- Antonia Roberts

EVALUATION

EVALUATIONGENERIC CONVENTIONS

• Before creating my media product I looked at many existing music magazines, to see what generic

conventions existed. I came across the following:

- Images

- Titles

- Layout

- Colours

- Language

EVALUATIONGENERIC CONVENTIONS

Many of the conventions that I became familiar with I chose to recreate in my final media product…

The recognisable font displaying the magazine name becomes iconic,

and like many magazines, I chose to

place the title in the top left hand corner to create a sense of

familiarity.

The large central photograph represents the main feature article on many front covers

and it’s something that I chose to use also.

The simple combination of a small selection of colours makes many music magazine front covers look very effective, I chose

to use 3 main colours that I feel work well together.

EVALUATIONREPRESENTATION

We chose two social groups for our target audience:

Gender – Female

Age – 16-24

We chose these as we felt there are no current music magazines which are aimed at this audience.

The font is quite feminine and with the use of colours that are typically feminine, it attracts our target audience. The pinks and purples are sophisticated but gender stereotypical.

EVALUATIONREPRESENTATION

The font is also modern and easy to read, appealing to the younger generations.

The photos of the ‘music

star’ are fun, girly and

glamorous, appealing to

young females, who may aspire to

be like her.

The content of the article

is a light-hearted

interview, which would

appeal to our younger

target audience who

The hint of red on the page also attracts the attention of males, as well as an attractive female that would appeal to that small proportion of our target audience.

may not be attracted by a huge amount of text on the page, which is why the large photographs may

appeal to them also.

EVALUATIONIDENTIFICATION OF TARGET AUDIENCE

To identify our target audience we used Burton’s social and media grouping concepts. We looked at grouping our target audience for their social similarities

such as age and gender, yet also for their music tastes.

We decided the following after looking closely at Burton’s theory:

Age: 16-24 year oldsGender: Unisex, leaning more towards female

Class: ABC1Location: Western

These are the social groupings we chose, but we also decided our target audience would be grouped for the genre of music they listened to:

Type of music: Rock/IndieWe have also decided to aim our magazine towards the female social group, we plan to do this by including more gossip and female orientated articles that will

attract females.

EVALUATIONAPPEALING TO MY TARGET AUDIENCE

To appeal to my target audience of young females aged 16-24, we conducted interviews and collected information from questionnaires to give us an insight on what our target

audience actually wanted in their media product. The results from the questionnaires about layout ideas, helped me to design my front cover and double page spread.

When asked which magazine cover they preferred many people said they liked ‘Clash’ - so I used the same concept of 1 large image taking up the majority of the front page, with the title in the top in a bright bold colour.

The results showed that many people found bigger images and less text appealing, which is what I tried to portray in my double page spread.

The colour scheme that was most popular was black, white and red which I also used but added some variation to it, with a slightly more pink shade of red and a plum colour

which appeal to my female target audience.

EVALUATIONTECHNOLOGICAL SIDE

I used my Lumix DMC-FS30 digital camera to take the photographs that I used throughout my media product. I edited these photos on Photoshop, by slightly changing

the contrast and brightness to create a professional appearance.

To create the entire product I used mainly Photoshop, using different elements to add a variety of texts in different fonts, styles, colours and sizes, yet also to crop and resize

various images.

The photos that I took I also edited using Photoshop.

The collage of Polaroid's used on my contents page was created on Photoshop, using a brush that I downloaded.

I created the text on the contents page using Photoshop, which allowed me to use an appropriate font in different colours and sizes.

I filled the Polaroid’s with the photos I took using the crop, cut and paste tools on Photoshop.

The preliminary task, showcased are basic skills using Photoshop, I feel I

strongly improved with newly learnt skills on Photoshop to

use on my main product.

By creating a preliminary product it allowed me to see the different aspects of creating a magazine front cover, it also gave me the opportunity to see what my target audience wanted and to improve things to make it more appealing. I used different fonts, added

more articles and improved the photography.

The basic layout is very similar, we stuck with one

model on the front page, with different sized text framing it.

The font I chose to use on my front page is much more

interesting, and appealing for my target audience, it is more feminine than the font used

on my preliminary.

EVALUATIONFROM PRELIMINARY TO MAIN PRODUCT

EVALUATIONMEDIA INSTITUTIONS

•The type of media institution that might distribute our magazine would be a multi-national company.

•Their priorities are to inform readers of the latest music news whilst also making a profit.

•A possible publisher would be Bauer Media Group, the publisher of Q, or IPC Media, the publisher of NME, as

these magazines are similar to our magazine. They also have other magazines aimed at a similar target audience

so the advertising costs of or new magazine would be lower.