Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Evaluation
Can Gizem Arik

For our AS media coursework, we had to analyse music magazine covers and make our own in groups. We decided to make the genre of our magazine RnB music. We wanted to do this genre because it is currently very popular and interesting with all the new artists e.g. Rhianna and Chris Brown.

We tried to keep some conventions the same to make the genre obvious (e.g. pictures of RnB artists) and we kept the conventions that make the magazine image successful (catchy captions e.g. “Who was Chris Brown spotted with?”). We also used colours that are bold/vibrant and unisex (red/blue/yellow/black/white) for the text to stand out and for it to be appealing to both men and women.

Our magazine does challenge some conventions of music magazines as it also has sub genres such as fashion and celebrity news. Also, on RnB magazine covers, people would usually expect to see someone really famous, but my group and I decided to use an image of me so that the audience can somehow relate to an average person trying to get successful.

We also challenged some conventions of a music magazine by changing the layout. Music magazines often have messy, relaxed looking layouts but the layout for our contents page is more organised. We decided to do this because it makes it seem more important and less cheap. We still tried to make it look suitable for our target audience by giving the headings a young, fun font called Synchro Let and we gave them bright colours. The list of the contents is a different font called Century Gothic. We decided to use this font to make the page seem clear and not too cluttered. We also gave the images captions so that they don’t seem too bland. For the front cover, the main font I used is Hobo Std because it looks young and bubbly. I varied the font sizes. For example, I made the important things bigger and additional information smaller to save space on the page.

My music magazine represents a certain social group. The group it represents is artists who are interested in RnB music or just normal people who aspire to be involved in the RnB music industry. The industry that I think would publish my music magazine is probably Emap. This is because they have many music magazines already such as Q and Kerrang. Even though they are not RnB magazines, I think my magazine will fit in as it is modern, interesting and appealing to many different audiences. It can gain Emap many more consumers.

The audience for my music magazine cover are both men and women who are interested in RnB music. They are aged between 16-24. They are probably working class people or students (possibly studying music and media). I tried to attract this audience by making the magazine look young with images and headlines of young artists. I also used bright colours to make it look funky and eye-catching.

I have learned how to use photoshop during the making of this magazine cover. For example, I learned how to edit photos and how to change fonts/texts to make them look more interesting. I learned how to use the custom shape tool to make the stars and boxes. I also used the crop tool to cut out the parts I didn’t want in the image. For the contents page, we used the gradient tool to make the background look more attractive.

If I had a chance to do a new magazine cover and contents page, I would add in more headlines and features to make the magazine more interesting. I would still make it spacious by making the font size smaller but I would just simply include more news and topics. I would probably change a couple of other things as well. For example, I would make the font of the sub headings more eye-catching by using a variety of fonts. Another thing I would change is the main image shot. I would probably make it a mid shot or long shot to have more space to add text to the front cover. Something I do like about my front cover is the colour theme we decided to use. This is because they are all strong colours that go well together. It gives the magazine an edge. On my contents page, I like the beat box stereos placed on the sides of the page heading. This is because they connote music and they are usually used by RnB audiences. I also think it fits in well with the background colour and makes the page more attractive.

On photoshoot day, me and my group went around our college taking pictures of each other that we can include in our magazine production. We tried to take pictures against contrasting backgrounds (e.g. if I was wearing a brown top, we would take the picture against a black or white wall). We took a picture of our friend who had dressed up to look like a celebrity for the project and we used this picture as a topic for “RnB Celeb Makeovers”. We also took a picture of a friend wearing headphones and a gold chain and hat who looks like a stereotypical RnB fan. We used his picture for a topic called “Youths In The Studio” as we thought it could appeal to younger readers who want to record their own songs. Then, we went outside and asked local people (who look like celebrities) if we could take their pictures (e.g. a Gwen Stefani look-a-like sitting at the bus stop with her friend that we included as a feature on our front cover).

We added in a banner at the bottom of the magazine front cover but it wouldn’t print out and the right side of the page was cut off. We made sure the page was set to A4 but it wouldn’t work even though we printed it out like 3 times. That was the only problem we couldn’t resolve during our project.