How does your media product represent particular social groups? – Evaluation Question 7

The three models on the front cover of my magazine are a good representation of a certain type of teenager in Britain – their dress sense, stance (with their hands in their pockets, defensive, slightly slouched as if they do not care about anything) and mixture between grumpy and almost sarcastically-happy facial expressions all clearly show their age due to the stereotypical attitudes and dress sense that teenagers have. The fact that each boy has piercings and stretched ears, and that Ashyy, pictured in a photo on my double page spread, has tattoos on his body, narrows their social group down further, placing them into a social group of teenagers who are perhaps of a more rebellious nature with a unique and individual style and who are likely to listen to heavier genres of music. Despite their grumpy facial expressions, none of the boys appear threatening and this therefore represents this kind of social group as approachable and friendly.

On my double page spread, the pull quotes I have chosen to use are of a highly positive and optimistic nature; “We’ve made a massive bond between us..” carries the connotations that boys in their late teens and young men are capable of forming strong and heartfelt friendships and presenting the idea that there is a strong connection and bond between social groups of their age. The positive pull quotes also connotate that this particular band were very comfortable with being put on the spot and interviewed. Similarly, the candid and natural style photos included in my double-page spread also show that these young men were comfortable enough to behave naturally in front of the camera. Both the text and photographs combined on my double page spread are a strong suggestion of how passionate and driven many young men in Britain are about performing music. The page helps to accurately represent this country’s music scene and the amount of new, young and previously obscure and unsigned bands and talent that are rising to the mainstream all the time, particularly the main subheading on my double page spread of “Ready for Takeoff” which highlights how the band are already ready for ‘bigger things’ and to step up to the next level in their career despite their young ages, suggesting their high level of maturity, wisdom and hard work.

The photographs on my contents page are highly representative of the UK and USA’s hardcore scene and ‘hardcore kids’ that go to shows and pit, two-step and sing along to the live music, not ashamed or shy to even jump on stage to scream along with their favourite bands and stage dive back into the crowd. The photographs show the atmosphere and attitudes of this particular social group, the sheer impact and power of the bands’ performances and how passionate this social group is about the music that they listen to and generally being at shows and having the opportunity to connect with other fans and fully and physically show their appreciation for the music and everything that it stands for. Each photograph, despite being of different bands and showing two different genres of music (hardcore for Expire and Soul Search and pop-punk for The Story So Far), looks very similar in the way that the bands and audience are interacting with each other, which shows a tight and strong bond between the social group and the way that they act at every single show they attend. The colour scheme I used across my whole magazine, along with the ‘Varsity Regular’ font that I used for my titles and main headings, represent the ‘Varsity’ style that is regularly associated with this particular social group. The Varsity style colours and the Varsity are an immediate indication to any member of this kind of social group that this magazine covers the genres of music that they listen to (hardcore and pop-punk), as these colours and this kind of font is very regularly used for a large amount of the merchandise, tour posters and other marketing and promotional media related to the hardcore and pop-punk music genres. The ‘Varsity’ style used as a representation for a music scene and its fans holds the connotations that the fans of this kind of music fit together as a “team” and that there is a strong bond and connection between and across the entire hardcore/pop punk scene and all the bands and music supporters associated with it. Even when fans at a show are strangers to one another, there is always a high level of respect and friendliness amongst the crowd which creates a friendly, welcoming and comfortable atmosphere that balances out the angry and turbulent nature of the music and lyrics that are being performed and the performance itself.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? – Evaluation Question 6

During the process of constructing and creating my final product and its three pages, I learned a great deal about different technologies and different techniques and tools I can use to achieve a professional-looking final result. For the construction of our product, we used two main pieces of software: Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe InDesign.

InDesign was a brand new piece of software to me that I was not familiar with prior to my preliminary task. I learned that InDesign can be used to create a number of different media products including particular print products such as magazines and newspaper publications. Through experimentation with various tools, I learned a number of new skills, including how to correctly insert images into the document by using the rectangle frame tool, into which an image can easily be dragged and dropped. I learned how to use different text effects to drop shadows behind letters and objects, create an inner glow to headings and to add heavy, thin, patterned and coloured outlines to text using the Stroke and colour selection tools. I learned that using a minimised amount of fonts throughout one media product helps to keep the overall look of the result consistent, neat, attractive and easily approachable and understandable.

