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.

Finished Music Magazine Double Page Spread

Finished Music Magazine Contents Page

Finished Music Magazine Front Cover

Iconic magazine image and commentary

For our iconic magazine image we decided to use Bill Clinton Former President of the United states of America because he is seen as a man of authority and this picture represents that by the way he is sitting with 

his arms on his knees makes him look powerful. We re-created this image by taking a picture of are teacher 

sitting at a chair in the same stance as Bill Clinton, we then used Photoshop to crop the photo using the magic wand tool and selecting all around the person, we then changed the background to a blue colour to make the person stand out more, the only thing we could not re-create was the title of the background on the magazine because we did not have enough experience in Photoshop to do this but everything else was a success.

School magazine

This was the first contents page we made for the school magazine as you can see it is very simplistic because their is lack of colour which is necessary in making your magazine stand out to the reader and also the fonts used are very basic however everything is very clear it just needs more added to it  to make it look visually better.

As you can see in this re-edit of are previous contents page we have made some simple yet effective changes to make it more appealing to the reader by editing the fonts to make them stand out by increasing the size and also colour scheme as well has improved because we now have a nice green background which is actually quite a soft colour to the human eye because it is associated with things like nature, we also added two pictures to the contents page because the reader will usually notice the pictures first because they are more interesting then text and finally we added a yellow star in the top right corner because this is the last thing the reader sees because they turn the page and the yellow really makes it stand out from everything else, the pupil of the week is similar to what a music magazine might do when they advertise a competition.


















For the front cover of our school magazine we used a mid shot of the expressive arts building, this gives the reader an idea of the location we are in and also as clues to what else is might be featured in the magazine, it always important to have a big picture for the front cover of the magazine because this is what readers see first and it is key to having a good magazine, it also important to make sure the picture is relevant to what your magazine is about for example if you had a rock magazine you most likely have a band head lining the front cover and could also feature props such as instruments. The picture we have used as you can see below is very clear because we have taken it outside and fits well with the title because of the green on the grass and trees it goes well together because they are eye friendly colours.

Audience research for music magazine

 

1.) The target market are rock fans that like too be kept updated and entertained, but also readers that like too receive a broad range of knowledge in the form of pictures and text.

2) The style of music is generally Rock with few other genres included in the music at all, this particular magazine focuses mainly on rock and single particular bands or big events or sometimes both in each issue.

3) Famous bands featured in this issue include, Green Day and also Weezer those bands are featured in this issue but every issue it is someone different.

4) Images on the front cover are bold and stand out, most of the images are close ups of certain people to interest and catch the reader’s attention.

5)  Fonts used on the front cover are bold and stand out in contrast with the colour used the text is intended too be clear and eye catching for the reader as the simple yet bold colours are definitive.

6) The layout of the front cover is generally the same as other big magazines in the form that the main article and main interesting thing is displayed bigger than the rest in the centre of the front with bolder and bigger text also with a picture that is bigger than the rest, whilst the other things contained within the magazine are spread around the cover but have no real presence due too the fact they are smaller than the main feature.

Photoshop experiment

In this image we tried to create the mood of having no piracy anymore by taking a picture of a CCTV camera which are placed all over the world watching are every movement, the government states that cameras are put in place for are protection but many people Today are still questioning whether they are an invasion of are privacy so that the government can keep an eye on all of us, in creating this we used big black font to make it stand out but did not use a bright colour font because it did not suit the mood of the image of what we were aiming for.

The mood  we are trying to show through the picture is serious, we used the words one nation because it refers to everyone not a minority of people so therefore would have a bigger impact on the reader, in terms of editing in Photoshop we made the image negative to make the camera in the center stand out because that is are primary focus in this image, in getting rid of colour you instantly change the mood because it becomes more depressing because the reader has only the image itself  to look at.

Kerrang Analysis

The font used is bold and of a large text which takes up the top of the page to catch the reader’s attention and make it stand out more .The size of the text is roughly seventy two obviously to make it stand out more.

The colours used are black white and red which are very common amongst this Goth culture.

The photos used are Small pictures of famous singers and musicians like snapshots of the best around at the time will be featured in the magazine so people are more inclined to read the magazine as it is about popular music at the time. The style of pictures consists of black and white backgrounds and one with a table and window.

The stars featured on the front cover feature Billy Joel idol, Gwen Stefani and the others I do not know as I am not the target audience.

The pictures are disorganised to possibly create a messy look.

Your eye is lead to all the different pictures as they are all scattered around the front cover so you are constantly looking at the different pictures and the title is at the very top so it is still visible. 

The cover relates to the rest of the magazine in terms of content we can see this from the pictures shown on the front cover as its represents rock/Goth culture because the men in the picture all look depressing and are not smiling further more the pictures are very dull and not vibrant because this would not reflect the mood they are trying to create.             

The title denotes It was about a man called kerrmot largbrest who went on an adventure to the USA who was a great fan of classical musical such beethoven, Mozart and nobinovsky.He suffered from a very rare disease called 'transvestical-malicitis' It was said he went to see a rock concert in new jersey and as soon as he heard the bone crunching guitar riffs and loud and dark lyrics he instantly changed sex. He was then known as Angie largbrest. Creating the KERRANG. Kermot - mot and Angie - i.e. = KERR-ANG.

Taken from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_myth_does_the_title_kerrang_refer_to

Double Page Spread Analysis

For this double page spread they have used a bold font to make it stand out to the reader because this will catch the eye and make you want to read on to find out what it is about. They have also used a big picture covering both pages this is good because covers the whole two pages leaving no empty gaps which it makes it look more presentable to the reader.

They have used a simple yet effective colour scheme of black, orange and white these colours all compliment each over well and they have used orange for the main title so that when the reader turns the page they will notice it instantly, as well they have made the quote in white to make it stand out because of the dark suit the man is wearing, finally they have made the text in the article black and in small print because the magazine writers know this is less important to the reader and if there is to much text then it is not as effective and will not draw the reader in however at the beginning of the article they have highlighted the names of musicians so that the reader may recognise them and make them want to read on.

Contents Page Analysis

Contents page clearly shown at the top of the page however the font is highlighted by being a bold font in yellow, this is used with black as the background to make it stand out to the reader. Picture of the band angels & airwaves who are featured with a dark black background which is simple and they have used a silhouette effect over their faces to make them stand out more associated with this type of genre of music.

These two mid shot pictures of the bands promoting their songs, these pictures were also used as double page spreads in another part of the magazine.  

Latest news to keep people up to date about their favourite bands. As well as competitions to give their audience more incentive to buy their magazine. Also live reviews of people who have been to see the bands live to give their view on how they perform live and their opinion. 

Advertising for Kerrang highlighted in red to make it stand out to the reader.