The document evaluates the author's music magazine project. It discusses how the magazine uses conventions from real music magazines such as prominent cover images, issue details, consistent branding, and interviews. The target audience is described as ages 11-28, interested in genres like grime, garage and hip hop. Feedback was gathered from the target demographic to design the magazine to attract their interest. Through creating the magazine, the author learned new technology skills in Photoshop and how to take better photos to represent their social group and genre.

1. This is the evaluation of my magazine. Evaluation

2. In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real music magazines? Many magazines have a main image that is bigger than the rest , this is a typical convention of a magazine, the person on the front is usually a person that is featured in their main article, surrounding this they usually put smaller pictures. In most magazines I researched the main image was of a celebrity so I created my own celebrity and used this as my main image In all of the magazines I have analysed they had an issue number, a date, a barcode, a slogan, and a copyright sign so I added these features to my magazine. Main image Smaller surrounding images

3. In every magazine I saw there was a house style, this is when the same colours and fonts are used throughout the magazine so it is easily recognisable as the same magazine. This is the reason I used black white and purple on every page of my magazine. No other colours were used apart from those on my pictures. In the contents page of Kerrang they used lots of box outs, I created many box outs to show the different sections Kerrang also used a main image for their contents and used smaller surrounding pictures, I also did this. A logo was also used in most magazines. I constructed my own and used it on my contents page.

4. Many magazines have their masthead huge, this is to be the biggest writing in the magazine, it should be eye-catching and distinctive I have tried to create a distinctive, eye-catching, colourful masthead. Many successful magazines have a left hand third, the left had third should entail of information of what is in the magazine, this magazine has both a right and left hand third I chose to just have a left hand third as I found it more professional. My contents page has most of the conventions of a real contents, it has page numbers, box outs, pictures and headings I have used my house style colours and fonts for the information, background ect.

5. The logo of my magazine is also on my contents page it is in the bottom right corner and is quite big so it stands out. Just like most contents pages mine has a variety of pictures included. I have a lure in my contents page this is to ensure my readers buy the magazine again also it may make them intrigued to know what other offers are inside and so will read on. It also has many box outs to show the different sections.

6. I gave the interview an introduction and enlarged quotes from the answers I got. The picture I used for my double page spread was really big this was to make the article look eye catching and also to fill the blank space, the heading was larger than the rest of the text. My double page article was a question and answer session, just like many magazines with interviews I made the questions a different colour to the answers. But still with in my house style.

7. Who would your target audience be and why? Target Audience Age: 11 – 28 Gender: Mainly Boys, Some Girls. Ethnicity: Young Black Community. Interests and Hobbies: Raves, social gatherings, lyricists, aspiring singers, rappers, groups, listening to grime. Music interest: Grime, UK Garage, Dancehall, and Hip Hop Social Class: C2 – E this is anything from skilled manual workers to lowest grade workers or students. The way I would target them is by the language I use and the people I feature in my magazine, I would use young people so that my young audience would have some sort of personal identification.

8. My magazine is mainly for people who like grime music so my front cover model had to look like a grime star I researched what clothes grime stars wore and how they came across to their audience. With this particular social group of Adolescence to young adults it was easy to know how to attract their attention as I as a part of this social group know what I would like to see in a magazine. Another way I have tried to fit in every thing my target audience would like was by giving out questionnaires and interviewing a random sample of my target audience. My front cover picture is of a girl aged 16, she is not a real celebrity however the props and clothes I gave her made her look like one, if it were a picture of a 40 year old man with a guitar I do not think it would appeal to a younger audience. How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

9. How did you attract and address your audience? The style of clothing clearly shows the genre I want to convey, clearly shows the genre my target audience wants to read. By asking questions I found out what my social group liked to read by including this I was attracting my target audience. The colours I used also reflected my genre and so was another convention that attracted my audience. I attracted my audience by making sure my all of my pictures were bold, good quality and interesting

10. What kind of Media institution might distribute your music magazine and why? IPC media would be the kind of media institution that might distribute my magazine because my research shows that it produces over 85 iconic media brands, their pint based brands alone reaches over half of the worlds population. This kind of institution may distribute my magazine in places like WHSmith, WHSmith sells a wide range of genre of magazines, as there are not many grime magazines around, so therefore newsagents would be less likely to sell my magazine as they are not guaranteed to have many sales. Whilst researching I found newsagents only distribute magazines that are on popular demand this may effect there decision to sell my magazine.

11. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this music magazine? The preliminary task was done on Photoshop, before this I had used Photoshop but only vaguely so there was still a lot for me to learn, I had a short time to learn everything before my main task but over time my skills have improved. I have learnt many new things. For example: My front cover image started out like this But after cutting out the background, adjusting the hue and brightness to get a higher quality picture and cropping it turned out like this I have also learnt that technology is very temperamental for example some times Photoshop and in design ran very slow or sometimes would not respond this set me back quite a lot. The reason I used in design for my main task was because in my preliminary task I found some of the text bled. While taking my pictures I learnt a lot about photography I have learnt that in order to get good quality pictures, the lighting and position of the camera needs to be right.

12. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I have learnt to organize and share out my time so that everything gets done for the time limit. I have learnt how to use new technology and my range of media key terms has improved I now know about Photography, lighting, shoots and how to get the best quality pictures possible. I learnt that it was not a good idea to do only one plan as my ideas would change throughout. Looking back at my magazine I now realize that my contents page was not as recognisable as the same magazine as my front cover and double page spread. I would change the background colour of my contents to black and also change the colour of my writing to purple and white. Now I also find myself analysing magazines I see in shops and thinking of what their target audience may have been and how they have targeted it I have learnt that audience feedback is very important, in my magazine I have used a lot of audience feedback, they have helped me to chose, the title, the imagery, the colours and many other things I used their opinions because they are the people I would like to buy my magazine and so they should have a say in to what they want to see.