The document provides an evaluation of a student's media project to create a music magazine. It summarizes the feedback received from audience testing, which was positive about the magazine's professional layout and engaging front cover. The student learned new technologies like Photoshop and InDesign in completing the project. Looking back, the student feels their finished product is a significant improvement over their preliminary task, and that they made the right design choices to create a magazine that looks professional.

1. EVALUATION
AS MEDIA EVALUATION
By Sam Walsh

2. Introduction
- For my Media Practical I chose to make a music
magazine.
- I had to create a front cover, contents page and a
double page spread.
- The pictures I used had to be my own, the text and
article had to be my own and the ideas had to be my
own.

3. Audience Testing Results
Question 1
What does the title suggest to you ?
Most people’s response was a music magazine.

4. Question 2
What genre/type of music does this magazine focus on and
how do you know this ?
a mix of artists just one artist
As you can see only one person
10%
thought the magazine was just
about one type of music where-
as everybody else thought it was
about different genre’s.
90%

5. Question 3
What makes the pages look professional and what stops
them from looking professional ?
Most people said that my pages
are well layed out but some
spaces could be filled better.

6. Question 4
How genuine does the front cover seem ?
Most of my answers to this question were that its was a
very genuine layout. On one of my answers they even said
it could be mistaken for a front cover of a real magazine.

7. Question 5
Does the contents page simply inform or does it manage to
interest you in reading the rest of the magazine ?
My feedback for this again was very much the same all the
way through. The answers were that it did both.

8. Question 6
Does the article sound like a piece of journalism ? If not what
bits don’t sound right ?
Again here I got the same answers of people that it sounds
like a piece of journalism but there are grammar errors.

9. Question 7
Does the article layout make you want to read it ? If not
why ?
There was one repetitive answer that kept coming up to this
question the answer was simply yes.

10. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and convention of real media products ?
The title is very eye catching and
they have to be otherwise they
wouldn’t get picked up of the
The text down the sides here gives
shelves so this is a feature the real
it the look of a real magazine as
music magazines would have in.
well because of the
advertisements, the price and the
website.
The picture is big and fills most of the
page, the person in the image is
looking straight at you. All big
magazines get this effect on the front
cover.
This bar across the bottom of the page The barcode just makes the
is an idea i got from a magazine because magazine look even more
it is there to highlight all the main artists realistic , like a real magazine.
that are featured that week and it stands
out very well.

11. The big bold title makes the page
stand out, and emphasis what page
it is.
The features column is very popular on
a contents page because it gives you The pictures are very important
the information you need to find what because they show an insight into
page your looking for. It also highlights the featured bands and artists that
the best stories that week in the are listed in the features column.
magazine.

12. The title is the same font that
is used on the front cover
because it is good to carry the
font through. It is also eye
catching and would make you
wan to read the article.
The picture is big and
features the artist in
action because then
it is more exiting to
look at and then makes
you want to see what the
article is about.
The article is well layed out and well read, the reader will want to read it and see what it is about because of the layout and
surrounding things.

13. How does your media product represent social groups ?
In my magazine there is not one specific type/genre of music
so therefore there is not one social group that will read it
there is many. This means that the magazine will be read by
many different social groups and liked by all. The magazine is
not focused on one more than the other and this is what
they will like.

14. What type of institution might distribute your media product
and why ?
I have been looking at the top magazines and arguably the
top leading music magazine NME is published by the institute
IPC. This is the Institute I would want to go with because
they have clearly been successful with NME and so they
would help my magazine a lot. I think my magazine is the
magazine IPC will be looking for its a new type of music
magazine because its focusing on different genres and they
would make lots of it, if it worked out.

15. Who would be your audience for your media product ?
After thinking about this, my audience would be from the age
of 12 to the age of 25. This is because I feel it is in this age
group that people but music magazines and I feel anybody in
that age group will like this magazine and would like to buy
it. They would want to buy it to find out the news on all
artists instead of buying four different magazines to find out
the same information.

16. How did you attract/address your audience ?
I attracted their attention with
a title that stood out, an
exiting picture, big fonts and
big names on the front cover.
This is the basics of catching
the eye of the reader, the
people then read into the
smaller print and found that
there was exiting stories and
then go on to read it.

17. What have you learnt about technologies from the process
of producing this product ?
In the making of this product I have learnt a lot of things, we
used an apple mac to work on I am used to using one of
these as I have one at home but their was new programs we
used that I wasn’t familiar with.
- I used the internet to find images, fonts, barcodes
and general information. http://www.google.co.uk and
http://www.dafont.com/
- I used http://www.blogger.com/ to create our own blog
on which we posted our progress.

18. - I used a Digital camera and a lighting studio to get the
pictures I needed for my magazine.
- I used a program called photoshop. I used this to cut out
images so that I could put them on a plain white background
then the background they were originally on wouldn’t ruin
the end result.
- I also used a program called Indesign. I used this to create
my magazine, after the tutorial on how to use it it became
very much second nature to use and it was very smart on
how it put everything together.

19. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the finished
product ?
This is my preliminary task (to the
right)and to say it was in the first
few weeks of using Indesign when
I created this I was pretty impressed
with it. Now I look back at
it though compared to my finished
front page I don’t feel it is even
close to being as good as my
finished product.
I now feel a lot more familiar with the
programs than when i did my
preliminary task and so i would expect it
to be better. Also I think my decision
making has been better in that choosing
the fonts and colours etc.

20. Conclusion
Overall I am very pleased with my final
product. I think I made all the right choices
when it came to layout, choosing images,
font, colours etc. I think it looks very professional,
the only negative I have about it is that there are
grammar errors in my article which I didn’t correct.
Even with these errors though my article still reads
like a piece of journalism I feel and I think without them
grammar errors it could pass for a good quality music
magazine,