My Evaluation for my Media AS Level

1. Evaluation
By Jake Worgan

2. Who would be the audience
for your product?

3. My Stereotypical
• Tom is 20 years old. He spends his week sat at an office waiting for
the weekend. Tom's interests include festivals, gigs and the latest
music. Tom likes to spend time with his friends and is often found at
pubs listening to local bands whilst having a few drinks. He likes to
have a good time but appreciates he has a job and commitments,
therefore he is sensible yet humorous. Tom listens to mostly rock
music with bands such as Oasis, Courteeners and the Libertines but
will quite happily sit and listen to a recent mixtape from artists such
as Kendrick Lamar or a catchy dance tune from Avicii.

4. I aimed my magazine at…
16-25 year olds
Educated
Have good
social lives
Interested in
extending knowledge
on music
Who spend
money on…

5. The gap in the market
• I believe I have found a gap in the market and I am trying to take
advantage of this gap by creating a, hopefully, unique magazine which
will be appealing. The reason my target age is 16-25 is because the
magazine is not gossip. My magazine is supposed to be intellectual
with aspects of humour therefore I felt that this age in which people
follow the most recent music seriously would be an ideal age. I did
not go below 16 as the maturity of the magazine or the content may
not be appealing to youngers as they crave pure entertainment. I did
not go above 25 as I thought that this is the age in which people begin
to start reliving songs from their childhood as oppose to following
new music seriously.

6. How did you attract/address
your audience?

7. Masthead
Cover star
Date and Price
Barcode
Features
Cover story

8. Age – My target age is between 16-25 years old. A wide range yet appropriate.
My research showed that people towards their 30’s entered
Gender – I have tried to ensure that the magazine content is appealing for both
men and women but the cover and design may be towards the male side. The
dark colours with a male cover star, who isn’t necessarily eye candy like Zac Efron
which also suits the idea of my magazine being intellectual as oppose to pure
entertainment, could be seen as leaning more towards a male audience and but
the content is mixed with whoever finds it interesting. Despite this I get the
feeling that this particular magazine is more male orientated.
Genre – My genre is whatever is whatever the main talking point within music
is at the time, supporting my idea that I am creating a magazine which fills a gap
in the market. In this particular episode it follows a band converting from the pop
scene to the competitive area of underground rock. For this particular magazine I
have gone with a dark underground look to support the new look of my fictionary
band “The Schemers.”

9. The masthead is a vivid red which
contrasts with the black
background. The date and price are
deliberately in very small white text
so that it is readable but without
being to overpowering on the
screen as I wanted to keep the
professional look and also
intellectual look and I thought that a
large price in bright colours would
not suit my style of magazine
Once again I have used the same colour for the
main cover story as the masthead. The thinking
behind this is that it shows fluidity which I
believe is important in my magazine. Whatever
the main topic of the magazine is I have based
the whole magazine on, creating fluidity. The red
and black is commonly associated with hell and
the devil, linking to UNDERGROUND rock. This
also links to me deliberately using the wording of
“undercover,” once again linking to this
comparison to the devil and hell (UNDERground.)
Similarly the size of the text is almost as large as
my masthead, showing just how important and
unmissable this particular article is.
I have stuck again purely to the
professional look. Everything is evenly
spaced out with a consistent and fluid
colour scheme on the front cover. The
white text contrasts with the black and I
decided that three colours was enough
for a front cover. I want my cover to be
eye catching without being immature and
overpowering, looking as though it’s a
childish magazine.

10. • I have cropped my model out on Photoshop
so that he is separate from the background.
I have put him in front of the text as the
audience would rather see a photo than
read something. The word is still easily
readable yet it makes the page much more
attractive.
• Evenly spaced out creating an aesthetically
pleasing contents page.
• The colour code of mainly black and whites
amongst the page is consistent creating an
attractive page which should
attract readers.
• A white background. Imagine turning
the page from the dark front page into
the light. The idea of opening the bible
and light shooting out was my thinking
behind this.
The sheer emptiness of the contents
page is deliberate. As I said for my
front cover, why would I put
anything in my magazine that is not
relevant? A contents page should
say where everything is and should
look professional. My magazine is
intended to be this way, almost like
the contents page of an intellectual
book.

