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Music Magazine Evaluation

Joe Barron

In what way does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

It is clear that the majority of the hundreds of music magazines on the shelves are different, but they all stick to the same sort of format. This consists of having a barcode; a price; a glossy main image; cover lines; strap lines/skylines; lures and so on. This way, the magazine’s brand is established and the audience’s familiarity with the magazine can be fulfilled for every issue.

You will notice that my magazine has adopted all of these conventions, and even attempted to develop these. I have done this by implementing conventions such as the essential main image and the masthead being ‘eye-catching’, but I have tried to develop a magazine that is different to others.

Like any other magazine, I have a masthead that is trying to tell the audience that this is the magazine’s name. Similarly to Q, the name is relevant to music. Q derives from the term, ‘Cue the music.’ Taking inspiration from this, I have used musical terminology to try and tell my target audience that this magazine is a serious music magazine, which helps determine my target audience of being from people of both genders aged from around 18-40.

The way in which it is written, ‘deciBel’, is the technical way of writing it. I have stylised it to try and make it look modern, sort of like the way ‘iPod’ is written with a lower-case ‘i’. With the letter ‘i’ now being an iconic letter in the world of media today, I have tried to take from other elements of the media in order to portray my magazine as iconic.

The typography is very clear-cut and precise, to show that the magazine is serious. It also makes it look very neat. I have opted as my magazine’s main colour to be burgundy. I have done this because it has connotations of being regal and of a higher class. I have tried to make my magazine to be of a higher class, which is why I have made the price £3.99; luxury pricing is used to make the audience believe that the product is of good quality, so I have made sure the price is in a big enough font for people to see it and for this effect to come into fruition, but not for it to overwhelm the front cover.

I have overdone the usual 6-12 cover lines that a magazine front cover normally has, and I have done so for a reason. I have chosen this magazine issue to be the ninth edition; so still fairly new. Therefore, I would need the content of the magazine to contribute to the selling of it, rather than rely on the name of the magazine or the front image. I have listed all of the featured artists down the right side of the magazine neatly around the main image. I have also put a big ‘+’ like Billboard Magazine and others to show that there is more within the magazine, making the audience feel like they are getting a lot for their money. I have selected a neat typography yet again, but I have chosen the colour black. I have done this because this is not the main selling point of the magazine. The theme colour of burgundy would only be used to try and make the audience think that anything written in this colour is important because the masthead has been done so.

On the left I have put even more cover lines but also with linguistic techniques such as rhetorical questions etc. to involve the reader and create intrigue. I feel that sometimes other magazines such as Q fail to do this, partly because they are already established, but I still feel that this is an example of me trying to develop conventions of real media. Moreover, this I have put in a bigger font to express the importance of these cover lines.

The biggest part of the magazine front cover is, of course, the main image. Researching main images I noticed that nine times out of 10, the pose will have little or nothing to do with music. They are normally just iconic pictures or quirky; striking a pose or just staring at the camera. It is because of this I have tried to recreate this. Using direct address, I staged a pose to look as if the artist is thinking about something. It is this random pose that will then make the audience think about it, creating enigma once more. The colour of the hoody being worn is grey. This has been done to accentuate the minimalistic approach that this magazine has taken.

I have also put a pull line on top of this, underneath the artist’s name. This is in burgundy to represent its importance. The quotation that has been taken is the artist criticising another artist. This could spark controversy, making the magazine more interesting.

When researching magazines, it was clear that they all had a house style. A prime example of this would be Q; with the colour red running throughout. Therefore, I tried to imitate this with the colour burgundy running through onto the contents and with the same fonts being used.

I wanted my contents page to be neat and clean. Using the same font as the masthead, I indicated to the reader that this page was the contents page, and placed it at the top.

I then ran the contents of the magazine round the images. I gave a small summary or element of the main body of text that would go with the article to give a brief insight to the reader as to what is going to be spoken about in each article in order to create intrigue. I used burgundy again to stress something’s importance.

Due to the passing of Whitney Houston, I thought it would be a good idea to make an article about her featured in the magazine. As she was a very important figure in music, I differed from the house style and put the heading in gold to represent quality, correlating with the quality her music has shown for years. I also used a traditional font in order to go with this. This is something I noticed that Q have done for things to represent quality, and therefore I thought I would adopt this technique. Moreover, I positioned it in the bottom corner of the magazine to almost give it its own place in the magazine as it is that important.

The images on the contents page had to be researched to get it right. The first thing I noticed is that in contrast with the main image of the front cover, they seem to be a lot more natural rather than having the artificial background etc, and they use more props and instruments as it is, after all, a music magazine.

I decided to put an image of the artist on the front cover there as he is one of the main selling points of the magazine.

