Evaluation

My music magazine use conventions of other music magazines as on the splash I have a masthead and a picture that takes up most of the front cover, my picture also overlaps the masthead as do other music magazines. I have a main subtitle on my front cover and other smaller subtitles. Also I have special features and exclusives, which other magazines use as well. On my double page spread my magazine follows conventions by having a picture on one of the pages and the other page predominately text, which is the article. Also on my double page spread I pull out certain quotes from the article and make them bigger and change the colour to break up the text. This is also another code and convention of music magazines.

My magazine represents different social groups, for example groups who like alternative music, as my music magazine is based on alternative music. Also my magazine represents teenagers. It does this as my main feature is a band called ‘Cool For Cats’ and this band is made up of two teenagers. It therefore represents teenagers as being able to do whatever they want to do, and being very motivated.

My magazine would be distributed by IPC, this is because they distribute magazines such as NME, and the NME is a magazine which involves itself in the same genre of music as my magazine does. Therefore the layout of there magazine is similar to mine, and it would benefit my magazine more to be distributed by the same institution as so a well known magazine like the NME.

My front cover attracts and addresses my audience as the picture I have selected as for the splash is the main focus and is positioned in a way that overlaps the masthead and makes the key aspects of the picture stand out, for instance the guitar that is in the picture stands out. I have done this to address my target audience. As my target audience are people who like alternative music, and music that is guitar based. For this reason I felt it was important to make the guitar visible. To do this I realised that other text and word art on the splash needed to be in other areas. Another way in which my front cover attracts and addresses my audience is by having ‘exclusives’ and ‘reviewed inside sections. This attracts my audience by making them feel that getting this magazine will give them the chance to know something exclusively, be the first to know this information. My contents page attracts and addresses my audience by having pictures in it that makes the audience want to know more about it, for example another picture that focuses on the main story on the front cover. Again the band pictured with a guitar and drum sticks immediately shows the audience what type of magazine this is. Other aspects of my contents page back this up. For example having the ‘features’ column shows the many other features in the magazine that the audience can view. My double page spread attracts and addresses my target audience by the use of imagery, on my double page spread I have the background of my picture that extends across the page, which my article is written on top of, this picture is again of my man story, and pictures them facing each other with each member of the band with their instrument. These pictures were originally separate but I have edited them so that they form one picture. The other picture on this double page spread is of the back of a guitar which has the band members reflection in it. This attracts my target audience as it is a picture that is different to all my other pictures in my magazine, and has rarely been done before, and has many connotations, it co notates how much they like their particular genre of music, and how passionate they are about guitars. It also addresses my target audience as well because this passion of guitars that the band has can be related to by the many of my target audience, as my magazine specifically focuses on alternative music.

I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing my magazine, for example Photoshop. This programme has helped me edit and create many of my pictures to attract my target audience. Also I have learnt a lot about a camera as I have had to learn how to get the right shot, and use the right amount of lighting to create the specific effect I want, and to make the shot look professional.

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel I have learnt a lot about the computer programmes, for instance I feel I have more understanding on Photoshop. I have learnt how to edit my pictures. For example the main picture on the splash of my magazine has been made so that it overlaps my masthead. This is just one of the skills I have learnt using Photoshop.

MY FINAL DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

MY FINAL CONTENTS PAGE

MY FINAL FRONT COVER

Development of my Double Page Spread

At the top is my first attempt at my double page spread of my magazine, below it is my final double page spread of my magazine. After revising my first double page spread i decided to make changes to my double page spread to make it better. For example one of the changes was to te title, the title and subtitle below it went across the page and this does not follow codes and conventions of magzines. So all i did was move the title to the left so that it did not go over the crease in the middle of the page.

I moved the quotes that i had highlighted out of the text to various points in the text, so that the text was broken up, i did this because i didn't want there to be huge amounts of text with no breaks. To break up the text further i moved the smaller picture from the right hand side page to near the text on the left.

I also added a 'what you need to know' section which tells the audience a few bullet points as to bits of information on the band and tickets. It also gives a must see rating on the band.

Development of my Contents Page

At the top is my original attempt at my contents page, below it is my final contents page. I have revised my first attempt at my contents page and continued to make changes to it. For example, in my first attempt i have at the top of the page 'contents' as a title. I decided that this was too big, i then decided to bring the magazine name from the front cover onto my contents page, in the same position on the page. This allowed me to move the title 'contents' to the left of this and make it smaller.

Then i looked at the rest of my page and realised that at the bottom of the page there was a big space with nothing in it. This made the contents page look very top heavy and very unbalanced. So then i made each of my pictures bigger and shifted them to the right hand side of the page, this made the right hand side of them page filled.

The text then had to move, so i moved the text to the left hand side of the page and I made sure that the text took up most of the left hand side of the page so there was no big spaces. The subtitle 'features' didn't stand out much so to incorporate the colour scheme more i decided to change the font colour to yellow and put a red strip behind it which linked with the red border of the main picture.

Also i felt it was hard to determine which story went with which page on my features list, so I made two changes. One was to put the page number on the picture aswell, and the second thing i did was to move the text about the pictures as close to them as possible, coupled with this was the fact that the text about the pictures is bigger than the other text in 'features'.

Development of my Front Cover

At the top is my original attempt at my magazine front cover, my final front cover is below it. I then revised the front cover and began to make changes to it. For example, on my original front cover there is a big gap in the top right corner, which makes the whole of the front cover look unbalanced. So i took other bits of text from lower down on the page that didn't look very visible and put them in the top right hand corner. This made the magazine look better in two ways. Firstly the splash began to look more balanced and also the text became more visible. Above this text i put 'reviewed inside' this gave the text some meaning.

I then looked at my main subtitle in the middle of my front cover and in parts it didn't look very clear. So i then outlined it with red and it became more visible. I also then decided to change the angle the text was as it went against the angles of all the other text on the page. I then moved the main subtitle down the page aswell. I did this because the main part of the picture behind was covered by the it. To show even more of the picture i moved the 'go on tour' text to the right underneath the main subtitle. This allows the audience to see more of the guitar and the guitarists hand. Which is important, as it shows what my picture is portraying about the band.

Once i did this however, the middle of the splash became packed with all the text, and my other subtitles made it hard to see which part of text was with which other one. I also began to notice that at the bottom of my magazine there was lots of other unused space. So i moved my other subtitles down to the bottom of the page, and made them about the same size, to show that they are of equal importance, and not bigger than my main story. To show that these were still big features, i put an 'exclusive' heading above them.

Contents Page Plan

Double Page Spread Plan

Plan of Front Cover