I learned more about the conventional layouts of music magazines and how to arrange text for articles into columns and use guidelines to ensure all objects on an InDesign page are neatly and accurately arranged and aligned. These tools enabled me to create professional looking mastheads and titles that conform to the general style that most modern magazines adopt. I now understand that the style, colour, size, effects and arrangement of text are very significant when attempting to address and cater for a particular target audience and in giving off a particular impression with the final result and I learned exactly how to meet these requirements with the appropriate tools and features in InDesign.

Luckily Photoshop was software that is highly familiar to me so I was able to use this to help me to edit photographs and, in some cases, text, for use within my magazine on InDesign. Although I did not learn any new skills through my use of Photoshop since I already knew how to use it in depth, I did get chance to practice and use the skills I already had during the process of constructing my product. In terms of photo editing, to maintain the particular look and style that I wanted to achieve with my product, I felt that little editing was necessary for my photos. For two of my 5 final images, I simply cropped them to be a suitable size, cut out any unnecessary parts of the background that exposed the studio setting and backdrop, and then finished them off with alterations to the brightness and contrast, gave them a subtle photo filter and used very light airbrushing. I felt that over-editing the images to the point where they appeared to be obviously airbrushed looked inappropriate for my magazine as few music magazines edit their images in this way; overly airbrushed images tend to be on the front cover of fashion or celebrity magazines rather than music magazines where the general image of the magazine’s stars is less important than the rest of the magazine and its content. Through initially giving the people in my images a fully airbrushed look, I did learn that this was not effective and looked wrong against the rest of my magazine, and I therefore scrapped this kind of edit and followed my final approach of subtle editing and enhancements using the spot-healing tool and the blur tool to subtly heal over any obvious imperfections on the models’ complexions and to give the overall image a smooth look without making any changes look obvious. I learned that using a combination of Photoshop and InDesign was effective as this then allows you to place images into your product that have been edited to suit the magazine’s style, layout and colour scheme and achieve a professional finish.

In addition to InDesign and Photoshop, I also learned more about how to use the blogging website WordPress.com. WordPress is a site you can use to create simple blogs, and we used this site to upload all our Media work relating to our magazines and any related posts. I learned how to categorise my posts into different sections to ensure each piece of work and each part of my project was easy to locate, and also how to put them into the correct date order. I learned how to upload different media onto my account including both pictures and PDF files which I could then easily insert into my posts.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? – Evaluation Question #5

For our initial preliminary task, we were required to create a front cover and a contents page for a College magazine targeted at students. Although creating this was merely an experimental process, since I was previously inexperienced with the use of certain software such as InDesign, the method of creating these two pages enabled me to learn more about how to use professional technologies and software such as InDesign and Photoshop to create professional media products. From experimenting with different tools on InDesign and trying out a number of different layouts, fonts, effects and colour schemes, I gained more of an idea of the kind of design that is appropriate for a magazine that is designed to appeal to a younger target audience, and also learned more about specific combinations of fonts and colours that complement certain styles or approaches that I may choose to use when creating a media product. I learned that the target audience is in fact the main propeller and the most crucial factor to consider when faced with the task of designing, creating, producing and tailoring a magazine. Through making decisions about my college magazine based on who I knew was going to be reading it,  I learned that every aspect of any magazine must primarily be based on and dependent upon the specific audience and genre of the magazine; every specific and narrowed target audience has different desires, wants, needs and interests to another, and this has to be considered in correspondence to the genre of the media product when deciding how your target audience will be able to gain the most from your magazine. The more appropriate a magazine is for its target audience, the higher the possibility that your audience is going to purchase and read it. The skills I have learned will enable me to explore how to create further professional media products across a range of media platforms.

