My Final Evaluation

Evaluation questions:

·In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I would like to think that if my music magazine was to be published that it would become a competitor to other similar music magazines. I wanted to make my magazine as realistic as  possible, so in order to do this I did a lot of research into current popular music magazines that are targeted at the same age range as my magazine. e.g. Q.
The use of advertising within my magazine really helped create a realistic vibe to my magazine. I made sure the adverts where in keeping with the theme of the magazine and were relevant to my age range (17-25).
I think my magazine would challenege a real music magazine if it was published, because I have tried my best to include all the main features a magazine should have, a main image, mast head etc. I also tried to make these appeal to my age range, so made the front cover look smart and sophistiaced, this might appeal to an audience more than girly, pop princess magazine.

·How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I wanted my magazine to appeal to my particular age range as is would help me with the making of my magazine. Focusing my target audience on myself and friends made the job of creating and designing the magazine alot easier as I know how to please an audience of my age group. When researching about other magazines that focus on the same target audience as I wanted my magazine to do, I made sure that I didn't just look at music magazines, but also fashion and celeb magazines as these could still give me alot of inspiration for the design and layout. I looked at Vogue, Elle, Hello, Glamour, OK etc
After researching I decided that my magazine would be young female based and this would be shown by the layout and presentation. Purple, grey, pink, white, these were all used throughout my magazine showing gender but also keeping the magazine sophisticated.

·What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I decided that the publishing house I would use for my magazine would be IPC, this is because the magazine they produce are very in keeping with my own, and they publish their magazines to many popular high street shops and even round the world.

·Who would be the audience for your media product?
My target audience would be young females between the ages of 17 and 25. This is because alot of my inspiration came from magazines that target to same kind of audience. It is also because the magazine I have produced is of the same sort I would buy myself.

·How did you attract/ address your audience?
To draw my audience in I decided to incorporate a recognisable celebrity on the front cover of my magazine. This automatically draws attention if the audience member is a fan of this celebrity, I have also made sure that it is specific to the age range of the magazine. Other techniques I Included were freebies such as an Itunes card with the magazine. This promotes another company and also suggests it's a music magazine. On the front page I also Included a exclusive interview with an up and coming boy band which would attract young girls.

·What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Most of my IT skills have improved while taking part in this project. For example creating, producing and editing an image in photoshop and also creating my magazine in publisher and word. Using this software really tested my ability to make my magazine unique as most of the designs and templates are very simplistic, and i wanted to avoid this.

·Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Throughout this task I feel I have learnt how fast the media moves and progresses. I have also learnt the In's and out's of the magazine industry and that it is far more detailed and a lot of thought has to go into a magazine before being published, most of which we as the reader would over look. I improved my IT skills and have learnt a lot more about how to produce and edit a photograph in Photoshop.
Overall I consider this task an achievement, and enjoyed working on it.

Further Evaluations- Videos

Please click on the links to view my video evaluations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4zhPHPgyew&feature=related

Above is a video to show how I attracted and addressed my audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BhMuYZdEH8

Above is what my audience thought of my magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0UAB9zwOY

Above is a video presentation of my evaluation on my magazine.

Advert for my Music Magazine

Evaluation for my Advert

This is my advert for my music magazine.

Firstly I used the colour pink to reflect that the magazine is for girls, and pink is a very clique girlie colour. The font is also in italic script to give off a more elegant, sophisticated feel to the who advert. I feel that the backing of the photography ties in nicely with this feel as it is posh and looks like something that you would see in a manor house, but with a modern twist.

The advert is modelled by Eva Brooklyn again who is the main theme of the whole magazine. I chose to use Eva because it shows how diverse and famous she is reflecting on the readers views on her. I decided that I wanted to use a perfume advert in my magazine because I feel it is appropiate for my target audience, and it is actually something that they would possibly be interested in buying.  After researching many different magazine perfume adverts I realised they are all portrayed in a very exotic, classy way. The main advert I focused on was a perfume called Pretty by Elizabeth Arden. I decided to focus on this perfume because I feel it was trying to send out the same message as I wanted my advert to do.  

Overall I was happy with the outcome of my music magazine advert. I am please with how the font and colours create the mood of the advert and how the audience and product is clear.

My Double Page Spread for my Music Magazine

Evaluation for my Double Page Spread

Above is my music magazine double page spread.

I wanted to included a boy band within my magazine as my target audience is females, young adults and teens, and I thought that an interview with a famous boy band might improve the magazine.

