Lily Ngo

Final Magazine

Evaluation.

1) In what ways does your

music magazine use, develop

or challenge forms and

conventions of existing

magazines?My music magazine follows typical forms and conventions of music magazines, as before I created my magazine, I researched the conventions of a teenage pop magazine (Top of the Pops) and I have discovered ways to attract my target audience with the various uses of images, language, colour, font sizes/styles and graphic images. Like the “Top of the Pops” magazine, I have used a central image of the main artist to grab the reader’s interest. The artist has a direct mode of address looking and smiling directly at the audience to grab their attention. Existing magazines also use buzz words, I have included some in my own magazine “Exclusive”, “Win” and “Free” to engage my target audience. I also altered the language in throughout the whole of my magazine to suit my target audience (of 12-16 year old girls) using colloquial words and phrases such as “Celebs”, “Cheeky Chaps” and “erm...” This type of language is light-hearted and is more informal and friendly than formal.

The colour scheme used in both “Top of the Pops” and in “Pop it” are both girly and eye catching. I have used 4 colours in my magazine to keep it simple but not too dull, too much colours would clash and not look very aesthetically pleasing. For my colour scheme I have used a light pink, white, black and red because these colours are girly and youthful suited for my target audience. This colour scheme is maintained throughout my magazine. The graphic images used in both magazines are also girly and feminine, hearts are used a lot in the “Top of the Pops” magazine clearing indicating that the audience is young girls. The central image used in “Top of the Pops” magazine is a worldwide known boy band, One Direction, so to make my target audience want to buy my magazine I have used a celebrity (that I have made up) that they might want to read about.

For my contents page I have also followed the forms and conventions of teenage pop magazines. I have a title, clear subtitles and text to add more information about the pages, and the pages are all music themed I have pages on upcoming gigs, album reviews and celebs and gossip. I have also included a message from the editor and a subscription which is usually found in music magazines. On the contents page, I have six subtitles all in columns so it’s clear and easy to find specific pages each labelled with clear page numbers in red so it’s understandable and user friendly.

I have followed the usual structure of a double page spread/article with having an image first then a part of the article running through two pages with smaller images seen throughout then ending with another image. The article also has enlarged quotes in it to draw the audience’s attention towards the article. The page numbers are all in the right places along with the name of the magazine with it being placed on the bottom left hand side of the page when the page is the left page in the magazine, and with the page number being placed on the bottom right hand side

of the page when the page is the right page in the magazine. The page numbers also correctly ascend as the pages start and end. The Top of the Pops article has a lot of graphic features of hearts, for my magazine I have used a graphic feature of a kiss stain, almost as if the model is blowing a kiss at the audience as a valediction. In my article I have integrated images and texts, on the third page of my article; I have placed four images as imitating small Polaroid pictures that have been scattered across the page in between the text. I have done this so my article looks more fun and not so plain.

2) How does your music

magazine represent particular

social groups?My target audience are 12-16 year old girls who listen to mainstream pop music that’s why I have chosen a teenage pop star on my front cover and my article so the target audience would read it and be able to relate to the artist as they are close in age. The artist is presented as girly, youthful and fun loving. The images on the article show her using making gestures like pretending to be shocked with both hands at the side of her face and blowing a kiss, this shows that the artist is playful and isn’t so serious. The anchorage text “Zayn’s like my big brother!” is also directed at young girls who are interested in pop stars as girls are more interested in reading about relationships and especially when it involves another celebrity, girls are more drawn towards gossip and finding out what’s behind it while boys wouldn’t be as interested as girls.

The artist is also dressed in a particular way to represent the type of girls that would be reading my magazine, she is wearing different dresses (white, floral and black) and the way she is posed nothing too serious. The article itself is about the artist being lucky starting out as a normal girl (just like many of the readers) finding her way to stardom. The target audience would be able to relate to her and may want to follow in her footsteps; she is presented to be a role model to these young teenage girls. Her story is similar as to x-factor contestants, they start off as an average person then they make it big, just like the Little Mix girls that won X-factor 2011.

3) What kind of media

institution might distribute

your media product and why?

I have chosen Immediate Media to publish my magazine; Immediate Media also publish magazines for the BBC so they will have some experience.

The Immediate Media Company also has a wide range of audience especially different age ranges such as Cbeebies, Charlie and Lola and BBC Top Gear.

Although they publish magazines for older audience and very young audiences, they only publish Top of the Pops for a teenage audience, so my magazine will fill a gap in their market.

