For my music magazine coursework, I chose to create the

genre of rock n roll that targets 16-24 year olds.

My media coursework has developed forms and conventions in comparison to a real music magazine. I did this by making sure every part of my magazine was looked into carefully, structuring the layout and design. I used other rock music magazine to help me with my final design. I mainly focused on “KERRANG” and” NME” magazine to give me more idea's of layout and structure designs. I realised that in these magazines the colour scheme continually uses particular colours such as black, red and yellow to target their audience.

My masthead is a bit chic and simple and has very contrasting colours to immediately catch the audience eyes. I used serif to keep the conventions of a real music magazine. My masthead only consists of black and white which are similar colours that lets the audience focus more on the models and less on the masthead.

I used three different font for my magazine which are Serif, Ariel and bold Serif. When I researched more into rock magazine I realised that rock magazine always has simple front to make It easier for the readers to interpret. However, I challenged the conventions of the typical make subject and instead included both genders to embellish who the magazine is aimed at…

My magazine suggest that its for rock related audiences through the use of colour and clothing on the front cover spread. On the cover page I listed a few bands name in small cover lines. I also put each person in the band in gesture posing colours so the reader could immediately identify what their role in the band is.

The position of the lead singer Is very conventional as readers genuinely expect the lead singer to be placed at the front. Furthermore the reader singer is placed in skater and clothing which is instating recognized by the audience. In a addition the models are all given the read eye contact which entices them into the magazine and makes them feel involved. Moreover it is a mid shot which is conventional for a magazine cover.

Double page spread

My magazine represents a particular social group by focusing on the type of music, clothing , language and lifestyle. I have done my magazine this way to attract audience from the ‘Rock n roll’ genre.

I used the front cover of ‘Kerrang’ magazine to help me get the desired look for my final cover. I followed most of the layout and structure by having a centre medium shot image with sharp eye contact. I made the front cover the most outstanding and prominent features of the page. The way the band stands, facing straight into the camera with eye contact shows that they have a lot of confidence. It really engages the audience with the artists. I challenged conventional and stereotyped views by placing a female as the lead member for the group rather then a male. Within the Rock music industry male figures are the more idolised then females.

Furthermore I used lighting to make the lead singer appear more idolised then the rest of the band members. I put the centre light on her as she is shown to be the most important one within the group and the other members with darker lighting.

All of this is linked to genre as it is made to have the main model (lead singer) in focus and the rest somewhat far away.

The masthead ‘scene’ instantly tell the audience that its based around ‘New Rock’ which the younger generation would know more about, my magazine really changing the stereotyped rockers look, no crazy hair styles just simple teenagers enjoying the life of music.

Throughout my magazine, I used a lot of formal to informal language, I chose to do this because I knew the audience I was aiming at would relate more with use of language and draws them closer to my product.

The social group of m magazine has been targeted towards with D and C2, on the standard occupational classification, this is because the targeted audience that would be drawn to my magazine would mostly likely be skilled or unskilled audience. Furthermore you wouldn't corporate the colour baby pink, blue or light green with Rock seeing as most audiences are fascinated by dark, gloomy colours.

In my opinion my music magazine clearly represent the targeted audience for this magazine through use of mise-en-scene (image).

When I looked into publishers of major magazine I researched Future and Bauer publishers.

Future publisher distribute highly priced magazines such as technology and games. They also are into guitar magazines and distribute other heavy metal and Rock magazines. Their audience consist of people that wear dark tight leather clothing, tattoo's all over their bodies and funky hairstyles. Their mainly targeted at male audience but also some woman are interested too. Future are global publishers, print and distribute their magazine world wide.

Bauer publish magazines mainly targets at woman with the type of magazine like woman weekly, woman's interest and TV listing. Their audience are aged 24-55 with children But on the other hand they also publish magazines such as Q and Kerrang. This shows that this company is aiming to get a wider targeted audiences.

I think future would be a company to distribute my magazines because they target main-stream audience. The Bauer publishers do also targets a wide selection of audience and have interest in Rock magazines such as ‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q’ however they already own a magazine that’s similar to mine like Kerrang so its less likely for them to be interested in something similar to what they already publish. Needless to say Future does not have the ‘new Generation of Rock n Roll’ and might be interested in bringing something new out for a younger audiences. Future will promote my magazine by advising it in their other wide selection of magazines and distributing it first in London and Gradually growing to make it in the US.

I made my music magazine to be aimed at male and female audience and practically young adult from the age of 16-24 who are into the ‘New generation of Rock’ that emerged in their recent years. If my magazine is to be distributed worldwide it wouldn't be just set to one particular gender. What I did to attract both genders is I placed a woman to the dominated leader of the band and the magazine and placed the rest of the member somewhat to the back however it had both female and male members so its bound to attract both Male and Female audiences.

