Media Blog

Laura Marris
Media Evaluation

The main task brief of this course was to create a new music magazine, featuring a front cover, contents page, and double page spread created by from scratch on my own. You had to take a minimum of four images to feature on your magazine, and these had to be taken of a fellow pupil or someone you know. We then had to research before doing anything else, analysing 3 contents pages from 3 different types of magazines, which were ‘NME’, an indie mainstream magazine, a contemporary magazine called ‘Fused’, and the slick hiphop magazine ‘Vibe’ . I then analysed 3 front pages which were taken from ‘Heat’ magazine, which isn’t a music magazine but has the same conventions, ‘NME’ again, and ‘HipHop’, a rap magazine. After this, I discussed 3 double page spreads. One from ‘NME’ again, one from ‘Bliss’ a teen magazine based around girls, and another from a magazine featuring Pink called ‘Q’. I used Adobe Photoshop for my magazine, which I believe was easy to use after getting to grips with the technology, and I would use this again and used a digital camera from college, and my HP Camera at home to take my photos, which had some good results. We also had to initiate the key terms and concepts of LIAAR in our magazine, and when doing the research we had to find similar media products that are the same genre and have the conventions of music magazines.
I first thought about my planning, drawing many mind maps thinking about what type of magazine I will be creating. I then decided to get straight into analysing many contents page, front pages and double page spreads and their conventions. These conventions have been used when producing my magazine, and here is what I found out in my research.
When researching, I did find out the common conventions of a music magazines cover. These are, the coverlines, a masthead, a barcode, a main coverline and a main image. I researched into these conventions, and tried to see how they are used so I could establish that with my magazine cover. My cover has a masthead, like other magazines, and a medium shot of my artist. I chose to call my magazine ‘MSM’ which stands for ‘main stream music’ to signify that my music magazine is a mainstream related magazine, and is based around different types of music. My music magazine’s name challenges many other magazines in the industry, as not many are based around having many different genres of music, and typically have their magazines based around one, e.g Vibe is based around hip-hop. I realised this when researching the product. I have coverlines which is another feature, and these are around the side of the medium shot picture which I have taken. I chose to have my model wearing very alternative clothes, and she is playing a guitar, which breaks conventions as you wouldn’t expect a young girl to be playing a guitar, since it’s not very common. I had the background blue, and Michaela in black and white, which made her stand out more against the background, getting all the spotlight on her. This is not like the form of a usual magazine, as all the cover would be in colour. I also have a bar code placed at the bottom, which is a very important convention. My magazine also features a main coverline, which is another convention of a music magazine. This read ‘Kaela Marson’ ‘new kid on the block, new found fame’ which showed to the reader that this was a new artist on the music scene. I decided to have this written in white and red to really stand out, as on music magazines the main cover line immediately catches the attention of the reader. I did decide to use the conventions and layout of a music magazine cover, so I didn’t challenge the forms of ones in the industry now, such as NME magazine, which does have all the conventions and uses colour and images quite randomly instead of having a boring layout. I wanted to make the music magazine as realistic as possible, so I believed sticking to the forms and conventions could make it seem so.
I then followed finding out the conventions of a contents page. There are many different features to a contents pages, and they are sometimes like the cover, full of pictures/text. Usually, the name of the magazine is placed at the top of the contents page which is the masthead. I did this on my contents page, having the name in red, big and bold at the top left to make the it stand out. There are listings of what's going on in the magazine in this issue on the left and the right, some magazines has captions to categorise each type of story. These captions are in bold, which makes them stand out and lets the reader know which subject they are dealing with clearly. I used the same process on my contents page, separating the captions and the stories with bold colours of red and white, which matches the colour scheme on the front cover. Also, next to the name of the magazine, a caption is added. This can be ‘THIS WEEK’ or ‘CONTENTS’ so I choose to write contents in big white writing so the reader knows this is specifically the contents page, and this is written in white to stand out. All features of a contents page contain the date or month of the magazine that has been released, so I used this next to the ‘CONTENTS’ writing. There a main image that catches the attention on the contents page, and is usually the image of the main story that’s featured that month. My picture is square, to make it stand out more, and blends in well with the layout. I used a medium long shot of Michaela, who is featured in my main story, as it is different to the medium shot on the front cover. Instead of having some in black and white on this picture, I chose to have it fully colour so the reader can see what my model’s features are really like. The contents page also features promotional adverts, which are placed on the bottom of this specific page. This promotion is usually based around monthly subscriptions for the magazine, and I used this on my magazine’s contents page.
I believe my magazine was ok for the time I produced it in. I think my front cover has the conventions of a magazine, and I tried to attract my audiences with something a little different. I think my magazine is quite similar to the institution NME, and I based my magazine around this one in the industry. In terms of LIIAR, I think I used the correct language in my magazine, with the many different coverlines that seem quite catchy, like ‘new kid on the block.’ In terms of audience, I believe this magazine would represent the social groups of many different people, from black people to the stereotypes of ‘chavs’ I have tried to influence different music genres such as rap, hiphop, dance and contemporary music in my magazine. My music magazines audience is based around 16-25 year olds, as the music is modern and the songs that are in the charts right now, and I believed this age group would be most interested in this. I also believe I used a very good colour scheme with my magazine as the colours were red, blue, white and yellow. Red has the connotations of danger and anger, which clashes with the connotations of blue, which could be calmer and quite soothing. This clash I think makes my magazine more interesting, as you don’t quite know what to expect from it.
To attract my audience, the colours I have used are bright and upbeat to appeal the a mainstream audience. The colour scheme of the writing is red and blues and whites, which are typical colours featured on magazines. I have attracted my audience by using my front cover to catch their eye. The main picture I have used is of Michaela Marson, (the new rising star in the magazine) and I have chose to use her in black and white to make her stand out, signifying how she stands out in the crowd. On my first draft of my front cover my background was a plain white background. I decided this didn’t look much like a different, ground breaking magazine, so I took some more photo’s and chose to change the background colour. This made the background look more professional. I wasn’t then wasn’t pleased with the colour, I thought my background looked to dark and dingy, so I changed to colour and made it more bright. On my original masthead, I started with a darker red, which didn’t seem to jump out on the page, but then adjusted the brightness. I was also worried about whether or not the colour would go well with the blue background, but it did so.
I also used the same colour schemes on my contents page and double page spread. I believe these pages attract my audience as they stand out immensely from other magazines. I used pictures that make my artist seem very vulnerable, and these created a different aspect to my magazine.
I have learnt a lot from this process of making a music magazine. Looking back from the preliminary task, I have learnt to manage my time a little better, as on the preliminary task I rushed quite a lot. I did, however, struggle with keeping up on the research. I have learnt how to use the technology better from the preliminary task, as before hand I didn’t understand Photoshop at all. I could however, have used more time to research, as I didn’t put 100% into it. I also could have used a lot more time to create my contents page, but all in all I believe I could have coped a lot better.