Evaluation

The audience of Transition would be young individuals like myself between the ages of 13 and 20 who love Rock music, but also love Pop music and the fusion of the two, although is found commonly in the charts and elsewhere, is not found in the publishing industry. Kerrang! readers enjoy bands such as You Me At Six and Attack!Attack! and although these artists can be classified as PopRock, the magazine's ideology is that pop music is a disappointment to the industry - which I believe it isn't, as do many others. So the magazine would attract a maturer pop-fanatic audience, rather than a Smash Hits! style audience; as well as rock-fanatics as the two can definitely go together. The magazine also aims to introduce a lot of new and upcoming artists to give them a boost into the industry and become known - one of the reasons behind the name 'Transition' i.e. the transition from being a local unsigned band to a major chart-topping artist. So people interested in finding new music that perhaps don't want to always just listen to the charts because they can appreciate any music.

My magazine conforms to magazine conventions as it has a barcode and price information, and is set out similarly to most other magazines with a large heading and a large proportion of image to text. The magazine uses magazine conventions so that it is immediately recognisable as a magazine, and to make it be seen as a music magazine I used a style of photography to show that the four people on my front cover look like a band - this is also clear through the colour scheme and the use of house style throughout. Banners are often used too, like the ones at top and bottom of my front page, sometimes to give more info about whats inside and other times for promotional tools such as comepetitions and free give-aways. I have also used the typical Q&A style for the interview, some magazines use this, others opt to write the interview in a story-type format but I find the Q&A is more useful as a reader can skip to a question they're interested in quickly as they can distinguish between question and answer due to the different font colours. I have challenged music magazine conventions by choosing to place an interview AND a review on a double page spread - this isn't found commonly, but I think it works well and most people enjoy seeing both aspects, so why not have both opposite eachother? Quite often magazines like to have an A4 page worth of picture, and then a small interview opposite, or a large image across two pages and the interview text at the bottom, whereas I have chosen to wrap my interview around the interviewee as to involve image and picture together.


I tried to attract my audience through my colour scheme which was mainly created from when I surveyed over 30 people. The people who completed the survey were all friends/people I knew that liked Pop and/or Rock music and so therefore it helped me get an idea of my target audience and create it for them. The colour scheme ended up being black/white/blue(two shades); the black denoting the rock genre which is quite conventional of a rock magazine, the white adding a nice contrast and grabbing attention to the magazine against the black, and the blue lightening the magazine and adding the pop-edge that I wanted. In comparison to my preliminary school magazine the colour scheme is very different as the school mag was aiming to attract an all-girl audience of the ages 16-18. The background image of the front cover is attractive to people looking for new music - as they aren't immediately recognisable as an artist but they have the ambience of being a pop-rock-band and their positioning implies this too. I ensured I included a range of artists on the cover hoping that people who liked even just one or two artists might buy it and wouldn't be put off by the pop-rock styled image if they were just pop fans for example. The taglines also are tools to attract the reader to open the magazine and find out, for example what All Time Low are really talking about.

I have learnt more about technologies completing this coursework and I'm now much more confident at using Photoshop as I had little previous knowledge of this program. I also now understand how to put Word 2007 to efficient use as I don't have Publisher on my home computers, so I had to manage with Word 2007 - which I feel has enabled me now to use Word better and taken my reliance off the typical program I have used. I sometimes struggled with editing my magazine but now I am happy at how to wrap the images round the text, and also all the layerings of images. I also feel I have got more experience photographing bands too - which I intend to continue doing more now. One thing that I struggled with regarding technology, is that the background of my front page image wasn't suitable and crowded the front page, so I decided to black it out, I didn't really like this look either, so I tried to impose the image on a different background, e.g. a wall, but it didn't work and as the band have now gone on a 'break' I couldn't get any more images, which I would've liked to have done. I also would've liked to have designed some graphics to lighten the dark, black around the edges of my double page spread.

I think my representation of groups in the piece is quite positive, in some ways it represents the audience as a group open to all different genres of music with lots of interests and a good awareness of the music industry. I would hope that 'The Rileys' are represented in a positive, laidback but amusing band who love being in the music industry as this is how I wish them to be portrayed as they are very genuine people.

Since the preliminary task I feel I have become more confident with the use of tecnology, the ideologies behind music magazines, the construction of media products and I also have more experience with the music industry as I got involved with a real band who are trying to become successful musicians. I also feel I understand the process of making a magazine more as I have seen the difference between producing a school mag and a music magazine and the style is completely contrasting, my school magazine is quite bright whereas my music magazine uses a few darker colours - which is conventional for this genre of magazine.

Finally, I think my music magazine would most likely be distributed by a company which is a conglomerate, who has the money to fund a project into a niche market such as the PopRock unsigned bands, etc. For example, a company such as Bauer Media who look at varying aspects of the Entertainment industry and also distribute Kerrang! so a company like that would be ideal. Also, companys such as that run Rock Sound which has similar ideological values as I do for Transition but Rock Sound is more rock-orientated (as you can tell by the name). I think a company like this would distribute my magazine as it would introduce new music and hopefully get some returns as it is a growing market, especially in places such as Camden. Plus, if it was a smaller company then it would struggle to get the magazine in the shops, whereas a larger company has contacts and could help more with the production, etc. But the magazine would also have to be distributed by people who have a genuine love of music, else they wouldn't be interested in this product.

