Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MEDIA
MUSIC MAGAZINE
EVALUATION
Foundation Portfolio Evaluation
With my front cover, contents page and article finished, I am going to evaluate
each, taking the following into consideration:
• Forms and conventions
• Representation
• institutions
• Audience
• Addressing the audience
• Technologies
• Overall outlook
Forms and Conventions
Front Cover
Before creating my magazine cover, I studied other professional covers to
Image: I have used the same image of my friend The font is regular and I have used 3 simple
as on the front cover, however I have reversed it so colours of pink, grey and black. These colours
it appears on the opposite side and faded it so I contrast and again, represent and attract my
can place text and images over the top without the
layout becoming too busy. target audience.
immediately.
Other elements of the page include information and pictures on other articles, the articles aren’t connected
with Justice directly but readers interested in Justice are likely to be interested in the articles shown.
Representation of Social Groups
To attract a specific audience, there must be elements of my magazine which
deliberately represent a certain social group.
Colour!
The colours I have used have played an important role.
I have considered genre.
Firstly, the genre of my magazine is electro house, dance. The music is generally lively, energetic and listened to at wild parties or raves. This is far from
something I would associate with as being dull therefore I am choosing bright, energetic and garish colours to dominate.
I have chosen colours which clash in a good way and form contrasts. I feel this represents the music through the way electro often merges different genres of
music together, but also, the audience and the freedom of its audience. All different people, who contrast listen to music, but when coming together, the
experience becomes enlightened.
Pictures!
Pictures are a really important way of representing a certain social group.
My pictures are supposed to represent famous people and therefore, people can realate and share the same tastes. I have pictures of competitions to do
with clothes, this represents certain style groups.
Font!
The font of the titles represent the edginess and less mainstream element of electro music. It allows people to remember a place they might go to listen to
electro or the way people dress when watching electro.
Distribution
Large magazine companies have to think about how they will
distribute magazine there product.
The magazine could produce spin off products such as CD’s, downloads,
events held and organized by the magazine institution, and t-shirts, so
people can become recognised as fans of electro or MAISON.
Audience
Knowing who a magazines audience are is perhaps the most important thing.
Without an audience, a magazine fails.
Anyone can listen to electro. But its who you are when you listen to it. Created in the 1970’s, electro is still quite a new genre of
music. Many if not most dedicated electro fans are between the ages of 16 – late twenties. However, many older adults where
there when electro was in its prime, having just been established. It was the reason for partying and a lot of those adults want to
relive those days 40 years on.
Electro is about feeling young, enjoying the music and having a good time and I try to represent this in the magazine.
MAISON’s audience are music lovers, they like having a brilliant time and enjoy the individual and merging together of techno
beats and sounds.
Creating electro can be done just as easily in the home as it can be in a studio. Many of MAISON’s fans don’t just listen and dance
to electro, they create their own too. And it is important for them to keep up with what is new and old to create something original.
My general audience feedback on completing my magazine was positive. People liked the colours used and the article. The fashion
and style elements attracted other people to my magazine and people were interested in the competitions.
Audience Feedback
My general audience feedback on completing my magazine was positive.
People liked the colours used and the articles. The fashion and style
elements attracted other people to my magazine and people were interested
in the competitions.
As this is the first edition of my magazine its really important I get it right so
people will buy my magazine again.
I needed to have a variety of things in my contents so a large audience of all
interests could be entertained.
The pictures were liked and approved of and they suited the articles.
Other people were interested in the events listed, electro music makes an
amazing social life as well as good listening in your own home.
People liked the fact that there was a magazine purely dedicated to electro as
other magazines included genres people weren’t interested in.
Attracting the audience
To attract my intended audience, I have thought about the following:
•Colours
•Taglines
•Column inch and other front page information
•Pictures
I had used Photoshop before the task but not in so much detail. I found Photoshop
tricky at first and after a lot of practice I roughly got the hang of it.
Tools such as the magnetic lasso, the brightness/contrast settings, and the
cropping tools enabled me to achieve the look I wanted.
I used Paint a lot to alter colours of texts and crop images then copy and past them. I
found paint easy to use and a successful way of completing something simply but
effectively.
Whilst writing the double spread article I was introduced to Publisher, a program
which has readily set up structures and guidelines for articles. I found using publisher
similar to Microsoft word, and therefore I was comfortable in using it.
Blogger was a completely new experience to me. I liked the lay out and found it
accessible to either write on my Blog or look up previous work I had done in an
organised structured way. I enjoyed the element of being able to personalise my
Blog.
Improvements
The first magazine cover I created was not very
commendable at all. I found Photoshop hard to get used to
and there was barely anything which followed any media
conventions.
The second time I used Photoshop I was a little more
accustomed to the way it worked and I tried a lot harder to
make my magazine cover visually attractive.
Throughout the process of making the final magazine cover,
article an contents page, I made several changes and
improvements. Mostly visual improvements instead of text
improvements. This included things such as the font size,
colour and design. Also, adjustments were made as to
where and how I placed things on the page. For example,
the picture of friend on the front cover appeared in the
same position in the contents page. I thought by reversing
the image so it appeared on the opposite side would make
more of a statement to I adjusted the positioning of
everything on the contents page.
I also made adjustments to the colour and brightness of this
photo. My removing the colour, the photo became ironically
more powerful and dominating as it caught people eye.