11. The red colour way is the same as the
one on my main cover story, as it’s
THAT article. I also have used the same
font to show it’s the THAT article. It is
bright, professional and aesthetically
pleasing.
Two pictures on one page. I have done
this because the previous two pictures
feature one model taking up the
whole page. I felt that despite the fact
I want my magazine to be unique I do
no want it to be boring, or repetitive.
Drop Caps is common in old books,
often used by monks. Yet again it
displays the intellectual side of my
magazine as it is common in books.
I have made everything black and
white bar the polo shirts and jumpers.
This is purely to make the page a little
different and show diversity. It is also
quite aesthetically pleasing.

12. How does your star represent
particular social groups?

13. Little details
• My model is an example of intertextuality as the audience recognise
the style of magazine by reading the titles or looking in depth at the
clothing and style of my cover star. They gain knowledge
subconsciously from simply looking at the front cover.

14. In all of my photographs I have young (20-22) male models which represents my target audience. The mise en scene of the
stars represent a “mod” look. Every model wears ‘Fred Perry’ clothing and on the contents page Adidas Original trainers are
shown. Brands worn by stars such as Liam Gallagher and Pete Doherty helps to attract a whole new category. The models are
dressed casually.

15. Character association
The link between my “celebrities” and real life
celebrities aims to attract a social group to my
magazine. Anyone who is familiar with bands such as
the Libertines or Courteeners will recognise the logo
and make assumptions on the type of music and type
of person my cover star represents.
A subtle item of clothing on my cover star hopefully
opens a door to a whole new audience to my
magazine helping to boost sales.
The look: The laid back and “cool” look which readers
will idolise and want to be like. My age group reflects
this style as well by being younger and more open
with clothing and style.

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

17. • The masthead is vertical down the side of the page. It brings
diversity to the magazine. Magazines are usually so predictable
with multiple magazines having a masthead with the model
covering it, this magazine goes against the normal functions and
the “ideology” of what a magazine should be like. This level of
diversity I found would suit my magazine perfectly as I was trying
to find a gap in the market for my magazine.
• Iggy Azalea is the main star of this particular issue of “Billboard”
magazine and is made large on the page and hardly obstructed by
anything by the masthead. This shows her significance.
• The small text on the page I found intriguing. Surely you would
have large text to attract readers? I created my own philosophical
theory about this. If you have smaller text then it shows almost a
cockiness that you do not need to go above and beyond to attract
your audience. I decided to pass this into my magazine but not to
the same extent. I was not a fan of the big paragraph of small text
though, I preferred summarising the content of the magazine in
one sentence.

18. Normal magazines, what I wanted to avoid.
All these magazines are popular but represent everything I wanted to avoid. The typical model covering
the masthead on the cover is almost a given on every magazine, but not mine. Mine is different, its unique.

19. • My magazine has a masthead vertical down the
side. This is unique, like my magazine is. It’s
different and shows immediately that this magazine
is not your usual music magazine.
• My cover star is down the centre of the page with a
photo taken in medium close up. This shows how
important he is.
• The content down the right hand side of my
magazine is in small text but with contrasting
colours and capital letters it is still easily readable.

20. •I copied the idea of a quote on my double page
spread. It gives an immediate taster of what the
article is about which is why I thought it would be a
good addition to my magazine.

21. What kind of media institutions
might distribute your product?

22. • I did my research and found a company called “Prometheus Global
Media.” It refers to itself as a ‘diversified company with leading assets
in the media.’ The word “diversified” is what really shone for me and
my magazine. My magazine aims to epitomise diverseness and to find
a distributor with similar goals. A distributor can help to boost sales
so I thought it was important to make sure my magazine is being
distributed by an appropriate company and I thought that this
distributor would help to boost sales to an audience which will be
interested in my magazine and hopefully purchase it again.

23. Price
• My magazine would cost £3, which I found
was approximately the average price of a
monthly magazine. I do not believe that £3
a month is very expensive and should be
affordable for all readers. The main funds
for my magazine/business would come from
advertisements within the magazine as
appose to actually selling copies though.

