Friday, 27 March 2009
Friday, 20 March 2009
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Evaluation
My Front Page:
My Double Page Spread:
My Contents Page:
My Double Page Spread:
1) In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines?
My music magazine uses a lot of forms and conventions from existing music magazines, such as the title at the top, main image centred in the middle, puffs, sell lines, teasers, graphic features, buzz words and the price being next to the barcode however most magazines have the price at the top in bright colours to attract more customers because magazines are stocked up in a way that the top of the magazine is more visible. To make my magazine more unique I put the free CD inside, usually the free CD goes on top of the front cover because I wanted the front cover to be full of puffs and sell lines to look more interesting. To make my magazine more unique for my double page spread I had the interview on the left and the image on the right, however the image isn’t A4 size it’s a centre fold page of the image of my front cover central image character. On my front cover I have anchorage text to make it look more attractive, it also has a good and an attractive slogan related to the target audience, “From crime to grime”. I also followed the 4 colour scheme on my front cover and stayed with the same colours on the contents page as well as the double page spread. Most contents pages have the page numbers on the left side, so I used this for my contents page, to make it look more like an existing music magazine.
My Contents Page:
My music magazine uses a lot of forms and conventions from existing music magazines, such as the title at the top, main image centred in the middle, puffs, sell lines, teasers, graphic features, buzz words and the price being next to the barcode however most magazines have the price at the top in bright colours to attract more customers because magazines are stocked up in a way that the top of the magazine is more visible. To make my magazine more unique I put the free CD inside, usually the free CD goes on top of the front cover because I wanted the front cover to be full of puffs and sell lines to look more interesting. To make my magazine more unique for my double page spread I had the interview on the left and the image on the right, however the image isn’t A4 size it’s a centre fold page of the image of my front cover central image character. On my front cover I have anchorage text to make it look more attractive, it also has a good and an attractive slogan related to the target audience, “From crime to grime”. I also followed the 4 colour scheme on my front cover and stayed with the same colours on the contents page as well as the double page spread. Most contents pages have the page numbers on the left side, so I used this for my contents page, to make it look more like an existing music magazine.
My Contents Page:
Existing magazine Contents Page:
2.) How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?
My magazine represents teenagers in the urban scene that are mostly interested in R&B, Grime and Hip Hop. On the front cover of my magazine is a young female producer that has succeeded in her life to what she always wanted to be, this will inspire the young community showing that you can succeed in your future and be whatever you want to be only if you dedicate yourself you can even achieve it at a young age.
This is great for my magazine because my target audience are teenagers/ students, most of the teenagers spend their time on the streets with no inspirations. A lot of teenagers are inspired by music that’s why there are more teenagers that do music than anything else, this might open a wider view for some of the teenager’s future or it might help them with their music if they get in contact with the music video producer I used as my main image.
3.) Who would be the audience for your music magazine?
The target audience for my magazine is mainly teenagers from age 13 – 19 any race and any gender, the audience has to be interested in the music genre my magazine is based on. My intended audience has to be in the urban scene to like and to have an understanding of my magazine, because than the audience won’t need any background knowledge. The audience I’m aiming at have to be able to afford my magazine as well, they have to be able to afford £2 a month as my magazine is published once a month. This is an advantage for the teenage/ student audience as they would be able to buy my magazine, if the price was higher my intended audience might not be able to afford my magazine which would be a fail in my production as my targeted audience would not be able to get my magazine which would meant me not getting any profit or it could even mean bankruptcy as I will make less money and use more money for the production.
4.) How did you attract/address your target audience?
To attract my audience I used bright colours, stories related to everyday teenage life, celebrities that teenagers are interested in and freebies to attract more wide range of the audience. My main story is ‘From crime to Grime’ this would inspire my audience that are possibly going through this phrase or would like to change to this phrase, the genre of my music magazine most of the time is stereotyped by crime so this story could even change a lot of teenagers life’s by making them concentrate mostly on what they would like to do in their future. The funky colours I used are a lot like my music genre loud, funky, laid back and unique. The language I used for my double page spread is urban because if I’m trying to attract urban customers I need to use the urban slang they use to attract them into buying my magazine, words like ‘Tha Productionist’ instead of ‘The’. Mostly teenagers are interested in all of the above, so there is a more chance of me attracting the audience my music magazine is made for.
