Music Magazine Evaluation
In this essay I will be evaluating my music magazine that I was asked to create for my coursework. This consisted of a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread which I produced in the R’N’B genre. The development process of my magazine started by creating a blog on blogger on which I researched different areas of music magazine conventions as well as the chosen genre for my magazine. The conventions of a music magazine are the masthead, the dateline, the main image, cover lines, main cover lines, the bar code and the selling line. To begin with I identified the conventions of the brief which I expanded on and explained what was needed with the front cover, the contents page and the double page spread. I also went on to look at different magazines that where in the same style and genre of my ideal magazine, the main magazine that I looked at was ‘Vibe’ magazine which is also a popular R’N’B magazine. The conventions of this particular magazine where very much similar to mine as due to the fact I wanted my magazine to represent the R’N’B genre. The masthead was in a bold font which created the block effect that we can see on most music magazines but is more stereotypical of the R’N’B magazines that are currently on the market. I decided to use this idea on my magazine as it created the desired effect and also allowed the text to stand out and the strong coloured image that I decided to use. Colour is also a main convention of R’N’B magazines especially within the image but also on within the font. The main colours on the cover of my magazine are all reds, blacks and yellow colours therefore I carried on the theme when creating the text. The font I decided to use was what I thought was suitable for my chosen genre especially in the masthead as it created a graffiti effect which also related well back to my image of the model stood against a graffiti covered wall. I believe the image used created the R’N’B style that I wanted as the clothing accompanied by the sunglasses and the setting was all very stereotypical of that particular style of music.
I believe that my contents page challenges the conventions of other music magazines as the image has a great deal more going on it compared to the contents pages I analysed on my blog. The background has a variety of colours compared to other contents pages which all seem to have one dominant colour. The text I have used is also not very conventional of contents pages that you see in other magazines as it is big and bold and takes up around half of the page. I have also carried on the theme of bright colours through to the contents page in order to provide more house style so each page relates to one another. My double page however relates well to other double page spreads that you see in magazines such as ‘Vibe’ due to the fact that it consists of one main image, a masthead and the article. It also relates well to other R’N’B magazines due to the colours I decided to use which are all very conventional on double page spreads which is black, red and white.
I believe that my magazine represents the social group of students as the magazine consists of the latest music as well as award ceremonies for the R’N’B stars and also provides insight on the alleged rumours that have been spread around the music industry. Another way that I believe my magazine is very representative of students is the fact that there is a chance to win tickets to see a R’N’B star which would be very appealing to students as being a student myself I know that music, concerts and generally having a good time is a vital part of our life. This also attracts students because not having a great deal of money and being at the bottom of the social
ladder it is a great chance to win free tickets which is very useful to students that want to see concerts but lack the funds to do so.
The media institution that I believe would distribute my magazine would be a company such as ‘Vibe’. Vibe is a music and entertainment magazine founded by producer Quincy Jones. The publication predominantly features R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers. After shutting down production in Summer 2009, Vibe was purchased by the private equity investment fund InterMedia Partners and is now issued quarterly with double covers, with a larger online presence, aided by the Vibe LifeStyle Network, a group of entertainment/music websites under the Vibe brand. The magazine's target demographic is predominantly young, urban followers of hip-hop culture. I believe that they would do this because my magazine basically fits in with all the conventions of the R’N’B style as well as relates well to this companies magazine. It does this by taking the conventions of the magazine such as bold fonts, strong coloured images as well as style and fashion related to the R’N’B style. I also believe that there would be a slot for my magazine within the market as my magazine is set to target students both male and female rather than just one gender which has become more apparent with R’N’B/Hip Hop magazines that they are targeted more at men rather then women which we can tell by the articles as well as the images used.My target audience for the magazine I have created would primarily be students. I decided upon targeting students based on the fact that they are very influential on the music industry and also a great deal of what they do is based around music. I also targeted this particular audience due to the fact that they would be more likely to purchase the magazine on a monthly basis especially if they like R’N’B artist and music which is the basis of the magazine I have created. I think that this would be very successful due to the fact when I asked friends outside of college what they thought of my magazine and whether they would purchase it 70% of them said they would (out of 10 people). I also believe both male and female would purchase this magazine as when asking friends about my magazine four males said they would purchase it and 3 females said they would leaving one male and two females that said they wouldn’t do so. I attracted and addressed my audience by creating a very attractive and eye catching front cover for the magazine. I also did this by promoting the chance to win tickets within the magazine. I did this based on the idea of being able to a concert for no price is attractive to students and younger people. I also included articles about fashion, awards as well as the latest ‘gossip’ within the R’N’B music industry which would also attract readers due to the nosey nature of students.
During creating my magazine, it became apparent that the technologies I had to use where very useful. Using blogger was a efficient and easy way of uploading and updating any research and information that I found whilst developing my magazine. Being able to add posts and then edit them at any time proved useful for anything that I decided I wanted to change or add information to in order to show the development process of my magazine effectively. The technology I used to create my front cover was a editing site www.picnik.com which I found helpful when making my magazine due to the variety of different style fonts that is contained on the site as well as the different picture editing techniques you could use. The only down side towards using this programme is the fact that you can not work in layers so if you was to change something you would have to start again. The final technology I used was Photoshop, although this was easier to work with as you could work in layers unlike ‘Picnik’, knowing what to do and how to work the programme proved difficult at times.
Looking back at my preliminary task I believe that I have made a great deal of progress in the sense of understanding the conventions of magazines as well as how images are used on magazines to create meaning and effect. I have also realised that the research done within the blog is essential to creating the idealistic magazine and representing the music genre in order to target the correct audience. I believe that my music magazine is a great deal better them my college magazine in the sense that there is more contained within it and it is much more conventional of a typical music magazine. My college magazine set me off to creating my music magazine as it gave me a basic idea to work from and allowed me to get a good idea of how to create a magazine as well as gaining knowledge of the research that needed to be done to create a ideal and suitable magazine.
Word Count: 1, 550
