The typical conventions of a music magazine for the front cover are photos showing one or more of the artists that are featured in the magazine, a logo for the magazine that can be used to identify it when people see the magazine on the shelf, masthead which is the magazine title and is normally large and bold and stands out as it is the name of the magazine, like all products it will contain a barcode so that it can be sold in shops and lastly it will contain a issue number so people who buy the magazine regularly can see what issue they are on. It would also include frequency showing if the magazine is weekly or monthly etc.
My front cover of my music magazine I used a masthead, issue number, barcode, a large photo but does not contain a logo which I could add if I needed to make the front cover again to improve it. I used a lot of text on my front cover which people who answered my questionnaire said was bold and stood out well making it easy to read. Yet people who answered my questionnaire said that my front cover was lacking more information about the gig guide inside and this could be one of the main things I would have to do to improve my front cover to better fit the audiences standards. My front cover also used fairly bright colours that would make it stand out on a shelf, and I carried out this continuity onto my contents page but my double page spread still looks like it is from the same magazine but is different.
The conventions of a music magazine contents page are a page title with date and issue, quotes from various articles within, a section saying what is featured, images from inside the magazine, continuous colour scheme, page numbers to show what is on each page, large clear font and some advertisements.
My contents page contains some of the conventions mentioned above but could do with some quotes from the articles inside the magazine, my font could be clearer and stand out more, my page numbers need to go higher so that people know they are getting there moneys worth for the magazine and it could include some advertisements.
The conventions of a music magazine double page spread they are, an introduction to the article, name of the artists large and clear so that it shows who the article is about, highlighted quotes form the article, the article written in columns with clear font, contact details for the editor, a large picture of the band and some smaller pictures and some extra information columns, these columns go well on the double page spread because they can do down the side of the interview article and contain things such as extra information about the band and maybe some background information.
My double page spread contains a large photo of the band and there title written in large clear font, but I could add some extra information bars and smaller pictures of the band to make it better. I think that I should also highlight some quotes that are from the article to improve it.
I wanted my models to pose in a way that would look more natural than staged, I did this because I did not want my magazine to look like others on the Market and again to make it stand out more.
The social group that my magazine is aimed at is people who are interested in indie or rock music and are student is aged between 15-24 as students are the group that tend to buy music magazines so I aimed at the more mainstream audience as this would be the best way for the magazine to make a profit and compete with other magazines that are on the market. From my audience feedback I can see from the questionnaires that I took from my target audience that my magazine could have included more genres such as metal as this was one of the most popular genres among the age group I am aiming at. Yet my magazine does offer things such as competitions and gig tickets as this is what my age group look for in a magazine so this may temp them to buy the magazine even if they do not always favour the genre. Another reason that I chose this group is because it is the group that I fit into so this gives me an idea of what this group will like and what they will look for in a music magazine.
I would use a smaller distribution company to distribute my magazine into shops, I would do this because I want to keep the price of my magazine low so that my target audience of students can afford it and a bigger company may exploit this and increase the price. I would bring out my magazine every two weeks because I would not want my target audience spending money every week on my magazine because they may become fed up of having to spend the money every week so they may be glad to have the week gap and it will leave them waiting to buy the next issue. I decided not to have the magazine monthly because my audience may not want to wait that long so they may buy other music magazines that my magazine is in competition with. I could also design a website for people who do not buy magazines often so that it would be a multi- media magazine making it more popular on the web, and also it would be seen by more people as the internet is one of the fastest growing forms of media. My magazine would promote the website inside of it and the website would promote the magazine, this would show two different mediums working together. I would have to use a small production company as well since my magazine would be new on the market I would not be able to be vertically or horizontally integrated, so I would have to use a separate company for both distribution and production.
I chose my target audience because they are the audience that I fit into, and they would be the most easy to interview when I would need my audience feedback. I also chose this target audience because they are the mainstream and are the audience that buy the most music magazines. This was shown by some reader profiles that I looked at that showed students were the mainstream for the music magazine industry.
I addressed my audience by using such things as gig guides and competitions on the front cover of the magazine and by using a title that would catch students eyes. My audience feedback showed that my target audience liked the layout of the magazine and the font but nearly all the people I asked said that they would like a much better gig guide. I used a large photo of my band on the front cover but some of my audience feed back said that it was to out of focus, I think this may have been due to the print out but I could edit the photo on the computer to make this photo better. The main thing that my audience feedback showed was that my target audience like a wide range of music so if I did another issue of the magazine I would include many more genres.
I have learnt a lot more about technology such as Photoshop while I have been making the music magazine, when I started I had a very limited use of Photoshop but I can now use many different tools to my advantage to make the magazine look better. I have also expanded my knowledge of Microsoft publisher as I used this for the layouts of my drafts and the drafts themselves. I still have a lot more to learn with Photoshop but I have leant enough to be able to do this project again but to a better level. I learned to use Dreamweaver slightly because I needed to edit some text for the titles on the top of each page of my magazine. This helped because it let me use another editing programme other then Photoshop so gave my a wider range of skills on the computer. We also used blogger to record all our planning and put our final products on the site, this taught us how to use a new method instead of just printing the work off. I like how we use blogger as it is an easy way to display all the work we had done in one place and it also made it easy to organise work and not to lose it. I have also learn how to use the scanner so that I can put my own images on the computer.
I took my audience feedback by going out into college and asking people who were in my target audience what they thought of my magazine and how it could be improved if it was to be done again in future, I asked ten people, I was originally going to ask five but that did not seem like enough, and I asked ten so that I could turn it into a percentage. The findings showed that people in my target audience liked more than just indie and rock music as some of the other genres were things such as metal and folk. This meant that an improvement to my Magazine would be to add a wider Variety of genres to attract more people to the magazine. The main thing that people said about my magazine is that it needed to include a more detail gig guide as this is what people in my target audience are looking for because they attend a lot of gigs. On the other hand my audience did say that they liked the font that I had used on my title and also the layout of the magazine. Out of my feed back about 55-60% like my magazine, while 40% said that It could do with some changes.
I have improved my skills in media since the introduction assignment we did which was the front cover for the wyke college magazine. When I did this it was very basic because my use of Photoshop was very limited and I did not know much about the conventions of a magazine. But by doing the music magazine project I have learned about the conventions and my use of Photoshop has greatly improved. If I was to do the college magazine work again I am sure that I could improve it by using the skills that I have learnt and get it to a better quality. This project has taught my some good skills that I could use in future projects if I needed to. I have also improved greatly from the first project we did which was an advert for a male fragrance, this shows how my media skills have developed because for the male fragrance advert I did not use Photoshop at all and stuck to publisher, but if I did it again I could now be confident that I could use Photoshop to improve it and get it up to a better grade. I have also improved my research skills so that now my research is more precise and contains the information that I need in it.
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