Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Analysis-
At one stage in one of Louisa’s lesson were asked to analyse a ‘Women Weeklies’ magazine. We came up with the conclusions that the target group was aimed at about 40-65 year old female pensioners; who were not necessarily educated. We also came up with other ideas regarding the content of the magazine. We had to identify the main things that are included on the front covers of magazines and say why we thought they had such relevance. After looking at a magazine cover as a class ,we all noticed that the front cover had a very important role as it has to communicate enough to the target audience in order for the to buy it . These are some important features that are expected to be on the front cover of magazine;
• A main image
• Colours
• Sub-headings (Sell Line)
• Mast head
• Banner-(strap Line)
• Different fonts
These and many more things are included on magazines covers in order to have a strong audience appeal.

With these given circumstances creating a magazine cover didn’t seem like an easy task as a lot of thought had to go into our work in order for it to be successful and appealing. We ensure that our magazine cover had many of the above and more features that we found on other magazine. The front cover has different fonts, a website; sell lines, a main image, a barcode (date and issue number), bright attractive colours and many more in order to have a strong chance with our audience.
However our magazine was in some ways different. We were all given the instructions to only use two images from the internet and as many as we wanted from our photo shoot. This established to be different as it was challenging the forms and conventions of real music magazines. The fact that I was the main person for the photo shoot also affected it because it is unusual to see only one face on the front cover of a magazine; it is boring and unattractive to many. These are when we started to struggle slightly. We had to carefully decide where we would put these two images and what we could use from the photo shoot without over boring the audience.


The main image on the magazine cover is a representation of many teenagers over the world. The use of colours relates to those individuals who have creative personalities and ideas within them. Our picture in particular is suppose to show the attitude and outburst that many teens have in them also showing that it’s okay to be who you are no matter what people say. The main image on our music magazine cover had a role in communication with teenagers, making them feel as if they can relate to this urban artist ‘Shauntae’ .Using eye contact with the camera was the best solution we had in order to achieve this.

The audience for this magazine varies from about 13-18 year olds females. This is simply because the magazine itself is a guide line for growing up also covering all the issues that teenage girls go through.
In every issue of ‘Urban Vybez’ we tackle some of the daily issues that teenage girls face and try our best to give them advice. ‘Urban Vybez’ mainly covers issues such as , boy drama, choosing the best college, sex, drugs , music and many other related topics.
‘Urban Vybez’ magazine is published every Friday mornings, giving teens the chance to taken in the advices over the weekend and start fresh on Monday mornings.

The decision to use bright colours for the music magazine front cover was to attract out target audience. The aim was for the magazine to stand out wherever they are distributed making people fall in love with the cover alone and then buy it. We wanted to attract our target group with the main image and that’s why it was decided that I looked directly in the camera to make the audience feel connected with the artist.

Developing the front cover an inside page of the music magazine came with many difficulties especially given the fact that I had to use a software that I was completely new to. Adobe Photoshop proved to be complicated and confusing to function in some ways. Although Mickey and Marisa gave the class demonstrations on how we could use to program to create different effects it was still a challenge.
Photoshop became very interesting and useful as the process of developing our magazine covers progress and I became comfortable using it. When I reached my comfort zone with the program my creative side started to show and many improvised ideas started flowing in my head as to how we could definitely make the magazine communicate with the audience.
It was through experimenting on Photoshop that we created many of our effects for example our content page background was made from scratch using Photoshop elements. We also ……..or image to the next side so that we could create more space to write and place important features for the magazine.
The program was a huge help to our magazine and thanks to Louisa, Mickey, Mary, Marisa and my other class peers (Alethea))for the tremendous advice they contributed. I am officially proud to say that I created an outstanding magazine front cover and inside page.


My partner and I had the opportunity to do a lot of panning over the weekend on the practical before hand, however this never happened. After the weekend we both came for the photo shoot and discovered that neither of us had done anything planned. We didn’t decide on anything, a title, genre, theme or simple even the content of the magazine itself. We had put very minimum thought into our magazine and immediately it became a worry.
The majority of our photo shoot process was improvised until the point I came up with a retro theme due to the range of colours I was wearing that day. After this point the posing became easier for me as I was already developing the content of the magazine in my head. We were very happy with the outcome of out pictures and to an extent it boosted my confidence allowing me to think that we would create an outstanding front cover for our magazine.
Although our magazine cover and inside cover wasn’t a disaster I really do think that me and my partner Topaz could have prepared and organised our self more. Due to the lack of planning we constructed a lot of our own time was taken away in order for us to complete our music magazine to an acceptable standard according to us. I promise myself that the next time we have anything similar to this project I will construct myself in a better manner in if I have to I will most definitely take charge of the situation and do all the planning if I have to. I am prepared to do anything in order to save time on my next assignment and it is very clear to me now that planning can take you a long way. Without all the stressing!!

