Media Music Magazine Evaluation

Sijanta Thapa

Research on existing magazinesI used Top Of The Pops, BOP and SMASH-HITS

magazines to help me create my new music magazine. I followed the codes and conventions of Top Of The Pops the most because I thought it suited my chosen genre of pop music and also because the age range for the target audience for Top Of The Pops is very similar to my music magazine.

I used Top Of The Pops magazines’s layout for my front cover, contents page and double page spread because I thought it was attractive and perfectly suitable for the genre of my magazine. Top Of The Pops is a very popular pop music magazine and I decided to use a similar layout to thieir one knowing that it has proved to be very effective for Top Of The Pops in attracting their target audience so it should do equally good in attracting a lot of attention from my target audience because the specific gender of the target audience for Top Of The Pops and my magazine are the same and the age range for the two magazines is very similar. The layout is very busy and cluttered, which suggests that the magazine contains lots of gossip and excitement. This connotation is appealing to gossipy, celebrity obssessed teenaged girls.

The genre of music for my music magazine is pop music, so to create my music magazine front cover, I looked at SMASH-HITS, BOP and Top Of The Pops magazines which showed me the codes and conventions of pop music magazines. However Top Of The Pops was the one that appealed to me the most.

For my masthead I used a font which made it look like a childish bubble writing, as this seemed appropriate for a pop magazine because it would appeal more to my target audience of young females aged between 13 – 16. I made my masthead look similar to BOP magazines masthead because I felt it would help me reach out to more of my target audience as it seemed to have done for BOP magazine. At first I used the colour yellow for my masthead because yellow is associated as an iconic colour for the pop music genre, but then I realised it didn’t match my house style/colour theme so I opted for another colour usually associated with the pop music genre: pink. Using the pink for my masthead made it stand out and easily noticeable and also, pink is commonly said to be a girly colour so this will be effective in attracting the attention of my target audience.

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

Instead of just calling it “contents” I chose to write “Inside the mag...” because it is different and more interesting than just calling it “contents”. Also, I’ve used genre specific colloquial language here, referring to “magazine” as “mag” because it is shorter and easier to say, also it sounds cool to teenaged girls. I’ve placed the writing on a pink banner because the banner makes it stand out and I used pink to match the house style colour of my mag and also gives it the “pop” look.

My magazine Top Of The Pops

There’s a whole separate section which only includes articles about celebs & gossip. This is a very effective way of saving time for the readers because gossip is the main thing they buy the magazines for because they want to find out about what is happening in the celeb world, Who’s dating who? Who’s got the number 1 hit?, etc. Interesting points are ‘highlighted’ to suggest that the target audience are school aged.

Contents Page

There is a section where you can find the page numbers which feature competitions and free gifts. This will be very use full for the people who like entering competitions and getting free gifts from magazines because it means they can just check out what page they can find these features on and go straight to them, without having to waste their time by flicking through the rest of the magazine.

My magazine Top Of The Pops

I’ve placed a small image of an artist right underneath an article teaser which is about this artist. This way the readers can see who it’s about.

There is a section called “All about you”. This is what attracts the attention of people who like to do quizzes which tell you which pop star would be your perfect match, or, which member of a girl band are you?

My magazine Top Of The Pops

This section is all about shopping. This is a very appropriate section to be included in my magazine as my mag is mainly aimed at young females, and females are associated with shopping quite a lot. I’ve made it easy for them to find the page which has articles about the latest trends, the biggest designer brands, etc.

Instead of listing out all the articles in my mag, I pasted a smaller copy of my front cover and included page numbers along the side with arrows coming off and pointing to the relavant article. The page numbers are pink and the arrows look as if they’ve been drawn on, I chose to do this because it gives it a childish look, which will appeal to my target audience of young females.

My magazine Top Of The Pops

I’ve made it very easy for the girls to find articles about boys and male pop stars by highlighting the page numbers on which they can be found. This way the girls won’t have to waste their time flicking through the pages till they find articles about boys, they can just check the highlighted page numbers and go straight to them. This makes it really easy for the girls and saves them a lot of time and also it’s a way to include the colour yellow into my contents page because yellow is known as an icon for the pop genre because it reflects the lively and happy mood of pop.

Double Page Spread

The image I’ve used is very appropriate for a double page spread and the interview because it shows the artist laughing and enjoying himself which sets a calm and happy mood for the interview as well, so the readers will feel the same while reading the interview. I based the colour pallet of this double page spread around the colours worn by the artist in the image and also because the blue makes it calm and cool.

