Music Magazine Evaluation.

1. Music Magazine Evaluation.

2. Forms and Conventions With forms and conventions I had tried to make sure that my magazine conformed certain expectations, in terms of the structure of the of the masthead, the date of issue, the bar code and the price. Also most magazines have their main image concealing some parts of the masthead however I decided to subvert from that layout as my main image of my model (French gangsta mc) focus was quite small, so if I enlarged the image it would have taken up too much space on the page and there would have been no space for sell lines etc. In addition my magazine is not as prestigious as other magazines, so if I covered the masthead people will not be familiar with my magazine and may not recognise it at all. Although my front cover follows most standardised forms in real music magazines there are some aspects in which my magazine challenges them. An example of this would be the fact the model is looking away from the camera, where as the majority of the time when you look at the front cover, the model is normally supposed to be looking at the camera, which probably tells us that the model thinks highly of himself, and that he is above all. Eyes focusing on the camera. Conforms to standards expected of a front cover. Masthead not concealing the main image.

3. Institutions For my music magazine I feel that there are a number of institutions that could distribute my magazine (Puissance Rap) or of places that could be of possibilities. As my magazine has quite a wide target audience it would only be appropriate to have my magazine distributed in big institutions and places that my target market would probably visit on a regular basis. For instance it would brilliant if my magazine were to be distributed in WHSmith, as it is considered as one of the biggest retailer for books, magazines and items such as pencils, pens etc. WHSmith sell a lot of magazines are they are all of different companies and genres. This variety in their stock show that the shop has plenty of different people that go there to shop. In addition to what has been said, it seems thatWHSmith is a good place for my magazine to be sold as so many people go there to buy magazines, and I’m sure that my target audience would probably pay a visit to that store and would be thrilled to buy it as WHSmith’s reputation as a wholesaler is very high. These are all possible places that my magazine could be sold to my target audience. I could also suggest one more store that could have the privilege of distributing my magazine, which happens to be a corner shop, as it is highly possible that costumers could come across my magazine, as the corner shop is practically the nearest shop around to some ones home, and plenty of people pass by. Local corner shop.

4. Target Audience • I had produced a questionnaire for my class room peers, so that I could have a rough idea on how they wanted their magazine to appear in terms of the front cover, contents page, and the double page spread. • I have also done a planning for the construction of the magazine, in order to ensure that my final magazine will be successful. • To satisfy my future readers, I had taken the imitative of expanding my planning by making three front cover drafts, one done by ICT and the other two by hand which has been displayed on my wiki space, in to addition to all that has been stated, I have also done some drafting for both the contents page and the double page spread. • What I have also done to ensure that my music magazine meets the demand of my target audience ( 13+ years old), I Have taken it upon myself to take some photographs of my models, for obvious so that the readers have an image of who is appearing the magazine. • To also get an insight of how I should go about making my music magazine, I had to also find out what they were interested, other than listen to music during their past time, and this information was included in my magazine planning, on the wiki space.

5. Addressing the readership • Used sells lines, in order to attract a numerous amount of readers. • Took some fairly amount of pictures, and from there I made decision on which one would look great and visually appealing for my future readers. • I did A little bit of quality control, in terms of final drafts, once saved on as a JPEG file, I would look at it and if I was not pleased with the quality I would make a few amendments. • To add on, to what has been said on the topic of sells lines and teasers, I had changed the colour of the witting into the French national colours to make it seem obvious to the readers that my magazine focuses on the Rap music industry in France. • Some of the text shown on the front cover of my magazine, I had put in French phrases in order for my upcoming readers can be able to stick the sells lines into their heads, and keep them thinking. • with my double page spread, the focus of my article was based around a young talent called French Gangsta MC, as these day many young people are interested in new, but also young talented people who are the same age as them. • Considering the fact that my magazine was based on the genre of rap/hip-hop, I still made sure that I was using the correct type of language, even though the magazine was also aimed at young readers too. So that this will allow readers to read a formal piece of text.

6. Technical/construction issues During the construction process of my magazine I used a range of technology tools to construct my Front Cover, double page spread and Contents page. For my audience research and planning I used programmes such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel to show the research I had undertaken for this project. I also used these programmes to construct some of my work e.g. Picture analysis and front cover analysis. Following on from there I have saved them into JPEG files, so that it could be uploaded onto the Wiki spaces. The construction of my front cover was done by Micro soft publisher, although the initial idea was to use Adobe Photoshop, but due to my lack of knowledge, and experience, which was a pity as Photoshop had plenty of image editing tools that would have helped me construct my front cover, contents page and DPS.. The most important thing to my front cover was the images that I would use to create my articles and front cover. To take the images and especially High definition images I needed to use a good piece of equipment. So for my photography I used a Polaroid t831 Camera of 8.0 Megapixels and this gave me the highly defined images that was required.

7. Comparisons of preliminary to final work

8. Comparisons of preliminary to final work continued… For the front cover of my preliminary task (school magazine), I would say that It lacked some effort , as I did not plan my time well. Firstly by looking at the masthead you can tell the difference, as in my preliminary task I had used word art to construct my masthead which show the lack in quality, Where as in my final work (music magazine), I had used Da font in order to enhance the quality of the mastheads aesthetics in order to make my magazine successful. Moving on from the masthead, there are the main images, and looking at my pictures taken from my school magazines in terms of the background was not thought about. Although my other front cover (from the music magazine have pictures that are of a high quality. To add on there is also the issue of the sells lines and teasers, where you can see that in the preliminary task I used word art the majority of the time, which therefore losses the attention of my intended target audience. Overall I could state that my final work also know as the main task is of better quality in comparison to my previous preliminary task, due to the amount of time given, and to the fact the preliminary task was supposed to be a taster, in order to test our ability to put together a magazine. Word art less appealing to target audience. Not much effort put in. Much more effort put into this masthead. The font used is Graffiti, to represent the urban theme of my music magazine.

9. Comparisons of preliminary to final work continued… Leaving the front cover comparisons behind, and moving on to the contents page , as you can notice yet again in my preliminary task there was a lack of effort put in, where as the main task looks much more better, also due to the amount of tome and hard work out in. In the school magazine as you can clearly see, has less featured article, although this may be due to the fact that it was a school magazine. But the contents page for the main task has, all due to the fact it may it is a music magazine or even a celebrity gossip, etc, as all this is dependent on whether the magazine is sold weekly, with less pages or monthly covering roughly 100 pages or more if required. In this case I think I have done the necessary amount required so that the future readers of my magazine are satisfied with the standard of the contents page, show featured articles. In terms of picture I have tried to blend in the background with the image pasted onto the magazine with the colour black, which is a colour urban sort of colour that mostly represents theme of a rap magazine. By constructing my music magazine I have learnt a great on how to improve the text and layout, and with the chosen pictures I have been able to think more about the mise-en-scene, compared to the previous disappointment the preliminary task.