I made the artist wear grey again to go with what he is wearing on the front cover. As well as this, I went for an outdoor setting to go with the artist’s persona; that being an acoustic style artist. I was trying to imitate an image I had seen of James Vincent McMorrow.

Then, with the other image I went for an ‘indie’ artist surrounded by things that would completely contrast this look, like a brown leather chair and candles. I did this because of the ironic quirkiness that is seen in many magazines today. Furthermore, I wanted to make sure that an instrument was involved because many contents pages feature an image from a live show, and since I had not opted not to do so, I still felt it necessary to show denotative images of music.

Double page spreads in music magazines seem to all be very similar, apart from the house styles that each magazine has being shown through. Again, to correspond with the rest of my magazine, the neat and tidy look needed to continue.

Q and Billboard both seemed to stress the importance of the image that would be shown. It is because of this that I dedicated a whole one side to the image. I positioned it on the left as it would be the first thing the audience’s eyes would see. Because my artist has ginger hair and that would be something I would feature throughout the double page spread, I needed to make sure it was one of the first things the eyes saw so that the audience could understand the relevance of the colour.

A pull quote was placed in the top left of the main image so that the audience could understand that the text still had masses of importance. I put this in orange and selected a font that would represent handwriting; because the artist, Ed Sheeran, is a well known songwriter, and I tried to portray this through the typography.

To the right of the main image I put the artist’s name going downward, with the word ‘exclusive’ to the right. Here, I was trying to create symmetry to make the whole double page spread easy on the reader’s eye. I even stylised it by putting the ‘E’ in ‘exclusive’ backwards to create even more symmetry with the ‘E’ for ‘Ed’.

Ed Sheeran’ has been written in orange again so that it can recognised with the artist, but the ‘exclusive’ has been written in burgundy to continue the magazine’s house style and to show that the magazine has obtained exclusivity with this artist.

On the right side of the double page spread I have put the main body of the text. At the top, I have put a heading stating ‘The coolest ginger in music.’ Here, I am emphasising the importance of his hair colour, accentuating the artist’s image. The heading has been written in burgundy and the font is the same traditional font as the main body, but the word ‘ginger’ is slightly bigger than the rest of the heading, once again, emphasising it.

AaBbCcDdEeFfGg...The main body of the text has been written almost like a tabloid paper would do. I have used the traditional font ‘Georgia’ as this font dominates online tabloids and I wanted this interview to be informative and neat; as this would be what my target audience would most likely want. I was also trying to make it look similar with Q. Q places the first initial of the artist behind the text in red, and this is something they do in all of their issues. Obviously I wasn’t going to completely imitate an iconic feature that they have developed, but I thought that I would put the first letter of each section of text in orange, once again, making the colour and the artist’s hair colour important; so that a quirkiness could run through it.

At the end of the text I placed a ‘>’ to indicate to the reader to turn the page for the rest of the text. I found it quite the rarity that a single interview would only take up two pages, and therefore, I decided to portray the interview as being longer. I placed this in burgundy because I wanted to differentiate from the black typography the reader has been made accustom to briefly.

At the bottom, like other magazines, I put the magazine logo and page number with other added information like the magazine’s website. I have placed all of this is the font used for the masthead to continue house style. I have placed the ‘dB’ in the middle and in a bigger font, also in burgundy to show its importance, and the other two features in black and smaller so they will obviously still be seen, but aren’t as important.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I tried to create a magazine that could represent a plethora of particular social groups, not just one. My magazine is a general ‘pop’ magazine, but not a pop magazine in terms of the genre; it is in terms of popular music. That is why, you’ll notice, that the content of the magazine ranges from artists like the X Factor’s Cher Lloyd to rock legends U2. This is why my magazine doesn’t have typographies or main images to suggest that they are weighted towards a particular genre of music, they are fairly neutral but still aesthetically pleasing to the eye the sense that they look good and the magazine is able to come across as being a quality magazine.

Because of this, my magazine is of an unconventional genre, but like the main music magazines such as Billboard, NME and Q, my magazine now is able to have a much larger audience.

The pull quote on the front mentions a majorly influential figure in UK music, Noel Gallagher. His genre of music has a pretty large audience rather than being a niche, so this also increases the size of the magazine’s audience alongside the list of artists featured in the magazine.

The main image on the front cover represents stripped, singer songwriters as he looks simple, correlating with his style of music.

The image on the contents page of the same artist does this too, but the second image represents a completely different social group, which is what I wanted to achieve; a diverse magazine. The way in which the girl has messy hair and indie style clothing contrasts with the acoustic genre of music my other artist portrays, making my magazine accessible to a vast audience.

My double page spread then represents another social group. Being of a completely different genre of music from the other two images, I feel like I have achieved this. Ed Sheeran represents the quirky members of the magazine’s audience as he has the name ‘Cyril’ on his guitar.

