.

Photos

Before I made my music magazine I went to some gigs where I took pictures of two different singers. The first two are of a singer called Billy Lunn who played at the square in Harlow. The second is a woman called Laura Mary Carter who I saw play at astoria in London. Both sets of pictures work well as they are from live gigs which help represent the raw nature of this genre music and the magazine.

nature magazines

Before we did either task, we made nature magazines which were purposely for the purpose of getting used to things like photoshop.

Preliminary Task

My preliminary task, like previously mentioned in my blog, was a school magazine. These are the photos from that magazine:

Q Magazine presentation

Following on from my research into music magazines we had to make a powerpoint presentation based on a magazine that we hadn't previously looked at. As I had already done NME, I chose to do Q magazine. In my powerpoint I looked at the basic history of the magazine and things like their selling figures today. Above are some of the slides from this presentation