If u were to make a customer profile on who would buy my magazine. I would make sure its being sold in places that my targeted audiences would be attending such as Guitar shops, concerts, festivals and skate shops. My targeted audience would be at either one of these events and be surrounded with music and ‘New bands’ out, introduced to the lasted clothing ad so forth. Their likely to be into pop rock, rock, punk rock, alternative rock and also watching Television stations such as Kerrang and Scuzz.

I attracted and addressed my audience in a lot of ways. Firstly, for my front cover, I made some use of lighting from Photoshop to make the leader singer stand out more than the rest. With a new band audience new to identify who would be what in the band and lead singers always become the most idolised members. I made sure that each member looked straight into the camera with very sticking eye contact. The way their dressed also portrays their image and the magazine. I also made sure that the female members of the group wore minimum to no makeup. I challenged the way woman are seen in magazines, as sex object.

Thought-out my magazine I kept a certain colour scheme of Yellow, Red, black and white. I wanted to make sure that known of the colours clashed. I started with the colours Black and White but was to boring for a Rock magazine aimed at younger audiences. I realised while reading Kerrang, they used a lot of Red to emphasis on the parts they needed to.

I put the lead singer in very striking colours such as purple and light blue which is not often used in Rock magazines. I wanted her to stand out the most so the readers would identify who the lead singer is.

You see how woman are seen just as sex objects even in rock

magazines.

For my content page I placed the featured band in a vintage red telephone box which did challenge codes of conventions with the bright layout and font compared to the front cover. The band picture I thought was fun and creative because their all placed in the phone booth. I picked a red phone booth because I thought red represents danger and the way their coming out of the phone booth shows their coming out into this world, like their something new and fresh might be introducing a new era in music. Also I thought it wasn’t necessary for the band to have eye focus because they were already introduced to the audience by the front cover page. I also used a Content page from Kerrang to help me with the structure and layout. I also used the colour scheme.

The double page spread, I used one of the picture cropped around one of the band members hands that pointing towards the lead singers hand which says their band name but I used this picture in particular because I thought of where the hand would be pointing towards. I placed it on the left hand side of the double page spread so the hand would be pointing to the interview, it’s a smart way I thought of getting the reader’s attention. I did the questions in red and the answers by the artist in white these colour stand out more with the black background. I also used formal to informal language in my spread because the targeted audience would relate more with it.

I produced all my pages on Abode Photoshop instead of Adobe in design. I’ve never used Photoshop and at first I found it very difficult because we used Adobe InDesign in class. However after realising I wont get the same effect as I would from Photoshop, I started from scratch learning how to use it.

I used a Nikon D60 digital camera to take the image of my featured artists. I chose to do my photo-shoot in central London although it was hard finding somewhere that had perfect lighting and wasn’t as busy as central always is. We located the shoot at a back road with old brick walls. I was aware of the technology within the camera and set all the camera setting to how I wanted them such as exposure, contrast and brightness.

The most difficult in constructing the magazine was using Adobe Photoshop. I’ve never used this programme before so starting from the begging was very hard at first but as i researched on the internet on how to use it more and how to get the effects I wanted, it gradually become much easier to manage.

I didn’t find it very hard to point out the codes and conventions because in class we did a PowerPoint on a featured magazine. I analysed NME magazine which really helped me a lot on my own magazine because it’s the same genre and targets near enough the same audience.

Looking back I really feel that I have developed may sills on how to analysis and design a music magazine.

The shot of my preliminary cover was very dull with few words and not striking images and compared to my final cover you could see a huge difference in my learning progress. I had no colour scheme that matches with my preliminary cover but on the other hand in my final cover you could see a well thought out colour scheme and layout. The picture of my preliminary cover was taken by a phone just to show how much I didn’t think into constructing a magazine and how much skills and knowledge you needed to put it all together. There is no eye contact with the audience which I did not think was needed with having little to no knowledge on how important eye contact is to make my audience eye catching. In the content page it had no real information on what was expected to be into the magazine, it seemed like it was only 3 pages long which also I did not think through how important it is to place all the information that’s inside so that the audience would want to read it.

However, my final cover was carefully thought through. It address the audience as my image is in centre composition and as a representation issue, the clothing of the band represents Rock and Skater culture. The colour aren't dull but are very easy to understand and engage with.

Overall, in my final magazine I have made the audience to consider woman to be more part of the magazines and less looked at as sex objects. I wanted to address the way woman are looked at in every magazine even when their featuring a band member they have to show some part of their skin or use of makeup to attracts male gaze. I wanted to break that representation of woman in the media and make a new magazine enforcing female power. Looking back now I'm surprised on how much I’ve developed key skills in media production.