The document describes a music magazine created by the author for an assignment. The magazine follows conventions of real music magazines in its layout, design and content. Specifically, it uses bright colors and includes sections like interviews and album reviews that are typical of music magazines. The author also learned new skills in photography, design software and publishing while creating the magazine.

1. Music Magazine Evaluation

2. In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Front cover My front cover NME’S front cover My front cover follows a lot of the typical conventions of my genre of music magazine. I have used bright colours such as red and purple which is my predominant scheme throughout the magazine. The use of bright colours is to attract the readers attention easily and they will automatically recognise the bright colours and associate my magazine with the genre of alternative rock. I have also included many plugs like NME they have a free posters section and so do I. however I placed mine down the side and not at the top of the page where it might be more noticeable. I also included a bar at the bottom with what was included inside the magazine, the NME magazine follows the concepts of this and as my layout is similar it is convincing. I placed my main image in the centre of the page, contrasted to the NME magazine this is highly conventional, through my studies of music magazine is have discovered that generally all music magazine place there main image in the centre. I have circled above on both magazines the typical conventions I have followed some of these include the barcode placing and the cover line. I have included a cover line to make my magazine conventional and so that it will fit in with the current alternative rock music magazine market. I created a Music magazine in the genre of Alternative rock .

3. Contents My contents develops the conventions of a typical rock magazine, but also has some typical conventions. It developed conventions by using a bright colour for my back ground, however ‘Q’ magazine has used a white background. Also I have use contrasting fonts whereas Q has used only black and white as a font colour. I have placed my title ‘Contents’ in the top left hand side of my page and also made it a bigger font sixe than the rest of the text. I also placed my contents list in the left hand side. I included a title for the article and a brief explanation underneath. This is similar to ‘Q’ because they also have placed there contents here and I followed the same format. I have also featured a main image for my contents similar to Q, however they have placed there’s in the right hand top corner and I have placed mine in the right hand bottom corner. Both magazines have larger main images to stand out against the background.

4. Double page spread My double page spread develops conventions of the rock genre. For my background colour I have used purple and black whereas a typical music magazine uses a white background with black text. There are many conventions that I have followed one of these is the use of pull quotes. I have taken some quotes from my interview and highlighted them in a different colour. This makes it effective because you can choose the part of the interview which may be of more interest to the reader I have also used images in my contents page. This is similar to the Q magazine because they have also used images. This keeps the reader entertained and breaks up the page so that they don't get bored. I have chose to follow the colour scheme onto this page to help the magazine flow and to keep it connecting. The use of purple, red and green represents highly the genre of this magazine and also portrays the masculinity of the interview with the two boys. I have written the text with a black outline so that it can be easily read against the background, I think that this is effective because when you are reading a interview you want it to be simple and clear to understand and not difficult.

5. MAGAZINE COVERS WHICH INSPIRED ME The Q magazine inspired me because of its colour scheme. The use of red and white as contrasting colours gives it a ‘rock’ look. Also the ‘Spin’ magazine uses similar colours. The use of dark colours also represents this. The cover features the female singer ‘Cheryl Cole’ and ‘Hayley Williams’ who directly addresses the audience by looking into the camera. The shots are close up and mid shot, so that you can recognise who is on the cover and also to draw the audience to the image. They both use simplistic texts and layouts so that it has a good visual appearance and is clear for the audience .

6. BANDS WHICH INSPIRED ME Franz Ferdinand, Kings Of Leon, Coldplay, Muse, Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys All of these bands are of a similar genre, however they all have there own individuality. From the images we can see how they all dress in smart attire but also have the rock unkempt look about them. Usually they have longer hair and have it in many styles. The clothes they are wearing are modern smart. We can see how they have developed this look by wearing skinny ties and patterned shirts.

7. How does your media product represent particular social groups? I think that my product represents many social groups, however it relates to some more specific groups. All have aspects which can identify with the Alternative rock genre. The main social group that my media product represents is both boys and girls, averagely in the age range of 16 to 24. Through the depiction of my images we can see how the people shown are wearing fashionable clothing such as ‘Fred Perry’ which is a recognizable popular brand. This represents my rock genre because most people who you would associate with liking rock music might be perceived as unkempt, however they also wear vintage up market clothing. The social group my media product is aimed at is young adults who enjoy festivals, gigs and music events. They usually have a large social group of friends who they attend these concerts with.

