My evaluation

Question 1

Front Cover;

My magazine has a mast head that has the two main colours of the house set theme (red and yellow), however the Clash magazine is one solitary colour (pink)but is a less bold colour than my magazine for a better transition and clash on colours that allow their magazine mast head to fit better than mine.

My mast head is behind the featured artist on my front cover; this shows my magazine tittle but allows the featured artist to get the main focus of the cover. However the Clash magazine mast head is above the featured artist, this gives the magazine a clear presentation of what is the most important aspect of the cover, they want their name to be known and to say that it is more important than any featured artist presented on their cover, whilst oppositely I am doing the opposite saying the artist is the most important aspect on my cover.

My magazine and Clash’s have opposite approaches on certain aspects but both our mast heads have the traditional convention that they are at the top left, but not the highest thing on the cover allows our magazines to have a common ground on the positioning of our mast heads.

The barcodes on our magazines are very different; this is because of the text included on our magazines barcodes are separated and the position is different due to mine being placed on its side with the; date and issue number being placed inside the barcode. Whilst Clash’s date and issue number being placed above the upright barcode. However our barcodes are placed in the conventional spot of bottom right and are the same size.

The price of our magazines are presented in different locations, this is because mine is in a traditional spot of being perched on the barcode whilst Clash have placed theirs in a splash circle to promote their price as a sale line. My magazine is cheaper than clash’s due to brand naming, by this I mean Clash is a large successful magazine whilst mine is in the early stages of trading causing them to be able to sell their magazine for more than mine.

The date of our magazines is placed in the same location with the one exception of mine being placed inside the barcode and Clash’s being above the barcode. However the same location of bottom right for our magazines the location of the is in a conventional place; however some magazines have their date below their masthead where mine was in a previous version.

The date of my magazine is placed in my barcode, a traditional convention, however the magazine Clash have placed theirs above their magazine’s barcode which is not conventional but due to the location being the same place of a traditional barcode it works as a magazine date.

The issue number of both mine and Clash’s magazines is once again in the same location showing the traditional convention of the position of the issue number. This similarity shows I have used conventions to create my magazine, which allows my magazine to have professional aspects that allow my front cover to be a better piece of work.

The main cover lines of our magazines differ here; this is due to the positioning of our cover lines. My cover line is near the top of the magazine over my featured artist, to relate to him, and the cover line of Clash’s magazine is at the bottom of the page over their featured artist. So I have conventions of a traditional cover line, however I have mine located in a different location which could be considered as non-conventional compared to professionally made music magazines such as Clash.

The cover lines of our magazines are different because of the location of where we have placed them. In comparison between my magazine and Clash’s I have placed mine to one side and lop-sided my magazines cover line, whilst clash have theirs placed around the featured artist on both sides. However this could be due to how our main images are laid out, because I have my artist to the right hand side looking down to disconnect him from the world which caused me to place all my cover lines on the left hand side.

Like Clash I have also chosen to include a skyline, but there are some differences between how I have used this feature and how Clash decided to use it. I have placed mine in a box to give a clear separation from the masthead and the skyline and to give it a feel of importance to shout out at the reader. Whilst Clash have presented theirs as large bold text with not box and positioned over everything else on the cover, but we have both use two of our house style colours to display the skyline.

Both my magazine and Clash’s have used a splash/puff to give an importance to the content inside it. We both have used a circular splash, but we have advertised different things; I have decided to deliver a teasing content to encourage a reader to continue reading, whilst Clash have placed the price drawing attention to the lower price for a popular Rock magazine.

Contents;

I have not used several images on my contents page; this was to draw more attention to the main artist presented on the front cover. However the magazine Clash has used several images on their contents, which is a conventional use of images for a music magazines contents.

 Both my magazine and Clash’s have used a features section to advertise a feature within the magazine, I only have one however promoting the competition to win tickets to meet a band, whilst Clash has several presenting the information about events and new album releases. My magazine does only present one but holds the convention of owning a features section on my contents.

The magazine from Clash has not used a news section, but has presented news in short paragraphs as an glimpse into an article/story featured within the magazine. This means they have presented some news as a teasing content to draw the readers in to reading more of the magazine; my magazine has done the same by giving a teasing content that reveals the most attractive part of an article/story feature.

A review section is used in a contents page to advertise the information of new releases and the reactions the magazine has towards the thing being reviewed, however the magazine Clash has not included any reviews on the contents but has however created an advertising banner detailing the page numbers of what is being reviewed (e.g. Albums, DVD’S etc.). However my magazine has not included an review section on my contents or any advertisement towards a review section within the magazine, however listed my contents there is several articles that are created to review a certain person/event showing I have included review sections in my magazine but have not advertised/displayed on my contents page, except on the contents list.

A numbered contents page is necessary because it allows the reader to know what page the article they want to read is on, this convention is used by the magazine Clash to show which pages the articles are on. My magazine has also presented these numbered pages to display the page the article is located on, both mine and Clash’s  magazines have refrained from using the word “page” on our contents because it is unprofessional and is an waste of space that lowers the professionalism and the quality of the magazine.

My magazine has included an message on the contents page from one of the directors for the magazine, it is a good convention to use on  a contents page as it shows the company within the magazine are interested in what their magazine is producing. In saying this though the magazine Clash has opted against using this convention on their magazine, but has instead used the space it would of used to present more teasing content for the magazine.

Double Sheet Spread;

My double sheet spread has not included a large headline; this is because I forgot to add one as I focused on the article and the image whilst owning the limited resource of my featured artist to take better images. This convention is a commonly used one as one of the double sheet spreads in Clash magazine presents to its readers.

