Evaluation Of Music Magazine Production!

Tasha Lancaster

How My Media Product Uses Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products

Whilst producing my music magazine I have tried to affectively apply a high calibre of the necessary methods and conventions that you would find in that of professional standard media product.

Some of the basic conventions that I have used in my magazine are things such as:

•Making the name of my music magazine and the headline story stand out from the rest of the magazine. This is important because it is the part of a magazine that catches the readers attention and gives them an insight as to what the magazine contains. I have also applied a unique style of writing to the name of the band that I have featured in the article.

•Like many other music magazines, I have placed the name of the magazine and the features that I have included down the left hand side. The left third is used on many magazines because when magazines are stacked in the shops, it is normally only the left third that is on show to the public eye.

•I have used my main picture to take up the entire background of my front page, by doing this it represents that the people in it have got something to do with the main story. Even so, not all magazine necessarily use the one picture of their main story to fill their background, but I have found that a large proportion of music magazines do, in fact, use this method.

I have used the Ebon magazine to show they ways in which have applied some of the same techniques.

Unique titlesUnique titles

Articles and title on left hand Articles and title on left hand sideside

Use of picture as a background Use of picture as a background fillerfiller

Cover linesCover linesMastheadMasthead

Main pictureMain picture

Price and date linePrice and date line

BarcodeBarcode

Left thirdLeft third

Main story/articleMain story/article

Conventions

My Media Product And How It Represents Social Groups

The theme of the media product is music and the band that I have used to cover my main article are of a indie/rock genre. I have decided to use this genre of music due to the fact that my survey showed that these were to two preferred style of music that people likes to listen to.

By using the theory surrounding social economic groups, I have tried to produce the magazine so that it appeals to a number of people that may enjoy my magazine regarding there occupation, education, economic status and background.

I have deliberately priced my magazine at a reasonable rate. Bearing in mind that my target audience is teenagers, it is important that the magazine was not priced as to high or to low. If it was to high then there would be a risk of people not buying the product, or to low there would be no profit.

I would say though that my magazine would be aimed at people from working class up to the middle class. I feel that people of this social group would enjoy and benefit from my magazine more.

As well as this the magazine that I have created would appeal to groups such as:

•Main streamers: Main streamers are people who just go with life. They are also people who can be influenced with there peers. If my music magazine was to be sold and was popular, main streamers may feel the need to buy it to keep up to date and in fashion.

• Aspirers: It could appeal to aspirers depending on what they wanted to aspire to. If they wanted to have a career in music then they may purchase it for that reason. Aspirers are people who strive for more, they want a better lifestyle and are not afraid to work hard to achieve it.

Media Institutions That Might Distribute My Media Product

Producers

Marketing

Distributors

CompaniesAnd

Organisations

MediaInstitution

Provide the means of sale for a media products. It would be the job of the companies to make sure that

the product has been advertised efficiently. It is also the companies that fund the article and make all the preparations for it to be then sold to a chain of supermarkets.

Make and sell said media products. This includes printing and shipping of to all the stores and supermarkets that will sell the

magazine, this could be to all different parts of the world.

Marketing includes putting the magazine or any other media product ‘out there’.

There is also marketing research and that job includes finding the subjects that people want to read and see about.

The producers are the people that design and put the magazine together ready to be put on the

shelves.

They pick and write up the articles, design the layout of the page etc.

The Audience For My Media Product

I have decided that I am going to make the age range for my product of around 14-19 year old females, thus trying to cover the topics that this era are interested in.

I completed market research into what people of this age like to see in a music magazine using an online questionnaire called survey monkey. In this survey I asked all the questions that I feel relevant and that will be beneficial to the production of my magazine.

The benefits of using survey monkey is that it is quicker and easier to make and send out then it would be to write it up, also it analyzes all of the results that you have been given and makes it simpler to understand and more reliable as it gives you a percentage. I have not made my magazine for a specific group of people but obviously it will appeal more to those who are interested in music and the world surrounding music.I have tried to add additional interests to my magazine so that it does appeal to a variety of people with a wider interest span, for instance I have included articles such as fashion tips and also a short review of films.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R5NFRQP

My Target Audience!

When planning my magazine I had to constantly think about how it relates back to my target audience.

I have challenged the form of using males to represent the main features of media products by deciding, to instead, have females as the main gender in my product. I have shown this by using a large amount of females in my pictures and also by using more feminine colours such as purple and orange.