8. What kind of media institution might distribute my media product ? I think that Bauer media would be distribute my magazine because they are a very large magazine seller. I think that my product would fit in with there market niche and that it would appeal to the area customers that Bauer appeals to. Bauer owns more than eighty magazines and so therefore has a large customer appeal. I think that my magazine would be distributed in many large stores. However they also produce Q which is already a popular brand magazine. So therefore they would have to make sure that they both were suited very specifically to there target audiences Another institution that might distribute my product is ipc media. They also are a large company that have many popular magazines, in total they have over ninety brands of magazine. They also produce another popular music magazine called NME, so therefore would have to target there specific audience types. Although this can also be a good thing because it shows that they ave knowledge of music magazine and will know where they will sell best and which customer types they will attract.

9. HOW DID I ATTRACT AND ADDRESS MY AUDIENCE? I have used a mixture of colours to represent both male and female. The main two colours used are purple and red. Although purple is associated with girls, I have made it a darker shade so that it looks more masculine. Also this makes it follow the rock genre. Some of the text and fonts I have used have a rock characteristic/style about them. They are detailed and mostly written in bright colours. This represents most of the young genre as they like to dress in bright loud clothes and so therefore this will attract them to my media product. I think it attracts the audience because the main image on the front of my magazine is looking directly at the audience, this draws you in to the cover. My main image is of a man and also my interview is with two men, this could be seen as addressing the female audience in a negative way because it is mostly masculine opinions and doesn't appeal to females. I have tried to combat this by making the interview questions attracting to both genders with questions from female fans and responses which apply to this.

10. Who would be the audience for my media product? My Music magazine is targeted at both boys and girls in the age range of 16-24. It follows the representative of the rock/music oriented audience. However it also has aspect of a pop magazine with the inclusion of ‘Jarvis’ Who is a singer. I like Rock music Im a young adult I like going to concerts and festivals I have a large social group I have male and Female friends I like fashionable modern clothing

11. What have you learnt about new technologies from the process of constructing this product? Mac photoshop Indesign When creating my magazine, I used the Apple Mac OS operating system. The Apple software is highly suited for design and creating, so therefore this seemed like a good option. The Mac system has an extensive range of programmes which can help you with design work and also to give you a better quality. When creating my magazine, I used Adobe Indesign, this programme was perfect for making my magazine on and offered many tools that I had never used. It gives you the ability to position objects and images where you would think they look most suitable and manipulate them so that you are happy. It also gives you a wide range of fonts, which also improves the overall quality. When creating my magazine, I used the editing software Adobe Photoshop, Although it is difficult to use I watched many youtube videos to learn how to use photoshop professionally and to make good use of its editing capabilities. photography When creating my magazine, I had to use all of my own photos. I had never used a camera to take proffesional photos before so I learnt about the rule of thirds and depth of field. This helped me to improve my photography skills and take a clear suitable image for my front cover and also to place inside my magazine

12. Progression from the preliminary task to my final piece. I think that since my preliminary task my skills have improved by a lot. On my preliminary task I used Plain fonts and positioned my tag lines in empty spaces. I think I have progressed in this area by using the empty space to place images and also to experiment with bolder texts. On many of my texts I have used a thick black outline, from which I developed through the preliminary. I have also progressed by using different colours. In my preliminary I used my image as the background whereas now I have experimented with many different colours such as purple and red. I have broken up the bright purple background with smaller boxes of colour such as where I place my posters section. Another progression I have made is the layout of my magazine, in my preliminary the text is placed in many different place all over the page and mainly at the bottom of the page. This could be difficult for consumers because they wont be attracted to the magazine if they ca only see the blank top half of my magazine. To combat this I have structured my cover carefully so that the top half of the page has an even amount of text and so therefore the target audience can see this.