After learning much about the production and design of magazines in general from the preliminary task, I endeavoured to plan out the initial idea, structure, layout and overall look of my final magazine in order to secure myself a good grade as I feel that the magazine I produced in my preliminary task was not up to my full potential and that I could certainly achieve far more the second time around after having learned many different skills and doing a large amount of research about magazines and their specific markets and audiences. Although it took me a while to make a final decision upon the specific genres my magazine was going to cover due to much deliberation on who I was going to feature in my double page spread, once I had made the final decision to create a magazine based on the music genres of hardcore and pop punk, I was then able to base every single decision I made throughout the entire design and production process of my magazine upon my specific target audience that I knew these genres would appeal to. The general idea and understanding I already have of the desires, interests, wants and needs of this kind of target audience enabled me to have a rough idea very early on of the overall look I wanted to achieve with my product, helping me to sketch out a few rough designs of front cover and contents page ideas, as well as a very large colour-coded and categorised list of ideas for my contents page. Having these rough designs and such a high level of organisation when it came to actually having to start constructing my pages was a great help and a good head start. I learned the technique of bullet-pointing potential contents page ideas and then colour-coding and ordering them into a more appropriate order with page numbers through experimenting with this method during the preliminary task – I wanted to make it easier for myself when creating the contents page of my college magazine, and since this method worked well initially on a much smaller scale, it was a great help when it came to devising up how I was going to fit in so many features on one single page when creating my final music magazine. This is a prime example of how certain techniques I adopted whilst carrying out my preliminary task helped me to achieve a better result in my final task.

Another element of the process between my preliminary task and the creation of my final product that helped me greatly was learning a lot about the market of different magazines, and more specifically music magazines, in order to gain a better understanding of my particular target audience and put them in comparison with other audiences. My further market research consisted of the full evaluation of 3 other magazines, specifically the three pages which I will be creating myself (front cover, contents and double page spread) of slightly different music genres, in which I took into account their use of fonts, house-style, colour scheme, photography style and text/picture ratio and reflected on how these choices were made to specifically cater for their target audience and in relation to the genre(s) that the magazines cover. This research was extremely helpful to me as it enabled me to refer to other music magazines to take inspiration from them for my own and to give me more ideas on feature choices, layout designs, types of images and colour schemes. From in-depth evaluation I was able to discover just how important and crucial each choice about each aspect of the design of each page is in order to ensure that my magazine has the highest amount of suitability for its target audience as possible.

Upon comparing the two front covers from both my preliminary task and my final product task, a clear disparity can be noticed; it is completely clear that my main focus and mindset when creating my college magazine was simply what I felt looked the best and most aesthetically pleasing generally in terms of design and layout, not necessarily with any consideration of my target audience and who was going to be reading my magazine and why. After learning the importance of this, however, I was able to create a front cover on which every single aspect, including the font style, image editing, layout, colour scheme and content, was specifically tailored to suit my target audience entirely. It is clear upon comparing the two front covers that the approach I took for my final task was far more effective in producing a better and more professional looking result than the way I created my preliminary task front cover.

Overall, due to the fact that my magazine, which covers specifically hardcore and pop punk and follows the culture that surrounds these genres, fills a complete gap and niche in the market that has never before been ventured into, I feel that I have created a product which could not possibly be much more well-suited to its specific target audience. I feel that I have created a product which has effectively placed every aspect of the music genres and placed them directly into magazine format; the overall look of the product directly reflects the attitude and atmosphere surrounding hardcore and pop punk and I feel that any potential reader who happens to glance at the magazine on the shelf will be able to immediately determine the genre of its content merely by the way it looks, and I feel that this is a great achievement and a very crucial fact to consider when evaluating how accurately I represented and catered to my target audience when creating my magazine.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? – Evaluation Question #4

My media product was a music magazine of the hardcore and pop punk genres combined. The general genre of the magazine I was producing, along with its specific genres that have many similarities, helped to determine the general appearance I designed for my magazine. In some ways I wanted to follow the general conventions and commonalities in design of other music magazines on the market, but my main aim was to challenge these conventions as much as possible due to the fact that there are currently no music magazines on the market that are similar to mine; my music magazine will be the only magazine on sale in the UK that focuses on the hardcore and pop-punk genres specifically, and this gives me the opportunity and motivation to think outside the box and explore new ideas and be creative in terms of my music magazine’s design and style.

