Music Magazine

Evaluation

By Rachel Linford
My Blog…
http://rl-9403.blogspot.com/

This is my blog that I created to put all the work that

I have done through out this project, it includes my
two different magazines , my photo shoots and
pictures from when we were exploring how the
camera works. It also has my music magazine
questionnaire and the health and safety of using the
redheads, and also includes any other work that I
have done on my magazine project on each post
that I have done on my blog I have also described
why I have done this and what it is for and how it will
help with my project. By putting work into a blog, I
can become ‘friends’ with other bloggers, and they
will be able to look and my work, and also I can see
if they have posted other work and if they have I can
comment on it and show what I think of it.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Flat Plans

Flat plans are a outline of how you want your

magazine to look, like a design plan. These are my
first ideas for my magazine My front cover pretty
much right as you can see my masthead, headline/
main story and menu strip are all in the same place in
my final piece. My contents page is different because
I decided to put my pictures in different places, so my
writing had to fit around my pictures. I think that my
double page spread is extremely different, I tried to
follow this plan but when I put everything in place I
didn’t think it looked right, I much prefer how I have it
now.

Music Magazine Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
I don’t think that my magazine challenges the conventions
of media, I think my magazine is inspired by different
genres of magazines to create my own music magazine. I
think that I have developed the music I like and created
into a magazine, but I don’t seem to fit into any genre of
music and there isn't really a magazine on the market that
caters people like that. I wanted to take the ideas of rock-
pop and alterative music and put it all into one magazine.
Also I think there is a lot of people like me that like pop-
rock music but are also very into music that appears in the
charts so I wanted a magazine that could cater for both,
also I think my magazine would be more popular and gain
more readers by doing this.

Throughout my whole production I was thinking about

when I as a teenager buy magazines and I always found
myself buying Kerrang on NME and then buying smash
hits or something because I enjoyed reading and knowing
about the artists in both them magazines. So when thinking
about my audience and how I would make my magazine
different to other magazines and to make it stand out from
all other magazine. and I think the mix in genre will mean
that there would be a place on the market for my
magazine.
Music Magazine Evaluation
Front cover
I decided to call my magazine ‘Electric Feel’ because it think that is the
feeling you should be getting when listening to the music you enjoy,
and been able to read about the music you like also I think it stands
out and I don’t think there is another magazine on the market with a
name like that. The band that I made up myself ‘Jukebox Kidz’ are
the biggest anchor on my magazine because it is linked to the biggest
picture in the background, also it is the name of the band that have an
‘exclusive’ interview in my magazine. I thought that adding a issue
number and the month it will be released it would make the magazine
look more realistic, and also that my audience could keep up with what
issue they were reader and also by the data they know when the
magazine came out. The story on the right-hand side of my anchor is a
true story (Paramore) I took from music-news online. Also most
magazine give out gifts so I decided to promote that my magazine also
has a posters inside. Like at the top, I have put a barcode and price
also to make my magazine look more realistic. At the bottom of my
magazine I decided to do something that would be interesting for my
readers, I decided to put in a competition to a massive rock band
(Blink 182) I thought it would attract more readers/buyers. On the left
hand side, I have put another anchor for an interview (You Me At Six)
because fans want to know as much as they can about an artist. Also I
wanted to add something that I know thousands of people are
interested in – Leeds and Reeding festival. I decided to create
something that would be like a photo album of all the highlights of both
festivals.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Contents

This is my contents, I think the contents is the most important

part of a magazine because it tells your audience what they can
expect from that week of the magazine, so I wanted to make it
very clear and easy to understand and also stand out because if
the contents looks boring and dull they might think that my
magazine is going to be boring and dull. I decided to do my
contents black, white and grey because I wanted it to follow on
from the front cover (white and black) but to make it a bit
different I decided to use grey instead of red I thought if I used
red it would look to the same and also too busy. When I
researched about contents pages, a lot of them used pictures
so I wanted to follow the conventions of this. As you can see I
used pictures from my photo shoot. For the text I wanted to use
black because I thought that it stood out and would be easy to
read. I don’t think that my contents follows the convention of a
genre of magazine, I think it is just a mix of each.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Double Page Spread
As you can see my double page spread has the same
colours as my contents, this is because I didn’t want to put
much colour on it because I knew that I wanted to put pull
quotes and pictures and I thought if I added another colour
that it would look to busy, so I decided to leave it simple
colours. Following the codes and conventions of a normal
magazine interview or story I wanted to have the bit at
writing at the top that needs the readers interested in the
story and also with what the band are about. I wanted to put
my writing into boxes because I thought that it would stand
out better and look less messy. Like a real magazine I have
used pull quotes I think this makes the interview more
exciting because you read some of the bits before you have
read the whole thing to see if you are interested also it stops
the interview looking very boring and dull and doesn’t just
make it look like lots of writing. I wanted the pictures I used
to look like snapshots of the four members of my band I
thought this would look very original and different and
wanted to give that effect of my been different, new and
exciting, as you can see I have over layered the name of the
band with the snapshots, I did this because I thought it would
make the snapshots look more realistic.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Who would be the audience for your media product?

