Evaluation of My Music Magazine

By Rosie Daly

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the codes and conventions of real media

products?

On my front cover, I have used codes and contentions such as a main image, masthead, issue date and number, barcode, price and cover lines etc.

Real Media Product My Music Magazine

I have used conventions of other magazines by using a play on words with “Note Book” and have also used a picture within the text to make it stand out.I have gone against the convention of having the masthead going all across the magazine so I had it on a slant instead. I did this purposely so it does not block the main image and it also draws the readers attention to the main article within my magazine. This is also achieved by the model looking directly at the camera.

In the top right hand corner of my magazine, I have an issue number and the date of the magazine. When I researched other magazines, I noticed they all have these so I decided to use them myself. It adds to the realism of my magazine. Similarly, I did the same with a barcode to give my magazine a more realistic look. The idea of having the price in small font is to make it hard to notice. I purposely did this as if I were to look at a magazine, I wouldn’t want to know the price as it may out me off buying it. So I thought, the same as many other magazine companies, that I should have the price tag in the smallest font to prevent any mind changes of the audience.

I have used a close up of the person on the front so the audience may establish the main topic/person in my magazine. It focuses on her and draws attention to my magazine.

In this teen vogue contents page, I noticed the layout of columns which I a convention that I followed. Along with page numbers, pictures and the contents masthead. This contents page only has one image but I have included three. I learnt that I needed more than one image as I experimented doing this but it didn’t look right so I concluded that I needed more images.

I have replicated the logo of “NoteBook” onto the contents page to make it a consistent feature throughout my magazine. This signifies what magazine the audience is reading because it is the actual name of the magazine.

Now that I have compared my contents page with a real media one, I think I followed the codes and conventions needed to make it realistic.

I tried to replicate this double page spread interview layout in the terms that it has columns, photos and questions and answers. I imitated this layout and added a few other codes and conventions such as quick fire questions and a tweet from the artist. I also used a promotion fro the artists of her next appearance and her new album.

Also, on my double page spread, I have included a main heading saying “Cover Story”, and an introduction on the artist, the logo of my magazine, having the layout in columns & having quick fire questions for the artist. All of this will contribute to the realism of my music magazine.

I have also used a technique that is similar to stage directions. When researched different magazines, I noticed these were included in some interviews. I think its to give the reader a sense of realism and get to think that they are with the artist so they are interacting with the reader.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I deliberately used this photo as the girl on the right is wearing a sparkly dress and the girl on the left is wearing a red dress. These costumes signify my genre of classical pop music as these are the kind of outfits that the artists would wear.

I tried to replicate this image as my main image. Katherine Jenkins would be the kind of person who will be featured in my magazine.

As my magazine genre falls into two categories, Classical music and Pop music, it will have an extended audience and this is known as an unconventional audience.

Even though this magazine is not a music magazine, if you think it was a music magazine, they would have the same audience. This relates to my female, sophisticated and classy factor of my audience. This magazine gave me inspiration for the colour scheme I used.

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

I researched two media institutions when answering this question. One being IPC Media and the other is Bauer Media.

IPC MEDIAThere are loads of women's magazines, one teen magazine and one not many music magazines. This would be ideal to market my magazine with this company. All three aspects are in my magazine so there is a fresh place on the market fro my magazine so I would choose IPC Media

BAUER MEDIA

Here a just a few magazines that Bauer Media have there name to. I don’t think my magazine will fit in with this company because it will be alone in the sense that there are not many other magazines like it. At a push, Grazia magazine will be the closest to my target audience except they don’t specialise in music whichh is what mine does. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t want Bauer Media to distribute my music magazine.

Who would be your audience for your product and why?

Here are typical audience members who my product will be aimed at. One is featured in my blog. They are likely to be labelled, stereotypically, as posh, classy and sophisticated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5IvpoJrTQY

This music video, Break It To My Heart, by Katherine Jenkins will be the kind of music which will appeal to my audience. Katherine will be an artist that would be most likely feature in my magazine. Even Katherine herself would be an ideal member of my audience.

How did you attract/address your audience?

One way that I have attracted my audience is by including a quotation of the main artists featured in my magazine. This will intrigue them as they will want to buy my magazine to find out what her experience was like at the Royal Wedding.

Another way in which I have addressed my audience is my making a feature that gives them a chance to meet Harry Baldwin. My readers will want to not miss out on this chance so therefore will want to buy my magazine. This proves that I have attracted my audience through this tactic.

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

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

When I had completed the challenge of my preliminary task (my school magazine) I then had to start planning a music magazine. I did mind maps of genres and title names. I originally had the idea of a pop music magazine, but the audience feedback was a bit negative towards the genre in such a way that people could not establish the correct genre. So I decided to change my genre which when I received audience feedback again, it was much more better and I had improved as I changed my genre to Classical Pop music.

I used the skills I learnt when making my school magazine and applied them to the task of my music magazine. I found that I developed them too as you can tell because my music magazine is a lot better than my school magazine.I added codes and conventions to my music magazine to add to the realism of it. This includes things like barcodes, price and an issue number and these are not present in my preliminary task. I feel I have improved in my photography as I have taken more images and included them on the front cover and made the main image fill my whole page.

Within our preliminary task, we had to do a medium close up shot of the main image that would appear on the front cover. I was allowed to change the shot however, I did slightly to a close up, not a medium close up. When researching pictures that I could replicate, I stumbled across this one of Katherine Jenkins and I thought immediately that that would work with my genre! And, I am happy to say that it has. The replication that I did has worked out well.

In my contents pages, I think I have also improved too. For starters, I have included much more features that are in my magazine. Even though I used four pictures in my preliminary task, I used three in my music magazine. I did this because when I looked back on my school magazine, I thought the photos took up too much space and there wasn’t enough text. However, I think it was

successful as I have managed to use the space efficiently without the page looking too compact and overloaded. Even though the two magazines are two completely differentgenres and have a completely different target audience, you can still see that I have progressed with my skills to develop my music magazine.

I feel like I have developed my technology skills as I researched many websites that I could use to edit the text fro my magazine. I came across dafont.com and I used this a lot in my music magazine.

I then came across this website called picmonkey.com which I found really useful to edit photos. One example where I used this is with the image in the front cover.

I developed this image to make it better and more suitable for my front cover image. Her hair has been lightened and the background is a lighter shade, edging on white.

I really enjoyed this website as I did want a white background but couldn’t get the correct shade of white that I was hoping for in the original photo. Furthermore, this website helped me achieve this background and it looks so much better.