Final evaluation.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine cover follows most of the conventional features seen on a magazine. I have compared it to an NME cover which follows a similar genre and style to my magazine. The masthead on my magazine is place on the top left corner; this is so that when stacked on shelves in the shops people will see it and recognize it. I decided to keep the name of magazine short and simple; as it is bold I think it will catch the audience’s eye more.  I used a bright red colour for the masthead as it would stand out around the other magazines in the shops drawing the readers to it.  The barcode, price, issue number and date are all conventional features on a magazine cover as they tell the readers what they are buying, and keep them up to date with the magazine they are reading or thinking of subscribing to.  I used a large text so that “triplicity” would stand out and the audience would know who the main feature is in the magazine. The teasing contents is used to tell the audience what is in the magazine, the smaller features and teasing contents are places at the bottom and the sides of the cover and are both quite small, this doesn’t take the audience’s attention away from the main feature of the magazine.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product is an indie music magazine called “NV”. My magazine is aimed at an audience aged between 16 and 27 which are interested in indie music. The magazine is aimed at both a male and female audience. The price of the magazine is £2.30 which makes it available to most people in a d to c1 range socio economic group. The magazine is filled with stories and information on artists and upcoming events for the readers to hear about, with interviews with their favourite artists to information on the festivals in the upcoming year. The photograph on the cover of this magazine is of three girls, the girls are all wearing similar colours on their clothes and all have fur on their hoods making them look quite wild and “care free” as they do not look like a stereotypical girl group with their hair and makeup done with fancy clothing on. I believed that this may draw the audience’s attention more as it doesn’t become a fashion magazine meaning that the readers can concentrate on researching about their favourite music and read about new events. The inspiration for my magazine cover was NME as it is a magazine of a similar genre and is aimed at a similar audience to mine and there are not many like it, this is why I didn’t choose to create a pop/chart magazine as there have been a lot of these in the past.

What kind of music institution might distribute your media product and why?

My magazine has been inspired hugely by NME magazine, I think that IPC media would publish this magazine as they also publish NME, the magazines are quite similar but I don’t think that they would attract the same audiences, which means that the magazines would not be competing against each other, fighting for the same readers. I think that NME is aimed at more of a mature reader as it has a very structured layout to it.

 Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for my magazine would be females for 16-27. I think that the majority of the audience for this magazine would be female. During my research I found that 73% of the audience of NME magazine is males, I think that my magazine would be the opposite of this. Although the magazines are both similar genres I believe my magazine is aimed more towards a female audience and that most of the readers of this magazine would be students as they are young and music is very popular with a young demographic which means that a lot of young people like to keep up to date with what is happening in the “music world”, from new albums to what festivals they can visit in the summer. I think that my magazine has a similar pychographical profile to NME magazine, their readers spend on average £532 on clothes per year and another £152 a year on shoes, I think this shows that the readers are of an age that they feel they have to follow the latest trends and fashions. The readers of NME spend £1229 on audio equipment a year which shows they are obviously more interested in music than clothing, listening to the newest music and bands on the newest and best sound systems, information like this is helpful when publishing a magazine as it allows us to guide the contents of the magazine. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

I don’t think that the price of my magazine was too high; I did not put a high price on the magazine, at £2.30 the magazine is affordable to most readers and doesn’t make them feel intimidated by a high price they feel they cannot afford. To attract my audience I used a splash on the cover of the magazine offering the chance to win prizes, with promotional gifts on the cover the audience are willing to pay money towards they magazine as they believe that they could be saving a lot of money with the chance to win the prizes on the cover. I believe that the magazine doesn’t look too intimidating and looks available to all audience, not just people that are interested in indie music but people that are interested in other music that just feel like they would like to expand on their music knowledge, I believe that this makes all readers feel like they are part of “the scene”. By using an image with all of the artists looking into the camera at the audience, this creates an interaction with the audience making them focus mainly to this feature. To find out whether I had done the right things to attract the right audiences I created a survey to receive audience feedback, I stored the results into pie charts.

These results show that it is obvious to most of the audience of the magazine what genre it is. 

These results show that around 70% of the people that answered the questionnaire are willing to pay around £2.00 to £2.50 for the magazine and around 30% would pay £1.00 to £2.00, I think that these answers are fair as most of the audience the magazine is aimed at are students which may not have disposable income after paying for their education costs.

80% of the people that answered the questionnaire agreed that the magazine is aimed at people aged around 16 to 27, 10% said that the audience for the magazine would be 12 to 15, I find this surprising because most magazines aimed at that age are not of an Indie music genre but are pop and chart music magazines and tips on make up and fashion such as 'sugar' or 'shout' magazine.

80% of the people that did the questionnaire said that they would subscribe to the magazine, I think that this is a good outcome and did not expect everybody that did the questionnaire to say they would subscribe as I didn't know about their music tastes and what kind of magazine they would subscribe to. 

What have you learnt about technologies for the process of constructing this product?

When creating the magazine I used Photoshop to edit my photographs and create my magazines. The first step was to create an A4 sized page and use to solid colour tool for the background of the page. To place the image onto the page I had to cut around the models in the photograph so that there wasn’t a plain white block behind them, I used the quick selection tool and the magnetic lasso tool to select the shape around the models, I then deleted the white background and used a blur tool around the edges of the models so that the edges of the image wasn’t so sharp making it less obvious that the image had been cut from a background I used the burn tool on the tips of the hoods as they were fury. I didn’t want to make the image of the models look too edited like models do on most magazine covers, so I simply just used the spot fix tool to create a natural clear skin on the models. I transformed the large text used for the main feature on the magazine; I used the skew tool and a drop shadow to create a 3d effect making the main feature of the magazine stand out to the readers more. I used the ruler tool on the left side of the cover to make sure that all of the text used was in line on that side of the page which created a neater, tidier look. For each shape, text or image used on the cover I had to create another layer, each layer added is placed on top of the previous one, I had to make sure that all of the layers were in the order that I wanted them to be so that things were only overlapping each other when I made them that way. An example of this is when I had to create the splash, I used the ellipse tool to create the white circle, and on top of this I used the horizontal type tool, which I transformed and skewed.

Progression

I think it looks quite obvious that I have put more effort and done more research into creating my music magazine. Since creating my college magazine I have learnt how to use more tools on Photoshop which made me a lot more confident when it came to creating my music magazine, I learnt more about how real magazines are created for different audiences. When making my college magazine I didn’t know much about creating a piece aimed at a specific audience. I learnt more about house styles and what colours worked with each other, when looking at my college magazine the text is hard to read as the colours underneath are too similar. I knew that when I was making my music magazine that the text had to be bold. I placed the text on red rectangles, the text I used what black and white which I thought would stand out to the audience.  

When making the college magazine I only created a quick mock-up of what a contents page layout may look like. When creating the music magazine I wanted to make sure that I put a lot more effort into it and make sure that it looked a lot better that the college magazine did. To make the music magazine look better and more like a real music magazine I had to make sure that I could take more photographs rather than just use boxes to show where the images and text would be placed. I had to put proper page numbers and to follow the conventions of a music magazine I didn’t use the word “page” with a list of what was in the magazine. I kept to the same house styles as the cover with the colours, black, white and red. This makes the magazine flow more so that when not put together it is still obvious which magazine the pages belong to.