5.) What kind of media institution might distribute your music magazine and why?
To publish my magazine I would use IPC media institution because they publish a lot of famous magazines like ‘Now’, ‘Look’ and many other brands, they also own NME the third largest commercial music website in the UK. However they don’t specifically have anything published to do with my music magazines genre, which could be seen as an advantage because it will be something new the institution could publish and get a lot of audience from it. IPC Media is a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. Almost two in every three UK women and over 44% of UK men read an IPC magazine, that's over 26 million UK adults. My magazine is unique which is good for the profit, my intended audience are teenagers they might also be interested in the other magazine brands by IPC, IPC’s target audience is mainly adults however my magazine would bring a wider audience to the company. My magazine will advertise IPC well, IPC will be more known because they specialise in mostly fashion magazines but this will put IPC in a different group as well. It will be also known in the urban scene which will be great way to attract a wider range of different type of audience, this would bring more profit to the IPC media institution.
6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your music magazine?
By constructing my magazine I have learned a lot about different technologies I used such as Photoshop which improved the quality of the images I used and Adobe Illustrator which improved my skills of setting out the layout of my music magazine. For my double page spread I used the skills I have learned from Adobe Illustrator to set out my interview page, which still had the same colour scheme that stayed the same throughout the whole magazine. Then I used my skills from what I learned about Photoshop and used it for my spreads centre fold picture which I edited on Photoshop to make it look different from other magazines, my unique skills only came out after I have learned about Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and also after the research I have done in my own time to see how magazines are made and many different ways it could be made so I could have a wider range of ideas that would come together for my final design.
My magazine before I knew how to use Photoshop & Adobe:
My magazine represents teenagers in the urban scene that are mostly interested in R&B, Grime and Hip Hop. On the front cover of my magazine is a young female producer that has succeeded in her life to what she always wanted to be, this will inspire the young community showing that you can succeed in your future and be whatever you want to be only if you dedicate yourself you can even achieve it at a young age.
This is great for my magazine because my target audience are teenagers/ students, most of the teenagers spend their time on the streets with no inspirations. A lot of teenagers are inspired by music that’s why there are more teenagers that do music than anything else, this might open a wider view for some of the teenager’s future or it might help them with their music if they get in contact with the music video producer I used as my main image.
3.) Who would be the audience for your music magazine?
The target audience for my magazine is mainly teenagers from age 13 – 19 any race and any gender, the audience has to be interested in the music genre my magazine is based on. My intended audience has to be in the urban scene to like and to have an understanding of my magazine, because than the audience won’t need any background knowledge. The audience I’m aiming at have to be able to afford my magazine as well, they have to be able to afford £2 a month as my magazine is published once a month. This is an advantage for the teenage/ student audience as they would be able to buy my magazine, if the price was higher my intended audience might not be able to afford my magazine which would be a fail in my production as my targeted audience would not be able to get my magazine which would meant me not getting any profit or it could even mean bankruptcy as I will make less money and use more money for the production.
4.) How did you attract/address your target audience?
To attract my audience I used bright colours, stories related to everyday teenage life, celebrities that teenagers are interested in and freebies to attract more wide range of the audience. My main story is ‘From crime to Grime’ this would inspire my audience that are possibly going through this phrase or would like to change to this phrase, the genre of my music magazine most of the time is stereotyped by crime so this story could even change a lot of teenagers life’s by making them concentrate mostly on what they would like to do in their future. The funky colours I used are a lot like my music genre loud, funky, laid back and unique. The language I used for my double page spread is urban because if I’m trying to attract urban customers I need to use the urban slang they use to attract them into buying my magazine, words like ‘Tha Productionist’ instead of ‘The’. Mostly teenagers are interested in all of the above, so there is a more chance of me attracting the audience my music magazine is made for.
5.) What kind of media institution might distribute your music magazine and why?
To publish my magazine I would use IPC media institution because they publish a lot of famous magazines like ‘Now’, ‘Look’ and many other brands, they also own NME the third largest commercial music website in the UK. However they don’t specifically have anything published to do with my music magazines genre, which could be seen as an advantage because it will be something new the institution could publish and get a lot of audience from it. IPC Media is a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. Almost two in every three UK women and over 44% of UK men read an IPC magazine, that's over 26 million UK adults. My magazine is unique which is good for the profit, my intended audience are teenagers they might also be interested in the other magazine brands by IPC, IPC’s target audience is mainly adults however my magazine would bring a wider audience to the company. My magazine will advertise IPC well, IPC will be more known because they specialise in mostly fashion magazines but this will put IPC in a different group as well. It will be also known in the urban scene which will be great way to attract a wider range of different type of audience, this would bring more profit to the IPC media institution.
