The student created a music magazine aimed at teenagers aged 15-18 who are interested in indie music. To attract their target audience, the student used a bold masthead, colorful design, and featured a popular indie band as the cover story. Based on research of real music magazines, the student included conventions like large cover photos, pull quotes, and a reader Q&A with the featured band. Through the process, the student learned best practices for layout, photo editing, and how to represent their target demographic to appeal to indie music fans.

1. Music Magazine Evaluation Ben Mantell

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Why you have used conventions (mastheads etc.) and why you haven't used certain stuff, add screenshots. I have used bold writing in my masthead, which all other music magazines do, I have done this to catch the readers attention, I have put it in a bubble as I think it reflects on the title of the magazine, also the colour scheme it uses, is quite bright which will also help catch the readers attention. This is my strapline, I have used this because, I think it will help get my magazine recognised, not all magazines have a strapline, but I included it in mine, because I think that it does help to make my magazine unique. Just like all other music magazines, I have included a picture that takes up most of the room on the page, this is so members of the public know who my main article will be about, and also it helps to catch their attention.

3. I have included a pull-quote on the front cover of my magazine, as it helps readers see a sentence in the article about that band or artist, and hopefully this would help catch their attention, and want them to buy my magazine. These are pictures that are on the front cover, these are to show who else is included in my magazine, all other magazines will have this at the side of the page next to the main article picture, this helps the audience see who is in the magazine, and if they want to buy it or not. These pictures are on my contents page, in other magazines they would have the page numbers in a corner of the picture. I have chosen not to do this as I feel that it doesn’t do anything to the magazine, I feel that the audience will not look at the pictures to find the right article but look at the page numbers next to the story.

4. On my double page spread, like a lot of other magazines, I have made my picture take up most of the page, I have done this because it makes my magazine look more professional, I have included some writing underneath my picture because my article is about a new band, so I included the writing so people are aware of who is who. I have included questions from the readers to ask the band my article is on, from my research I didn’t find a magazine that included questions from the audience, I thought that this would be a good feature to add, as it gives the readers a chance to ask bands questions that they have always wanted to know. I have included a pull-quote on my main article, I have put a blue background on the text box, I have done this to get the readers attention straight to this, as it gets them more interested in the actual article and the questions that the audience asked. All of the magazines I looked at during my research had included some sort of pull-quote on their double page spread.

5. On my contents page I also added a quiz question, for people to win tickets to a gig, I thought that this would be a good idea as in the real magazine, they often have a quiz in at some point so that you can win something, whether its tickets, or merchandise.

6. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Young adults are the focus of my main article, so they are the people I’m trying to attract. The band I have used I would say would be role models for young people, because they have accomplished a dream that they have always wanted to do. So I would say that they are role models for never giving up. They are also the main focus throughout my magazine, they are the main picture on my front cover, the only picture on my contents page, and the main focus of my double page spread. My picture of the band is of them closely together, this shows that they are all good friends, and that they can accomplish stuff together, that is why I think they are good role models.

7. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? IPC Media are the publishing house, for NME which aims at people about the same age as people I want to try and attract with my magazine. The reason I would choose these as my publishers, are because they are used to aiming at a similar age group as I am trying to attract to my magazine. So they will know if my magazine will attract the right age group or not. I shall also consider going into online distribution, this will save people time and money, and as it is already online, it will already be aimed at the right age group as most teenagers are always on the computers. Also it can help me determine whether I fully start to distribute my magazine, because if a lot of people start to read my magazine online, then I shall bring it out in the shops as this is where I would make a lot of my money, but on the other hand if hardly anyone looks at my magazine online, then there is not much point in bringing it out in the shops as not many people would buy it.

8. Who would be the audience for your media product? The audience I have aimed for is teenagers between the ages of 15-18 years old. The reason I have aimed for an audience of this age group is because these are the age group that are most interested in music, and magazines. The audience I have tried to attract are the people who are into indie music. I tried to attract them by the bands I have used, and the band that I done my main article on.

9. How did you attract/address your audience? I attracted my audience by using a big bold masthead, that catch’s the readers eye’s and which would hopefully get them to pick up my magazine and have a look through it. I put my masthead into capitals so that it stands out more. I used a red box above my masthead to add a bit of colour to my magazine, I was hoping that the red box, would help that little bit more to catch the readers attention, and persuade them to have a look at my magazine. I also hope that my strapline helped get readers attracted to it, for the readers to be able to see my strapline they will have to pick up my magazine, so hopefully that once they pick up the magazine they will find my strapline funny/good, and buy it.

10. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? To edit my photo’s I used fireworks and Photoshop. Photoshop was the better of the 2, as it completely cut out the background and there was no chance of it being able to go over the people in my photo. This is when I used Photoshop, as you can see everything in the photo is still intact and its only the background that has disappeared. This is when I used fireworks, as you can see I have gone over the people in my photo so therefore it is not the best thing to be used.

11. Using Publisher To create my magazine I used publisher, the reason I used this is because, I thought that it was the best software to use, because it is possible to over lap objects such as, masthead and the main photo, to do this all you need to do is either send the masthead forward or backwards. Another reason why I used publisher is because it is easy to transfer work that is completed in Microsoft word, and other Microsoft products.

12. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I learnt about what the best things to attract the audience are, also I learnt how to make my magazine as professional as i possible can. For my magazine to look as professional as possible I had to make some of my pictures larger, and take up most of the room on the page, so that there the main attraction. I learnt about pull-out quotes, and how/where to use them, such as the front cover, and the double page spread. Also I learnt about how to present my contents page, I learnt the best way to present it after completing my college magazine this is because I didn’t use my college magazine to get ideas for the contents page, because when I completed the college magazine, I sort of rushed through it, and didn’t make it look very professional.