My Evaluation

1. My magazine challenges the forms and conventions of a real magazine by using a masthead, sell lines, images and even the price…I did design the masthead myself. I thought about the font and experimented with the colours and gradient effects. I called my magazine ‘Eccentric’ because it connotes uniqueness and different; I looked at the NME masthead saw how simple it seemed to be so I decided to keep my own masthead as simple as I could too. I did benefit from this because I still used the colours for my house style throughout my magazine, the shades maybe differ but the colours are always the same as those used on my front cover, and they all came from my masthead. I used the Verdana font for my masthead and then used Impact for the text on the cover, contents page and double page spread. For the actual article and lead I did use Arial font, in bold and changed the colours to suit the topic and attitude of the story. I used pinky-purple colours with black, grey, white and blue because they connoted femininity, yet the other colours were more darker and/or masculine. I used impact for the captions on my contents page and Arial for the band index. I did not intend add a band index but do the usual types of index which say things like, “Interview with The Somethin’s on page 16”, however it is a big part of NME’s style and I did find in a music magazine that it is very convenient to have a band index when the magazine contains a lot of bands/musicians. I added a shadow to all the text on my contents page because it made the writing stand out better against the background.
I did the price for my cover in Corbel font because I think it needs to be more obvious, I could have put it in red but I think black looked better.

2. This media product represents particular social groups in the sell lines and the elements of the magazine; on my front cover I have added a border at the bottom with headings such as ‘news’, ‘reviews’, and ‘gigs’. I think these headings really represent the different social groups that will be reading this magazine. Mainly young adults and teenagers, who go to gigs and like hearing about the latest up-dates in music, they also like reading reviews before they purchase an album. People who really take their interest in music seriously but also like to read some gossip too. These headings also apply to struggling musicians trying to make it big. News about Amy Winehouse is always going to interest people but it is quite common to find her on a magazine cover because she’s always in the news, still her music is very popular and she is most likely to sell magazines, which is why I put her on the front of mine. There are people who would read the magazine for gossip like this, who would skip straight to the gig listings, and those would actually read the magazine cover-to-cover-and it’s these people who are more likely to be interested in the reviews and interviews. I think my background image mediates that being a rock star makes you look cool. The contents page images mediate that being in the recording studio is not all work actually, you can have a laugh too. And the double page spread image gives us the impression that the band is quite controversial and aggressive. I did try and create some stereotypical characters, especially with Hayley and Emma; Dyer (1985) has a theory about representation this can be said for all the images I have included in my project because they all attempt to stereotype band members and musicians. Roland Barthe’s theory of Connotation and Denotation can be linked here because the actor’s body language are telling us about their personality and what kind of people they are, but also connote other things.

3. I think a conglomerate company such IPC Media would distribute the magazine. I know Independent companies tend to target more niché audiences because they don’t have the money to target bigger audiences, however, in my research on magazine industries I did notice that Mojo (Bauer) has the biggest circulation figures, bigger than even those who are part of conglomerate IPC Media. Mojo is aimed at niché audience, but my magazine is based around NME which is part of a conglomerate.

4. My ‘imaginary entity’ for the audience of my magazine would consist mainly of teenagers who dress casually-smart; skinny jeans with shirts and dresses, messy long haired, pretty girls with bright coloured make-up and headbands. Boys with leather jackets and messy long hair; everyone wears converse or non-sporty trainers-because its all about appearance with these kids. And then music comes next because they all need an ipod/mp3/mp4 player to complete the look. They like parties, getting drunk and going to gigs-a lot. Most of them are book smart and enjoy hearing about new bands and music. They probably ‘chill out’ at one friend’s house just flipping through all the channels that play ‘decent music’. They are opinionated when it comes to anything ‘chavvy’ –it is not uncommon that they take pleasure in rap music (Dizzee Rascal) every now and then. The magazine is aimed at both genders; this does sound very stereotypical but this is what I think this is the kind of teenagers my magazine would attract. It doesn’t matter about ethnicity because the magazine contains artists of various ethnicities and social backgrounds anyway that its very likely, for example a British Musim like myself, would take an interest in it too, Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes) was born in Pakistan and now lives in England, so maybe some audiences that come from different ethnicities’ can relate to their favorite musician.

5. I have attempted to attract my audience through the images I used and my house style. I know the female audience would be attracted by the gossip and images (especially of the male band members/musicians), for the boys it is more about the interviews, headlines, images and reviews. They would read about life experiences and try and relate to it all, they may be looking for motivation and inspiration for their own music. I think the colours were important because the magazine had to appeal to both sexes so it could not appear too bright or too dark which is why my masthead is a combination of colours that contrast with each other, and then I used these colours for my house style on my contents page. The mode of address I used in the magazine is peer-to-peer because it will feel like my audience and I are on the same level and it will encourage them to keep reading. It was important to keep this mode of address in the interview so the readers did not get bored. I tried to keep it light hearted. I think the phatic talk in my article is a bit like intertextuality; I began asking Hayley and Emma about Tatu; my real intention was to get them to talk about what their sexuality because they were just two girls in a band with no male influence. They could easily be linked back to a band like Tatu, Tatu were very well known for their sexuality and what they did in their video for All The Things She Said. This was how they became so famous.

6. This project has helped me learn how to use different technologies such as Photoshop, Quark Express, Blogger and how to take photographs properly using digital cameras and big cameras. I use Photoshop for other work anyway, but my knowledge has developed throughout the past four months, even learning shortcuts make all the difference to how quickly I can work and what I can do, for example erasing the background of a picture fully and without taking half of the object I need with it. Playing around with text and special effects until I have the right one, this was extremely useful for my front cover; it really did make all the difference to the quality of my work. Quark Express is new to me but I have discovered that it could be very useful to me in the future as well as in this project. It’s very good for layout and editing text, which is really good seeing as Photoshop feels more beneficial for editing pictures. I liked using Blogger, it was interesting having a blog but my only issue was that I could not contribute to it daily. I would find myself doing work and waiting until I had got a fair amount done before posting it onto my blog in a number of posts on the same day. I did like the idea of an online dairy and have tried to be as honest as I could with it. It has kept me preoccupied too. I really enjoy photography but there are some things I did not know, for example I was not aware of the rules of photography. But learning how to use big cameras like the Cannon OES was useful. Some people used the small Fugi cameras but I didn’t mind the Cannon at all.