4) Who would be the audience

for your music magazine?My primary target audience is teenage girls roughly around the age of 12-16 because females typically enjoy pop music and catchy songs about love and relationships that they can relate to. The audience will be young and easily influenced so that’s why I have made the artist to be a positive role model for them. The teenage girls, would more likely to buy up to date catchy singles rather than albums and they would be attracted to young pop star boys like one direction and Justin Bieber. Their role models would be famous girls such as Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. I am not targeting at any particular race or ethnicity as there are people of all different races in my images I am not directing it at any certain race/ethnicity. The target audience’s interests would be in celebrities, music, their friends, boys and relationships.

5) How did you

attract/address your

audience?

From my initial survey I devised before I planned my magazine, I discovered that my audience (young teenage girls) mainly only heard of “Top of the Pops” magazine, so for my research I analysed the cover, contents and an article from “Top of the Pops” magazine. to see what and why my audience enjoy it. I decided to make a Pop magazine because my survey results show that my target audience listen to Pop the most, out of the other genres. For my double page spread I decided to do an interview as they are easy to read and that is suitable for my audience.

To attract my audience, my front cover has girly colours, images of One Direction and the main article is of someone that they would look up to and see as their role model. I have also included buzz words like “Win” and “Exclusive” to draw them in. I have also used colloquial language in throughout my article like “cheers”, “OMG”, “cheeky chaps” and “cos”. I have done this to make the audience feel comfortable and make them feel like they are talking with a friend rather than talking with someone more superior to them. The images I have used are all fun and carefree rather than straight and serious poses. This also makes the audience feel more comfortable. Overall I have made my magazine look feminine, so my target audience would instantly be attracted to the cover.

6) What have you learnt about

technologies from the process

of constructing the product?From making my magazine I have gained many skills because I created the magazine pages on Adobe Illustrator, I have learnt to put my all my images and text together along with adding coloured boxes and experimenting with a range styles of text and colours. I had prior knowledge on using Adobe Photoshop (rubbing out a background or selecting and deleting parts of an image) but I have now learnt how to change the exposure of an image, and I was able to experiment with an images contrast/exposure to see what looked best for my images. I have also learnt to blur out parts of an image to make it look more pleasing plus I have learnt how to use the brush tool to create a shadow effect for one of my images.

I used a digital camera to take all my images, the camera has various lighting settings so I was able test them out and use the ones which suited my magazine. The camera also had different zoom settings as well so I was able to get many shots out of one position of my model (longshot, midshot and a closeup). I also took images at different angles and positions varying my choices of images to use for my magazine. To present all of my work I created a blog using Blogger. I have learnt to upload my work, edit the texts, add images and links to surveys. I also had to organise my posts to make it easy to access.To have audience feedback, I created surveys, using SurveyMonkey. This enabled me to devise several surveys without any difficulty. SurveyMonkey is user friendly and is easy to use for the audience taking my survey.

Here I have used Photoshop to edit these images to make them look more appealing and suitable for a magazine. As you can see in the first image, I have changed the brightness and contrast making the image more interesting, and I have also blurred out the background to make the people stand out more. For the second image, using the help of Photoshop, I was able to place my original image on to a background that I found on the internet to make the image look more realistic as they are suppose to be celebrities.

7) What do you feel you have

learnt in the progression from

the preliminary task to the full

product?Looking back at my preliminary cover magazine, I did not know how to manipulate images and I did not edit any of my images I just simply cropped them and put text over them. For my magazine, I edited all the images used to make them look better I have smoothed the images, sharpened them, and brightened them. This made my images look more professional. After researching and analysing other music magazines, I learnt that I can add banners on my front cover, graphic features and other images on it along with my central image.

My layout of my contents page has also improved my final magazine contents page looks a lot more exciting and professional. While making my preliminary contents page I didn’t think about the amount of pages I had to include, and from my survey the audience wanted to see more pages, so therefore, my final contents pages had a lot more pages to it. My preliminary contents page is quite plane and boring while my final contents page had a lot more colour and images.

Audience

feedback

This question asked who do you think the target audience is, and from the results the audience was able to identify my target audience of my magazine (teenage girls who enjoy pop music) this suggests that the colour scheme, images used, and the article are easily identified as youthful and girly.

From this result, the audience was able to recognize what the genre of my magazine was, all of the participants answered correctly. From this, I have gathered that the genre of my magazine was very apparent throughout my magazine.

Here I have asked the audience to rate out of 10 (with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest) how realistic they thought my magazine looked.

The answers ranged from 7-10 showing that my magazine looks somewhat realistic . The majority of the vote lands on 9 suggesting that my magazine doesn’t look 100% like a real magazine, but close enough.

Some of the written responses say that my magazine looks real, more so the article and the contents pages. Other written responses say that my magazine looks real due to the colour scheme being consistent throughout my magazine pages and has all the typical magazine conventions.