Evaluation

For my AS level media coursework me and my partner created two issues of a music magazine we decided to call “Encore”. We both worked on the design of the issues but created each issue separately; I created Issue # 1. In this evaluation I need to answer questions on certain aspects of my music magazine below. I have done this evaluation separately from my partner Charlie Dymond.

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

I think that our music magazine defiantly challenges some forms and conventions of real music magazines, it does this by focusing on a few different music genres, which we found is different from most music magazines because they usually focus on one type of music genre. We did this because we felt that there would be a gap in the market for this type of music magazine as we would like to see a music magazine that writes more broadly about music and not about specific genres. We have stuck too many of the typical conventions of music magazines though, the cover page is based n design conventions and we have used the idea of a photo shoot on the front cover as the base idea for the cover itself. We then used this photo, and based the text, including the heading and sub headings around it. It seems that we have used the norm for most music magazines of our genre, although we feel that the colours and black and white effect on the photo are different when comparing them to these magazines. We felt this would be effective to attract our target audience as well as being visually attractive to everybody.

We also decided to keep away from the convention of a normal Question and Answer interview and I decided to interweave my interview questions and answers into the article so that the language flowed through out. The interview is very laid back and a lot like the interviews written in Q magazine. I also tried to use the artistic filters that you can add to photos in photo shop to break the convention of a normal photo shoot; I made it different and I feel this is more interesting and again visually appealing.

Although I have changed some of the conventions for my magazine issue, I have also stuck with other conventions used when making a music magazine, I have decided to release the magazine monthly, and I think a lot of the magazines that aim for the same social group as our magazine do the same. By having the magazine as a monthly released magazine, I think that there would be enough time to make the magazine to a high quality within the month so that is aims at this higher social class.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our music magazine presents and aims at the social groups between C1 and A. It is a better quality magazine released monthly and I think that this helps represent and aim at these higher social groups. It represents these groups because it is more expensive, due to its higher production quality, I think it would be only these social groups that could afford our music magazine every month. It also is written by men for men, and mostly about men. I think this would attract a male audience and represents their interests in music. My audience is from around the ages 15 to 30 and I think the style of music and magazine style would attract these ages of audience and not an older audience. I also think it would be too mature for a younger audience and they would not be interested in its wordy articles.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A large magazine distribution company would probably distribute my magazine. It is aimed to be sold first nationally and then if it did well, internationally.



How did you attract/address your audience?

We intended to attract our target audience, by making a magazine that was generally very visually appealing but with detailed content as well. I think we achieved this by making the cover a very glossy and appealing front to our magazine and this would attract any kind of reader.



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

Constructing this project and media magazine, I discovered lots about technologies in the process. Using Microsoft Publisher, I found that this was insufficient software to create a music magazine; it didn’t have enough features and I wasn’t able to create a project that I felt was made to a high enough standard. We decided to use Adobe Photoshop to create the magazine; a photo editing software in which you can create documents and even save them as JPEGS. I didn’t know a lot about Photoshop before I started this media projects and had to learn how to use the software to my full advantage. I learned how to cut around the edge of photos and use photo filters to create effects of photos. The best thing I learned using this technology in the process of constructing this product was how to layer images and text effectively. I found that layering these carefully would lead to a professional looking magazine. I have also learned that without technologies as advanced as these, it would be hard to create a magazine that was of such a high standard.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I felt that from my preliminary task, I learned that I needed to use more sophisticated computer software such as Photoshop, after attempting to use Microsoft Publisher to start with. I also learned that editing and cutting my photos so that they would fit onto a page in high quality, onto a background would be more effective and better from a visual aspect; it would be more appealing to an audience. I also felt that after i made my preliminary task I needed to fill the page more with sub headings.

I think that my magazine was how I imagined it, and I achieved what I set out to do, and that was to make a visually appealing music magazine that crossed over many different music genres.

Main Task Finals

Encore Music Magazine:

This is made up of 4 pages, the cover, the contents page, and two pages that make up the double page spread.

The first issue features a photo shoot and interview with our chosen and created artist "Barely Niall". The second issue is exactly the same, only another the next months issue with a different act "Snap and Flow".

We changed both issues to make them better. You can see this if you compare this final issue, compared to the original issue on the post before.

The magazine is now how we want it, and we have tweaked the originals so that they are more visually appealing. Below i will present both issue of the magazine:

Issue #1: March

(click on these to view larger images of them, so that you can read the articles.)

Encore Cover Page - Issue 1: (Below)

Our cover page was meant to visually appealing so that it would attract a reader from just looking at it. The cover features an image of Barely Niall (our imaginary artist) which we edited and cut from the photo to put on the main page. We felt this picture was very appropriate for the type of magazine we were creating. Layering was also very important for this cover, we laid the images how we wanted them. As you can see, we wanted the image of Niall to go over the ENCORE heading, a lot like "Rolling Stone Magazine". I felt this was very effective and looks incredibly professional. We took aspects of other magazines such as the Sub-Headings and chose eye catching colour schemes for each magazine. We wanted it to stand out. We thought that a quote from the article would also be good to include across the image of Niall, to attract readers the the double page spread. We included a price label and Issue as part of the magazine convention. A lot of magazines have these on the cover. I edited the image of Niall to make it more exciting and again visually appealing. I made him black & white, but left his guitar coloured i think this was a great idea we could use for future issues, we also added glasses and a cigarette to make him look more like the Barely Niall character we wanted him to be. We thought that this cover really stood out, because of the bright colours and black & white image on the black background.