Both my magazine and that of Clash have used an large image, this convention also shows that the large main image spreads across both pages of the double sheet spread and both of our magazines have done that. One thing that is not commonly used by magazines is an border around the main image, I have placed this on my image to make it stand out more and deliver a more rebellious theme to relate to the featured artist and improving that impression with the connotation of a red border.

Another convention of the Double sheet spread is an introductory paragraph before the main article, the magazine Clash has used this convention by laying out their article as such. However my magazine has not, this is because I have introduced the article in the contents page delivering the outline of the article whilst placing the article its self on the double sheet spread.

An image has to be taken by a photographer so some magazines include the photographer’s name, but this convention is not always used by music magazines as both my magazine and that of Clash’s have not made use of this convention. This shows that it is not a very strong convention as not man people would be interested in the knowledge of who took the image.

Both Clash and my magazine have used a By line, the article writers name. This has been used to display who wrote the article so credit is due to them. My magazine has used this feature mostly because it is conventional to have the by line presented at the end of an article.

Question 2

My magazine has represented a certain social group by displaying connotations of dark colour and colours that are associated with hard rock music, such as AC/DC who have as well used the dark red to represent their band as a heavier type of rock compared to Queen who have gone for a light grey to represent their lighter version of rock, and with my magazine using these connotations of black and red to associate with Rock at its core elemental colour I have represented the genre of music in which many social groups associate with showing I have connected with social groups.

The age range of my magazine is mainly focused on the younger rock fan, 16 – 24, because I have included features such as rock concerts and new artists which is more of what a younger reader will want to read about. However I have also included features that the older rock fan,50 -60, can relate too because of the features about the older rock bands presented in my magazine, Queen and AC/DC.

The Socio Economic groups that are more likely to read my magazine, which is why I aimed it at them, is the classes; C1, C2, D, E and U because the white collar workers all the way down through the manual workers and unemployed are more likely to listen to rock due to its heavy music that is not considered an appropriate form of music for an higher class citizen. However my magazine focuses on the lower social economic groups as they are the best social classes to target my rock magazine at.

Question 3

If my magazine was to be published as a rock music magazine for all to purchase I would try to get it published by Bouer Media, this is because this large publishing organisation has many music magazines under its belt. One in particular is the music magazine “Kerrang”, my magazine has taken some inspiration from the design of Kerrang’s magazine and is a similar genre of music, Rock, which makes it a good idea to enlist Bouer Media o publish my magazine because it gives my magazine the security that Kerrang can not try to destroy my magazine in the competition for sales as it would in turn back fire on its self.

I would have my magazine manufacturing team to be in control of the magazine and not leave it to Bouer media, this is because it gives my magazine complete control over its self as it can make decisions on the magazines content from the createors as an internal creation team using the external publishing company to merely produce and distribute the magazine.

Question 4

My audience has stayed the same from when I decided which audience would be best associated with rock through the prezi animation detailing my demographic and psychographic intentions to the very end on aiming my rock magazine on those who enjoy the rock musical styling’s of bands such as Queen and AC/DC who would be mostly found within the social classes U – C1.

Question 5

My magazine has focused on its target audience considering their position in society and how that might affect their decision to purchase my magazine. Considering my target range, in terms of social class, is from the middle class down I have decided to make my magazine a more casual presenting one as to appeal to those of a lesser constitution. I have considered the financial state of the magazine as the class U people are the unemployed, so with this in mind I needed my magazine to be both appealing, to draw them in and tempt them, and low costing, so that they believe they can afford it even with the current expenses happening to them.

My Magazine has accumulated several video feed back on the magazine, this is published to my blogger page (http://pedholdernessasmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/)

Question 6

In creating this magazine I had to use a range of specialist software that can be difficult to understand and use, but with the help of others acquainted with the tools on the software used I could create my magazine.

Software such as “Photoshop Cs5” was used as the primary software for the magazine creation, I used tools such as; Quick selection, Transformations, scale / rotation Character  Gaussian blur etc. I had to use these tools to create my magazine at a professional standered, so using the tools on Photoshop I was able to select certain parts of images for quick and clear editing (quick selection tool) which I used on all my images to cut out the back ground or unwanted sections to become useful images, and a Gaussian blur to make images fit more subtly into their background so they were not too bold allowing the image displayed to be effective in its purpose, and the transformation tools allowed me to warp my images to increase the appearance to fit its purpose and in some cases make the images more appealing and a better graphic to use for my magazine.

To show an example of how these tools have aided my magazine create I have a before and after images displayed below to show the effectiveness of the tools used.

So as you can see I have warped this image on the left into the image used on my front cover that allows the magazine to be more effective in its attempts to attract the target audience to purchase my magazine.

Question 7

Looking back and comparing my final preliminary task to my final main coursework task I can see how my skill and understanding of magazine creation has evolved to a new level of professionalism.

As you can see from the four images above my skill and understanding has dramatically evolved from my final preliminary task and into the skill and professionalism shown in my final Music magazine. I had learned new tricks and techniques both by teaching from a more knowledgeable source and independently, as I spent many hours working my way to this level of work I explored my choices of tools and adapted them to my use.

The reason these two magazines are different is not because of the tools I used, it is because of the amount of knowledge I had before and after on both the conventional magazine

layout/design and the understanding of how every magazine has adapted its look to suit the audience it is trying to capture through the use of the features and conventions that are used on their magazines.