My Evaluation..x

Me and My Partner's Magazine, used conventions of a normal music magazine, depending mainly on the genre, the conventions can be changed.
On most music magazine the conventions are:
-A Main Cover Image
-Subheadings
-Main Cover Story HeadLine
-Date, Issue Number, Website, Price
-Barcode
-Other inside images
We followed these, but as we did a pop magazine genre, we researched the genre by looking at the pop magazines such as 'Top Of The Pops', and a convention that most pop magazines have are free gifts, we added this to our convention list, by giving away a free cd with 5 exclusive pop songs on it.

Our music magazine cover represents different social groups. It represents different people that are interested in the latest celeb gossip, are into pop music , and celebrities that are in the pop industry.
As the genre of our magazine is 'Pop' the social group is aimed at is mainly girls, this is represented by pictures of pretty woman in glamorous high fashion expensive clothing, in the pop industry that they inspire to be like, and have what they have.

A place were our pop magazine can be found and bought is local shops, WhSmith's , Woolworths...etc
This is because it is a diverse market that will read the magazine, so it has to be in shops were lots of people can buy it, and it is easier for people to get hold of and find if it is sold in different places such as Woolworths and Local Shops, rather than selling them via the internet , as that restricts buyers of an age to buy the magazine, and that it is harder to find and get hold of.

The Audience for 'Poppin' Magazine is targeted at 'Teenagers'.
We decided to have this as our target audience because teenagers are easy to appeal to, and are most likely to enjoy the content of a pop magazine.
An audience profile of our target audience would be :
-Mostly Girls.
-Aged between 13-19.
-In Full Or Part-time education, and may have a part-time job.
-Basic reading skills to be able to read the magazine.
-There goals in life would be to be as famous and rich/ successful as the people in the magazine.
-Our target audience would mainly be interested in Music, Fashion, Celebs and Friends.
-Things they would do in there spare leisure time would be sociolising with friends; in a park, at the cinema or at each others house..etc, Watchin Tv such as MTV, and TMF, Going shopping in places such as Primark and New Look..etc.

The way we attracted the audience was;
-By using pictures of a celeb as the front main image.
-By using sub-headings, that makes the audience want to to read the inside stories, inside the magazine.
-By using bright colours and different fonts that attract the audience visually and make them want to pick up the magazine,and read what its about.
-A MOBO Award Special, With exclusive pictures inside and embarrising moments on celebs and there downfalls that make the target audience feel better about themself, which they love to read about.
-Free Merchandice , We added a free cd with 5 exclusive songs on it, this appeals to the audience as they are music mad, always wanting to hear a exclusive songs , and alot of people buy magazines for the free gifts come with the magazine.

I have developed my skill on Adobe Photoshop, by trying out different font and styles of writing working on the front cover. I also learnt how to airbrush images of people, to smooth out skin tones, like in magazine adverts, this is achieved by using the clone tool, my partner taught me this technique when we were airbrushing the main image of my face, to take away the spots and smoothing my skin tone, so it was all one tone, but still looking natural.

If i had a chance to re-do the front cover, i would have planned the photoshoot better and in more detail, so that i could achieve more picture to use, with different people init, with different props and clothings ..etc.
I would also like to have more time on photo shop to manipulate the images better , and to explore the ins and outs of Adobe Photoshop Properly.

I am pleased with the outcome of The Poppin Magazine Front Cover, and Inside Content Page
My Partner and I, Worked Hard, and achieved a Good Outcome of Our Magazine, to the greatest of our abilities for the task in the time limit we had.

This is the finished Front Cover and Content Page Of The Poppin Magazine .

http://www.photobox.co.uk/my/photo/full?photo_id=1517600667

http://www.photobox.co.uk/my/photo/full?photo_id=1517600664

Magazine Evaluation..

Conventions are specific details that you would generally find on a magazine depending on what type you are dealing with, For example a mast head, a banner, a main cover line and boxed text. Some can be found any type of magazine for example bar code, price, issue number, issue date and mode of address. In this case we have music magazines and my magazine genres are R’n’B, funky house and hip hop. After looking at other music magazines such as Q we realised that music magazines use the same conventions for example; Q magazine which I looked at in my group had a main cover image, a masthead, a banner, the barcode and more. We therefore decided to use the same conventions. This made our music magazine begin to look realistic.

