music magazine evalution

Magazine evaluation


Our music magazine uses different ways in which develops and challenges forms and conventions of a real music magazine.
To begin with, we have our masthead at the top of the magazine, which says ‘THE MIX’. This name reflects the name of our magazine written in colourful bold and clear text. We have decided to rotate the word ‘the’ to 180۫ in order to give our magazine a funky look. As a strap across the top of the page, we have decided to insert a banner that says, ‘WIN TICKETS TO SEE…’ We did this in order to attract our audience into purchasing the magazine, to show a competition that gives them an opportunity to see celebrities. At the end of the sentence within the banner, we have used mode of address involving and exclamation mark in order to exaggerate the competition and make it appear important. The banner is also our cover line as it is ‘selling’ our magazine to a certain extent. As well as this, we have a main cover image of our group as music artists. We did not do anything to the background of our main cover image as we felt that everything fits into proportion visually on the image for instance, the background is a block of flats and some trees. This highlights ordinary everyday life indicating that music is everywhere. Another cover line that is on our magazine cover is ‘Interview with Rihanna’ with an image of her on the side right hand side. We are informing the reader about what is inside our magazine in order to persuade them to purchase it. At the bottom right corner of our magazine, we have inserted a barcode however; the price of the magazine is at the top of the magazine with the issue date. To a certain extent, this may challenge the forms of a real music magazine as the price and issue date would usually be with the barcode at the bottom right corner of the page.

Our music magazines represent to variety social groups. This is indicated as we tend to have a mixture of style, interest in different music yet we all love music. These features are shown in our magazine cover as; the main cover image involves a band with members from different music genres and style backgrounds such as rock, hip-hop, RnB, Nu Rave and dance. This straight away puts the message forward that our magazine will involve many music categories from rock to dance. It is also clear to judge that the band in the main cover image have different music and style backgrounds by judging by their clothes and their facial expression. For instance, Ben (Nu Rave) is dressed in funky colours with sunglasses whereas Daniella (Rock) is dressed is dark clothes and her facial expressions appear quite serious. The kind of media institution that might distribute our music magazine cover may be newsagents as well as music outlets such as HMV. We address our audience by inserting many bright colours on our magazine cover, as it would be very eye catching for young people to look at. In addition, the main cover image is of teenagers in a band, which would straight away catch the audience’s eye, as they would be mainly teenagers themselves. We aim to attract teenage boys and girls as our audience, which is why we have decided to have both boys and girls in the band on the main cover image.

Altogether, I have learnt more about technologies from the process of constructing this magazine front cover. For instance, I learnt how to overlap layers in Photoshop as well as cutting out an image’s background using the ‘magic wand’. Furthermore, if I had a chance to make another front cover there would be a few areas in which I would change things and do differently next time. For instance, I would some effect on the main cover image and make it appear more attractive and funky. I would also change the texts of which I have used and have them in a more stylish font in order to make it look original. Including this, I would have a more uniformed layout by choosing the same type of text or same colours for the writing. As well as this, I would place the text ‘D-SELECTION’ which is the name of the band on the main cover image lower so that it doesn’t really hide the image itself. In addition to this, I would move the price and issue of the magazine down to where the barcode is in order to make the magazine layout appear neater and more organised. Involving this, I would also like insert more freebies such as a free McDonald’s voucher for instance in order to sell the magazine more.