Magazine Evaluation

As a group, before we were to decide on what genre we wanted our music magazine to be, we looked into the Music magazine Industry which included looking into successful music magazines that are present today, we looked into a variety of genres, including, Rock, Hip-Hop, RNB, Indie and many more. Through our research we came to the conclusion that making a music magazine for an ‘Indie’ audience would be successful. We saw and recognised that although ‘Indie’ music is very popular and is one of the leading genres in today’s world of music, there are hardly any music magazines out there supporting and representing this genre. Therefore constructing a music magazine for this genre would be strongly successful in today’s music and ‘Indie’ audience.

In choosing the genre ‘Indie’ we also found that an audience of young adults/teenagers are prone to buying and listening to ‘Indie’ music, they are also prone to buying music magazines in general. Due to this, we decided that our Target Audience would be for young adults/teenagers and would be for both genders.
This way our magazine has a head start in the selling industry as it fits in perfect alongside with our target audience, they’re looking for a music magazine that represents the genre ‘Indie’ and there not being hardly any out there, the introduction of ‘Infinity Rockz’ should be a major hit.

We decided as a group that the Mast Head of our magazine was going to be “Infinity Rockz”. We chose this name as it carries the connotations that Indie Music will be around for ‘Infinity’ and that it ‘Rockz’. This appeals to our target audience, as them being Indie listeners they personally think that the genre ‘Rockz’ and hope that the genre will last for ‘Infinity’ in meaning forever. On top of the letter ‘O’ in the word ‘Rockz’ we have placed a small graphic of a crown, once again we done this as it appeals to our target audience.

Our music magazine cover follows the conventions of a real music magazine cover.
It contains a Mast Head, a Strap line, a Main Cover Line, Graphics, Banners, Boxed text, Cover lines and of course a Main Cover Image. We placed our Mast Head to the top right of the cover, we done this so if the magazine happens to be stacked on a shelf behind another, still the first letter can be read and our audience will know that, that’s ‘Infinity Rockz’. Our Mast Head is big, bold and bright, we edited it like this to make it stand out and attract our target audience. The main cover image is my self and my group. We took a photo of our selves using a digital camera, these images were then uploaded to the computer and my self and my partner photo shopped them on to our cover background, which is of trees and rocks placed out doors. Our Main cover image being out side informs the audience that our magazine is the Autumn Edition. We are all posing in certain ways that our audience can relate to, we are also wearing suitable clothing that an average ‘Indie’ band would be seen wearing.
Our Strap line consists of the text “Indie for Infinity”, this relates to the Mast Head as both contain the word “Infinity”. Our Strap Line along with our Main Cover Image inform the audience on the genre of our magazine, the Strap line does this almost directly as it contains the actual name of the genre, in being “Indie”. We made this the same colour as our Mast Head and placed it directly underneath it, ensuring that our target audience will recognise this. We used a large eye catching, dark coloured graphic and on it we placed some bright coloured text. In making the text contrast with the graphic it immediately made the text stand out. The text is a competition. Advertising a competition on our front cover also makes it more appealing to our target audience as they then get a sense of excitement and will want to buy the magazine in the hope to enter and win; this also offers interactivity between the audience and the magazine. The boxed text and Banners work together in advertising some of the bands and content that’s going to be inside the magazine. This too makes the audience appeal even stronger. All of the conventions listed all successfully make my music magazine seem realistic. To just push that sense of realism even further we added a barcode, a price and a date.

The mode of address of our cover includes exclamation marks and some use of slang language. We used these as the exclamation marks set the impression and carry’s the connotations that Indie music can be quite loud yet direct and the use of slang language directly sends the subliminal message to our target audience that this magazine is for them.

Our magazine cover represents certain social groups in a positive way as it shows that young people don’t all follow the stereotype of a typical teenager. It shows that this type of person is expressing them self’s positively through music and is sitting back and reading up on music and the topics that come to their interest. It also shows that some young people are musically talented and do focus on the good things in life.

From constructing this magazine cover I have learnt many things about technologies.
I have learnt how to use photo shop on the computer, how to effectively edit text and photos, how to make a realistic looking magazine cover, how to use a digital camera effectively and skills I didn’t have before, I now do. I also learnt that there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into making a realistic and effective magazine cover.

The kind of media institution that might distribute my music magazine would be an institution such as ‘HMV’ or ‘Zavvi’, as these are two very well known entertainment stores that mainly consist of musical entertainment including a variety of music magazines. They would want to distribute my magazine as it would attract customers to there stores, as people would go there knowing “Infinity Rockz” would be there and at the same time they might pick up an Album from their store. As there store attracts a wide variety of music lovers my magazine would fit in there nicely.

If I were to construct another music magazine, I would perhaps spend a little longer planning out the process of designing it, I would also look into the genre in a deeper level enabling me to address my audience more effectively. But in all, I am very pleased with the way it all came together.