Magazine Evaluation

In what ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music nagazines?
My music magazine "Diverse" I think uses many of the conventions that many music magazines use today. We have a big and bold masthead spanning the entire width of the magazine so as to grab potential reader's attention. We have a main cover image like many other music magazines out there although, our main cover image challenges what is done by other music magazines because our image is not looking straight into the camera which most music magazines do to connect with the audience. We chose not to have the main cover image looking at the camera because we wanted it to be realistic and be an image of a violinist in action. We have also included sell lines on the cover to show what can be expected to be in the magazine these are with right and left hand justifications. There is also a top banner so that we can say how our magazine is number one and unique like a lot of the music magazines do such as "music" magazine. As well as the conventions that make the magazine look interesting we have also included a barcode, price and issue number.

How does your music magazine cover represent certain social groups?
My music magazine cover reperesents the young, urban and working class group mainly through the background, images and font that is used. The background is a brick wall which I think shows that we are taking something onto the streets, making something that wouldn't be available to this social group normally and putting it where they feel comfortable. The font used I think also reinforces the idea of putting something on the streets because it looks a bit like graffiti. The main image is of a girl in clothes that any girl could wear walking down the street, playing the violin showing that there is not a ceratain social group which can enjoy classical music, it is available to everyone.

What kind of media institution might distribute your magazine cover and why?
The type of media intitution that might distribute my magazine cover would be a small institution because I doubt that there will be a mainstream market for it. I think that the distribution of my magazine would be quite limited as well due to there being a very small market for it, so you would probably only be able to get it from a music store such as HMV or a specialist in classical music store such as Chapples of Bond Street.

Who would be the audience for your music magazine cover?
The audience for my music magazine cover would be young musicians, or just young people who are interested in classical music but can't relate to the classical music magazines already out there and need something which can connect with them.

How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience by using what I would call a young people's font, I'd call it that because it is not very formal looking so therefore does not look like there will be loads of technical terms in there that young people could not understand. Also I have used an image of someone (me) that looks like an everday young person someone that you could walk past in the street, someone who is not wearing a posh dress or suit and bow tie so also makes the magazine look less scary to young people. There is also a promotional offer of a free CD and nothing attracts young poeple, if not any person, to something than the idea that you are going to get something for free.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the magazine front cover?
I have learnt that once you learn how to use the features on photoshop making a magazine cover using this technology is quite easy. I have pretty much learnt all the basics such as adding text, changing the colour of fonts, using the magic wand and lassoo tool, rearranging the different layers so that everything can be seen and how to resize, crop and rotate images, I have also learnt how to transpose things too.

If you were to make another front cover, what do you think you would do differently next time?
If I was to make another magazine cover I would definately take pictures on a plain background so that I could use the magic wand tool instead of having to lassoo all of the images which is very time consuming. I would also take a wider range of pictures so that there could be more than the main cover image present on the front. I would probably do another genre such as R'n'B because there are a lot more R'n'B artists than there were for my genre. Lastly, I would experiment more with photoshop because I feel that I could've done a lot more with the software had I been a bit daring andd tried a few things out.