This document provides an evaluation of a magazine created by the author for a class project. It summarizes the key ways the magazine uses and challenges conventions of real music magazines. It includes a two-shot photo on the cover instead of just one artist, and offers freebies like posters to attract younger readers. Layout and design conventions like large central photos and text wrapped around are followed. The target audience is described as mainly teenagers interested in dance music, represented through bright colors, popular artists featured, and an emphasis on social media interaction. A dance music publisher like MixMag's would be a suitable company to distribute the magazine commercially.

1. Magazine Evaluation
1) In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
My magazinerevolved around dance music, so the closest forms and
conventions werematched with MixMag which is also a dance
magazine. I used a menustrip to advertise my magazine around the bold
title so that both stood out and it showed that my magazine was the
best of its type: ‘The best NEW dance magazinearound’. Looking at the
main photo on my front cover, mine contains a two shot, which slightly
differs fromthe normin MixMag, usually featuring only one artist. I did
this to show two very important articles in my magazine which will
hopefully attract more people to buy the product.
A typical convention of music magazines as a way of attracting an
audience is by offering things like free posters to readers. I thoughtthis
was appropriatebecause my target audience is slightly younger
(teenagers) than that of MixMag and that is probably the main
difference between my magazineand a real one. By including freebies it
again incises the reader making them wantto buy the magazine.
Another convention I use is placing a fairly large photo on the centre of
my frontcover and placing text around it (to the left and right) with the
name of the magazinein a large font sizeabove it. I thought that this
was vital because it is the most importantconvention for every music
magazine to have so that they’re easily recognisable.
If I was to comparemy contents to a real magazine, take Q for example, I
would say there are obvious similarities and differences. Visually, the
photos in Q’s contents are far larger and take up a large majority of the
page and although my contents do contain photos they are not as large
scale, but I feel it has the same impact as in Q becauseeven though you

2. do need photos they are not the main attraction of a contents page, the
actual contents are! And on this frontthey are similar due to the amount
of contents and with clear titles and a description of the page below in a
smaller font size.
Q’s colour scheme is very straightforward (red, black and white) and
DanceMag is similar in the amount of colours used but not the actual
colour scheme (red, blue and yellow). I felt I needed bright colours
because as a dance magazine aimed at teenagers especially you need
something out of the ordinary and that is visually representativeof the
mood you are trying to create throughoutthe magazine.
My double page spread is fairly conventional. It contains a very large
image, a tagline in the formof a quote and a large section of small text
which is the main article. Mixmag also follows the majority of the forms
and conventions, including colour consistency, theactual article and
masthead. Both pages are very structured in the layout and use easily
readable fonts and clear photos representing whatthe article is about.
For my photos I used a studio and a professionalCanon camera. This was
so that my photos wereof consistently high quality and I could easily
edit the photos to how I wanted them to be. For example cropping out
certain parts of the photos that I didn’t like and making them ideal for
use in my magazinespecifically. On my frontcover I used a close-up
(medium) to show two separate people. This differs froma conventional
frontcover of a magazine as it would normally justhave one artist or
group in a photo. My contents page features a photo of an object (chair)
and two artists. The fact that I used a chair is slightly different to what
you would normally find in a music magazineas it would usually contain
photos of justthe artists featured further on in the magazine. However,
the chair featured in my contents page is relevant as it asks ‘Who is on
the hotseat this week?’ ThroughoutI used studio like photos to give my
magazine a professionallook like in proper magazines. By not always
having the subjectlooking directly at the camera it creates an edgy feel