When I did my research I found that a lot of music magazines only use one of the two double pages for the writing and the ther page for a picture. In order to make my double page spread look more professional I decided to do this aswell. My first page captures the fun essense of the band in one image. The photo is very staged but is meant to look natural, which I think it does. I didn't just want one picture of my band on my double page spread so I included two smaller ones to break up the text on the interview page. I did this so more people are likely to read the text as it's no longer one big chunk of writing.

My colour scheme for this page was grey and green. I took these colours from the main image, so both pages were linking with one another. For the font on the forst page I have made it seem as if it was carved into the page. I did this because the band are called We Fight Dinosaurs, so I wanted to create a very prehistoric effect, which i think i have done nicely.

I have made this interview and exclusive interview to Musica magazine. I did this because I think it would improve the magazine and make people more inclind to buy it because you wouldn't be able to find this interview anywhere else.

Overall I am really pleased with how my double page spread turned out. To improve it further I think I would have made the pages more wacky and unorgainsed to reflect the character of the band, so the page looks more like something from a personal diary rather than a edited magazine.

Music Magazine Contents Page

Evaluating my Contents Page

This is my contents page for my music magazine. It doesn't look like a normal contents page you would see in a music magazine and that is because when i was researching, I came across contents pages that are photographs with text added to them rather than a series of smaller images and text around them on a page. I like this idea so thought I would try and create my own version.
I have taken  a picture on Eva Brooklyn (The celeb on the front cover). I have done this because I wanted to keep the main theme of my magazine, which is Eva Brooklyn, running through my magazine the whole time so the reader does not forget anything.
Again I have kept the colour scheme from the front cover. Purple and grey are later described in an interview with Eva Brooklyn as her favourite colours so I continued to add these throughout the magazine.
The image I used was very simple, and was taken so that there would be enough room on the left hand side of the picture to write about the magazine.

Overall I liked taking the photos for my magazine, but i feel this page could show more of my range and my ability to edit on photoshop as this page is rather basic.

Music Magazine Front Cover

Evaluating my Cover

This is my final music magazine cover. As my target audience was young female adults and teens I decided to draw in my audience by using a up and coming celebrity as my main image and have her name printed boldly at the top of the cover. This should hopefully automatically draw attention to the magazine for the people that are interested in Eva Brooklyn. My one inpiration for this magazine was Ian Rankin one of the most famous fashion photographers around. He has shot cover picure's for many fashion magazine's such as VOUGE and ELLE and many more. The picture that inspired me the most for my front cover was a very simple, naturlistic picture of Eva Green. So I tried to recreate the image to the best of my ablity.

 Here is the picture of Eva Green taken by Rankin for a double page spread in ELLE.

MASTHEAD: This is the next thing on the page that attracks attention to itself. The masthead to bold and at the top of the page as it's most likely the first thing the reader should read. MUSICA stands for Music in Spanish. I decided to change my masthead in to a different language because alot of well known magazines do this e.g. Elle.

I also thought that changing the masthead into spanish makes the whole magazine feel abit more classy and sophisticated rather than just using MUSIC as the header. I have tried to keep all the colours on the front cover in co-ordination with eachother. I picked out the colours from my model (Grey from the eye shadow and the purple from her dress) and used them to header my cover lines and sub titles.

As my music genre was mainly POP, RAP and HIP HOP I included the official UK top 40 on to my front cover to show to my audience what genre this magazine will be focusing on. I also showed a preview to intise the reader in and make them want to read on. By adding the word EXCLUSIVE across the top of the preview image it shows to the reader that no other magazine will have this, so if you want to read it, you have yo my MUSICA.

Another technique I used to draw my readers attention in was to include a free gift with my magazine. This is a technique that many magazine companises use these days to sell their magazine.

Overall I am very pleased with how my magazine cover turned out. I like the way the whole front cover is all colour co-ordinated and all fits together nicely. If i was to make a music magazine front cover again I would think about using different effect on the front page such as bumper stickers to make the cover look more fun and full.

Publisher

IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brands, with print alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 42% of UK men – almost 26 million UK adults – while our websites collectively reach over 20 million users every month.

This is the publishing house I would use to publish my music magazine. I would pick IPC Media because they have pulished a lot of womens magazines and as you can see by the stats in the first paragraph.

Above are two of the hundreds of magazines IPC Media publish on a daily basis, and from what you can see they are a combination of the two types of magazines i want to combine.