Evaluation of my music magazine production

Evaluation of my own
music magazine
productionAshleigh Foy
>

1. In what ways does you media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For the masthead of the cover I used the
word “Eclectic”. Eclectic is defined as
"composed of a variety of components
drawn from a variety of sources and
styles“ which I believe fits the indie
genre as my magazine would focus on
different styles of indie music within the
genre. This is typically a longer word
than is usually used on indie magazines
such as ‘NME’, ‘Q’ and ‘MOJO, however
if the magazine was to become
established it could always be shortened
down to something like ‘E’ magazine, as
NME was shortened from ‘New Musical
Express’.
On my magazine cover, the main cover
Image takes up the whole page (including
the bleed) which is conventional and
typical of nearly all magazines. The model’s
body is positioned toward the
camera/addressing the audience, however
her eyes are looking slightly off to the right
of the page with a slight smile on her face. I
did this because as mentioned in my
research having either the model’s eyes or
head positioned to the right sends
subliminal messages to the reader to turn
the page, as this is where the page is
naturally turned. Also her looking off into
the distance and the grin combined might
intrigue the reader to see what it is she is
so focused on and looking at
A medium close up shot is also
common for a magazine cover as it
has connotations of more of a
personal approach and so this is what
I feature on my cover.

After quite a lot of research into indie music
magazines I chose the colour scheme for my front
cover and got a lot of my inspiration from the
Foals issue of NME. Back when NME first became
established only a red masthead was used in
every issue from the connotations of danger and
their rebellious image, however in recent years
NME no adapt the colour of their masthead
individually, according to the colour scheme of
that particular issue. The other indie magazine I
analysed was Q magazine that only
predominantly use a red masthead. This seems to
be the conventional eye catching colour that
grabs the readers attention. After considering this
and my own point of view I decided that because I
wanted my magazine to take on a vintage route, I
would stick to the classic masthead which made
magazines as popular as they are today and what
can be seen as a grungy style, would attract both
sexes and wouldn’t deter my target audience of
females from buying my magazine .

From my research I noted that most indie
magazine tend to stick to a colour scheme
of around 3-4 colours and I feel that this
makes the cover look effective and
attractive without being confusing and
have too much going on. I have stuck to a
colour scheme of Red, yellow, black, white
and only a couple of blue to add some
vibrancy as the rest of my colours are
more toned down. I also , along with the
colour scheme, stuck to 4 fonts which
allows me to maintain a house style
throughout. I have also added a
conventional banner that seems to be a
very prominent feature on a lot of the
magazines that I have looked at.
As with all magazines, a
barcode, date of release and price
is and essential convention for my
magazine to look realistic. From
my research the most common
place for this to be displayed it in
the bottom right hand corner
rotated vertically to allow for a
cover line and so this is what I
imitated on my own cover.

I turned to NME as a prominent inspiration
and tried to imitate the conventions as best
as possible, with a few slight alterations, as I
love the simplistic yet very effective layout
which makes it so much easier to navigate
between pages/features. The pages of
NME, however, are slightly wider than A4 and
so I made a few changes to allow mine to fit
and look authentic. I used a bold serif font
for the title, “Inside This Week” to challenge
the conventions of an ordinary magazine
that has the title “Contents”. Underneath the
title, I also included the date of release in
italic serif font .
As for the reason above about NME being slightly wider, they tend to
use 7 images on their contents with a sufficient amount of
space, however to avoid crowding my own, I only used 5 images to
conform with the layout but so that it still looked realistic. I also tried
to include a subscription box as this tends to be a clear convention
on nearly all NME contents pages, however if I were to do this task
again I would make the subscription box more authentic looking.
Unlike NME I used a image from my main
feature , from the shoot I had with the
model, as my main photograph in the
centre. NME tend to use a different
image and have the feature image as a
smaller thumbnail.

I used a sans serif font for the majority of
my text, like NME, however for my pull
quotes I used a more artistic italic font
which will hopefully be attractive to my
audience as this is one of the attributes
that my audience for my magazine would
hopefully be interested in.
The colour scheme I used on this
page was just black and white, with
the exception of the page umber
where I chose to use red on a white
background that is a conventional
feature of NME magazine contents
pages to follow their house style. As I
used NME for my main inspiration, I
tried to imitate this in my own. This
worked effectively as the images I
chose all seem to have a darker hue
to the background which made it
stand out predominantly and make it
easier for the reader to see instantly
where each feature can be navigated.

