Friday 23 April 2010

Read title below :P

Media Music Magazine Evaluation

Over the course of this task I have looked at the aspects of L.I.I.A.R. Language, Ideology, Institution, Audience and Representation. Through LIIAR I have observed and examined many music magazines to help my find my target audience and to help with the production of my magazine. I have looked at the forms of a magazine including the cover, contents page and double page spreads. I have followed these forms in production of my magazine. I also followed the conventions.

the conventions I have followed you would find in any music magazine it features a masthead, story lines, ears, price, date, bar code and web address. The mast head is important, it’s the first thing the audience will see when they browse the shelves looking for a magazine to buy. So the masthead has to standout form the cover, mine does with a lovely glow effect that lights it up. Sell lines or story lines are the main articles in the magazine. You have to consider what the audience would like to hear, what appeals to them. I thought of cartoons, music and video games.

My magazine does follow the forms of a music magazine because it’s laid out like any old music magazine. With the mast head at the top and sell lines down the sides. It may challenge the conventions of colour because it’s mainly a black and white magazine. And black and white appeals to me and being part of my target audience I would think it would appeal to them as well. My media product best represents young rebellious people like teenagers. Because they like loud music and video games and cartoons, they will read this because it appeals to them of course some may not like it. But no one has too.

Through the use of my fictional band characters who dress in unique attire and are young in appearance. Their costumes may give off a vibe of rebellion as teenagers try and find their own fashion. Clothes that express their emotions and who they are, being rebellious is also part of expressing individuality. That is the ideology of my magazine, individuality is special and should be expressed and rebelling is a form of expressing said individuality. So the ideology of my magazine is that being rebellious is okay, though parents may not agree.

The media institution that would market my magazine would be the NU-DAZE company. Which doesn’t exist of course. The reason why they are selling my magazine is purely for commercial purposes. The company wants to make money by selling this magazine. Because really most people are in the media business for money. Although not every one is in it for money some want fame or to just express themselves. The target audience of my magazine would be the young people like teenagers who like to express individuality through rebellious behaviour or clothing.

Because teenagers buy credit for their mobiles and they buy cigarettes, my magazine should be cheap enough for them to afford. Say maybe £2 or even cheaper than that.
My product has music and games in it as well as an element of sci-fi and fantasy to help attract it’s audience. That’s what I like and I’m a teenager so I’m sure other teenagers like sci-fi and fantasy as well. And what kind of teenager doesn’t play video games? The black and white colouring could be a big hit with the gothic teenagers.

During my time on this course I have learned more about Photoshop, but before this course I had adequate knowledge of Photoshop. Such as the resizing of layers photo filters. And magnifying area making erasing easier, plus adding other pictures to it.
I also knew how to chose my fonts colours and blending options. I also knew about artistic filters but sadly I never used any in my music magazine. Perhaps I could do that next time round. Other knowledge included how to use the shape tool the selection tool the brush tools many settings. Even more knowledge of Photoshop included creating slices and much more. So it was rather easy to put my magazine together. I didn’t really pick up any new skills through the course of the project just the same ones I already had. After looking back at my preliminary task I feel confident about making magazines, and hope to make more in the future. I have learnt about the numerous conventions of magazines and how to lay them out. This task has given me a better understanding about music magazines and how they are designed and put together. However I wish I would have spent more time on my magazine as I feel like it could be much better than it currently is.

Tuesday 20 April 2010



This is the doublepage spread of my music magazine. At first i thought of using the same colour scheme as my previous pages, black and white. But then i thought of using a photo for the whole page to brighten things up. Plus with a few friendly suggestions, i added those threee smaller images and fake information. To make the page more intresting. The whole page depicts producers (class mates) of a fictional band, 1000 Wordz. The title was originally all on one line and further to the left. I moved it becasue it was obscuring the image i put on the board in the top corner. All in all i'm happy with the way this turned out.