I am overall happy with my music magazine and think that it looks original and new. However a big issue I have found is that once printed, the dark blue on the front cover looks to dark and the black background on the double page spread doesnt look so good, but I imagine that would be overcome if it were to be printed as a proper magazine on glossy paper and high-tech printers.

Magazine Pages + Feedback

Below is the feedback I received about my four music magazine pages:

• Red eye removal of front page is needed
• Spelling mistake in review
• Red-Eye removal in the pictures on the 'Review' page
• Repetition of 'Christmas' on Interview Page
• Front page image could be better
• You need the new 'The Rileys' Logo
• I liked the grey boxes you had around the main feature question words more - made the words stand out and more readable when in smaller size
• The picture of Joe on the Interview page looked wicked, especially how it enters into the text
• Its really good

So there was a mixture of feedback and my final versions of the magazine pages are below. An evaluation will follow shortly.

My Magazine Pages (Pre-Feedback)

I created all of these using Microsoft Word 2007 along with the help of Photoshop and Paint. Annoyingly I had to export the files into PDF format so as to view them elsewhere but here are some jpg images of the pages as they stand at the moment.

Transition

Yes, I have decided to call my magazine Transition and as it is now the Christmas holidays I have been unable to use my desired program of Microsoft Publisher to create my music magazine, so instead I have used Microsoft Word which I can use at home.

I have spent a while creating my front cover, and I will post the first draft below:



After finishing creating I asked for some critical feedback from some of the target audience and they made these points:

• I don't like the blue on the yellow, it makes it look cheap
• The grey boxes behind the writing is a little odd
• include more writing on it
• play around with more fonts
• don't leave so much space
• i like the title its really bold and makes a statement
• the main feature looks good
• too much blue - try and include other colours that compliment blue, like a nice green...or different shades of blue
• really like the front cover
• Dave's leg looks a bit weird
• It would sound better as 'Why they split' rather than 'why the split'

So I took their comments into consideration and I will post the updated version soon along with the front cover and double page spread. All of which I intend to get some feedback for by posting the images online and/or asking people and videoing it. Altogether the feedback however, was positive and most people liked it and thought it looked quite professional.

I have been finding it very useful to look at other magazine front covers, as I have gathered a collection of music magazines and using them as a basis for my magazine, obviously adding my magazine's own style. I also feel I have become more confident using Microsoft Word as a program to create a magazine. I am also very pleased with how my images have turned out - although if I had the opportunity after having the first session of editing I would have liked to have taken another set of photos; however this is not possible. But I think the images I have chosen work well and suit the genre of magazine.

Simple plans for the music magazine

Here are the simple layout plans for my music magazine, I have chosen to stick to my blue/white/black theme throughout the magazine.

Progression

I have decided I am going to call my magazine 'Transition' or 'Deviant'. To decide which name I am going to use, I am going to create my front cover first and then place the name at the top and see which looks better and more professional for a music magazine name. I think 'Transition' is slightly more popular from my recent survey which I did via text to get quick results, so that is the most likely.

I have begun to edit my photos for my magazine - the front cover one has been quite difficult as I am using Photoshop, which I haven't used that much really but I had a bit of a practice a little while ago (I will post a couple of these images below). But I am not a Photoshop genius. Anyway, I have been attempting to get the image of just the four members of 'The Riley's for my front cover as I (think) I want them placed on a black or maybe white background - depending on what suits the image better as this is the conventional use of front cover image I have found through my research. I am going to go and edit that image now and then hopefully have my front cover finished tonight.

Name of the magazine & Update

On Friday I took my photos ready for my music magazine, the photoshoot went well and the music was fun; The Rileys are lovely people and I enjoyed the night a lot.

I will also upload some photos from the photoshoot & gig below, once I have edited them and chosen which ones I would like to use for my front page, contents page and double page spread. But I feel I have enough images however I would've liked them to have been better quality but as my camera broke before Friday I had to borrow one from a friend.

I would've quite liked to have used the image above in my magazine, however the quality is bad and the image is quite blurry and so I didn't as I thought it would detract from the magazines authenticity.

The second point to this blog is to make a final decision for the name of my magazine, here is the list of Maybe's left:
Pop Rock Today
Sound
Unpublished
Prock
Deviant
PopRock
Buzz
Transition
Ropazine
RP
JUMP
BacktoBeatSix
TRIP (Techno Rock Indie Pop)
Rocky Road
Rave!


I have decided to not call it the ones in orange.

So I have been left with 5 names, which I am going to do a quick survey for, via text as this is probably the quickest way to find out which name people think is the best. Here are the results:
Deviant: 6
Buzz: 1
Transition: 7
TRIP: 4
Rave!: 2

Decision will be coming soon!