2.
When we began making
magazines in September, I created
a Science-related magazine for our
preliminary task. It featured some
codes and conventions such as a
masthead, buzzwords, puffs,
quotes and subtitles, but it lacked
other typical magazine features. It
was also quite bland, with the
same fonts used throughout.
Although I liked the picture, it
looked like something made in
Microsoft Word.
3.
Since my preliminary task, I have learnt a lot more, particularly
about codes and conventions of alternative rock magazines, and
generally just music magazines on the whole. I
researched Alternative rock bands and fashion, and this helped me
to create an idea for my front cover as to what the models might
where and how they might stand. I also created my survey, and
this helped me to develop an idea as to what my audience may be
looking for, what ages they were and what they would expect on
an alternative rock magazine. I did not do any of this for my
preliminary task, and I found that all of the research I did
definitely came in useful when making my final piece.
Learning about the codes and conventions was also important, as I
managed to find magazines which I could get ideas from, and use
dafonts.com to get different fonts like other magazines do.
4. I also did a lot of research on types of alternative rock
bands and their music, as it helped me to get an idea of the
kinds of bands that would be featured on my magazine. I
used various websites to help get this idea across,
including 8tracks,where I made a playlist of examples of
rock bands and their style, YouTube where I uploaded a
video of me performing a song by an alternative rock
band, and then continued to use YouTube
and Soundcloud to show more and more examples. I
found that all of these research materials helped me to get
an accurate idea of what I was aiming to do.
I also found doing magazine deconstructions useful. I
could analyse various magazines and their genres to see
what different kinds of codes and conventions each of
them held in comparison to alternative rock. For example I
saw that pop magazines consisted of bright colours and
was considerably more upbeat than rock magazines which
had darker colours and a less excitable tone.
5.
As I continued with my magazine, I updated it and asked
for feedback on it, and each time I updated I got more
feedback and it ended up to be very useful to me.
I feel that all of these stages towards my final piece has
helped me to develop my magazine, based on the
information I found out such as my audience, colours
used, what you would expect in an alternative rock
magazine, the differences of conventions based on genre
and these all helped me to create my magazine.
However, if I could change things on my magazine, I
would include a brighter colour to the buzzword 'FREE',
maybe include a tagline on the front page.