We also tend to make the association of bright colours with the younger generation. This means that I have also conveyed my target audience age through using this method.

I have planned to make my media product so that it would appeal to all ethnic backgrounds. My target is to make my magazine attractable to all different people so that the profit margin will be larger.

Also, as I have previously mentioned, the social class and psychographic group that I feel my magazine will fit into will be the working class up to the middles class and from this group I believe that people like main streamers and aspirers would benefit most. Because of the price and the articles that I have included, I trust that this is a reasonable prediction of whom would be most interested in my final piece.

How I Attracted My Target Audience

The methods that I used when planning and producing my music magazine are techniques that I know would appeal to my target audience. Things such as the use of bright colours and an array of different layouts.

For my contents page I have made the layout very busy and left as minimal space as possible. Also instead of columns I used separate boxes to make it more less boring and more dramatic. I have applied the bright colours to it and left the background plain so that the colours really stand out.

As I mentioned before I have used topics that I know interest my target age such as festivals and fashion etc and also the band are of the same age as the target age.

Instead of using a large amount of writing, exempting my middle page, I have tried to even it out with also using a lot of pictures. The pictures that I have used contain people that are of the same age as the target audience that I was hoping to attract to the product.

What I Have Learned About Technologies

During the production of my music magazine I have had to learn how to use many different types of technologies so that my magazine could look that of a professional standard.

The main technologies that I have had to learn about was:

∙ The manipulation of the images, I did this by using a programme called Picasa which allows you to crop, remove blemishes and add special affects to the picture that you are changing. I have learned through this technology what affects look best in a picture and how to apply these changes to the image.

•Another technology that was important to the construction of my music magazine was computers. The computer was important to my magazine because it allowed my to use its programmes on it that would help with not only the construction but also the research of my magazine. What I have learned about technologies via the computer are to use things such as survey monkey where you can create a online survey.

•Through what I have learned about shots and pictures, I used a camera phone to take the pictures for my magazine. When the photos were taken I tried to make sure that there was nothing included in the background that I did not want to be there. Also I have tried to vary the different shot and angles.

Who Would Publish My Media Product

To enable my music magazine to have the best chance of selling, I need to make sure that the company that publish it have a good background history in the world of media.

I would use the company IPC to see my product as it is an industry that accounts for at least 85 iconic media brands.

One of the magazines that they produce is NME. This has been on of the most influential magazines for my own media product. I have tried to use the same methods and target audience that this product uses as it is one of the most bestselling music magazines in not only the UK but worldwide.

IPS has three main focus points: men, mass market women and upmarket women. This means that it specialises in my target audience which for this would be mass market women.

After it has been produced by IPC I plan for it to be sold in all good shops and supermarkets.

I have used inspiration from other popular music magazines such as NME to create a flat plan for my front, contents and middle page of my media product.

A flat plan is creating a rough design on, in my case, the layout to my media product.

On my flat plan I gave a detailed account as to where I was going to put all the things on my music magazine and by doing this I could see whether the things looked good where they were.

I found this particularly useful in the design of my magazine also because I could continuously keep referring back to my flat plan to see where I was putting the different parts of my product. By doing this, not only could I ensure that I would like the final layout to my product, but also it would save me a lot of time in the long run.

Flat Plan

As a preliminary task we had to design and produce a student magazine. The main reason that we made this magazine was as a practice for when we had to create the music magazine.This was a useful task because as well as getting a feel for what we had to do in the real thing, we also got to see what techniques would and wouldn’t look good on my final piece of work.As part of the task we had to create a front and contents page as to the standards that we thought looked that of a professional product. We then had to show what we had come up with in class and then we would be criticised on the piece of work that we had just created.Just a few of the criticisms that I received were things like: Having a plain background made the product look boring and not stand out, not using the picture to cover the entire background, there should be no underlined titles on the front or in the contents page, use different colours but no more then three per page and also the writing should be only on the left hand side. I have learned a lot from the preliminary task a majority of it has been around the importance of layout, colour and styles and how important they all are to making people purchase the magazine. I received a lot of constructive criticism for my preliminary task but I have decided to leave it as I originally designed it so that people can see how I have improved from this task to my music magazine.

Preliminary Task

What I Have I Improved On My Front Cover

1. Colour for background.

2. Better quality picture.

3. More colours.

4. Stand out fonts to highlight main story.

5. Short features that get straight to the point.

1

2

5

6. Busier style.