I chose to have simply one main central image of one band on the front cover of my magazine, which follows the conventions of many other music magazines on the market such as NME and Rock Sound. I also chose to follow the conventions of the genres of music that I chose to cover by choosing a “Varsity” style font for my main title and main subheadings, as this font is very commonly used across album artwork, merchandise and tour posters for those two particular music genres, so the design of my front cover was very coherent of this general theme, although, due to the fact this kind of genre and its associated themes, fonts and styles are not commonly seen on the market, this is also effectively challenging conventions of music magazines generally. I endeavoured to ensure that my audience are able to see an evident and clear comparison between my product and other products associated with those music genres.

One way in which I challenged the conventions of magazine design was my colour scheme; after much deliberation and alteration, I decided upon a general colour scheme of black, white, green and orange. I feel that these colours fit in well with both the genres that my magazine covers, with bright and cheerful colours to represent pop-punk and darker/monochrome colours to represent the more serious and aggressive hardcore genres. I also chose to combine these colours as I feel they represented a sense of diversity, and sent out the message that there is something for everyone within the hardcore and pop-punk genres, and also that the fanbase across both genres is a very eclectic mix.However as there are currently no other magazines on the market that cover these genres, there are also no magazines that follow a colour scheme similar to this. Most music magazines generally tend to follow a colour scheme that includes red, white, black and a few others, but very rarely do they include oranges and greens together as I have done for my product. I feel that this challenge of convention and great contrast between my magazine and other music magazines will make my product stand out over the rest and appear more interesting. Consumers become very bored very easily and quickly and are constantly trying to find new products and new ideas to keep them satisfied, so a brand new music magazine of newly covered genres with a completely new and different look in comparison to others is sure to attract many potential readers.

How did you attract/address your audience? – Evaluation Question #3

I took a number of different measures to endeavour to make my magazine as suitable for my target audience as possible. Due to the fact that there is a complete gap in the market in terms of magazines that cover the hardcore and pop-punk genres, meaning my magazine will be the only product of its kind on the market, I wanted to ensure that there was a high level of appeal towards my intended target audience to encourage them to buy my magazine and to make them aware of the fact that there is finally a product out there that covers the bands they like.

One of the ways in which I tried to attract and address my audience was by using certain fonts that I knew would appeal to my target audience due to their taste; my main font used for my main magazine title on my front cover, along with the main coverline and secondary coverlines, was a “Varsity” font, which is highly suitable for a magazine appealing to my target audience. The reason for this is that this style of font is very regularly used on album artwork, merchandise and tour posters for bands of the hardcore and pop-punk genres. Many pieces of merchandise produced for bands of these genres also tend to be baseball-style jerseys and vests and ‘varsity’ jackets. Therefore if a potential reader from my target audience was to see my magazine and the fonts used on its front cover, they would immediately be aware of the genres of the content of the magazine before even picking it up to read into it further. The overall look of my magazine would mean it could potentially be sold at merch stands at hardcore and pop-punk shows as it blends in and complements the style of the merchandise well. The font I chose is perhaps one of the strongest and most effective ways in which I attracted and addressed my target audience directly.

Another way in which I attracted my audience was by using central figures and cover stars of roughly the same age and demographic as my target audience; the stars of the main feature of my magazine are a local melodic hardcore band called Oracle. The genre of the music that the band plays is melodic hardcore, and the ages of the band members ranges from 17-22. As a band that plays music of a sub-genre of the music that is covered in my magazine, and that contains members of an age range that strongly represents my target audience who also all listen to the music that is covered in my magazine, I felt that this band was highly suitable for the role of the central feature in my magazine and on my front cover and double-page spread. My target audience are likely to be attracted to my magazine upon seeing a band on the front cover that are clearly of similar age, dress sense, taste and demographic to themselves and also other bands that they’re interested in. This makes the magazine more easily approachable and readable and easier for the target audience to relate to and find common ground with, and also helps to persuade and show readers that they too can attain that kind of look and musical status.

