Evaluative Questions: Question 1

Mast Head:

For my mast head i took inspiration from Q magazine as i have used the same red and white colours for my mine, i chose to use a red and white colour scheme because the colours work well together and they stand out as the background is very dark, i made the font bold and put in it capitals to make it big, i also put the official magazine below it in a smaller text to make the front cover look more professional and make my front cover look overall better.

Cover Line:

In comparison both are magazine titles are written in big bold fonts, except for mine i have used two colours white for the text and a red glow around it to make it stand out even more, it is very important to have a good cover line because if it small or lacks colour it will fail to catch the readers attention.



Double Page Spread Layout:

For my double page spread i followed the layout of most other magazines as i have used big a picture similar to double page spread below i have also divded the text into collums to it easier for the reader to follow and it looks nicer then if the text is scattered everwhere, i have also highlighted the titles at beggining in red to make them stand out as they are the heading of each separate piece of text, i also put the quote from the artist in brackets and put in in italics so you know they are speaking.

Colours:

In terms of colours i used two colours for the whole of my magazine except for the free poster which i used yellow as it seprates itself from the other colours and makes it stand out more, red and white were to two colours i chose to use similar to Q magazine i decided these worked best for my magazine as they worked well with my background and the style of my magazine being rock/alternative music, most magazines tend to two or three colours throug out their magazines as they work well together but use too many and it becomes a mess and does not look good.

Layout of contents page:

For my contents page i choose to compare mine to this contents page from Mojo magazine, they are both the same in that they have one picture, most contents pages uses more then one photo but i though this was not necessary as main point of focus for magazine was one particular band, the page layout is identical to mine as we have both put the text in collums and most of the page is taken up by the picture itself.

Question 2

My magazine represents particular social group because it shows a band and it is very common for many teenagers to get into bands because it gives them more popularity when they are at school whether it be to attract girls or because they think they have a chance of making it big and becoming famous or they just genuinuely like playing instruments together as a band because it is their hobbie and they are good at it.

                                

Question 3

I think that the type of media institution that would distribute my magazine is Bauer as they own over 300 media titles in 15 separate countries and their main media divisions are magazine and radio, Q Magazine and NME From researching these two magazine institutions I feel that Bauer would be the best to distribute my magazine as IPC produce a very similar magazine to mine which is NME. Although Bauer produce the magazine Q which has elements of my genre within it I think my unique selling point of being in the rock/alternative music genre of magazines would still shine through, and it adds a different type of magazine to the types that Bauer distribute, although my magazine is similar to that of NME magazine I still feel it is quite independent in itself and therefore would suit being distributed independently as well as being distributed by Bauer Media. Overall I feel either Bauer or distribution independently would benefit my magazine either way as I feel my magazine would fit in among those of Bauer as it is similar to the genre of Q and NME magazine

Question 4

The target audience for my magazine would be for people who like rock/alternative music and are in the age range of 17-19 i feel this age range suits my magazine because many teens today are becoming more involved in this rock genre of music and going to gigs that no one knows about or big events that are globally known such as Reading, Isle of white festival or Glastonbury below are some pictures of people i belive would be interested in my magazine.

The first people i looked at would be other bands that are into rock/alternative music, since they have probally  left school they all have part time jobs but their band is their main focus as they are always doing gigs all over london, i would say they are my primary readers as they would most likely want to keep up to date with the latest news in rock/alternative music and  read about their favourite bands and find out  new venues to play at, as you can see they all have fairly long hair and one has a mo-hawk so this tells me that they are passionate about what they do and this type of music is their way of life.

The other people who would be my target audience are students who are at college or uni and listen to rock/alternative music in their spare time although they maybe not as dedicated to music as much as a band they will most likely buy my magazine once a month to find out about new bands so they can be in the know and fit in with the similar crowd at school or they might just buy because their is a band they really like featured in the magazine, they will probally attend some giggs in their holidays with their friends who listen to similar music as they do but are probally not going to be buying magazines much as you can read about it on the internet or through word of mouth.

Question 5

In comparision to Mojo magazine we have bothed used a free item for the reader which is usally located in a corner of the front cover in my case i postioned mine in the top right where i had space avaible and highlighted it in yellow to make it stand out from everything else as well i had an arrow pointing inside the magazine to make it more interesting, the idea of having a free item in your magazine is to give the reader more incentive to buy your magazine which is why i used it in my music magazine, i also tried something that no other magazine has done and that is actually edit the picture of the people on the front cover to make it almost cartoon like i think this effect works well as it suits the genre of rock well and does not take anything away from the magazine but infact makes the picture much more vibrant and eye catching to the reader in comparsion to magazine below which has no real editing done to the picture itself, the masthead used in mojo magazine is in a black font which is very doll and not interesting to the reader thats why i used an outer glow in red so that it was not just white text on its own.

Question 6

When making my magazine i took the pictures using this Canon 10 megapixel camera.

When taking many picture i took enough so that i could use the best ones for my magazine below are some images i took but didn't use in my magazine.

I then upload my pictures to the computer using this USB connector

The following are the programs i used for editing and uploading photos to blogspot.

 I used Microsoft word 2010 so that i could spell check what i had written before i copied and pasted it to  the blog and up loaded it.



I also used powerpoint to upload my photos to blogspot as i found this to be the simpliest method for me i did this by going to save as then making it a PNG file then i could upload the pictures straight to the blog.



Photoshop was the program i used for editing all my photos for magazine below are screen shots of this.

For the front cover of  my music magazine i used the layer tool > then selected Layer style from the drop down menu i then added a outer glow to the text to make it stand out more and used the colour red as it works well with the black.

I then adjusted the settings by adjusting the levels out of 100% and chose the colour i wanted to use in this case i chose red because that was part of my colour scheme foy my magazine, i made the opacity high because i wanted the glow to be big so it would make the white text stand out more.

Here you can see all my layers together in the layer pallet the ones that have a T mean that they are text also if any affects were used they are below the layers, in making this front cover i had to move some of the layers because otherwise they would not be shown for example the issue number and month/price layers are before the Layer 2 layer which is the barcode so that they can be seen on top of the barcode.

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Question 7

When I first created my school magazine I did not have very much experience with using photoshop as you can see here the front cover for my school magazine is very simplistic as there is no bright colours or fonts to attract the reader as well the picture could have been of people rather than a building as would make the magazine appeal more to people, from creating both magazines I have realised that the magazine front cover is very important in a magazine being successful as this is the first thing the reader sees and could potentially affect whether they buy it or not, as you can see in comparison my music magazine has had much more detail put into because at the start of the year I had no knowledge about how to use photoshop since then I have improved much more because I now know how to edit in photoshop

Overall i am very pleased with my music magazine as i think it has turned out well after learning how to edit in photoshop and i can see the progress i have made since my school magazine which didn't turn out very well because of my lack of skill in photoshop and the fact it did follow the conventional style of a magazine but i think my music magazine has been a success after do much research into music magazines which i took my inspiration from such as NME and Q magazine which helped me get a better understanding of what a music magazine should be like.