6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your music magazine?
By constructing my magazine I have learned a lot about different technologies I used such as Photoshop which improved the quality of the images I used and Adobe Illustrator which improved my skills of setting out the layout of my music magazine. For my double page spread I used the skills I have learned from Adobe Illustrator to set out my interview page, which still had the same colour scheme that stayed the same throughout the whole magazine. Then I used my skills from what I learned about Photoshop and used it for my spreads centre fold picture which I edited on Photoshop to make it look different from other magazines, my unique skills only came out after I have learned about Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and also after the research I have done in my own time to see how magazines are made and many different ways it could be made so I could have a wider range of ideas that would come together for my final design.
My magazine before I knew how to use Photoshop & Adobe:
My magazine after I found out how to use Photoshop & Adobe:
To store all my work for teachers to mark my work I made a blog on Blogspot.com and put all my work on there daily, I can also look at examples of other students work and rate them. Blogspot is really good because it stores all my documents so if I lose them on my computer I can get them back on my blog, however somehow my account wasn’t able to upload pictures on my documents so I had to save the pictures and upload them on the documents on a Mac, this held me back but I still managed to stay ahead.
7.) What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from creating the school magazine (preliminary task), to creating your music magazine?
When I made my school magazine which was just to test my skills, I didn’t know how to use Photoshop so my central image looked plain it didn’t stand out to attract any audience the image didn’t look like a music magazine it looked more of a fashion magazine. I also didn’t know how to use Adobe Illustrator to set it out like an existing music magazine, after research and more practises I have learned much more and improved a lot for my final music magazine. Now I know how to take a photo in an appropriate setting and edit it on Photoshop to make it look more appealing and more focused, I also have learned how to put the image on Adobe Illustrator and set out the writing well around the image. After studying a lot of magazines in my spare time I have realised that the colours and fonts used have to relate throughout the magazine to be more like an existing magazine and to make it look more professional, so I kept this primary research in mind and used it for the front of my magazine, contents page and my double page article. This is important because now all my pages look related, instead of looking like pages from totally different magazines. On my blog I also had a pole asking people if they like my Front page, Contents page and my double page spread I had 100% positive feedback, this means all the people that went on my blog liked my Front page, Contents page and the double page spread.
7.) What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from creating the school magazine (preliminary task), to creating your music magazine?
When I made my school magazine which was just to test my skills, I didn’t know how to use Photoshop so my central image looked plain it didn’t stand out to attract any audience the image didn’t look like a music magazine it looked more of a fashion magazine. I also didn’t know how to use Adobe Illustrator to set it out like an existing music magazine, after research and more practises I have learned much more and improved a lot for my final music magazine. Now I know how to take a photo in an appropriate setting and edit it on Photoshop to make it look more appealing and more focused, I also have learned how to put the image on Adobe Illustrator and set out the writing well around the image. After studying a lot of magazines in my spare time I have realised that the colours and fonts used have to relate throughout the magazine to be more like an existing magazine and to make it look more professional, so I kept this primary research in mind and used it for the front of my magazine, contents page and my double page article. This is important because now all my pages look related, instead of looking like pages from totally different magazines. On my blog I also had a pole asking people if they like my Front page, Contents page and my double page spread I had 100% positive feedback, this means all the people that went on my blog liked my Front page, Contents page and the double page spread.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Analysing Music Articles
Music artist Gary ‘GZA/Genius’ Grice is featured in this article, so straight away you are able to know that it’s a hip hop magazine because it’s a hip hop artist. And also you can tell from the picture that it’s a hip hop magazine.
The language used is simple and sometimes street e.g. ‘You’re proud to remain true to your ethics.’ This is because hip hop is their main music genre and they have to appeal to their target audience e.g. ‘Pure Genius’ and ‘No the GZA, no Wu-Tang – It’s that simple. Yet the clan’s elder statesman still has creativity to burn…’
The colour used is simple and not so bright, it suits with the picture. Mostly black and white then red is used to highlight main words like the question, this is also useful to keep the reader in track so they don’t loose themselves in the paragraphs.