I also tried to create my colour scheme so that it would be directly representative of both my covered musical genres. Although, as previously mentioned and explained, the two genres are similar in some ways in the way they are marketed and presented, the atmosphere at the shows and the kind of fans they both attract, there are inevitably many differences also, due to the strong difference in musical sound. For this reason I chose to use a mixture of bright, bold and strong colours such as greens and oranges, mixed with plain monochrome black and white. From this I expect my target audience to be able to get a feel of both of genres, with pop-punk being far more cheerful and upbeat with brighter colours to represent it, and hardcore being darker and more serious and aggressive, with darker colours in representation of this genre instead. I feel that the great contrast in my colour scheme creates a really effective overall look for my magazine that truly shows that ‘Pit’ magazine has both of these genres perfectly combined into one highly appealing, attractive and approachable product that really fits in with the contemporary market.

Another way in which I managed to achieve a high level of suitability for my target audience was the content of my magazine. Every band featured is from the genre of either hardcore or pop-punk, which are the two genres covered in my magazine. My survey results showed me that my target audience would prefer to read a magazine that contained a good mixture of features on bigger bands and also smaller, more obscure and upcoming bands, and for this reason I made sure to include this kind of mix with my magazine’s content and features; my magazine includes bigger and more famous bands of their calibre such as Title Fight and The Story So Far, but also features smaller, widely unheard of and obscure bands such as Sold Short and Cloakroom. This wide diversity in content will be a very appealing factor of my magazine for my target audience as it shows that my publication doesn’t simply focus on the bigger bands, but actually takes notice of the smaller bands that are just as good and highly underrated. This range of content will also gain a lot of respect for the magazine from the target audience as it shows that the magazine is willing to help out smaller bands and give them publicity and spread the word about their music to help them gain more fans and play bigger shows. One of the things that fans of hardcore and pop-punk are most passionate about is live music and going to shows, so I tried to include as many gig-related features as possible, while still maintaining a sense of variety in my magazine. I achieved this by indicating on my contents page that my magazine contains a high amount of reviews and a high amount of “News” pages, most of which will feature news on brand new tours from my target audience’s favourite bands and artists. Turning to the contents page and seeing this high amount of gig-related articles will certainly attract and address my target audience as it shows that the editors of my magazine understand what is most important to them, and shows that they know that information about gigs and tours and live photos are a very important part of any media product that is related to these two genres.

Due to the younger age of my target audience, mainly being people between the ages of 16-25, I knew that it was very important to ensure that my magazine not only catered for their wants but also their needs. As people of this age are very likely to be students or not very well off at all, I had to decide on a price that would be suitable for a member of this kind of target audience. I felt that £2.50 for a monthly magazine loaded to the brim with content was very fair and affordable for my sample, and the monthly frequency was also decided upon due to the age of my target audience who, when specifically and directly asked in my survey questions, said themselves that they would much prefer to buy a magazine on a monthly basis rather than fortnightly or weekly as they would struggle to find the time, money or even remember to pick up a magazine as often as that. The fact that my magazine features very few mainstream bands will also help to keep the manufacturing costs down, which is another reason why the price I chose was a very suitable, achievable and realistic choice for my product in particular. In addition to the fairly low and affordable price, I also decided it was very important to offer freebies with every issue of my magazine, which will normally be a CD mixtape of songs from all their favourite bands that are featured, or large pull-out tour posters. These freebies and the low price I chose will make the magazine much more desirable for my target audience, who, with very little money, need all the encouragement possible to make them choose to part with even a couple of pounds a month for a magazine.

Who would be the audience for your media product? – Evaluation Question #2

The target audience for my magazine is intended to be both males and females between the ages of around 15-25, of any social standing between lower middle class to upper middle class, who listen to music of the hardcore and pop ounk genres.

