Final Magazine

The following images are my final pages for my music magazine. 

Creative Evaluation

Evalutation of Final magazine

The main task for our AS Media Coursework was to design a four page music magazine on the genre of our choice. I chose the ‘Rock’ genre as it resonated with my style of music and it was one genre of music to which I was familiar with. I focused my magazine on popular rock magazines like Kerrang! and Rocksound. 

The magazine I have created follows most of the conventions of a typical magazine which fits the criteria of creating a rock magazine. The reason for this was to enable me to have a simple base structure for my magazine to build around and it helped to enforce a certain house style throughout the rest of the magazine pages. The house style of the magazine was that the front cover colour scheme would carry on through all the pages however the feature articles would have their own colour schemes because it provides a change in art style along with giving more emphasis and focus to the main article story. As well as colour the text font would be the same through out and the positioning of my stories would be aligned to the left or right to show a flow. 

The magazine I designed has generated its colour scheme through the anchor model which follows the magazine convention of the rule of three. The colour scheme continues on from the front cover to the contents page however it changes on the feature page as this has a different style to the model in addition it would not be good to have a repetitive flow of the colour scheme and thus the feature page is different to the front cover and the contents page. The contents page is divided into categories to make it easier for the target audience to select specific pages under different categories. The magazine represents the social group E which is unemployed people and this makes sense as my target audience are 14 – 19 year olds. I managed to target this group by mentioning popular bands.

I conducted an audience questionnaire to ask what kind of genre of rock music people listen to. The genre that was most popular was the popular genre. I went ahead and searched popular rock bands to give me an idea on the sort of content to provide my audience with. On my front cover and contents page, I mentioned popular bands like Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, All Time Low, Bring Me The Horizon etc. These bands show that I am aware of the culture of 14 – 19 year olds and thus would attract a greater audience. The bands are famous worldwide and are featured on magazines whenever they release new material. As well as having an awareness for youth culture, I also kept the price to £0.99 because it would be cheap and an easily affordable price something that 14-19 year olds could afford.

An independent niche media institution will distribute my magazine as the magazine has only just started and if my magazine were to be distributed by giant oligopoly like Bauer Media, it would depend on the circulation of the magazine: If the magazine circulation is low then this could cost a loss for Bauer Media and thus they can shelve the magazine whereas a niche independent institution for example ‘Axom Publishing Ltd.’ Or ‘Atom Publishing Ltd.’ Can carry on distributing the magazine even if it has a low magazine circulation. Thus an independent niche media institution would distribute my magazine. 

Each technology taught me many different things during the creation process. In order to design my media magazine, I used Photoshop because it allowed me to digitally manipulate images in order to fit the conventions of a magazine. Within Photoshop there were many tools that allowed me to do many things with my magazine:

The Move Tool and Transform Tool allowed me to move images to place them properly on the page as well as change the images’ size, rotation and angle.

The Eraser and the Magic Wand Tool enabled me to get rid of the background on some images to help neaten the image as well as allow easy shaping to the pages in the magazine.

The Fill Tool and the Paintbrush helped me to change colours on certain parts of the images and I was able to give certain parts of the image different strokes of colour to allow blending.

As well as Photoshop tools I was able to use Google to search for ideas and themes in regard with my magazine. I searched for ideas about how to structure my magazine and I mostly researched Kerrang, which is a rock magazine. I was used advanced searches in order to give me limit the search amount and to bring the most relevant searches to me. I was able to do a lot of things within Blogger for example I was able to embed a Prezi presentation within my blog as well as images and YouTube videos. All the media technologies I have used, have taught me many shortcuts to make my use of the technology simplified, quick and efficient. 

My preliminary task shows a massive change in design and layout as my preliminary task was a display of my basic understanding of what a magazine is whereas the magazine I have created now has shown significant change in the use of colour, target audience and design placement. I have gained an understanding of magazine conventions for example magazines have barcodes, dates, issue numbers and prices on the front cover of the magazine as well as most magazines gifting readers with freebies. My preliminary magazine had a simplistic understanding as it follows the same ‘C’ layout. Not only that but my magazine shows a range of tools used to create the most professional and design effective while my preliminary magazine shows a rudimentary use of Photoshop Tools.

Photoshop Developments

In order to generate the magazine I desired, I needed to manipulate the images I took and place them in a way that would suit my magazine. Thus I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to allow me to  alter the images and lay them out in a magazine fashion.

This was the first draft of the magazine and it is very clear that there are still more improvements that needed to be made:

The logo of the band was too big
The cover lines were very difficult to see
One of the anchor models were difficult to see
The masthead is not eye-catching
The barcode is too small and the website and date were too big
The text for the posters did not fit within the skyline

This made it clear that there was quite a lot to improve.

This is the final completed magazine and there shows a massive change as I got rid of the pink square background to make the cover lines visible to see. I added a bottom skyline to occupy the empty space and added an extra cover line 'Album Review'. The barcode has grown much bigger while the issue number, price and date have shrunk. The website appears on the bottom top right hand corner, directly underneath the skyline. I reduced the size of the models and sharpened one of them to get rid of the blur. As for the logo I made it transparent to fit on one of the band members as that band member tried to represent death. The masthead has been given a drop shadow and a bright colour pink in in order to attract readers to the magazine. There has been a massive improvement from the first magazine front cover to the latest magazine cover.

This is the draft magazine front cover and very few changes were required as it followed a typical contents page of a rock magazine but there were a few small changes needed to be made like the text on the content pages were to small and congested. I also needed to get rid of the word 'page' from the content lines and the issue number and date needed to be smaller and not take up the most space.

This is the newly updated magazine and the following changes that were required had been made like I reduced the texts for them all to be the same font size. I got rid of the word 'page' but left the date and issue number and date to be the same as it was common to have a large date and issue number in most rock magazine content pages and so I decided to follow that style and have my magazine have large font.

This is my final feature page and no changes were required apart from a few minor tweaks like ensuring the page numbers at the bottom were on the same line and to reduce the size of the images so the text could be seen other than that there weren't many changes that were needed.

Media Photoshoot photos

The following photos are pictures I took for my magazine which is a rock genre. The photos relate to the feature page in which the article is about a rock band's release of a music video.