24. The Website
SUBSCRIBE ADVERTISE CAREERS CONTACT
Sneak peak at our next issue…
Title
Relevant
images,
persuading
viewers to
click on
links.
Online sales. More
ways to make
money.
NEXT MAGAZINE: PREVIEW
Read our interview with The Schemers
We were honoured to be able to get an interview with the stars of the moment, The Schemers. Be
sure to pick up the new magazine this February to get a glimpse of their plans for the future.
What is the most popular genre of music?
We sent the Barline team out to survey you, the public, to find out what really gets your toes
tapping. Will it be a funky house beat or a headbanging rock tune? Found out.
Is pop music superficial?
Sneakpeaks

25. Merchandise
Apps.
Pens.
T-Shirts
Signature black and red flip flops
Headphones.
All of these are effective ways of
not only making money for my
company but also, debatably
more importantly advertising my
magazine and helping to get it
universally known.

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

27. My front cover: How I made it.
I started by simply creating a black
background using the rectangle tool with a
black fill. I then created a text box and typed
“barline” in. It was easy to rotate the text
box and change the colour to my desired
red. I had already planned the font, I used
‘Ahorani.’ To get the text closer together I
used the text spacing tool and set it to -90.
I used the quick selection tool to remove the
background rapidly and to change the my
cover star to black and white was easy. I
simply clicked the black and white tool
which did all the work for me. It took a
matter of minutes to edit my photo
completely ready for my front cover
The rest of my front cover was simple text
boxes which I would just trial and error the
positioning until I believed I had found a
professional layout.

28. Contents: How I made it.
I got the original photo on photoshop and
cropped Max away from the background. I then
pasted the original photo onto my InDesign
document and put the Contents text on with a
small stroke in position. I then pasted my cropped
version of Max onto my InDesign document and
placed him exactly on top of where the unedited
photo is so that it covers the contents text giving
the illusion of the text being sandwiched between
the model and the background.
I then simple added the numbers by copying
and pasting each text box and changing the
numbers. I had to change the number and text
for each which wasn’t very hard.
To make sure the white text was easily visible
against the white background I had to make
sure that I used a stroke with a black outline to
solidify the text and make it easily visible.

29. Double page spread: How I made it.
The main body of the text was simply
copied and pasted from a word document
I had done earlier in the year. I literally
used just text boxes and changed the
colour and font using visual skills I had
learnt throughout the course.
I used the quick selection tool to select all
the clothing and used the black and white
tool to make everything in the background
black and white. I did this effect purely to
make the page look different. I used my
developed photoshop skills to make the
photo look slightly different in order for it
to not be seen as boring and simple.
The double page spread required
technical skills which I did not require at
the start of the course. Simple things
such as the big bold letter T at the start
of the sentence required skills that I did
not previously have. To take my photos I
needed technical skills to ensure that the
settings were right for the type of photo
I wanted. I have learnt a lot.

30. Looking back at your preliminary
task(School Magazine), what do
you feel you have learnt in the
process?

31. School vs. Music
• The main difference between the two
magazine is how “professional” they look I
think. My school magazine im using basic
techniques on photoshop and I have not
placed my text very well. I probably have
more text on my school magazine yet it looks
to be much more empty space on the front
cover.
• The colour scheme on my first front cover
seems so random and messy. Blue, white
black and green? The consistency and
contrast between colours is not their
creating a very amateur looking front cover.
On my music magazine I have a fluent colour
scheme with even my cover model being
edited to fit into it.

32. • My contents page has not changed too
drastically. I liked the simplicity of my first
contents page and really tried to carry that onto
my music magazine. I had learnt camera
techniques and the photos for my school
magazine are nowhere near the same quality as
my contents page. I used my new photoshop
skills to be able to crop max’s head into a
separate layer to the background in order to
have it overlapping the “contents” text. I have
quite simply learnt new computing skills
throughout the course with the thanks of fellow
pupils and my teacher and tried to apply them
to my second magazine.

33. • I was most pleased with my double page
spread. I noticed that my skills in simple
things such as the positioning of text and
photos had developed dramatically through
the course. My double page spread did not
require to much computer skills but more
using my brain to figure out where
everything should be positioned in order to
make it look as “professional” as possible. I
needed to think about what colour text
should be and why. I felt as though my
decisions were much more effective and
created what I believe is a very convincing
and proficient double page spread.