Encore Contents Page - Issue #1: (Below)

The contents page was the most challenging part of the whole magazine for me, it was hard to get something that looks both professional and conventional without stealing ideas from magazines that already exist. I played with this a lot, and changed it a few times, but eventually I decided on the Black background with bold white text and imaging.

Encore Double Page Spread - Issue #1: (Below)

The double page spread was the most creative part of our magazine and we decided again to go with black and white colour schemes. I chose the images of Niall that we took, and edited them in photo shop to create an artist look, i also changed 3 of the pictures so that Niall had 3 different coloured tops. The font for the text was also quite hard to choose, in the end i went with an arty title and a strong and easy to read font for the article itself. I think you could compare the article to one found in Q magazine, it is not totally a Q & A Interview, but a very descriptive piece of writing with an interview wound into that. Creating the boarders was also effective in drawing the readers attention to the page. Our magazine is very visually focused.

This is the first issue, and the issue made by me. Charlie Dymond has made another issue of Encore Music Magazine, Issue #2:April. Here is the other issue, just to show the difference between the two issues and too show that we have actually created 2. This is not my issue and is Charlie Dymond's; you can view this on his blog "The Dymond" which is under my followers list.

Issue #2: April:

Main Task Originals

After using the research and planning we created two issues of our music magazine which we decided to call "Encore Music Magazine". We created these in Adobe Photo shop and made them visually effective. The two issues needed separate photo's as well as articles and colour schemes; we both did these individually for our issues. Here is my issue.

Issue #1:

Although these look finished, we found that there were certain visual aspects that we needed to amend, not only on my issue, but on issue 2 as well. These images are the originals and we are going to edit our magazine until we feel we have fixed these aspects and both magazine issues are perfect.

Main Task Plan

After detailed research, we have decided upon what type of music magazine we are going to create. We decided we wanted:

• A high quality magazine, that would be made entirely using Photo Shop, including the cover, the contents page and the double page spread.
• We want a magazine that includes high quality photo's.
• A professional article and interview.
• A well planned layout.
• An attractive colour scheme.
• A music magazine that was based around a wide range of music genres including Indie, Rock, Punk, Hip-Hop/Rap and Drum and Bass.
• A magazine that is relitivly cheap and produced monthly.

To start the main task, we designed a simple plan in Microsoft Publisher, to decide upon the design of our music magazine and used boxes to represent aspects of the design. These plans are shown below:

We created these plans to help us when it comes to creating our main task. These will give us a vague idea of what our design is going to be for both issues.

Preliminary Task

We created a preliminary task comprised of the covers for two issues of a school magazine, to show that we were able to practice using the tools we planned to use for our main task. We started off by experimenting with different programs that we could use to create the cover. Most programs such as publisher and paint were not advanced enough to use, but we finally decided to use Adobe Photo shop, partly because of its ease of use and its professional looking projects. We decided upon using some cover conventions and photos we took around school.

Here is the outcome of our Preliminary Task.

This is my issue of the magazine; we produced an issue each using the same cover template that we created. Here is the other issue also...

Both issues were produced by us both and show simply abilities used in photo shop, such as cropping, cutting, and designing. We designed these covers in Microsoft word, and made them in Publisher, but we found this program to be insufficient to our design need, so we decided to use Photo shop. Below is a mock up plan for a contents page for this magazine made on Microsoft Publisher:

Magazine Research Task

We have done a lot of reasearch on music magazines in general to be able to get a picture of what ,music magazines are all about. This will help us in creating our own music magazine and give us an all round better understanding of this genre of magazine. In this research, we have also looked at 4 specific music magazines that we thought would be suitable and took ideas from not only our initial research but our research of these magazines aswell, this includes their design, content, images, house style and colours. This would help us when we create our own magazine.


We have put this research into an advanced Power Point presentation which includes all of our findings and example of all four of our examples. I have printed these off to go with my portfolio, but below i have also used screenshots to present our presentation.

(You may need to save the image to view it up close, Right-click and save the image, or zoom in. You will then be able to read the powerpoint presentation.) (You can also just click on the images to view larger versions of the presentation.)

Introduction

For my AS level Media coursework, i have paired with Charlie Dymond (http://thedymond.blogspot.com) to produce a Music magazine.

We aim to include:

1. A Research Task, a PowerPoint presentation to show our research on different music magazines.
2. A Preliminary Task made up of a cover page of a school magazine. This is going to consist of two seperate issues of the same magazine.
3. A Main Task which is a music magazine that we have to produced that includes a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread. It is going to consist of two issues aswell, we are going to produce an issue each with combined ideas.
4. An evaluation of the work we have done.

We are going to show evidence for this using this blog. The blog is going to include explanations of the work as well as samples of the work we are going to create.