Finished Magazine

Front Cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

Evaluation Question 1: How does your product develop, Use and challenging of conventions?

My music magazine titled ‘Top’ uses a lot of conventions of magazines of that genre, it is a Pop music magazine designed for the target audience of young female teenagers and preteens (from about ten to fourteen). When I started I looked at other magazine of the same genre and audience, such as ‘We love Pop’ and ‘Top of the Pops’; looking particularly at their use of colours, house style and image framing. I found a very nice example in an issue of ‘We love Pop’. Looking at their house style of bold and blocky red and yellow, which I wanted to try and replicate in my first mock ups. Then once I had the basic layout and colours decided I later began to change these colours in my next drafts into the bold pink and purples seen in the finished product, this new pink colour matched my models costume far better and would attract the target audience I created a lot better due to its connotations.

With my contents page I wanted to make something quite childish and playful, using the zigzag effect I created around my images did this perfectly. It got rid of the very plain and straight lines that would be used by adult magazines like Q, and instead made it very sharp and quirky. For colours I kept with the colour I had used on my Front Cover, to keep consistency throughout the magazine. Also when creating my contents I had to play attention to the page numbers, so make sure they did not clash and that page 23 for my double page spread was consistent throughout.

My product has developed a lot since its original draft, and between my first and second draft of my Front Cover I took into account a lot of my feedback from peers. The piece has been made a lot brighter and vibrant from using image manipulation. The layout looks a lot more professional, and the piece as a whole looks more polished and neater. Using my double page spread as an example, the introduction of a bi-line on the piece make the piece look far more conventional  and neat than when it did not have one. This and the lines added in behind make the page look more interesting and less plain. While still not going over the top and overcrowding the page.

Evaluation Question 2: How does your product show representation of particular social groups?

With my magazine being targeted towards young teenagers my use of colours and language show representations of this social group. The price of the magazine is relatively low for a monthly magazine; this is due to the target audience of teenagers. They would normally have no income other than pocket money or maybe helping parents or friends on weekends, meaning that they would not be able to always afford the magazine if it had a high price. With £3.49 it is very good with usual pocket money being around £10 a month now. The language I use in my magazine is kept simple and short, making it easy and quick to read, which means that teenagers could read it between doing other things, and would easily understand what is being said. The colour and very bright and attractive making the magazine looks interesting and eye catching, the connotations of the colours of yellow and pinks are quite childish and very feminine which would appeal to girl aged between 10-13 who would be listening to this kind of pop music.

        With the costumes the models are wearing there is nothing outrageous or unseen before. This is common amount the pop genre and idolises the artists and my audience of the magazine would see this and want to look like that as well. My main artist’s hair has been made to appear to have yellow tips to a dark blonde hair. This dyed hair is becoming more common among pop artists like Kate Perry and Miley Cyrus.

Evaluation Question 3: What type of institution would distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

At the start of the project I intended to make quite a mature Pop magazine for older teenagers, but as I began to research and create my piece I began to see how the audience of this sort of magazine was younger than my target audience. This is partly what lead to the be change between my first and second front cover draft, as the piece changed to be more appealing a a younger audience instead. As this was more conventional and made it easier for me to find Pop artists with this same target audience.

The target audience of my music magazine would be young teenagers who enjoy pop music. Around 10-14 year old. As research I gave questionnaires to people of this age and found that the girls found the magazine a lot more appealing that boys. This was how I hoped due to the artists I had put on the front cover and contents. Bands like 1Direction and Artists like Elyar Fox have the same target audience as my magazine is intended, so using these artists appeals to them. This was also the question I previously used to decide what sort of plugs to use on my front cover.

Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Over the course of the project I have had to teach myself, experiment and find out how to use different technologies. This includes how to use adobe Photoshop for image manipulation, learning how to use some of the more obscure tools and effects. These tools are what I used in order to improve my images and make them look much more smooth and professional. I also had to learn how to use an Apple Mac as well because my college had a classroom full of them that I often had to use. I found this to be quite an awkward transition to begin with, but I learnt to use them smoothly and comfortably quite quick.

Within Photoshop one of the main things I had to learn quickly was the many selecting tools. Bellow are examples I had made to show them.

For me the next most important tool I learnt was the gradient tool. Though I had use things like this before, I had to be a lot more technical with how I used it this time. With my front cover I used quite a lot of the gradient tool, though it is not drastically noticeable because I keep the colours relatively similar, or let it fade into the background. 

From these examples you can see the variety the gradient tool has on Photoshop. This was next to me as previously I had only seen the linear gradient tool.This allowed for more variety on my contents page, when making my images' backgrounds.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Front Cover Third Draft

With this redraft I really wanted to brighten up the piece. I used to tones and brightness tools to brighten up the main image, and gradient to make the background much more interesting. I remade the plug and rearranged the bottom half of the cover. The changing of the colour scheme was to liven up the piece, as the colours were too solid, and now this with gradient tool it looks a lot smoother. I also used the slanted text which I used for my contents page, this was to keep consistence within the magazines style from page to page.

Contents Page, Redrafted

With this redrafted contents page I spaced out the contents itself a lot more and spread it about the page to add it the pieces youthfulness it now looks much more appealing to a young audience. I also changed the colour scheme of the text, however this also meant I had to change it on my redrafted front cover.

Social class & demographics

·        Social class & demographics

·        To state which social class you will be aiming your magazine at.

-To state how you will adhere to their needs

-To decide on the price of the magazine

-Understand what free gifts/ prizes they would like

-How the social class table will help you with your feature stories and target audience. 

My magazine will be targeted at a lower class audience, it will use quite a lot of slang and simple  language, this will also mean that the price of the magazine will be relatively low for a monthly magazine at £3.49. Though this will mean that the physical quality of the magazine wouldn't be as good as magazines like Q. But it will be affordable for my audience of low income teenagers.

My magazine will include free gifts like posters and smaller magazine about fashion or other interests of young teenage girls. 

Double Page Spread

Front Cover Redrafted

I decided to completely restart on my front cover designed from my first draft. I have made it much brighter and using colours more conventional to the genre and appealing to the younger audience. I feel this looks far better and I have filled the page much more than previously, which is common among the Pop music magazine genre.

Contents Page Draft

With my contents page I tried to keep with the same colour scheme I used for my second draft of my front cover. But using the gradient tool in places to make the colour look less solid and bold, as it did not look right next to the images. The use of the unusual shapes makes the page more interesting to look at and appealing to the younger audience.

Contents Page Mock Up

Contents Page Research

Double Page Spread Mock Up

Double Page Spread Research

For my double page spread the layout is a very important aspect. The positioning of the text and the main image varies between the examples found. Some clearly put the image on its on page and separate the two pages very boldly. Whereas others have either the image or the text flow across both pages or just going into the other page.











I would also need to decide how many images to put on double page spread. At least one big main image is needed, as it is conventional and is a easy way to straight away tell the reader who the artist/musician is and images can hold more connotations than words offen can. But sometimes more than one image is used, though the second or third image is often much smaller and not as significant. But using to many images will quickly overcrowd the page. In the picture bellow on left; the editor has used six images and still used the space well. Whereas the two images above are both quite empty and blank pages if the text is taken away. The use of the busy of the page seen bellow on the left also helps with the connotations of quite messy teenagers and rebelling. The page bellow and to the right however has used multiple images but a lot more text than the top right example, showing that using more images would not sacrifice space for text.