We intended for our magazine to be aimed specifically at people aged 17-21 therefore, we entitled our magazine ‘Young Vybes’. I think that this age group would appreciate the information inside the magazine rather than a factual magazine about international affairs; I think it successfully targets young women and men that like music and like to have a good time at parties because the main front cover image connects with the audience because the person featured on the front looks like someone they can relate to because she is dressed appropriately is smiling and has eye contact. The audience is people that would possibly be in education, have a part time job, has basic reading ability and has a wide variety of music interest. Our banner reads ‘hot spots for young ravers’, which I also think helps target the preferred audience by telling them exactly what to expect from the magazine. Overall, the target audience is 17-21 year old females and males and because our market is so broad it could appeal to so many youths. I think the magazine represents the social group of young people that listen to urban music.

Our magazines could be specially distributed on mail order or at specialist music stores, but I think this wouldn’t maximize sales because the magazine is not targeted at a niche market. instead my magazine is targeting at a wide range of young people therefore the style of distribution that I would prefer to use is news agents and in local shops such as Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s’, so that it can be accessed easily. I think it would sell successfully because the front cover page is bright coloured and would stand out among the other magazines. Other ways in which we attracted the audience was by using celebrity photos on the front cover and inside page to catch their attention, offering a free gift on the front cover so that they feel like they are getting more than their moneys worth, and by using interesting cover lines to make you want to read the content.

Technology has changed in the last few years and using Photoshop on the apple Mac computers is an example of the developments. Photoshop was design to have many easily accessible features at your finger tips. I have realised that once you know what you are doing by learning the basics, it becomes time efficient, which is necessary when working on so many pages of a magazine. I have thoroughly enjoyed working through this topic because it has been fun and has allowed me to develop my personal skills on technologies such as, Adobe Photoshop, for example I can now use the wand tool to take an object from one background and place in another, I can also switch the direction of a photo to make it more appropriate, it is a useful skill because It gave me much more variety of how the magazine cover page could look. My most favorable part of this topic was the photo shoot; I enjoyed taking the photos and directing my partner of how to pose also compromising on ways to make the front cover image most effective.


If I had the chance to do another magazine cover and inside page, I would plan in much more detail because it would allow me to spend less time thinking on the spot and more time perfecting and adding to my work. I would also change the amount of people I photographed because a problem I came across was not having enough variety within the photos, I would have liked to showcase different outfits on different people that represent young ravers. One thing that I would not change would be the step by step method we used to complete the magazine and inside page. Overall, I am pleased with what my partner and I have produced because we put a lot of effort into making our front cover and inside page. It has been a great experience and I loved making Young Vybes every step of the way.

This is my completed magazine cover page and inside page.

Thursday 25th september

This lesson was was an introduction on the magazine industry which i found extremely intriguing as they are embedded in my everyday life. In Louisa's lesson we were asked what kinds of magazine we read as individuals. Louisa then recorded our answers on the board by placing them in the correct group according to their genres in the institution. I was never familiar with the different categories that magazines were all placed in such as music, mens health and cars for example.

Lesson Of Editing The Front Cover and Inside..x

In this lesson we decided to finish focusing on editing the front page, and then going on to doing the inside page.
As me and my partner had done the front page main image we had been prefecting so that it looked professional, we got it o the standard that we through was good enough, so we moved on to the writing parts of the magazine, and the features it would have on the front cover aswell.
As the Magazine title was called 'Poppin' we looked through various fonts to see which one we thought looked the best and represented the genre the best, the font we chose was called 'Braggadocio', this font was the best, as it stood to us, and it looked and blended in with the wording of the Magazine title and the genre too, the font colour we used was white, as the colour of the top i was wearing in the main image is white, so it flows and keep the theme the same.
We added a Strapline to our magazine this was ' Uk's Number 1 Pop Magazine'. This was placed just underneath the main magazine title.
As Chantelle was the Front Page image , she was also the main part of the edition of the magazine, so we added the Sub-Heading what said in her interview inside the magazine, so it brings you into wanting the buy the magazine to see what she has said in her interview.
This was in a medium font size called Century Gothic, with a plain type of writing, all the writing on the magazine was in Orange, Black and White, keeping in theme with the background of the main image.