To see what type of music teenagers would like I went round the college and asked lots of different
college students what type of music they like and the music genres that came out on top were pop and
rock. After surveying them about what music they liked and I decided I was going to create a band. I
then had to ask the students what type of magazine they would like and also what then think the
magazine should contain. So because my audience for my magazine is be aimed towards teenagers
that are interested in pop/rock and alterative music so everything that I have put into my magazine is
what my audience have asked for. I think the reason I have decided to make my magazine for mixed
genres is because there is no music magazines out there that cater for more than one genre of music. I
think my audience would like my magazine because of this reason, and they know that they can just
buy one magazine and get everything they want, I think this is much better than buying a whole load of
magazine. I also think that more people would buy my magazine because it doesn’t fit to one genre. I
think I am best aiming my magazine at teenagers because they are very much interested about the
lives of the people that make the music that they enjoy.

Music Magazine Evaluation

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

When I was GCSE media we used a program called PhotoDraw to create a magazine and found it very easy to
use, therefore coming to college and using different programs was hard, before we started anything on this
course we created a blog where we could post any work that we will be doing on this project. Creating the blog
was easy also I found it very easy to use and post things on. Before we started any of our magazine we had to
take photos first to just get use to how to work the cameras and then we had to take photos that shown that we
could use the different camera techniques and then finally we had to go into groups and create a photo shoot for
our music magazines. In order to create our magazines we had to use a program called Photoshop, when we
were first shown how to use it I found it very difficult to use because I was use to using PhotoDraw, but now that I
have made both a college and music magazine and I understand how it works I am confident about using it.

Music Magazine Evaluation

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

From doing the college magazine to creating a music

magazine I have leant, how to use the redheads
(lighting) for my photos shoot for my music magazine. I
didn’t know how to use these prior of doing my music
magazine. Also when creating my college magazine I
didn’t really know how to use photo shop, I could do the
basic but nothing advanced. I think you can tell that by
looking at my college magazine and then looking at my
music magazine, that I have explored more of the
resources of photo shop when creating my music
magazine, in my college magazine I could only shade
the pictures and place the writing and pictures in the
right place. In my music magazine I have learnt a lot
more as you can see from looking at my music
magazine I can do a lot more with the pictures, and I
have learnt how to change the stroke of the writing and
I have found out how to crop the pictures.

Music Magazine Evaluation

Conclusion
I really enjoyed doing this project. I felt it was very hands on because we got to decided what we wanted to
do and also got to do everything in groups so it was very interactive. With in our first few lessons we were
outside using the camera and just having fun creating different shots with our friends. Also at the same time
we were creating a blog and exploring what we could do with it. I also enjoyed when we had to make shots
that followed the rule of three I felt this was more changeling but we got to see how the cameras worked in
more detail. After we had explored the camera I had to create a college magazine – this was the run up to
creating my music magazine. I felt creating the college magazine was harder because I didn’t know how to
use the camera right and also had never been on photo shop before. After this I thought it was very fun when
we had to bring props in so that we could do a photo shoot, which was going to be the pictures that I would
use for my band and magazine. I felt we learnt a lot by doing this because we got to explore with redheads
which are the lights that we used for our shots I thought the redheads made my pictures much more dramatic
and effective. I felt like after I had done this it was just putting all my ideas together to create a magazine I
needed to decided what genre my band was from. I enjoyed creating my own magazine because it was
easier after doing the college magazine also I enjoyed creating a story for my interview with my band, and
posting everything that I had done onto my blog this way anybody that wanted to see what I had been doing
could . I felt finishing the magazine and creating my evaluation was the hardiest part because it was a lot of
writing and a lot needed to be done for the deadline.

Music Magazine Evaluation