A hypothetical example of a member of my audience would be the following. Steve is a 23 year old full-time barman, fully inked from head to toe, who lives and works in central Manchester. He enjoys listening to music, hanging out with his friends and is a regular on his local hardcore scene, never missing a show. He is a vocalist in a Manchester-based hardcore band, touring around the country playing small shows in small pubs and clubs. He studied at College to get a diploma in Music Technology, but instead of progressing onto University, decided to start his own band instead and get a job to keep himself going. He enjoys collecting vinyls, and other than building up his collection of rare records, he likes to splash his cash on merchandise of his favourite bands and on festival and gig tickets. He used to follow a straight-edge lifestyle, however now he has let his strict habits go and is more lenient, drinking alcohol with his friends from time to time and working in a bar, but maintaining his vegan eating habits. He likes to buy Pit Magazine as he finds it is one of the easiest ways to keep up to date with news and events regarding his favourite hardcore and pop-punk bands as it simply collates all the information into one place, leaving him without the need to have to scour the internet himself. He likes the suitability the magazine has for men of his culture, age and interests; it is the only magazine he would ever feel comfortable reading and he would certainly recommend it to his friends. His biggest aspiration is to be part of a major hardcore band enabling him to tour the world, and he hopes that his own band may perhaps end up at that level of popularity someday.

What kind of Media Institution would distribute your product and why? – Evaluation Question #1

A “Media Institution” defines any organisation that is responsible for the production, marketing, distribution or regulation of media texts. Some examples of major institutions include the British Broadcasting Corporation, also known as the BBC, is one of the biggest institutions in the UK and it is responsible for the the production, marketing, distribution and regulation of its own media texts and products. Another, very different example of an institution is the British Board of Film Classification, which is a regulator of media texts, regulating and moderating the classification and age ratings of films in the UK before they are distributed for theatrical and home release to the general public.

Since my product is going to be a music magazine, I am going to be doing research into various key magazine publishing institutions in the UK in order to decide which institutions would be potentially suitable and appropriate for my product, and which institutions are not.

One potential institution to publish my magazine could be Bauer Media Group. This institution is a multinational media company based in Germany, operating in 15 countries worldwide. The company’s magazine circulation amounts to around 38 million magazines per week worldwide. A company this highly regarded and successful would therefore be a great choice as the distributor of my product.

The genre of my music magazine is going to be pop-punk/hardcore, however the institution responsible for publishing my magazine does not necessarily have to have any affiliations with this genre other than my magazine itself; ‘Kerrang!’ Magazine, a magazine that specifies in rock/metal music, is published by Bauer Media Group who also publish magazines such as ‘Bella’ and ‘That’s Life!’, titles which are a complete contrast to Kerrang!. Therefore institutions who publish magazines are often in charge of a very diverse range of media products that cover many different genres and formats. The company’s portfolio also includes ‘Take A Break’, ‘TVQuick’, ‘TVChoice’ and ‘Q’. The depth of their portfolio makes them an interesting choice of a company to work with as it is clear that a lot of thought has been put into the contrast between the genres of their products to ensure that their products generally appeal to a very wide market of consumers; effectively there is a Bauer Media Group magazine to suit everyone. This is the reason why I feel that my magazine, ‘Pit’, would easily fit into their portfolio as they do not currently publish a magazine that covers music of the hardcore/pop-punk genre. The magazine would be greatly different to the two music magazines they already distribute, and a polar opposite to the rest of their portfolio which covers real life, women’s lifestyle, puzzles and TV listings. Kerrang’s target audience is specifically aimed at people between the ages of 15-24,  so the magazine will have been produced specifically for the appeal of this age category, and this is shown in recent NRS figures that prove that people between the ages of 15-24 are the age category who are most likely to purchase and read Kerrang! magazine, with 56.1% of their readers being this age, a much higher percentage than any other age category. Another notable point is that the majority, specifically 54.7%, of Kerrang’s readers are male, and as previously stated, I am going to endeavour to ensure that my magazine appeals well to the male gender due to the fact that generally more magazines are purchased by females than males and i I would like to encourage males to be interested in my product. However statistics prove that in this kind of genre (heavier music), it is in fact males who are more likely to read these magazines, so achieving my aim should not be a problem provided I ensure my magazine it suitably appealing for males who fall into my target audience age category. The fact that the age category that buy the most Kerrang! magazines is also the target audience I am choosing for my magazine is another reason behind my choice of Bauer Media as an institution to distribute my magazine, as though the genres differ, the target audience of general music lovers who enjoy live music and general updates and interviews of their favourite bands are the same and I will therefore maintain this sample for my product. Being distributed by Bauer Media Group would also allow my magazine to be infiltrated into many other media areas and to be spread across other media brands; Kerrang! magazine, which is one of Bauer’s most successful products with an average weekly circulation of over 42000, has its own website, radio station, TV channel and UK tour. Kerrang! and my  magazine, ‘Pit’, will be appealing to a similar marketing demographic, despite the difference in specifically covered genres, meaning there would be a great opportunity for my magazine to also have its own range of extended media brands such as a TV channel, a website and a radio station. This opportunity would allow my magazine to attract a larger audience, gain more publicity and in turn generate much more revenue. The chance to spread across to other media platforms is very important to me with regards to my magazine as I have chosen to produce a magazine that covers genres that are not yet covered in any available magazine in the UK; the target audience for my product are not currently able to purchase anything similar to my product, watch TV channels that include their favourite bands or listen to them on the radio. If ‘Pit’ magazine gave them these opportunities, this would mean pop-punk and hardcore may finally begin to escape from the underground, break into the mainstream in the UK and gain an even bigger following. As both ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Q’ are very highly-regarded, well-respected and popular music magazines with much extended content, I feel that Bauer Media Group should therefore be my top choice as the UK publishing company that will be in charge of distributing my magazine.