The smaller feature images that I have chosen
are photographs that you would typically see on
a contents page, more so the concert image
then the polaroid. They are all images of mine
that I have taken at concerts ad the polaroid
image is from a shoot I carried out especially
during production.
In the bottom of the centre third column of the
contents I have included a “Plus” column to
display the rest of the features in the magazine
accompanied by the page numbers. This is a
typical convention of most magazines, however
the white space surrounding the column is too
wide and so if I was to do this task again I would
try and amend this by maybe adding another
feature .

This is from the Dave Grohl issue of
NME
This is from the Jake Bugg issue
of NME
For the inspiration of the
layout for my double page
spread, I looked at a few
issues of NME and the ones
that stood out most to me
where the ones with the
simple layout as I think it looks
more attractive. These issues
tend to have a title that takes
up half of the page with an
eye catching font.
As with the Dave Grohl issue , I
decided to feature my fictional
artists name as the title at the
top of the right hand page and
also as with both issue its
seems conventional that the
actual article itself is set out in
3 columns and so this is what I
reflected in my own double
page spread.
I used the continuation of the title as “Pieces of me” because as
my fictional artist is a new upcoming artist and the audience
might be inspired by her style and interests, I thought that this
would entice them to read on to find out about their new
inspiration and take pieces of her life to translate into their own
as inspiration.

I included a caption on the top right hand corner of
the left page overlaying my image. As the
background was dark I made the text white to
contrast well against this. A caption placed like
this is a typical convention of double page spreads
in a lot of music magazines.
I used a Sans serif font for the
title , as this seems to be a
convention for a lot of double
page spreads. However, I
went slightly against this
because I used a more artistic
almost illustration based font
whereas the title on other
double page spreads tends to
be quite formal looking. This
font choice would hopefully
appeal to the artistic side of
my audience and would grab
their attention.
I also included a “What Twitter thought” box
which is definitely a regular convention of the
NME double page spreads. I included this to
allow another point of entry into my magazine
and to portray the views of the
audience, which if people had out heard of
“Elle Nilson”, the views of people on twitter
may persuade them to read on and learn more
about her.
To keep the house style running
throughout the magazine, NME
also use it on their double page
spreads. I tried to reflect this and
so I used it as part of the title and
also to highlight the journalist bi
line and tweets. I only wanted to
stick to a few colours with black
dominating as I didn’t want it to
become confusing and distract
away from the article and main
image and so I only used
black, red, and blue o stand out
against the white page. The only
other colour I used was for the
backdrop for the bi line over laying
the image as it contrasted nicely
and is a convention of a lot of
magazine double page spreads.

2. How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
To make sure that I appealed to my target audience of women between the ages of 16-23, I
decided to feature a female artist as my main feature for the magazine. I did this because I
feel that today there are no female musicians that can act as role models to young
women/girls and I wanted my magazine to stand out and be a unique selling point for
distributers and publishers. I have tried to represent my female artist by the conventions and
choices I have made throughout my magazine and portray her as a young female indie
musician, who has an interest in photography (as mentioned in double page spread
article), art and fashion and that has an individual style which would hopefully inspire the
audience .
Before I started the production of constructing my music magazine I took inspiration from
fashion designer/icon Alexa Chung for her style of clothing and existing female artists to
consider how they are portrayed in the media and represent their individual style. I looked a
the female indie girl band “Haim”, for their style and photography, “Alexa Chung” for her
individual style (and hopefully as I wanted to appeal to a side of the audience that were
interested in fashion, they would see Alexa’s style translated through my magazine).

The prop of the cat eye sunglasses
and the way she is using them
reinforces the femininity of the
model that I wanted to portray and
the youthful, fun side of her that
would be attractive to the younger
side of my target audience of 16-
23. However, to contrast this , I
dressed my model in a grungy
leather jacket, baseball tee and
vintage looking, grungy/spiked
jewellery which connotes the
tougher side of her personality and
style that many indie bands/artists
have.
These two components contrast
two sides of her personality that
would be attractive to different
ends of my target audience and
makes sure that my whole
audience is represented in one
image.
In the actual photograph
itself, her expression is inviting
and intriguing which goes
against the usual stern look
that many music magazines
use for their cover. Although
this is the case, I still feel as
though her expression is
powerful enough to draw the
reader in and portray the
power that female artist can
have had tried to portray that
goes against the conventional
feature of a powerful male
band/artist.

