I think that my magazine particularly represents a certain social group, young people who like to listen to RnB, Hip-Hop and Pop music. I think this is because the character that I have created for my front cover is young and has made something of herself, which would attract the readers of the same age range and would aspire to be like the person on the magazine, as if she was a role model. I think that the overall look of the magazine would attract a person in that social group as I tried to make it look sophisticated and not childlike with bubble fonts and candy pink colours. Also to show which social group I am aiming at I tried to make the articles interesting by giving the readers an insight to what they can expect to see inside. I made it appealing to my target audience by using names that sound "street like" an example is "Shae", I also played with one of the names of an already popular artist "Rhianna" and changed it to "Priyana" for my created character.
If my magazine was to really go into the market I would think that the distributors would be the same as magazines such as "Vibe" and "Blender". However, I think that the target audience of these magazines are a bit older than what I have in mine, this could be seen as a niche in that music category. The magazine would be sold in places where you would normally find them, in shops, newsagents, supermarkets and so on.
My target audience is very specific, 16 to 19 year old, mixed genders who have the RnB, Hip-Hop and Pop taste in music. My target audience was identified when I gave out 50 questionnaires around college and the town centre, when I found out the results of the questionnaires I immediately researched magazines in the same music genre. I think that my target audience would be attracted to my magazine as I took into consideration what the results of the questionnaires were, from what kind of music to the kind of articles they want to read. I also made sure that they can relate to the thing that are in the magazine like the story of the artist "Priyana" where she from a normal school girl to success.
In order to complete this project I used programmes such as Photoshop and Publisher. I had no problem in using the Microsoft Publisher for putting detailed text in as I have done it before, however, I had problems in using Photoshop as I was fairly new to it. Whilst creating the designs of the magazine I have encountered a lot of errors. At one point I was frustrated as I could not completely delete the whole background of an image, I tried all the tools until I encountered one called the "pen" and "pathway". The other techniques I have learnt just by trying out everything and it came very useful whilst designing my product.
When I have finished creating my first design for the front cover magazine I have asked my teacher what he thought about it. He said " the arrangement of the articles are all over the place and the main article cannot be identified, also the bar code is too big compared to the existing magazines". From that I re-edited the front cover. When I have finished all the front cover, content page and the double page spread I asked Katie, from my media class, about what she thought of it. She said "the editing of the model is well done as if it was a real front cover and the colour scheme is followed throughout the pages". I also showed these pages to the model on the front cover, Zara, and has said "I like the layout of the magazine and the theme of the background on the front cover is linked to the shirt that I was wearing that day". I was pleased from these comment and I have decided to keep to those designs.
Before doing this project I have made a preliminary magazine, not the same genre as it was a college magazine, but I think that it helped me in a big way as it got me started in thinking of what kinds of things would I put in the main magazine. Doing the preliminary also introduced me to the programmes I had to use in the main task. I also realised that the quality of my prelim magazine was very low and had a lot of weaknesses to it, this was because it did not have the small details that a magazine should have. Also the quality of editing wasn't very good and it was obvious that not enough time was spent on it. I also learnt that the colour scheme of your front cover should match the colours of the person on the cover, I did not do this in the prelim. The prelim helped me see what I should not do to my main project.If I was to do this again I think that I can create a magazine that would be the next issue of this one. It may be better as I have more expertise by then. Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of my magazine cover, content page and the double page article. I think this because I feel that there is continuity throughout these pages and it looks like it belongs to one magazine. I also believe that I have achieved my objective which is to create a music magazine with the genre of RnB, Hip-Hop and Pop. I, again, believe that my target audience would be attracted to my magazine as I tried my best for it look very appealing to them.