I’d say it is the artists that ultimately represent the social groups, and my magazine has to merely remain neutral whilst still giving of the impression of it being of quality.

In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I would argue that my magazine fulfils the higher end elements of it. It fulfils the element of love/belonging because it represents a vast amount of social groups so that people can feel a sense of belonging when they read it.

It represents esteem because the way in which all of the social groups are being represented – which is being successful and popular – the people who fit into the particular artist’s social group will feel good about themselves.

And I believe that the magazine fits into the level of self-actualisation. This is because, for example, the double page spread speaks about an artist who starts at rags and ends up in riches. The reader may read this and feel as if they can achieve this too if they desire to.

What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

There are numerous amounts of institutions that may distribute my magazine, but the magazine must fit into what they like just as much as the audience. So, I researched four institutions: Bauer Media, IPC Media and Development Hell ltd.

Bauer Media is a very influential group in the world of music. They own a 50% stake in music channels such as Q TV, 4Music, Kiss TV, The Box, Magic TV, Kerrang! TV and Smash Hits TV. As well as this, they also own Q and Kerrang! with radio as well. Bauer Music Group issues around 38million magazines a week. They are clearly involved with a diverse amount of music genres and types of media and their wide international basis, which is why I would consider Bauer Music Group a suitable institution for my magazine.

IPC Media is a subsidiary group, and is very much involved in publishing – suitable for a magazine. They own such things as IPC Newspapers, IPC Magazines, IPC Trade and Technical, IPC Books, IPC Printing and IPC New Products. Because of there establishment in the printing industry and their knowledge, I would say that they are perfect for a magazine, with them already having IPC Magazines.

Development Hell ltd. is a much smaller media group in Islington, London. However, for a new music magazine, they would be very good for launching domestically in order to get the magazine up and running. They currently publish Mixmag, the UK’s biggest dance music magazine, with Mixmag TV also. It is because of the domestic establishment that I would consider these to also be a very good institution who would distribute our magazine.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My magazine’s target audience would be both men and women of the ages from about 18-40. I would say specific social groups, ethnicities and classes of people wouldn’t be too specific, as my aim was to create a general popular music magazine that didn’t appeal to a specific group of people.

With many saying that Q has now steered away from writing about the music and focuses more on a band’s image, I wanted to create a magazine that doesn’t play it safe and that would only write about spefiic things; I wanted to create a magazine that could fill the gap in the market and satisfy the people who used to read Q, but were discouraged to by the turning point the magazine took during the late 1990s.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Due to the fact that my target audience is more mature and more sophisticated, I wanted to attract them by presenting the magazine to be of a good quality, first and foremost. The typography and clean-cut style each element of the magazine has undertaken does this.

The skyline: ‘The UK’s loudest magazine!’ metaphorically describes the magazine. The use of the word ‘loudest’ just reminds the reader of the magazine’s genre. As well as this, the use of a superlative tells the audience that the magazine is the best.

Since I have a wide audience, I made sure that the audience was made aware through the front page - the first thing they see – of all the artists featured to try and appeal to every social group taking an interest in the magazine.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?When making my product, I wanted to make sure that the photos were of a high quality, so I dedicated a lot of time learning about how to use Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 and Adobe Lightroom 4.3. I did this by experimenting on the softwares, watching tutorials on YouTube and reading books such as Adobe Photoshop by Focus Guide.

I learnt the most about Lightroom; because I needed to learn how to effectively airbrush skin and replace blemishes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahrmz5o_1yo

On Photoshop I mainly learnt how to change the brightness levels and how to use colour replacement to create an artificial background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7sXLMV5IhI

I also learnt a lot about using Microsoft Office Publisher 2007. In trying to achieve a tabloid style body of text for the double page spread, I learnt about placing the text into columns, using autoflow and dropping a cap.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full

task?

Looking back at it, it was clear that I was again trying to create a high quality magazine, but I did make some mistakes.

I was quite pleased with the staging of the main image of my preliminary task, but I didn’t know enough about Photoshop to enhance the lighting levels, and so the background of it is rather orange and unappealing. Moreover, the typography of the cover lines isn’t as neatly around the main image as I have achieved in the full task, so my research into music magazines and magazines in general has helped the structure of my magazine.

The contents page I created for the preliminary task is where I made the biggest errors. The contents page I made for the pleliminary task is boring, dull, and has far too much space. I think that I had the right idea, but I didn’t know enough about contents pages to create an effective one.

I think what makes my contents page for the music magazine most effective is the pictures, as it adds colour to it and is something else to look at.

The contents page for the preliminary task doesn’t relate too much to the front cover in terms of house style, but it is something I managed to do for the music magazine.

Overall, I would say that the research and knowledge I gained from the point of making the full product was key to creating a successful, realistic media product.