We decided to add a picture from the internet of a new girl band call 'Girlicious', After pasting and placing the image on to our front cover, we decided to blend the image into the front cover more, by blurring the edges into the image, and then fading it lighter so it didn't stick out so much, and so it looks although it was part of the magazine.

We placed a second image into the magazine, it was a original image taken on the stairs as if someone was falling down them, we then dragged the image on to the magazine cover, and used the shapes tool, to make the image a circle and erase the outside of it off ;By doing this, this created the effect that this picture is exclusive, and you have to buy the magazine, in order to see the picture of the fall and how it happened.

We then added a banner in orange, and adding white writing onto it, with a free gift of a exclusive Cd.

We finished the front cover by adding the barcode, price and website, we murged them together, by using the link tool to link all the layers together.

We were satified with the outcome of the magazine, and it was ready to be printed off.

This is the Poppin Magazine....

The Inside Content Page.

We started by added this image to the bottom of the page.

. Then by using the eyedropper tool, we cloned the colour of bottom of the grey in the picture, and used it in the background of the actual magazine, as the colours were not exatly the same, and did not blend because of the materials of the chair that i am sitting on, so i decided to use the erase tool with a blur on a big brush , to make blend the image and background together.
We then added page numbera and the content inside the magazine pages on to the page, in orange and white, to keep in theme with teh front cover, all the writing was done in the font of ' Century Gothic'.
To finish off the content page of the magazine, we added a quote that Chantelle Says in her interview 'I Am Now Free To Love Dave and My Music'.. We did this by putting the writing in a media font size of 14, and making the font colour white, to stand out, we used the curve tool , to make the writing, follow the shape of Chantelles Body.
We were happy with the Magazine Content Page, and was ready to print it out.

Bye

x

Magazine Evaluation

In every magazine you will always expect conventions, depending on the genre it is; conventions are what we would tend to see. Music magazines normally have the same conventions, for example looking at Q magazine in class we noticed it had the following:
- A main image and other images
- Included strap lines
- A mast head
- Price
- Mode of address
- Barcode etc
In our magazine we tried to do the same, we used a main image which was a close-up and used other images to attract an audience. Also we added a strap- line to sum up or magazine, we tried to add as many sell- lines as possible in our magazine. We made sure we included the price and barcode and we used bright and bold colours, but just like Q magazine we kept our colours to a minimum; so that it still looks professional. Also looking at Smash Hits magazine, we also gave free gifts to lure our audience in. We also made sure our mast-head was bold.
Our magazine represents different social groups in different ways. It represents those people who just like a bit of gossip in other people’s lives. Our magazine those this by giving them gossip about celebrities, therefore some people can come together and gossip together about celebrities. Also it represents people who also like pop music, as the magazine is from the ‘Pop’ genre certain social groups might want to just read about the latest ‘Pop’ music. Again, one of the main social groups our magazine represents is girls. Our magazine has many pretty females in side it, so teenage girls aspiring to become famous in the music industry are likely to buy the magazine and feel influenced by it.

With my music magazine, I think that the best media institution that might distribute my music magazine would be EMAP. EMAP stands for East Midlands Allied Press, and not only publishes magazines but owns several radio and television stations. The reason that I think that Emap would be a good publisher to use, is because it already has a good reputation. Emap already distributes a lot of well known music magazines for example, Q, Kerrang! And also ordinary magazines that appeal to a variety of different audiences such as FHM (Men and style), Grazia (Women’s glossy), Empire (Film magazine), Smash Hits! (Music magazine aimed at teenagers) and Heat (entertainment magazine). Therefore, because they are a trusted distributor, people would be keener to buy and read our magazine. Also Emap magazines mostly include either music or gossip and our magazine includes both of these qualities; so this would be another reason to go with Emap. Lastly, Emap is very reliable and very successful in what it does.

