Evaluation Question 1

Many magazines, music and otherwise, use traditional “conventions”
when designing the magazine. They have to decide where the mast head should be
placed, how the picture should be taken such as angle and shot type, as well as
where the features and text should be listed, if and where there should be a
catchy slogan, ect. This can change dramatically depending on the target
audience and the subject matter, such as colours, layout of the text and
features, picture sizes, ect.


When designing my music magazine, I decided to base it
around metal and rock, and so I have chosen a conventional layout that will
relate to other music magazines of this genre. I have chosen a number of pictures
that have inspired my magazine.

10. House style (how all the above combine to create an overall theme, filling a
gap in the market and targeting a specific audience)

With all of these features in mind, I have created a house
style for those interested in fast paced metal and rock music, which fills a
gap for the publishers IPC, which have a gap in the market for people
interested in heavy metal.

Evaluation Question 2

I have chosen this KERRANG! cover to compare my front cover
with. One of the ways I think this is similar to my magazine is the posture. On
my front cover, the entire band are all climbing on top of each other and
giving each other piggyback rides. Compared with the KERRANG! cover, on theirs
they are all pushing forwards and climbing over each other to get to the front
of the camera. On both of these covers all the individuals are looking very
happy, as well as being very hyper and energetic, they all look like they’re so
energetic they could just run amuck by their facial expressions and positions. Both
the lights in the photos seem to be artificial and are directly in front (though
also slightly above) the people in the pictures. You could represent younger
males in both of these photos as being very energetic and boisterous.


However there are some slight differences between the photos
as well. On KERRANGS! cover all but one person is looking directly into the
camera, while on mine all the people in the pictures are looking directly into
the camera. Another thing slightly different is the camera shots and angles.
While on mine there is a medium close up camera shot slightly above the people
in my picture, on KERRANG!’s it is a mid shot that keeps at a level angle to
the individuals. Lastly on KERRANG!’s they use a white/ grey background instead
of my cover, which has a black background with white streaks.


In the media, people such as Goths and metal fans are often
treated negatively. For my magazine, I believe that it is pushing a positive stereotype
for metal fans, showing them as energetic and fun-loving, rather than menaces
to society. It also pushes the image of the metal fan as the people on my cover
are wearing band merchandise, wearing black clothing and have long hair, dyes
and piercings. This is partly so it doesn’t alienate my target audience, who
will also likely dress like this and wear body piercings, but also to advertise
particular brands and band merchandise to people reading the magazine. I wish
to have a pro-consumerist attitude in my
magazine, but not so much that the magazine has too many adverts. I wish to
have enough advertisements to gently persuade people to buy particular merchandise
and not alienate my target audience, but not so much that it becomes a magazine
about selling out and pushing people to buy particular merchandise.

Evaluation Question 3

For my Publisher I have chosen IPC, which is owned by Time Warner, one of the biggest multinational media companies
in the world. IPC is known for publishing magazines such as NME. I have chosen
this over other publishers because as they are more well known than smaller
publishers, it may get more recognition and publicity than it would do with a
smaller publisher. The publisher will also have a larger audience or number of
people who follow it, and so I won’t be restricting myself to a publisher who
has a very specific fan group or audience. They will also have a much larger
budget to help fund my magazine and get it the money it needs to get itself off
the ground while a smaller company will struggle to pay for it if it does not
get recognised very quickly.


However there are some disadvantages about choosing a large
publisher over smaller ones. For one because they are in control of hundreds of
other magazines they may not give it the attention it deserves and it may just
get lost in a sea of other forgotten magazines. If I were to choose a smaller
company that only publishes one or two magazines I would get their full
attention and help to get it on the shelf. Also if the magazine starts
dwindling in sales and start losing money, large publishers may think it’s
easier to just let the magazine go rather than help it, especially if it’s
smaller than their other clients. With a smaller publisher, they would lose
more money letting them go than keeping them to help get their sales go back
up, so they would keep hold of their clients and do what they can to improve
sales.


I have chosen IPC because though they make NME they have a gap in
the market for KERRANG! styled magazines about heavier and more energetic bands,
which I believe my magazine can fill for IPC.