____________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

A publishing company that would certainly not be suitable for the responsibility of distributing my magazine is Titan Magazines. Titan Magazines is the magazine publishing division of Titan Publishing Group. They specialise in many film and TV-Related Titles, as well as comic-book magazines. Their portfolio, including past and current titles, includes ‘Heroes’ magazine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comic, ‘CSI’ magazine, ‘Star Trek’ Magazine, ‘Torchwood’ Comic, DC Universe Presents (comic series), and ‘The Walking Dead’ magazine plus many more that fall into the categories of Film/TV and comic-books. The depth of their portfolio does not venture much further than this narrow selection of genres and content nature, meaning that in comparison to another institution like the Bauer Media Group, Titan Magazines appeals to a much narrower, smaller and more specific target audience. Whereas Bauer Media Group is likely to publish at least one if not two magazines to suit everyone’s taste, Titan Magazines only publishes products that appeal to a certain type of consumer with specific interests, which in their case will most likely be either young children or even adults with slightly childish interests surrounding TV series and comic books. In addition to this, most of Titan Magazine’s products cease production after two or three years, meaning that the majority of their publications are only temporary – for my music magazine it is vital that the distributor of my product is experienced in the distribution and marketing of long-term and long standing magazines rather than a product that will have continuously plummeting sales after its initial release and ends up coming off the shelves for good before too long. The nature and the depth of the portfolio of this media institution and its entirely different target audience makes Titan Magazines very unsuitable for the choice of the distributor of my media product.

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________

 

 

Another highly unsuitable media institution for the responsibility of distributing my magazine is Future PLC. In 2006, Future PLC was the sixth-largest media company in the United Kingdom, publishing more than 150 magazines that cover genres such as video games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. It is also the official magazine company of all three major games console manufacturers. Its titles include magazines such as 3D World, Computer Arts, Maximum PC, Windows: The Official Magazine, GamesMaster, Playstation: The Official Magazine, Xbox World, PC Gamer, Nintendo: The Official Magazine, CrossSticher, Photography Week, Your Family Tree, Simply Knitting, Practical Photoshop,  Cycling Plus, Mountain Biking UK, Total Vauxhall and many more. The depth of this media institution’s portfolio is largely hobby orientated; the typical consumer for their products is someone that has a practical hobby that they like to read about, rather than just an interest or talking point. There is a large amount of evidence to support the idea of the kind of target audience that this media institution’s products mainly appeal to, such as the circulation figures of the most popular hobby magazines they produce. Figures such as 70556 per month for one of the company’s major Gadgets magazines ‘T3’ show that the specific “hobby”-type content of their magazines is exactly what makes their products so popular. Although the institution does produce a small selection of music magazines, these magazines differ greatly to the kind of music magazine I will be producing. My magazine is intended to appeal to people who are interested in listening to music and going to shows, and not necessarily people who actually play their own instruments or produce and write their own music, which is the niche of the music market that Future PLC’s products cover (their music-related titles include Guitar Techniques, Guitarist, Prog, Rhythm and Future Music). In conclusion, it is clear that, demographically, Future PLC produces the kind of publications that are largely unsuitable for my target audience due to the large difference in content and interests of readers. 