3. and might make the audience wantto read aboutthe artist in further
detail which will obviously be inside the magazine.
2) How does your media product
represent particular social groups and
who is the target audience?
My magazineis aimed mainly at teenagers and both genders. Obviously
it is also aimed people with an interest in dance music. I think this is
reflected by the slightly less sophisticated look of my magazine
compared to MixMag, which parts of my magazine are based on. This is
because I believe that MixMag is aimed at the slightly older generation
(18-35 years old) so I needed to adapt my approach subtly. I reflected
this by using a brightand bold colour scheme, which is generally seen as
more ‘fun’. The content also represents particular social groups as it is
100% aboutdance music, and the magazine is aimed at thosewith a
strong interest in dance. I featured big names in dance in the magazine
(like Diplo, David Guetta and Avicii) because that is the responseI got
frommy survey.
My magazinerepresents different and specific social groups in varied
ways. Firstly it is aimed at mainly English speaking people as the
magazine is published in English. Furthermore, thephotos taken are of
two of my friends and on the front cover, they are shown to be looking
directly at the camera, which shows confidenceand perceiving an
upfrontkind of attitude. Dance music is seen as a very positiveand
upbeat genre of music and the fact that the two cover stars aresmiling
reflects the type of magazine is and this could therefore replicate the
personality of the reader accessing different socialgroups in the process.
Dance music is very much dominated by white people in terms of
producers and artists as a whole, with the majority fromAmerica, the UK

4. and Eastern Europe. The trend is followed with the photos as they are of
people of white decent. This could perhaps suggesta representation of
social groups.
Gender-wise, my magazine isn’taimed in particular at males or females
singularly, so I haven’tchanged my magazine to incorporateeither
gender specifically. This also means I haven’treally used any
stereotypical male or female colours becausethe magazine is for
everyone. Looking at age, my magazine is aimed more specifically at
teenagers and young adults as I found that they were the group most
interested in the genre of music I chose, however I think that my
magazine is accessible and interesting for all.
Stereotypically teenagers are all ways on social media and in particular
mobile phones so I have taken this into account by including ways to
interact with DanceMag via socialmedia as hopefully this is another
avenue of interest to my magazine. For example, instead of people
hearing about DanceMag as a resultof the actual magazine they can see
it online and go to the website or Facebook page which could potentially
lead them into buying the magazine every time it is released and
therefore making the company moremoney.
3) What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and why?
Media institutions interested in distributed would be music magazine
companies, solely becausemy media product is a music magazine. The
closestrepresentation of my magazine to another, as I mentioned
earlier, is MixMag as it also focuses on various genres to do with dance
music. Therefore I think that the company that publish MixMag,
Development Hell Ltd. would be the best option and the sortof media
institution to distribute my magazine. Other options would include well
known music magazine publishers in general as they have good
knowledgeabout what makes a successfulmagazineand the right ways

5. to advertise it. Not to mention the profits that big corporations make,
which would be appealing for that reason.
Development Hell would be a good option for a media institution to
distribute my media product.DevelopmentHell.com is the world's #1 on-
line resourcefor Writers and Writing, featuring information, interviews
and articles by, with and for, screenwriters and novelists. This means it is
well-suited to be able to produce my magazine: DanceMag.
4) Who would be the audience for your
media product?
As I mentioned previously the main audience for my magazine is
teenagers. This is primarily for the reason that the results of my
SurveyMonkey survey suggested my magazinewould be best suited and
received by teenagers and young adults.
5) How did you attract/address your
audience?
People are attracted to magazines by using appealing words, fonts,
colour schemes and a good page layout. Firstly, I intrigued the audience
by immediately bringing to their attention that my productis a dance
magazine. This is shown by me using the phrase ‘The BEST new dance
magazine around’. Also by using the word ‘new’ it appeals to the
audience as it adds a senseof freshness to the magazine potentially.
Furthermore, by using words like ‘exclusive’ on my front cover, it
attracts people as whatever is exclusivewill only be in my magazine,
which adds something different to my product. In my contents, I used
some specific words concerning what’s coming up in the magazinewhich
require pragmatic knowledge, but this is a way of addressing my
audience as they understand whatI mean by the terms used. These