Every magazine is aimed at someone, it always has its target audience, and our target audience was ‘Teenagers. We felt that teenagers were very easy to appeal to, also that they would be a very target to sell our magazine to; as there are many of them. If I was to do an audience profile on our target audience I would say the following:
- They would be around the age of 14-19 years of age
- They would be in full or part- time education, so they would be able to buy the magazine as it’s not too expensive
- They wouldn’t need any qualification to read this magazine, just an interest in music particularly ‘Pop’
- Their goals would be to aspire to be famous like the people they read about in our magazine
- Our target audience would take most interest in gossiping with friends, shopping, buying the latest music(which our magazine gives them a sample of free music ) and fashion
- They watch TV(MTV), go shopping(Primark, H& M), Socialise with friends (gossip, go cafe) and attend concerts and festivals
Knowing all this about our target audience, we then tried to attract our audience by doing a competition to win a set of concert tickets in our magazine, which would attract more of our audience to buy the magazine and attempt to win. Also to attract out audience we informed them in the inside cover that there were pictures of the MOBO awards and gossip. This definitely would attract our audience, as we know our target audience like to gossip a lot, therefore we would add pictures that they could see, share and snigger at; which would then bring more profit in. We also attracted our audience by using bright bold colours, as this would attract them to pick up our magazine. In addition to our bright colours we used a bold title because first impressions always count, and we wanted our first impression to catch the reader’s attention. So we made our title big and bold and added shade to the font to make it different. Our images on the front cover also attract out audience, as requires them to look, criticise or admire the pictures. Finally we addressed our audience by adding a web address, which allows them to get to know more about the magazine and get more involved.

Making this magazine I have developed many skills, especially in Adobe Photoshop. I played around with the font and size, to see what looks good or not. Also I learnt how to add shading and how to style the fonts I use to create my mast head. Because I've used Photoshop before I knew how to use certain things and I got to practise using the clone tool to make changes on my main picture. This affect made the main picture look very smooth and she looked like a model. Also my partner showed me how to use the blur tool on Photoshop, this helped as on the front cover we wanted to blur around the edges of the image from the Internet so it didn't stick out so much.

If I were to make another magazine, I would have organised my magazine planning a bit better. This would have included a more detailed plan of the pictures I wanted to be taken and why, I would have also planned what theme I wanted the magazine to have. In the photo shoot I would have taken more of a variety of pictures, not just of my partner but other people; so I could have more of an option in what pictures to pick from. I would have experimented with the fonts a bit more, to see what looks better. Lastly I would have used a different back drop, a less textured one; so if I wanted to alter it in Photoshop I could.

I really enjoyed this unit and I feel like I've learnt so much. Below is my final magazine and inside page.

Finishing front cover and inside page

At the beginning of the lesson, my partner and I looked up images on the Internet of girl bands and found a picture we could use. We then dragged this image on to our magazine and dropped the opacity of the layer so that it didn't look to fake. Using the 'blur' tool on Adobe Photoshop we then blurred around the edges of the image , again to allow the image to blend in with the whole magazine. Also we added different cover lines that we thought were short and catchy, this was because we wanted our audience to only catch a glimpse of what would be in the magazine but also making them want to buy our product. We kept most of the font the same using Centuary Gothic and the colour white as it is easy to read, but with one of the over cover lines we used a different font because we didn't want the magazine to look boring. Again with our main headline, we kept the font the same, but made it bold and orange. this was because we wanted this to stand out and we made it orange to keep with the background colour. We also added our barcode and website and price and linked all these layers together to make it easier to move around when adjusting. Also next to the 'popp!n' sign we placed the date and issue we rotated the texts, so it was vertical. Next, we used another image that we had taken in our group and use the stencil tool and made a circle around the image and dragged it over to our magazine

; we then placed a caption over it using warp text, we were able to give it an arch bend. Finally we created a banner using the rectangle tool and coloured it orange. We put this layer behind the the barcode layer but on top of everything else. we then added more text inside the banner and used Braggadocio text like our mast head.

After finishing our front cover, we then moved on to our inside page. We looked at other music magazines to see what they did, and we found out they only had main feature in the inside page.
So first we made our background layer grey, then we dragged a big picture of my partner Zanele lying down onto the background image.

Because the picture stuck out to much we used the eraser tool and erased around the top of the picture and using the blur tool blurred so the image blended in with the background. We kept the theme orange and white again for continuity of the front cover. Then we made a banner using the rectangle tool again and coloured it in white, making the writing orange, we also link these layers too. To add another image from the pictures we took we first used the magic tool to go round and cut out the image and then transferred it over using the move tool. We then, again used the erase tool to get rid of other things that were in the background, and blended it with the background picture and blurred it as well. In our magazine we wanted the writing to have continuity so the writing on the inside page has to size fonts, the heading is orange and size 22.87px and the information underneath is in white and is size 14px. Also the font is also Centuary Gothic which looks professional and good. Although, on the inside page it looks like we used two images from the Internet, we used one image that was together from the Internet and then added our own text using the font Garmond Premier Pro and then lowered the opacity. Lastly the quote we used " I am able to love Dave and my music" we created the curve affect by splitting the texts up into different layers and then using the warp text again, we changed the setting to arch and the played around with the 'Bend' setting. We were happy with our inside page and our front cover.