Final Magazine Pages

I edited some of the text to prevent them having a white outline against the dark background.
Here are the final versions of my magazine pages;

Audience Feedback

Within the magazine industry, it is important for producers and editors to receive feedback and opinions from others as a way of making their magazines more successful. Therefor i asked a variety of people within the target audience age bracket to comment on my magazine allowing me to receive different types of criticism and possible improvements to my magazine as well as allowing me to see the successful areas of my magazine pages.

Below are are some of the quotes i received from the feedback;
"Your magazine looks really professional"
"I'd defiantly buy it if i saw it on the shelves"
"The bold colours really stand out. I like it!"


I'm really happy with the over magazine and the feedback i was given!

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT AND LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

I think these two questions go hand in hand with each other as they both  ask how have i improved my skills from the first preliminary task of creating school magazine to the music magazine whether that be through the improvement of editing skills or simply through the ideas i produced.

When creating the school magazine i was able to research into current magazines identifying  the main codes and conventions adding realism to successful magazines.

Putting my magazines next to each other, i can defiantly see an improvement within my work. the main improvement in my work is through the use of the text particularly the positioning and colouring of the text itself. In the first task, i feel some of the text a struggle to read and lacks clarity. However, when designing my music magazine, i wanted the text to be one hundred percent readable as this would defiantly jeopardise the audiences chances of buying the magazine so i tried particularly hard to make this happen by using appropriate and readable text fonts and colours.

To do this, i used websites such as;

 www.dafont.com

 www.myfonts.com

These enabled me to find interesting and exciting fonts for my magazine which i used as a way of attracting audiences.

I really like the contents pages for both the preliminary task and the music magazine but for different reasons. I loved the simplicity of the school magazine contents page as i felt it was 'straight to the point' in providing information of what was involved in the magazine. Another thing i liked about the school magazine's contents page was the way i edited the schools badge to a very light fade and had it as the page background instead of having just a plain white. However, i feel that as these two pages are so different it is hard to compare them together although i feel that a clear improvement is visible.
Within the contents page for my music magazine, I was able to use more conventions such as ordering text into columns which is used in most magazines. I think the colours used in the music magzine are a huge contrast to the colours used within the school magazine pages as i've learnt in order for a product to sell, you must use bright and bold colours and as i've improved on this, i feel that my music magzine looks alot more attractive because of this.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?
My magazine is aimed at a young audience of females aged between 16-25 who are interested in the genre of Pop/Rock and have their own sense of style.I feel that my magazine attracts this type of audience from the front cover and throughout the magazine. The model used for the main cover image is a fashionable teenage girl pouting at the camera in a satirical manner.
On the cover of my magazine i've used a variety of different lures as a way of attracting the audience into reading into the magazine. These include;

 I feel that using lures are a great way of attracting the audience as it makes them feel they are experiencing something new which can't be found in any other magazine. Using words and phrases such as "blow your mind" and "you must download" add a sense of excitement to the magazine as it draws the audiences attention into the magazine as they'd want to find out more about the lures being displayed.

The lure above it possibly the most important lure used on the cover as it makes the audience believe that the magazine i have created is the best around and you won't find anything bigger or better in the UK.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT

Copy of Copy of Alice Caulfield on Prezi

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

In order to select the appropriate institution to distribute my media product, I chose to do some research to find the best company for my magazine.

IPC MEDIA- http://www.ipcmedia.com/ 
IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brand with their print reaching almost two thirds of UK woman and 42% of UK men which is almost 27million UK Adults. IPC offers something for everyone but they have a focus on three core audiences; me, mass market women and upmarket women.  Their portfolio includes;

Mens- comprises a wealth or leisure brands including Country Life and Rugby World as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts and NME.

Mass market women- famous women's weeklies including Look, Now and Chat; TV entertainment brands including TV Times.

Upmarket women's Division- luxury fashion brands including Marie Claire and home interest brands including Ideal Home.

It is clear to see that due to the amount of recognisable brands IPC distributes for, it is a successful business.