6. include: new releases, DJ sets and shows and remix. On my double page
spread, I talk about a brand new type of house music, and this attracts
the audience because it’s all about dance music, which attracted them in
the firstplace, but with a slight twist. In general I think that all the
words used would attract and personally address theaudience of my
product.
The photo on my frontcover is of two people showing direct address,
which will make the audience see whatthe magazine is all about. The
people photographed arewearing fashionable, brightcoloured clothing,
which in my opinion represents dance music as a whole very well and
basically addresses the audience fromthe firstthing they’ve seen of the
magazine. On my contents page I used photos that reflect different
articles and features in the product. One of the photos is of someone
dancing which is obviously a big part of dance music and attracts the
audience as a result of the action shot taken. My double page spread has
a more calm approach with the solephoto being of a male artist with a
guitar in hand, but it also attracts and addresses the audience because
the article as a whole has an unknown factor to it.
I kept a consistentfeel with my fonts, becausealthough they are very
important in portraying your magazinein general, it was not necessary
to go over the top with the amount of different fonts I used. One of the
fonts used ‘WhoopAss’featured predominantly as I felt it was a very
relevant font for a dance magazine. Itis very funky and bouncy in my
opinion which reflects the feel of the product. Itwas used on all of my
magazine pages in various different sizes.
The colour schemes I used consisted of bright and bold colours again
reflecting the feel of dance music. The main colours I used were red,
blue and yellow, which are all primary colours, emphasising whattypeof
music dance is. This attracts and addresses thereader because the
magazine is very much themed.

7. My page layout was fairly straightforward as my audience is mainly
teenagers, so I need to make surethere’s a compromisebetween
physicaland visualcontent within my publication. There werecertain
parts of my magazine that I felt needed to be emphasised like certain
quotes and headlines, so they’re placed in fairly unnaturalpositions,
whereas there rest of the publication is structured similarly through the
frontcover, contents and finally double page spread.
6) Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Even though I had used photoshop before, I had never used it in this
detail. Looking back to my preliminary task and comparing it to my
finished piece, I have made a lot of progression. The firstthing that
strikes me is the professionality differencebetween the two. My
preliminary task was very basic, firstly becauseI was justgetting started
with using photoshop for this type of production and secondly wewere
limited on how long we could spend on the preliminary task.
The colour scheme was poor on my firstattempt and not really relevant.
This is becauseI didn’t realise the importanceof having an initial house
style. Also the fontsize was not consistent, and the front cover had no
content on it whatsoever. I realised that my final productneeded to be
jam-packed with content and I changed this when I made the actual
thing, showing a clear difference. The photo on my ‘College Life’
magazine is out of focus and this is very noticeable and clearly makes my
preliminary front cover unprofessional. For my actual frontcover, I made
sureI had a range of options for different types of frontcovers, so that I
could choosethe one that suited my magazine best. Furthermore, I used
audience research to build on my previous knowledgeof Photoshop and
so that I could make my magazine as suited to the potential reader as
possible.

8. Frommy marketresearch, I was introduced to different magazine
publishers like Bauer for Q Magazine and industries, which gave me an
understanding of the background to music magazines. My audience
research probably showed me the most new information, for example
finding out who the audiences are of certain magazines, so I could fit my
music magazine genre specifically to the audience. Also frommy
audience research, I learnt how to classify people into groups based on
factors like wealth and occupation and their location in the UK that
consequently helped me decide whatto include in my final magazine. In
terms of research techniques, I learnt two new ways of gathering
information. This came in the formof doing interviews with two
different people, which is classed as qualitative data as it featured
people answering questions, and expanding on them. I found this useful
because it meant I could gather answers that are moredetailed even
though it did not involvemany people. The other type of technique I
used was a survey on the internet, using Survey Monkey and is a formof
quantitative data becauseit involved a larger range of people and had
more straightforward questions to answer that didn’t necessarily
involve as much detail as the 1 to 1 interviews. Both of these techniques
were new to me and helped me massively in the production of my
magazine.
Overall, I feel I made a lot of progress and learnt many new things
regarding my music magazine which all helped me in the build-up to my
eventual final magazine.