Luke Thomas has created a music magazine called Alva aimed at young adults aged 15-25 who enjoy punk, indie, and rock music. To attract this audience, the magazine uses conventions from existing magazines like colorful covers featuring well-known bands and competitions. However, it also uses unconventional elements like a comic book theme and unique backgrounds to make the magazine visually striking. The featured artist interview provides fun facts about the musician in an entertaining way while avoiding promoting stereotypical rock and roll lifestyles around substance abuse. For distribution, a major media company like Bauer or IPC Media would be needed to achieve national success.

1. MEDIA
EVALUATION
BY LUKE THOMAS

2. IN WHAT WAYS DOES THE MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP AND CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
My product uses several conventions that are common in existing
magazines like NME and Kerrang. I have done this so the target
audience will recognize it on the market as a music magazine and
the genre and audience isn‟t questioned. For example, it has a
barcode, price and all the usual relevant information on the front
cover, and a large masthead so there is little question as to what
the genre and brand of the magazine is. All these features help sell
the magazine effectively. I have included a large, central image to
be the main focus of the cover. Similarly, the contents page has a
clear and conventional layout so the information is not scattered
and hard to find for the reader. The interview also follows basic
conventions, being ordered in an article format. In following
certain conventions I have given my magazine some much needed
realism, and using these features has helped make the final
product look more like a magazine that would be sold on the
market and less like poor standard GCSE work.

3. My magazine has some unconventional features though. It has a bright
and colourful comic book theme which is rarely used for music
magazines, which tend to follow a black, gothic and cluttered theme to
suit the rock genre. The use of reds, yellows and purples are very
punkie and contrasting, which make the magazine visually striking and
unconventional. The background on the front cover and the contents
page are made up from scribbles (described in the interview as having
been drawn by the featured artist). This makes the background
completely unique and original, and thus unconventional. The layout of
my interview is also unconventional, showing a rock singer in a quite
idyllic hill setting. This setting also contrasts with the title, which
retains the comic book theme of the contents and front cover, and in the
main picture the singer is dressed in punk/ indie clothing. This links to
the theme of this article; to meet the real Will Marshall, the article shows
the person behind the persona he has built. I have made the
background on the interview contrasting to make it visually striking like
the other pages, and perhaps to express the singers contrasting
personality.

4. I have used specific jargon with the title Alva. It is the middle
name of Thomas Edison, who created the gramophone. This
title is very unconventional, as my target audience are indie
teens and this name is very unrelated to the genre. Despite
this, it is linked to music and is short and catchy like similar
magazines like NME so is conventional in that sense.

5. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL
GROUPS?
As my product is aimed at young adults aged 15-25, it must
use language that will appeal to them and images related to
the genre. I have tried to achieve this by keeping the writing
simple yet informative, particularly in my interview. For
example, it follows a simple question answer structure to
maintain readability in the article, and it consists mainly of
fun facts and trivia rather than statistics and numbers. This
keeps the article interesting and entertaining for the
stereotypically short attention spanned young audience.
Maintaining this stereotypical view on my target audience, I
have kept the text minimal on both the front cover and
contents page, and more focus on strong images that stand
out. The images used all are of people aged under 20, which
further establishes the magazine as aimed and related to
young adults.

6. The major social groups represented in my magazine are
punk, indie and rock movements. Punk dominates the
magazine as it is used as the major theme, particularly in the
colourful and contrasting colour scheme. This is mainly due to
the fact that one of the major features that would appear in my
product would be a retrospective on punk music, and in having
a punk theme it would bring the audiences attention to it being
linked with the genre. I have tried to incorporate many
influential and instantly recognised aspects of the punk genre
to my magazine, including using a punk symbol (the anarchy
„A‟) on the front cover and the inclusion of images of classic
punk albums that are now synonymous with the genre.

7. The musician featured in my interview does follow the
stereotypical vision of musicians and their rock and roll
lifestyles, which often consists of substance abuse and
following the old idea of “sex, drugs and rock and roll”.
However, Will Marshall is fictionally portrayed as being “clean
and teetotal since 2009”, to ensure the article doesn‟t promote
drugs for the young and impressionable audience. The major
theme of the article is to reveal the real Will Marshall, perhaps
after events that prelude this article. Either way the idyllic
setting of the article contrasts with the stereotypical view of
rock and roll being nightclubs and dark rooms. Again
stereotypically of most musicians, their lives are plagued with
various tragedies. This is often the case with musicians, who
will use tragic circumstances to give them more humanity and
an emotional edge over other musicians, and to gain popularity
and common ground with their audiences. Following this I
decided to use his fathers death as a catalyst for his motivation
towards music.

8. WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION
MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT AND WHY?
Following most magazines, my product would be distributed by a much
larger company, but if it is able to compete on the market professionally
against other popular magazines like NME and Kerrang, it must be
distributed by one of the big names, in particular Bauer (Q, Kerrang etc.) or
IPC Media (NME, Uncut etc.). Both are competing companies, and both have
a similar scope in scale of distribution. Despite this, IPC Media have a large
gap in their market for magazines like ALVA (being a mix of indie/ alternative
rock/ punk) with only NME being a big name music magazine in their
collection. Another magazine like mine would help them compete better
against Bauer, and alternatively if it we‟re to be distributed by Bauer, the
similarities with NME would weaken the chance of success for my magazine
on the market compared to these well established brands. The reason for
using a well established media institution as my distributor is simply
because that will almost certainly mean higher sale figures rather than if it
was independently distributed. Having a well established distributor will
help give it national success rather than just localized success, meaning it
will be more widely known and eventually become well established like other
music magazines on the market.

9. WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE
FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?
The primary audience for my media product, as detailed
in my target audience model, would be young adults
aged between 15 and 25. Following the NRS
classification system, my primary audience will be in the
C1, C2 and B boundaries, which will mean they will be
working to middle class, who are probably tired of the
constraints put on them from class, status and gender.
They‟ll have a rebellious streak, possibly dying their hair
and wearing emo/ mosher clothes as a way to get rid of
these constraints put on them by their peers, family and
society as a whole. Music will most likely make up a
large part of their lives, so my magazine has to love
music as much as them. It must inform them on tour
dates and new releases from their favourite bands, but
also entertain them with articles that contain fun facts
and anecdotes about their favourite bands. There must
be a variety of bands (from Metallica to Asking
Alexandria to The Smiths) to attract a larger variety of
audiences, but still stick to the major alternative genre
to keep it specialized (For example, no articles on rap or
pop).

10. HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/
ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?
I tried to attract and address my target audience with my
product in a variety of ways. One of the major ways to do this
in a music magazine is mentioning brands that are well known
to the audience, particularly well known bands. On the front
cover, I mention several to attract fickle readers to my
product, including Green Day and AC/DC. The inclusion of this
on the magazine front cover means they will be included in
some way within the magazine, and will attract fans of those
bands to read it. Also on the front cover I have included a
competition to win tickets to an Arctic Monkeys gig, so the
prospect of winning something may attract the young
audience to the magazine, and it is directly linked to the
central theme of music. I have directly addressed the
audience in the note from the editor segment on my contents
page, where I have included a paragraph to summarise the
most important articles featured in the magazine. Whilst it
remains pretty generic, it does refer to the audience as “...for
all you music lovers out there.” This shows that the editors
understand that the target audience will love music and will
have bought this magazine for this as a primary reason.

11. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT
TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS
OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?
In creating my media product, I have had to produce the majority of
my work on Photoshop. In using this software, I have learnt a lot
more on making my product look more professional and less like
GCSE work. I have worked on various things, like adding contrast
and brightness levels, to make my images striking and easily eye
catching. When using Photoshop in the past, I have often misjudged
the scale of my work, often resulting in too small photos and too
large text, which make my work look amateur and messy. To avoid
this problem I have printed out and seen previews of my work as I
have done it, and compared it to existing magazines at all times to
make sure it looks professional in comparison. I have also used the
stroke effect on various texts I want to look the most important, such
as the title on my two page spread and my masthead, and also drop
shadows and outer glows to stop the magazine looking stationary
and flat. Another problem I have had in the past when using
Photoshop are the backgrounds, where I have usually used the
gradient tool. Unfortunately I realized early on that this doesn‟t
create a sense of verisimilitude because it doesn‟t look like a product
that would be on the market. Instead I decided to use an
unconventional drawing as my background, which makes it look
different to other magazines yet it still retains a sense of realism.
Similarly on my contents page I have used a faint drawing over a
plain blue background so it will link to my front cover, and on my
background for the two page spread it is the same as on the picture I
took, a hill setting. I tried to minimize the amount of cutting on
photo‟s I had to do to take away the initial backgrounds, as cutting
can often look messy and I wanted to maintain some realism to the
images.

12. Due to the amount of Photoshop used, I have had to do the
majority of my work on Apple Macs. This proved difficult at first
due to me being more used to PC‟s, but in creating this product I
have become more skilled with Mac's, being able to use most of
the programs on them successfully. My other most used piece
of equipment whilst creating my product is definitely the still
cameras. I have used 1 original image on my front cover, 5 on
my contents page on 3 on my two page spread. All 9 of these
were taken at different times with 5 different models, and so I
have learnt over the span of this course how to use
photography successfully. Along with the above, I also used the
Safari browser to get additional images needed for my
magazine, including the barcode, some of the text, the parental
advisory logo on my album cover etc. I also used it with my
research into existing products, research of distribution
companies and other research into bands and albums. I have
had to put all the work I have done over the course of this year
on Blogger. I have had to make sure I have made regular posts
on various aspect of my production, including evidence of my
research, planning, progression, extra details and my final
product. I had never used Blogger before this year so I have had
to learn over the duration of the year how to use it.

13. LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY
TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE
LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO
THE FULL PRODUCT.
In the progression I have made from Preliminary task to my final product, I have
definitely made significant improvement in all areas of media. For one thing I
have learnt that the attention to detail is very important, such as if a magazine
front cover doesn‟t hold the relevant information (such as barcode, title, issue
number etc.) the audience will find it difficult in establishing the genre and it will
also look less professional. Another thing I have learnt over the duration of this
year is to make sure I use effective backgrounds on my work. Instead of just
using block colour or gradients on Photoshop, I have opted for photos and
other original images as this makes the product look more visually interesting.
Unlike my preliminary task, I have aimed to make each page visually
striking, instead of solely focusing on my front cover, and I believe I have
achieved this during my progression. Another skill I have developed over the
last year is photography, which at the start on my preliminary task I did
shoddily. For work on my final pieces, I made sure that I took a large amount of
photos of each person, so I could pick the better ones to use on my magazine. I
also tried out various different lighting effects on the pictures I took to find out
the better aesthetic look for each situation and to successfully portray the
models ideology. Following the idea “A picture paints a thousand words” I have
tried to effectively express as much about the models character as I
can, particularly focusing on how mise en scene can be used to portray them.
These are all things I would not have payed much attention to during the
preliminary task, but which help the product look better and more like an actual
magazine on the market.