The representation of the artist is also reflected I the language that I have used. I have used
language that any typical young woman/teen aged girl would use in every day life, referring to her
family a lot and using words such as “cos’” shows her down to earth nature and the fact that she is
not fake. This was important for me to portray this because in a lot of magazines today women can
very easily be connoted as “fake” in the media which I wanted to deviate away from.
This image is also from
the same shoot as
featured on the cover
image. In this
photograph I got the
model to hold a vintage
bottle of pink
lemonade which
connotes her youth to
attract the younger end
of my target audience .

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
• After quite a lot of research I came to the belief that ‘IPC Media’ might publish and distribute my music
magazine. I came to this conclusion because this company is also responsible for distributing NME
magazine, which, I found a huge inspiration from through my research and production into indie
magazines and the conventions are similar to my own that I have chosen for my own magazine.
• Also from looking at their website I found that IPC
engage with over 26 million adults with 2/3 of these
being women. This reflects my target audience of
young women between 16-23 and may mean that IPC
Media may be interested in publishing/distributing
my magazine as they focus on selling magazines with
a female audience that my own might attract.

• There are a lot of music magazines on the market
out there for catered for many genres and for wide
audiences, however there are no music magazines
as of now that have a direct audience demographic
of females. For this reason IPC may potentially
attract an entire new audience to engage with and
so would make my music magazine a Unique
product for sale.
Here is a link to IPC Media’s NME page: http://www.ipcmedia.com/nme

4. Who would be the audience for you media product?
My target audience would be females of the age group 16-
23. My audience would predominantly be individuals with a
quirky style that are interested in Indie rock. The audience
will be a typical 17 year old girl that has an
artistic/contemporary style, spends a lot of her money
buying vintage vinyl's/albums and goes to intimate gigs in
architecturally beautiful buildings. She is always listening to
music whenever she has an opportunity and is linked to
quite a few social networking sites to keep up to date with
her favourite artists and their tour dates. Her favourite
bands would include classic, older bands like The
Smiths, The Clash, The Arctic Monkeys and more newer
indie pop bands like The Kooks, Jake Bugg, Two Door
Cinema Club and Imagine Dragons. She is interested in the
photography in magazines and music is one of the most
important components of her life. She will buy quite a bit of
her clothes from thrift/charity shops and has an individual
style and she is always seeking to learn new things and
discover new artists/fashion inspiration.
I took inspiration from all of these images that would help
me to think about what my audience would be interested in
as all of these photo’s are associated with indie music genre
and in turn what feature they may look for in my magazine.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
There are quite a few conventions that would attract my audience to my magazine;
The image I have used as my main cover image as mentioned before
shows my fictional artist positioned towards the camera however he
eyes are directing the reader to the right hand side of the page
where you would open the magazine and this could send subliminal
messages to the reader to carry on reading the magazine. Also the
way she is dressed (wearing a leather jacket and an array of vintage
and spiked jewellery would attract my female audience to gravitate
toward the model for style inspiration, more so those amongst the
audience whoa re most interested in fashion.
From carrying out my questionnaire into the indie genre, I found that
82% of the people I asked said that they would pay between £2-£2.99
for a music magazine. Due to this reason and through research in to
other indie magazines I think that my audience would be attracted to
the price of my magazine at £2.50. I feel like this is a happy medium as
with my target audience being between the ages of 16-23, they will
most probably be student who can afford to pay this , as other
magazines such as vogue are £4 which is much more expensive and not
as accessible to the younger part of my demographic and also a cheaper
magazine would attract a lot younger audience.