College Magazine Evaluation

For the first part of our coursework we were required to create a ‘College Magazine’, using InDesign software, that consisted of a front cover and a contents page, and a general idea of what the hypothetical magazine would consist of. I chose to title my magazine “The 411”, featuring my friends’ band ‘Oracle’ as the main headline and article in the magazine, with a photo of two of the band’s members on the front cover.

I spent some time perfecting my two final designs, and overall I am very pleased with them. I am most happy with my front cover, as before creating the magazine, I had a general picture in my head of how I wanted to design the front cover, with the ideal font and layout, and the colour scheme was chosen later as the front cover began to come together, as I chose the bright orange and plain black and white text carefully to complement the central image and to make the magazine appropriate for my target audience. I think the Stencil style font of the title of the magazine works well as a representation of the fact the magazine is for college students, and the bright yet simple colour scheme is attractive and eye-catching yet subtle and well suited to both genders and all tastes. I was very pleased with how my central image turned out. As an amateur with photography I had to try my best to shoot some good quality photos that were suitable for a front cover, and after much deliberation, I chose my favourite one and proceeded to edit it in order to perfect it to front-cover suitability and standards. Many magazine front covers have heavily airbrushed images of the stars, so to fit in with this commonality and in order to gain some further experience in photo editing with Photoshop, a skill that I already had some knowledge of, I chose to edit my own image in this way, using the spot healing and blur tools to perfect the complexions of the two boys and then finalising my editing by changing the contrast, brightness and colour filters and adding a slight glow to the whole image. I’m extremely pleased with the way my final edited central image looks on my front cover, and I worked hard to ensure that the rest of the layout around the image fit well with the photo and made every effort to ensure the front cover didn’t look too “busy”, as this can sometimes put potential readers off of a magazine; a subtle front cover that appears to have interesting, stand-out headlines is the kind of cover I was trying to achieve.

If I could change anything about my final designs it would probably be the name of my magazine. I had a lack of ideas when it came to deciding on a title for my magazine, so in future I would probably allow myself more time to do this or perhaps tried to ask for help from others when deciding on a name. I was not happy at all with the final name for my magazine, but from the limited ideas I had, it seemed to be the most suitable, and the small pro of the idea is that short titles are often best for magazines.

As previously stated, I already had some experience with Photoshop as I have it on my own computer, so I was very familiar with the tools on this software and knew exactly how to achieve my intended results when using it to edit the images for my front cover and contents page. I did, however, learn a few things as I was using Photoshop CS5, a newer version than the one I have at home, so there were a few new tools and features to get the hang of and the locations of some of the tools and options had changed, though I picked these things up fairly quickly. In contrast to this, I had never used InDesign before, so this was a completely new program and idea for me, though the software had its similarities with Photoshop and its tools were very easy to get the hang of. I really enjoyed using InDesign as it is very easy to create a highly organised layout for magazine pages with the handy feature of simply dragging and dropping where you want to include columns, making it easier to arrange pictures, headings and text and keep everything in-line and in proportion. I have learned how to correctly insert photos, change the proportions of images in order to make them fit their frames, and also how to de-hyphenate text which is something I have always wanted to be able to do, among many other new skills.

The most useful skills that I have learned which I can keep in mind when creating my music magazine are all the tools with which you can edit and change the text on the magazine. Now I have learned these skills I will be able to successfully make the text on my music magazine stand out, glow, look brighter, embossed and bolder and really attract the readers’ attention. Learning about adding columns and borders to my page will also be of great use to me so that I can create a neat and tidy-looking design for my final product and so that I can ensure all my text and photos stay in proportion and in-line with each other.

Evaluation

http://prezi.com/z7wbigmrbh2m/evaluation/?kw=view-z7wbigmrbh2m&rc=ref-29267939