My magazine Top Of The Pops

I’ve used the second biggest font on the artists’ name so the readers know who is giving the interview and I’ve placed it on a banner to make it more noticeable.

I’ve placed a banner running across the bottom of my double page spread saying, “Turn over for a chance to win Sagar.G’s hoodie – and it’s signed! OMG!”. This will attract a lot of attention because the blue makes it stand out and more noticeable and also because Sagar.G is a very popular pop artist and all his fans (specially the female fans) will be dying to enter the competition where they will have a chance to win Sagar.G’s signed hoodie. I’ve also used genre specific language here, “OMG!” is a term commonly used by youngsters because it’s cooler and quicker way of sayin “Oh my god!”

My magazine Top Of The Pops

By separating the questions by writing them in a different colour to the answers, I’ve made it very easy for the audience because now they don’t have to spend time trying to figure out what bits are the questions and what bits are the answers. They will simply know that the bits in blue are the questions and the bits in black are the answers. The questions are also in Italic, which makes it stand out more. I chose the colour blue because it matches the colour pallete of my double page spread and makes the page look neat and tidy.

The biggest font on my double page spread is the title quote, “The greatest feeling in life is doing something people say you can’t”, which basically sums up what this article/interview is about, about how the only nepalese pop star, Sagar.G, recieved no support from his friends and family on his long journey to fame! I’ve placed the word “can’t” in a black box, enhancing the fact that Sagar.G has done the impossible and achieved a career in singing even though he recieved no support, instead, when he told people he wanted to become a singer they would just laugh at him. That is my second quote. I’ve used these two quotes because one of the first things people read before reading the actualy interview, are the quotes around it. They read the quotes and if it is interesting, they then go on to read the whole interview. The quotes I’ve used will make the readers feel sad and sympathise with the artist, which will make them want to read the rest of the interview.

My magazine Top Of The Pops

By separating the questions by writing them in a different colour to the answers, I’ve made it very easy for the audience because now they don’t have to spend time trying to figure out what bits are the questions and what bits are the answers. They will simply know that the bits in blue are the questions and the bits in black are the answers. The questions are also in Italic, which makes it stand out more. I chose the colour blue because it matches the colour pallete of my double page spread and makes the page look neat and tidy. This makes the article easier to skim read rather than having to spend a lot of time on because teenage girls are more likely to read in this way, as a distraction rather than because they are interested in the music.

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

IPC Media is a media institution which publishes magazines such as NME and UNCUT which are rock/indie magazines, and use codes and conventions I have not used on my music magazine, so at first I thought choosing IPC Media as my music magazine publisher would be a good idea as they are very experienced in publishing many different magazines and they know what their core target audience like, that they try to cater for, then they may know where there is a “gap in the market” such as a music magazine, maybe of a pop genre.

As IPC Media don’t publish any pop genre music magazines, adding my music magazine to thier production would be beneficial to my magazine as the sales for my magazines would be high if the audience knows that the publishing company also publishes some of their favourite existing magazines.

IPC Media distribute their brands across many supermarkets throughout the UK, which broadens the magazines’ target audience. Making my magazine available in large supermarkets would make it available to more people, there fore increasing sales as well as my target audience.

Original choice

http://www.ipcmedia.com

My alternative publishing company is Bauer. Bauer might be alternatively appropriate because they have published more magazines then IPC and more of these are music magazines. This could mean Bauer may have more experience in what codes and conventions a successful music magazine would need to attract a large but particularly target audience.

A plus point of making Bauer my publisher would be that they already have experience in publishing a pop magazine (Smash-Hits) and there fore know exactly what codes and conventions a pop music magazine needs to attract a large target audience.

Bauer Media company distribute their brands through different types of media, like radio, TV and online; this would widen my target audience as my magazine would be advertised on each of these types of media.

I think Bauer Media is the more suitable institution to publish and distribute my magazine because it already publishes another music magazine of the same genre so adding my magazine to their production would increase sales because audiences of the existing magazines would be introducd to mine and take an interest in it as it is of the same genre as the other music magazine they like to read.

Final Choice of Publisher and Distributorhttp://www.bauermedia.co.uk

My reader profile explains a lot about the target audience of my media product. 97% of the readers are young females because my magazine mostly features articles and images of male artists, which the young females are interested in. The average age of the reader will be 14, in a 13 – 16 age range. 100% are in compulsory education and live with their parents in their parent’s house. They get £5 pocket money every week. All of my target audience are in the E category. They rely on their parents to give them money for personal use.