By featuring hug indie artists/bands on the cover of my magazine such as on my strap line shown above, displaying the likes
of Ben Howard, Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg and Foals provide a wide variety od classic and new upcoming talent in the indie
genre, means that because my audience would have a strong interest indie music , they would instantly be attracted to
read the articles inside and so would buy the magazine.
On my cover lines I have also mentioned a huge indie band known as
the “Palma Violets” promoting their new debut album. To display this I
used a plug and a graphic design style font known as “Impact Label”
from www.dafont.com which is actually a font that NME have used in
the past that I noticed from my research. The graphic/illustration style
font would attract the people of my target audience who are
interested in art and the design of the magazine production. Also the
cover line in the banner ruing across the top of my page uses the word
“Exclusive” which means that the audience would definitely be
attracted to the magazine as they would have to buy it to find out the
information that they couldn’t find elsewhere as it would be exclusive
to Eclectic magazine.

My contents page consists more of visual images of famous indie
bands rather than just a sentence mentioning them. I used
photographs of artists that I was lucky enough to go and see in
concert as small thumbnail features to attract my audience as
they would want to read the article that is specialised to their
favourite artists/bands. I have also included an image of a
polaroid camera that I took while on the photo shoot for my
fictional artist. This would appeal to the side of my audience that
take an interest in to vintage photography and so they would be
more likely to read this article for this reason.

The simple layout would invite the
reader’s to read on other than deterring
them away from the page because it
was too overcrowded with text. A page
dominated by text would seem
daunting and would make the reader
lose interest. Whereas a good ratio of 5
images to text would make the reader
want to continue to read the magazine
and would not be bombarded with a lot
of information all squashed at once on
one page.
The use of a rhetorical question : “Elle Nilson? Not heard of her? Where have you
been?” means that the page is directly addressing the reader which would interest
them and make them think or even go to the article itself. It would make them feel
involved in the magazine and they would be more compelled to carry on reading.

I edited this image on Photoshop by adding a deep blue
filter and slightly cross processing it using the colour
curves tool. I enhanced the brightness and contrast and
all of these components together gave the image an
effect that you would get from an image from a
lomography camera. The side of my audience that were
interested in photography would be most attracted to
this aspect.
In my kicker I mentioned some famous
bands such as The Kinks, The Smiths
and Bob Dylan which would attract the
older side to my target audience as
these are classic indie band and
artists. Including this could make them
want to read on and find out more
about my artists if they know that they
have the same interests and would
immediately attract my indie target
audience.
In the article itself I have used language that would
attract and be relatable to my young female indie
target audience through youthful language ,meaning
that she would be seen as down to earth, compelling
the audience to read on. My audience rage from the
age 16-23 and so using youthful language such as ‘cos’
would make her more relatable and appealing to this
audience. This interview was decided from around 65%
of my questionnaire results showing that people are
more attracted to reading interview compared to other
news and reviews etc and so I catered towards these
results.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process
of constructing this product?
Over the course of the production of my music magazine , I have used a wide
variety of media programmes and technologies to create my final
outcome, present my research and planning and evaluate every process.
Considering that blogger is what made this whole process easy to handle and organise and a platform for
the whole course I might as well start here. At the start creating a blog on www.blogger.com seemed quite
daunting to me as I had never relied on technology to hold an entire body of work, and we all know how
unpredictable technology can be. However I instantly became familiar with the easy layout and seen it as a
neat and effective way to record my thought processes. The main advantage that I really liked was that
blogger is available on a lot of platforms and so I was able to check my blog from my phone or whenever I
wanted which was very useful and a quick way to upload. Throughout using blogger I have learned how to
navigate around it by using labels as a shortcut and recording my developments to show my journey.

The main foundation to allow me to access anything online
(even blogger), known by almost everyone, was
www.google.co.uk. Without Google initial research into the
indie genre of music magazines would not have been as
easily accessible. The internet and Google played a vital role
in my planning and research stages , but most importantly it
enabled me to construct my final product. So as a whole this
whole body of work, without the internet, would not have
been possible. For my font choices I used websites such as
www.dafont.com and so without the use of this site my
caption, pull quote and masthead fonts may not have
turned out as professional as they did, so this was a very
important technological site to add realism to my music
magazine.