My magazine is much similar to NME which comes under the Men's category. However, the magazines in both women's categories are within the fashion, reality and TV magazines with no music magazines for women. As there are no female music magazines within this institution, I'm not sure how successful my magazine may be as there are no other success stories of the same genre within this institution. Although, contrasting this, my magazine would be the first female music magazine in this institution which could create a popular audience as it is something new they've not distributed before.

Bauer Media- http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/
Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media Group consisting of many companies collected around two main divisions – Magazines and Radio.  Bauer Media is built on influential media brands with millions of personal relationships with engaged readers and listeners. their strategy is to connect audiences with good content and the wide portfolio of influential brands gives them an advantages over pure play magazines or radio competitors.

I think Bauer would be the perfect institution to distribute my magazine as it emphasises it's importance with creating a personal relationship with it's readers. Throughout my magazine, i have tried to use language which is personable and informal as a way of trying to connect with the audience of my magazine as a way of making them feel like they belong to a group.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS

My magazine is that of a pop/rock genre with artist influences such as Coldplay, The Streets, Ed Sheeran, Lily Allen and The Kooks. This creates a hybrid genre as I have combined two very popular and mainstream genres as a way of hopefully boosting the success of the magazine.  I collected images of the typical audience members of my magazine. These characters best suited the "festival look" which comprised of pretty summer dresses teamed with grungy looking biker boots or slogan tees and ripped shorts.

 

When thinking of my target audience, I also began to think of how i can represented this social group through the use of images and colour schemes. The colour scheme for my magazine is red, white and blue representing the "Best of British Issue" I've created. Connotations of these colours include; 

• White- purity and innocence. This contrasts the rockiness of the magazine yet also compliments the pop aspect. 
•  Red- love, passion, boldness. These connotations can be associated to the rock side of my magazine.
• Blue- security, peace, relaxing. This can be shown through both genres of my mag zine as well as linking with McQuail, Blumer and Brown's theory of Diversion-  the audience escaping their everyday life to relax and enjoy the magazine.

Throughout my magazine, I used specific sociolect language which would engage my audience such as using phrases like "dead good" within my interview with Lola and having a fun quickfire round of random questions. This type of mode of address adds a sense of informality to my magazine creating an appropriate level of interaction with the target audience and social group of pop/rock audiences as well as creating a bond between the audience.

When creating my front cover in particular, I wanted to create a character which would appeal to the target audience of my magazine. To do this,  I carefully thought of the mise-en- scene of the image so that it would reflect the genre of my magazine. The cover image of my cover artist is in black and white. She's wearing a black coat which I added red roses to replacing the mundane buttons which were originally on the coat. The inspiration behind this idea was rock band Guns N Roses logo shown below;

However, the red rose can have contrasting connotations. Red roses could mean love and girlyness within the pop aspect of my magazine but also show a harshness and boldness within the rocky aspect of the genre.

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

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

As a way of identifying how successful my magazine is regarding codes and conventions, I've analysed a cover from a magazine of a similar genre, Q magazine and compared it to my own front cover to determine the likeness between them both. In order to identify the codes and conventions, I've labelled them and added a description of why they are used and the effect that it had on the audience.

When designing my magazine I took into account the different conventions used in actual magazines to create realism throughout the product. To do this, I included stereotypical codes and conventions of a music magazine including; a masthead, luring techniques, bar codes/price/issue number and an interesting and engaging cover shot. Also in the Contents and double page spread pages, I used typical magazine conventions such as using columns within the text to give the magazine an authentic feel to it.  As well as using a traditional Heading within the article, an enlarged quote from the artist was used as this is often the case within real magazines and i wanted to replicate their success.

On the double page spread, I also included the slogan from my magazine along with the page number as this is a main convention which occurs on all magazine pages.  

Also used on the double page spread, was the technique of ordering text into columns as this is what occurs in most music magazines.

Double Page Spread

Front Cover and Contents Page

Front Page

Contents Page

Photo Editing

This is the original photo used on my contents page. When designing the page, I didn't think the photo particularly stood out and decided I wanted to edit the colours so that it would so.  I really like the picture as it allows me to add plenty of text to the left of the page without having to edit or crop the actual photo.