The target audience for my media product has been based upon current statistics about the readers of Top Of The Pops magazines.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My magazine is priced at £1.99 because my results showed that the two popular choices for the price were £1-£1.99 and £2-£2.99, so I decided to price it half way between the two choices. I think this is a reasonable price for my magazine because my target audience get £5 a week as pocket money so they can save up £1 a week, for two weeks, and buy my magazine, as my magazine is going to be issued fortnightly. When pricing my magazine, another factor I had to consider was how much pocket money my target audience got. 100% of my readers lived with their parents and the average pocket money they got per week was £5 and my magazine is published fortnightly so therefore, I thought £1.99 was a reasonable price for my magazine and all the readers have to do is save £1 each week from their pocket money to buy my magazine.

£0 - £0.99£1 - £1.99£2 - £2.99£3 - £3.99£4 - £4.99£5 +

How much are you willing to pay for a music magazine?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructiong this product?I used Photoshop to create my magazine and from this, I learnt how to create a attractive and professional looking magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread.

I learnt how to use the layers feature to hide unnecessary parts of an image or to place the writing over an image. I also learnt that Photoshop is very good for resizing photos without the quality becoming worse than when it was when uploaded from a digital camera, which would have been diffiult if I had used a program like Microsoft Publisher. A useful thing I learnt while creating my music magazine was thatyou could easily resize an image by simply pressing & holding down the ‘shift’ key, this was very useful as it prevented the image from distorting.

I thought the ‘fx’ tool on Photoshop was very effective in adding special effects to my text which made it stand out and easily noticeable.

For example, on the text on the left, I used an effect called ‘drop shadow’ because I wanted to give a feeling that someone had just scribbled this on the front cover of the magazine.

While using Photoshop, I learnt how to edit image so they are suitable to use on the front cover of my magazine and follow the conventions of other music magazines of the same genre.

For example, I used the ‘magnetic lasso’ tool to cut around the body of the artist and then the ‘magic wand’ tool to edit it so it could be placed on my front cover.

Prior to creating my media product I had never used Photoshop before. Working on my media product taught me the basics of Photoshop and now I’m able to use my knowledge of Photoshop in future product designs. By using Photoshop I was able to make my product look like a professional magazine.

Using Photoshop was much easier and more effective than using programs such as Microsoft Publisher because Photoshop has more advanced features which can be used to create and edit products to a high standard and quality. Also, I found it quite easy to to use Photoshop and learnt how to use it quite quickly. Though it was time consuming, it allowed me to create my magazine to a high standard.

Microsoft Publisher

I used Microsoft Publisher on my prelim task. I had used Publisher before so i knew exactly what I needed to do and had no difficulties in doing so. Publisher was much easier to use than Photoshop because everything you could do on it was basic, however because of that, the quality of my prelim task was not as high as my final music magazine product.

I used a digital camera when taking the images for my magazine. I used a CANON which is specialised for taking professional quality photographs. The pictures have high resolution and megapixels which means that they are big images and didn’t get pixelated when I enlarged them. It was important to use a good camera for my media product because I wanted to make it look as professional as possible.

Digital Cameras

InternetI used the internet to search for information and images of current brands of

media products. The internet was useful for searching up old material to influence me when designing my music magazine, by looking through the older issues of Top Of The Pops, BOP and SMASH-HITS on google images. This was very useful as it meant that I didn’t have to go out and buy lots of old magazines to use, so by using the internet to look for old magazine issues not only did I save myself some time, but I also saved some money.

I also used the internet to search for a website that lets you generate your own barcode and you can customise what you want written on it.

http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php

Social Networking WebsitesBecause 90% of my target audience regularly use FaceBook, I used

this to my advantage and sent a link of my survey on Zoomerang to a lot of people who fitted to my target audience category. By doing this I saved myself and the audience some time as it only takes a couple of minutes to fill out a survey online.

http://app.zoomerang.com/Report/ResultsPage.aspx?qn=1

How does your media product represent particular social groups?The type of consumers my magazine is aimed at will be interested mainly in

good looking male pop artists, so because of this, on my contents page, I decided to highlight all the page numbers and articles which featured male artists so the young female target audience of my music magazine would’nt have to waste their time flicking through the pages to find these articles and images which feature male artists.

I decided not to put an advert for a subscription on my front cover or contents page because the age range for my target audience is 13 – 16 and they won’t be on a long term income as they will still be in compulsory education.

In my contents page I used genre specific language, e.g. “Inside the mag...”. My target audience are young and using the word ‘mag’ instead of ‘magazine’ because it is used by young people and it also makes it look cool.