The images opposite are examples of
some of the images that I edited using
Photoshop by using basic tools such as
the clone stamp tool for the bottle
image, which was one of my first
attempts at the beginning of the
course, and adjusting the colour curves
for example for my double page spread
image to enhance the colours.
Throughout the course I learnt how to
successfully edit my photos to the feel
that I wanted to portray.
I had previous experience using Photoshop before the course began but it was quite minimal. Using
Photoshop allowed me to revive my skills I had previously, but also learn a lot more through practice and
watching Photoshop tutorials etc. Having access to such programmes as Photoshop has really allowed me to
transform my magazine from something mediocre that could have been produced in Microsoft
Publisher, such as my school magazine, to something that I can be proud of and that looks a lot more
professional due to the advanced tools and effects that it offers.

I feel as though I was lucky when taking my photos as I used my own Nikon
D3100 DSLR camera which allowed me to capture detail, high quality
photographs. I use my camera for my own photography when I have spare time
and so I had a good idea how to work my camera for the best results, however
extraneous effects such as lighting that were harder to control was the main
struggle/hurdle for me to overcome. This is what professional photographers
would have to try and work around and so I tried as best as I could to get the
best outcomes. I am pleased with how the photographs turned out as a whole
due to the high quality of the camera.
Obviously not every photograph turned out exactly the way I imagined and so
this is where Photoshop came in extremely useful for me to alter any
imperfections . The main tools I used were the colour curves (to cross process
my main cover image and altering the RGB), the spot healing tool and the
clone stamp tool to remove any imperfections (such as blemishes) or
unwanted objects obscuring the background of some images. I also used the
eye dropper tool to pick up and place colours to other areas of my page to
create a correlation in the colour scheme.

To create my magazine I used Adobe InDesign – a programme also used by professional to produce established
magazines such as NME. I had never used InDesign before and it seemed really scary to use because there are
endless tools for may different uses. At first I found it really quite difficult to navigate my way around and make
use of the tools to create the best outcome and I was overwhelmed with the complexity of it. However, after I
had a play around with it, I found out how to make the most to make my layout of my magazine look
professional.
I found that after using InDesign, it was perfect for using to construct my music magazine as any other software
such as Microsoft Publisher that I used for my preliminary task, would not have allowed my work to turn out as
professionally as the final product did. Through using InDesign I have learnt a lot about how established music
magazines are made and how long it would take for a whole magazine to be published and it has made me
appreciate them all the more.

The final media software that I used was Slide Share. This website
is what enabled me to upload this evaluation power point to my
blog in a neat and more effective use of media. I really like the
idea of using a power point to display my evaluation with images
rather than just plain text typed up and so I found it a lot more
enjoyable creating this slide compilation which was a lot easier to
handle.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
>
I feel I have learnt an awful lot from producing my school magazine to my final music magazine from beginning to end
through the use of a range of different media.
I only used Microsoft Publisher when producing my school magazine ad so I was limited with the range of advance
tools that I could use, which in turn created an unprofessional outcome. As I have mentioned previously I then
upgraded a lot to using InDesign which was just so interesting to learn how to navigate. The conventions on my
school magazine were not correct, from the layout to use of colour and fonts which did not stand out enough.

Over the progression from my prelim to my music
magazine, I feel I have learnt a lot about the individual
aspects of the conventions and how much work goes
into magazine production as a whole. For example, the
images need to be eye catching and well edited and
fonts need to contrast the background and be a
sufficient size to make it look as professional as
possible.
I have learnt that small components such as the
language used can completely change the style
and focus of a magazine and I feel that my music
magazine masthead is a lot more professional
looking/size and I believe that it was the use of
InDesign that gave me the platform of tools to do
this. I have learnt that colour schemes and fonts
can hold messages and connotations that you
wish to convey, and the importance that these
conventions carry in appealing to certain
audiences.

I have learnt how to effectively work Photoshop and InDesign and I really
enjoyed learning a new experience with editing although I found it quite
tricky to begin with. I feel that I am very proud of my final outcome and I
enjoyed the whole journey of production from beginning to end, despite
little hick ups that set me back at first.
I feel as though if I was asked to do this task again that I would feel
confident that I could produce a magazine of a similar quality or even a
higher quality overall outcome, but I would challenge myself to deviate
away from my initial taste in music and try to produce a magazine of
another genre that I am not as familiar with.

Evaluation of my music magazine production

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Evaluation of my music magazine production