1. Media Evaluation
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My magazine used a conventional layout and theme that is used by real media products like “Kerrang!” as
it showcases similar music and is eye grabbing and professional looking. For the colour scheme, I used colours
that contrasted well – white, black and red. The scarce use of the bright red makes the text stand out on the
page as being important, in the case of the front cover it is used to highlight the interview with Kieran Langley
– the biggest feature of the issue.
The largest text on the cover is the name of the magazine. Stretching across the whole page and being a
different font to the rest of the text makes it eye grabbing so the product is easily recognised at a glance.
The image on my mag follows the conventional layout of having a mid-shot on the cover. Down the left side
and the bottom of the cover is information about what people can expect to find in the magazine; if people
see a name of a band they like or recognise they’re more likely to buy the mag so they can read the whole
article about it.
My contents page is split into two halves, a large image at the top and a page guide on the bottom. If I
could do this again, I’d make the page number stand out more and also annotate the image at the top, as it
looks a bit random on the page. I would also make some of the text a different font and colour to make the
page more interesting to look at.
My double page spread has a conventional layout of text on one half and a large mid-shot image on
the other. It had an interview with a vocalist on the side with the text, and an image of the vocalist on the
other side.

2. 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine represents modern rock and metal music – people who follow this music tend
to have a striking, extreme or dark and brooding. The cover picture represents this by
looking grumpy with a hood up.
The colour scheme is suitable for the genre, and is a conventional scheme. The contrasts
between black, white and red are used to make certain parts stand out and it makes the
magazine look punchy and rocky.
The names of punk or rock bands are on the cover and the content throughout the
magazine involves rock bands that represent a particular style. The interview on the double
page spread interview someone who fits the style that this magazine represents; it goes into
detail about life as a professional musician on the rock/metal scene.
3.
Bauer Media Group might be the kind of media institution that distributes my magazine. It
distributes the very popular rock magazine “Kerrang!” and “Q” these are produced every
week and sold for £3.20, but even less if you subscribe. My magazine is priced at £3.00.
They publish 282 magazines worldwide.

3. 4. My audience could be anyone interested in rock or metal music, but this would be
mainly teenagers and young adults, around 15-25. Both females and males would be
interested as there is a lot of variation in the rock genres, punky, happy songs (which
would probably interest teenagers) all the way through to extreme, biker metal
heavy music that could interest and older readers – old classics could appeal to an
older audience. Ozzy Osborne is 64 and a very famous metal singer. This era of rock,
although old would be suitable in Noize and therefore
attract a older audience.
5. My magazine attracts an audience of mainly 15 – 25 as many bands featured on the
cover are bands of that generation. There are many current bands that would
interest younger readers and bands like “Iron Maiden” that is headlining a festival
featured in the magazine would attract an older audience.
The content has a lot of current and older bands that would interest fans of that
band, as they would want to buy the magazine to catch up on a band they like.
6. In the production of this magazine I learnt to use Photoshop through trial and error. I
had no previous experience or knowledge of the program so I found this very
challenging. It is editing software that is very useful for creating different layers and
editing photographs.
I had to handle a camera which I found fairly easy – cameras are relatively simple to
use and upload images onto a computer with.
I used Microsoft Word to write up about my magazine, which was then easy to
upload to my blog through the use of an internet program called “Scribd” – an online
document publisher.

4. 7. Since my preliminary task I feel like I have improved at using Photoshop and I also
feel that I have more understanding of how media is published and the process an
editor of a magazine has to go through before it is ready to publish. I have more
understanding of techniques used to attract an audience and make the magazine
stand out from others.