Evaluation Question 4

The target audience for my magazine are fans of heavy metal
and rock. They usually dress in black or wear band merchandise, these usually
being black as well. They usually have shoulder length hair, piercings,
tattoos, and usually dye their hair either black. They are usually considered
very energetic and will start “mosh pits” at gigs they go to. They usually like
horror or gore films, as well as play gory games. They like energetic foods and
drinks like fast food and monster energy drinks or mountain dew. As well as
this they enjoy alcoholic drinks such as Jagermeister and apple sourz. They
would want to buy my magazine because it has the same level of hyper energetic
music genre and approach, but also has a dark vibe to it found in heavy metal.
Advertisements for my magazine will include relevant band merchandise for the
genre of the magazine, as well horror and gore films/ games, energy drinks and
fast foods, as well as alcoholic drinks like Jagermeister.

Evaluation Question 5

When designing my magazine I needed to think about how my
product will address my target audience and how it speaks their language.
Firstly I decided that the colours used in the magazine will be dark colours as
it relates to the music genres of heavy metal and also relates to the target
audience who will most likely dress in black or dark clothing. Next were
features of the magazine such as gig reviews of popular metal bands, tour
guides and chances to win tickets to gigs.

Evaluation Question 6

During the development of my magazine I have used many
pieces of software and technology to help me design and create my magazine as
well as organise my work. The programs I used during the process of development
were Blogger, Photoshop, flickr, DaFont, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint
and Slideshare. Though these programs and websites helped me in my work, there
can be problems while using them, especially with the free websites such as
Blogger and flickr.


Blogger was useful to me during my work as it has helped me
upload all my work for people to publicly view. I can keep all my work
organised through the “label” on my blog and it also allows me and others to
print out any work I may have put up whenever I want. I can also edit my work
whenever I want if I want to change it. The personalisation of my blog can help
give my work something special about it and give it its own “personal touch.”
One disadvantage of using free sites like Blogger is that the people who own it
have the right to take down your blog should they expect you to be a “robot,” a
person or program who sets up blogs or email addresses in order to spam people
with advertisements or dodgy offers. When accused like this, the blog user will
have some warning and a period of notice, though after this, there is not much
you can do about saving the blog, aside from creating another blog and posting
all of your files/ work from the first onto the second.

Adobe’s Photoshop program was extremely useful when creating
my magazine, as it was the program I made it on from scratch. Using this
program I could edit all my pictures I use on it as well as build up layers and
shapes to morph them into finished products. Firstly I would take a template such
as a front cover from KERRANG and then use the opacity tool to make
it fade into the background. With the faint template there I would then build
layers on top of each other to represent the structure of the template, such as
placing my pictures over the pictures from the template. Using tools like outer
glow and stroke I can highlight my pictures of my band to make them glow while
highlighting shapes and text to stop them from blurring into each other. The
help of these tools are extremely useful and without them people could not hope
to design top quality magazines as they do today.

Flickr was useful to me when wanting to evaluate images and
work such as my college magazine, as using this website people can add tags to
any photo they want and write about them in detail. This was much more useful
in some cases when uploading images than blogger due to the tag feature. Some
problems can occur from use of free websites like this one. As stated in what I
wrote about blogger, users do not have full control over their account and it
can be removed by flickr if they deem it necessary. There may also be certain
glitches and problems when trying to upload images or when viewing them.

DaFont is a website that allows anyone to download user made
fonts and add them to their work. This was very useful when making my Mast
Head, as I could use a unique font that relates to my magazine, its audience
and name of the magazine. For example, my magazine was called “pulse” and so I
used a font that has a heart rate pulse that runs through the centre of all the
letters.

Microsoft word and Microsoft PowerPoint were very useful
when doing written work. When I needed to write large amounts of text such as
my article, I would write it in Microsoft word first to check for grammar and
spelling mistakes, as Photoshop does not have a spell/ grammar check system. With
Microsoft PowerPoint I can arrange a short powerpoint that will show all my
work but in a aesthetically pleasing way, such as using backgrounds and
animations, and looks a lot nicer than just posting up work with no
personalisation.

Using the website Slideshare I was also able to upload all
of my PowerPoints directly to the internet and then to my blog. This is useful
as I can import the entire of my PowerPoint and be able to view it online,
rather than having to download it from a link or taking screenshots of each
slide and posting them on one by one.