I began editing the colours on the photo to try and emphasise the picture. By changing the contrast and brightness of the original photo, I was able to produce photos similar to the one on the left. Although i like the colouring on the image as it is very bright i felt that the text could potentially become hard to read due to the fact that the background is an orange/red colour and the text would also be red.

I felt that although i like the colouring used on this image, it is quite soft and I'm not sure whether it would fit in with the pop/rock genre of my magazine.

Double Page spread editing

When I saw this image from Adele's interview in Q Magazine, i immediately thought about how good it looked and as a result, i wanted to replicate this for my own magazine.  As the text has a hand written effect to it, i decided the best way to produce something similar to this was to actually hand write the interview and then scan it onto the computer.

When I'd handwritten the interview and scanned it onto the computer, I felt that the text was quite hard to read as a  lot of the text colour had lightened. I tried to darken the text that had become lighter but found this was hard to do without effecting the pieces of text that had scanned successfully. As a result of this, i chose to type the text due to the fact that although hand writing would have made the interview more unique than others, i didn't want to jeopardise the audiences ability to read the text just to make it more unique than others.

Working Ideas

When I first began planning my music magazine, I chose to design a pop magazine as this is they type of genre I would personally be interested in myself . This magazine would have a genre of teenage girls ages between 13-16 and be based much upon the new pop magazine We Love Pop as shown above but after seeing the image of Jessie J, also above, i was really inspired as i thought it was a  strong and powerful image perfect for a more pop/rock style of magazine. I then decided on creating a magazine of a pop/rock genre with a older target audience of  both males and females aged between16-25 interested popular and new pop/rock artists.  I would say a typical member of my audience would ;

• aged 16-25
• have a keen interest in pop/rock artists, particularly British artists as my issue will be 'The Best of British"
• male or female- not gender specific.

My brand person would be fairly 'out there' and wouldn't be scared to express their beliefs of opinions. They would have a keen interest in all types of music but pop/rock in particular. If i was to put a person to my brand, i would say Jessie J was the perfect choice.  She is a feisty, outspoken character who seems to completely adore music and everything about it. From reading articles and hearing interviews with her, i think she stands up for what she believes in and doesn't let anyone else's opinion overrule hers.

At the moment, my magazine is called M- the initial of music. From the very start of my planning stage, i knew that i wanted a short, bold title much like the iconic Q magazine which has now become a well known brand. The brand identity is bold, edgy and of a pop/rock genre.

I hope my target audience will buy my magazine as it will be attractive to the eye. I want to use bold colours and images which would grab the audiences attention. By using these colours, i hope my magazine will look appealing and stand out amongst other magazines on the shelf.

My masthead is situated in a red box on the top left hand corner taking up a fairly large section of the top of the magazine. The letter M will be written in a red box to contrast against the red background colour and therefore make them stand out against each other. I've used a much softer rounded bubble like text as this will contrast from the harsh, bold image.

As I've decided for my magazine to be the 'Best of British' issue, I'm using very bold, patriotic colours of red, blue and white. Bright colours will really stand out to the audience when next to other magazines. The background colours clash against the midnight black, strong bob of Jessie J used on the main image. The colours will juxtapose each other and make the cover stand out further.

I hope to include the following features in my magazine;  an exclusive interview with the cover artists which will be a double page spread, an interview with two other artists- one well known, the other possibly not well known. I'm also going to include competitions for festival/concert tickets in the summer such as V- Fest and Hard Rock Calling as well as offering the audience the chance to win tickets to the cover artists concert.  At the moment, i'm not planning on including a luring gift as i'm unsure of what to include and if it will fit in with the magazines image but if i do choose a gift, it will probably be official merchandise from the cover artist for example a wristband. 

I want to include bold images for both my cover and double page spread. For my cover image, i will hopefully have a good close up of my cover artists so that i can show the artists emotions and facial expressions. On my double page spread, i'm planning on getting a mix of camera shots and sizes- hopefully including a good long shot of my artist. As it will be a bold cole up on the cover, i want to focus the attention on to this shot.

Along with my main image, i want to include anchorage text of a quote from my cover artist to add to the image. The contents page will include a short description of the main stories in the magazine and a brief idea as to what these stories with include.