MUSIC MAGAZINEAS MEDIAEVALUATION OF ‘POP-ON-LINE’ MUSIC MAGAZINE FOR AS MEDIA STUDIES

BY ASAD TANVEER

WHY DID I SELECTED POP MUSIC AS MY GENRE FOR A MUSIC MAGAZINE?I choose ‘POP’ as my music magazine’s Genre because it is very popular among my target audience and the word ‘pop’ is derived from the word ‘Popular’.

The pop music genre is widely listened in Pakistan.

Some of the most popular artist includes Michael Jackson who was given the title of ‘King of the POP’.

Pop music is the music which is the most popular at the time so it is widely listened. The pop artists have huge fan following and their fans read the magazine to find out what is the latest news in the POP music.

So my magazine will provide news, gossip, reviews and release dates etc. for the POP music.

Q1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MAGAZINE USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF DIFFERENT REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

For my media AS portfolio, I had to design a music magazine’s front cover, content page and the spread page. The pictures and all the content is original. The pictures are of ‘Waleed Khalid’. I researched a lot about the Pop and different music magazines and used the colour scheming of the magazines such as ‘Billboard’ and ‘VIBE’. I noticed that almost every magazine have used the Yellow colour in their text as it makes the font prominent and the magazine colourful. I used White and Blue colour on my texts as well as you can see the colour scheming of the magazines shown below

My magazine is purely my production but however I was inspired by some of the magazines such as Bill Board, VIBE and some inspirations were taken from the magazine made by the AS students from around the world.

A masthead is the convention you would find on the magazine’s front cover which makes the identity of the magazine and somehow tells what the magazine is about, so I created the masthead while keeping in mind about the audience. . I used ‘SCOOLAR TFB’ as my font for the Masthead

which is a bit catchy for the targeted audience of my magazine as it is bit funky and distorted type font.

The main image must be really strong and attractive which should convey the story and genre of the magazine to its readers, so keeping in mind all the codes and conventions I used this picture of Waleed which have a guitar at his back which is the key to the POP instruments, this shows that the magazine Is about POP music. So having a picture like this helps the target audience be attracted to their favorite or upcoming artists and to buy the magazine. The picture is quite dark which helped the text to stand out more on the front cover and the main focus would also go on the topics and the masthead of the magazine.

The cover lines on the magazine’s cover page are in the colors blue and yellow which are was the forms of the magazine ‘billboard’ color scheming. I used only two cover lines making the magazine cover look neat and have good spacing between the picture, artist name and the masthead. The tag line ‘It is all about music’ is placed right under the Mast head to make it prominent about what the magazine is delivering to its target audience. I have developed the conventions of the cover lines by putting them on the both side and creating them in a way that the reader finds it really good and attracted towards the magazine.

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Another typical convention of any magazine is the barcode. I have placed the barcode at the bottom of the cover page so that there is good spacing between the items and it looks good to the audience.

The issue date and name have been placed in a vertical format aligned with the Mast Head.

Now coming towards the content page, I challenged the forms and conventions of all the music magazine in the industry by putting up only one picture of the main artist on the full page and placing the content on it. However, it Is a form of development in the content page of the VIBE music magazine’s content page. I used black and yellow colors for the contents as these colors are very catchy and are easily visible to the reader. On the bottom, I placed the page number and the magazine name in black with the background of yellow. The page number is in a larger size than the rest of the magazine name and ‘Page’. The page numbers are given the colour white due to its difference from other colours and it is quite prominent to the reader which helps them to turn the page to their own choice in the easiest way possible.

The main title of the content page is ‘Contents’ which is in white font with black background.

The double spread page is again challenged and the magazine’s spread page is designed with different images of the artist and it includes interview of Waleed Khalid. The second page of the spread page have his photograph at the back with the 10% opacity to make the text look clearer while we have a background of his photo. Another photo was added on the right to make it look better. I added signature of Waleed Khalid to make it look a bit professional and real.

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My magazine represents the social group of teenagers of age 15-18 and the people till the age of 25. These are usually school and university students who are in the interested in the music and love to read when they are free. The magazine is for both female and male gender students or normal people who are employees. They usually buy the magazine for their office and read them when they are free. However this magazine is not limited to any social group in our society as it is offered to anyone with any class.

The POPonLine magazine is for the people who have high interest in music gossip and ratings. This magazine provides them all.

HOW DOES YOUR MAGAZINE REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

BAUER MEDIA UK, might distribute my magazine as they as they are the media distributors of various magazines and media brands such as Q magazine and Kerrang magazine. The company is situated in UK and have a lot of Radios in it’s brand list.

Extract from the BAUER MEDIA’s WEBSITE: “Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, wEurope’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations.”

This Media Institute is distributing and catering the brands for music, so they might distribute my magazine as well.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MAGAZINE AND WHY?

My Target audience for the magazine is the young new generations and the people in mid-twenties; both male and female. The magazine is catering to the people who are interested in POP music genre and they will find out very interesting details about their favourite artist at the time. The target audience are the people who love sophisticated POP music of Pakistan. They can be of both gender and the age of 15-25, because of their presence in the school or universities.

. WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR THE MAGAZINE?

I attracted my target audience by using the typical conventions of a magazine that is catering to the young teenagers and the people in twenties. I used vibrant colour and mostly neutral to ensure that this magazine caters to both male and female gender. The front cover has cover lines which will attract and address to the younger audience about the Events happening in the local town. The design and the font used in the magazine cover page and the rest of the page are very simple except the Mast Head as it was designed to attract younger target audience. The people who are interested in the music will be very much attracted towards this magazine because of the mast head of the magazine.

The target audience is attracted towards the ‘PUG 'of the magazine which is usually an offer or exclusive in the magazine. I added a free CD order slip in the magazine which will attract the audience to purchase the magazine. The main cover page and the content page is referring to the younger audience as the main picture of the POPonLINE magazine is of Waleed Khalid who is under 20 yet, a very famous individual singer.

 

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

I have learnt a lot from the process of constructing this music magazine. I have learnt Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Indesign software to help me make the design of the magazine. I learnt a lot from Adobe Photoshop and got to know how to edit the pictures by using blending tools and the filters. I also used the Photoshop to fix the colour of the picture taken by the DSLR camera. It was another technologies I used in the production of the magazine. I learnt a lot and have started using cameras as a semi-professional photographer. Well, I downloaded fonts from www.dafont.com and researched about the magazine and its material from www.google.com . I used NIKON DSLR D5100 CAMERAS to do the photography of the Model for the magazine. It was an excellent experience of using and getting to know more about professional cameras.

I used the help from ICT and signed up at bloggers, the blog was used to keep the audience updated about the latest updates on the magazine and its design. I will be using slideshare.net for uploading my evaluation reports and the media research I did for the music magazine.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

I have developed excellent knowledge in the production of a magazine, as the preliminary task was the foundation work of our media studies but making the full product helped us learn and experience the professional level work for production of the magazine. In the preliminary task, I was very weak at the typography and using the right colour scheme for a specific task, but now I have learnt which colour connotes what colour. Now comparatively from the preliminary task, I have polished my skills in ADOBE PHOTOSHOP and the use of DSLR and other editing software. Now I have learnt how to post at the blogs and add new pages to the blog.

I learnt about the color modes ‘RGB’ and ‘CMYK’ and how to save the file in correct format and editing the file size in Adobe photoshop.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?