The style of the text is simple and easy to read, the questions and others are bolded to stand out. And the three main attractions of the article are made in a different font to stand out even more like the headline ‘Pure Genius’, the first letter of the article ‘H’ and the lead quote ’’It’s frustrating seeing rappers talk…’’. These are used to attract the reader’s eye, make them stop and read the article. Especially the lead quote, it gives the reader a bit of what is in the article to keep on reading.
It is a double page article, one side of the double page is used for the writing and the whole other page is used for the picture. This makes it look more interesting and quicker to read than seeing a double page for writing and possibly a small picture on the side.The tone used when addressing the reader in this magazine is as an informed intelligent fan, because in the interview the discussion is very clear and straight to forward. They are having a quite smart talk between each other about his point of view about rapping and his music.
The artist presented to the audience through the image is simple and quite smart, he seems confident about himself and what he does and he looks very independent.
The style of the article matches the style of the front cover because the picture on the front cover is also simple not bright and quite black and white, it keeps this quite professional look possibly throughout the magazine. On the front cover the main colours are red, yellow and black, an don the article the red and black theme is still kept so if you would look at lots of covers and articles mixed together you would be able to spot this one together. Also the text font is quite similar, so it makes the front cover and the article look alike.The article demands prior knowledge mostly for teenagers because people he talks about like ‘Slick Rick’ is an artist in 80’s, so teenagers would not know what the artist is talking about so they would need to know who he is talking about to be able to understand what he’s talking about. Elders adults that wore/are into hip hop/rapping would possibly know what the artist is talking about and would be able to understand what he means. Also young readers wouldn’t know what Wu-Tang is, they wouldn’t know that it’s a rappers group of 20 or 30 people. So this article wouldn’t be interesting to teenagers without any prior knowledge.
The language used is quite formal and informative e.g. ‘RIGHT NOW, clubbing is not ‘green’. The average medium- sized dance club uses 150 times the energy of a typical household and produces around 12,000 litres of glass to recycle from each weekend.’ Uses this information as a fact, this in figures would most likely to make the reader understand how bad this is. This also shows that he uses formal language so this article is taken seriously, and not just read for a joke. This also suits the target audience which are elders from 18 years old to possibly early 30’s. The audience is based at this age group because clubbing is mostly from 18 years old or even 21 years old.
There are lots of different bright colours used in this article to attract more of that type of audience, to make them glance the page and read it. But the article itself is more serious and plane, so the audience actually realise what clubbing does to the world.
The style of the text used for the headline ‘Rave the Planet’ is quite funky to catch more audience to the article just like the first letter of the article ‘R’ to persuade more people to read the article, but the rest of the article is in simple text that is easy to read and understand.
Pictures in this article are important and they take up probably a full page, but they laid it out on both of the pages to make the article seem quite quick to read. The pictures are sized well to fit the pages, and it’s mostly the pictures on this article that attract most of the attention.
The tone used in this article is like a member of an “in” crowd because the article is taking to a certain people that go clubbing, it describes detailed with lots of facts like ‘The full sized dance floor in the basement of WATT cost around £162,000 to build’. This article informs the reader so the reader don’t need any general knowledge to understand the article, all the information about the theme of this article is all put in there.
All the images used are showing people having fun, the meaning through that is how people are all there having fun not realising what they are doing to the world. Then there is a picture of a toilet that measures how much water is in the toilet and it says on the picture ‘The rainwater toilets: Flush with success’ suggesting to recycle, and also there is an image of a big smile covering few pictures (like its more important) with recycling symbols as eyes.
The style of the article really matches the front cover of the magazine through the matching colours and nearly same text font, the colours are so alike and some of the text font is still kept simple and easy to read.
The article doesn’t need any prior knowledge because it’s an informative article so everything is clearly explained in figures and other people’s point of view e.g. ‘“When I go clubbing I want to have fun, drink beer and look at girls. Clubbing don’t care about the environment. Besides,” He adds, “if a club doesn’t play cool music, then nobody will go.”’ This article has everything you need to know about what going clubbing does to the world, and it’s laid out very well because it doesn’t have biased views. It has facts and lot’s of other peoples true opinions, to show the reader what people that go clubbing and people that don’t think about this problem.
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