Evaluation

Music magazines generally use the different techniques to portray different ideas, and relate to different audiences.

For younger audiences, the pages tend to be busier, with lots of boxes and banners of text, also over lapping is more common, larger and brighter images are used, not necessarily clear statement images, but band pictures and photos from gigs are used more regularly. Brighter colours are usually used in younger audience magazines, your young teen mags, such as 'smash hits' a lot of pink and yellow is used, as they are bright and draw attention, and the front covers tend to have lots of headlines to attract young minds, who love music gossip. These also tend to directed towards girls, as it is more gossip than music journalism.

Teenage magazines, such as NME or Kerrang, Have a darker approach to the design, and much less on the pages, but still, they contain gossip and lots of articles, with more band pictures and gig photos, They also tend to have more readers feedback and newsletters. They can be directed towards girls and boys, as it has a simpler approach that appeals to teens who are becoming more interested in music.

Then Magazines directed towards older audiences, tend to reduce the amount of text on the front cover, and carry on the teen mags idea, of darker pages, and more contrast rather than colour. This is because colour doesn't tend to appeal to adults as much as it would a 13 year old girl.

In my magazine, i used the older audience magzines as a guideline, as this is the apperance that i prefer, i think it shows class and real journalism that is interesting and can also be quite quirky.

I didn't really challenge the style, as it would generally fit in with other magazines, such as The Word or Q, however, i did take my own approach, and fit my composition around all my sources. I chose to use a theme of black and white, with statement colours in my photos, as this was different to most magazines, and suited the effect i wanted to achieve.

I researched into the publishing of music magazines, and discovered that Q and Kerrang are both published by a german company called Bauer. This is the type of publishing that would fit with my magazine as it tends to be glossy papers and classy styles. Publishing institutes tend to publish a large range of magazines, varying from fishing, mother and baby and mototbike magazines. However, the magazine is always designed and created by the editorial staff, the general institute would have to be a large company who can produce enough copies of the magazine to distribute weekly across the UK.

I have not decided on a specific age range or music style, as i feel this would generalise it too much, however i can imagine that an older range of people would be interested, or some younger people who are interested in an alternative music taste. I made it seem classy and neat as this tends to appeal more to older readers, but this does not mean that younger people will be put off reading it. Although, many younger teenagers, who do tend to prefer magaiznes like 'smash hits' would not be drawn to the magazine, and therefore determines the age range to be around 16 and over. With it being alternative, it does not have a specific appeal to a person who dresses a specific way, like a more gothic magazine would; which allows interpretation and open-ness to the reader.

In my magazine, i tried to represent the general ideas and passions of a large social group, By addressing my audience in their ctyle and culture, it makes the magazine seem more approachable to many people with either, a love for music in general, or an alternative taste in music. I decided, that as it is a music magazine, it would make the most sense to attract people who are interested in music, these people wouldn't be very interested in busy pages of gossip and bright colours, and would probably put them off. By using good english and statement pictures, i different social group entirely would be attracted to my magazine. I decided that, to sell a music magazine, you have to be true to your word and make the magazine seem trustworthy to the reader. However, it isn't very strongly opinionated and so can be more varied to different tastes.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
For the front cover and contents, i used adobe photoshop. This is a good program for design and composition, as you can work on seperate layers, include text and images and edit the tone and contrast across the page.

The cover needed a lot of photoshop editing to improve the quality and remove any errors in the composition.

The original image, although the skin was clear and there was a clear contrast, still needed work to brighten it, add more contrast, and increase the colour in the hair, in the end the picture was also cropped to fit the A4 page.

In order to adjust the brightness and contrast, I opened it up onto photoshop and went into the image toolbar, and went to the brightness and contrast function. I also used the sponge tool to increase the saturation of her hair. I used the crop tool to fit it into the page.

For this image, i used alot of editing, changing and adapting the colour and tone of the image. I needed this one to link to the picture on the cover, so that they didn't look like different photo shoots. but at the same time, i wanted this one to have as much character. In the end i had edited it too much, and could not be printed, so i changed the type of editing and started again using the new techniques i had learnt to create the same effect. I used contrast and brightness to enhance my image.

Preliminary Magazine

The overall comparison from my preliminary task to the final magazine cover, is quite dramatic.
To begin with, i hadn't quite grasped the concept of compsition and had left large amount of plain background. The fact that i had put the title along the sid eof the page was quite daring, and in the end it didn't work on the page. the picture in general was quite a strong one, but the editing to remove the background is very obvious and doesn't create the studio effect i had intended. simply, the page is too bare and un interesting, and would not stand out on the shelf.

My skills of design have improved quite alot over the production of my front cover. I decided that contrast and richer colours would give the cover a strong apperance. I played around with the compostition throughout the design and eventually decided on the places where it is necessary to have writing and still leave space for it to seem like a neat page. The use of a second smaller image, really brings out the colours and lines in the background image, and works as a good comparison. I also used coloured lines to break up text, as i realised this would bring a bit more to the page without making it too over crowded, also to help me stick to a general magaine colour scheme.

Audience Feedback:
General feedback concluded that, the contrast between the dark background and white text worked well, and was clear to read, the image that fills the page is very eye catching and would draw attention on the shelf. Downsides, were the smaller image on the top wasn't particularly clear and didn't fit well onto the page, this could have done with more editing to make it link more to the page. Also the blue eye was too dramatic and obviously edited, this needed to be toned down and faded quite a bit.