Note to examiner

Dear Examiner,

Over the past few months of working on this project I have enriched my knowledge and understanding of both magazines and media products as a whole, I have learnt a lot about various computer programs and online websites. I have really enjoyed creating my magazine and I am thankful for the opportunity to do so.

Many thanks, Ollie.

Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in your progression from it to full product?

I feel as though my understanding of conventions has vastly improved and why the use of certain conventions are important in creating an authentic looking magazine for example, the inclusion of a barcode is one of the main features that I included in my final magazine and not my preliminary work, this is an example of my progression in knowledge of magazine conventions. 

I used my preliminary task as a learning experience as the finished product was uneasy on the eye due to the colours of the text and the clothing of the model clashing, this helped to teach me of the importance of pre-planning and choosing a suitable colour palette that prevents colour clashes whilst also looking interesting and suitable for the theme of my magazine. In my preliminary photo I cut out my model and put the picture over a green background, I felt that this looked tacky when looking back on it and so for my final music magazine I chose to pick a background that I would like on my magazine, I also chose not to have the background cover the entire magazine and instead condensed the photo to a small box to make my masthead stand out more against a white background. My preliminary work was also completely self thought out and did not take inspiration from existing texts, this meant my final result didn't look authentic, however when I came to do my music magazine I drew inspiration from a number of existing magazines and emulated their styles to create a visually pleasing text. The shots used for the cover on both magazine were mid shots from a mid angle, I chose to stay with this shot type for my final product as I grew to learn from my magazine research that this was a generic style of shot used to showcase the star on the cover and allow the image to be noticeable from a far to potential buyers. My contents page for my preliminary work was very basic and contained little information, on my final magazine I had developed my skills and created a very informative and categorised contents page. The font choice also vastly improved from my preliminary work as I chose basic and common fonts that weren't attractive and would not increase audience appeal, in my final magazine I chose to pick more unique fonts as they are more interesting for audiences to view.

Evaluation Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Macbook: My personal laptop was the most important piece of equipment I used during the creation of my product, It contained programs such as Microsoft Word and Photoshop which were the main programs used when  creating the magazine. My laptop also enabled me to store all documents and files for the entirety of the project, as well as this it was what I used to search the internet for useful information and to conduct audience research.

Nikon Camera: I used my nikon camera to take all of my artist photos, I chose to use this camera as it took pictures in a high quality to a large pixel size, this meant that all images used in my magazine were clear in quality, contributing to the overall aesthetic appeal.

Photoshop: I used the image editing software photoshop to create and construct my magazine pages, this advanced software offers a range of tools that allow users to manipulate images in a variety of ways. The tools I used most frequently were the text tool, the move tool and the crop tool, they were easy to use and allowed me to make adjustments on a minuscule level to create my magazine exactly how I wanted it. Due to its advanced nature, I was quite unskilled at using this program at the beginning of the project but due to trial and error whilst completing my preliminary and draft work I developed and grew my skills overtime.

Microsoft Word: A more common program, I used this frequently when brainstorming ideas around the research and planning stage of my magazine, it was vital however when creating the article for my double page spread because of it's spellchecker and grammar checking system that prevented me from making typos which would reduce feelings of verisimilitude amongst readers.

Dafont: Dafont is the name of the website which I used to discover and download all the fonts that I used in my magazine, after reviewing existing fonts available I decided that they were not what I wanted in my magazine, dafont allowed me to browse fonts based on categories including 'fancy', 'sharp' and 'retro', making finding what I was looking for fast and simple.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?


I think that the cover is the most crucial part of my magazine in drawing in and generating audience attraction, I created a cover with a simplistic but stylish appearance, by including only limited information I was able to draw audiences attention to both the masthead and my star cover image. The artist on the front cover represents a young popular indie/alternative singer, wearing a camo green bomber jacket with medium length styled hair, a generic indie/alternative singer appearance that mimicks current popular singers of the same genre, therefore attracting audiences to read the magazine. My mast head is centred at the top of the page in a large bold font that is unique as it has the appearance of a water blur running through the centre, this contributes to the overall stylish effect that as I learnt from my audience research, is popular amongst my target audience. I chose to have my artist keep a friendly but focused look as he looks directly at the camera that would develop a likeableness to him whilst also adding an air of mysteriousness to his nature. Whilst the idea for my masthead design was developed from existing texts such as 'Mojo' who also position their mastheads centrally, My design emulated the music magazine 'Paper' who also use a white background whilst containing the artist photo in a box with the text giving the artists name with a line of text beneath it lay over the image.


The contents page is the final deciding factor in whether consumers will purchase the magazine or not, it is where all potential readers will view the content of the magazine and make an assumption upon it's quality. I wanted my cover page to both attract readers whilst addressing them simply and being set out in a manner that made it both informative and simple to read, I therefore chose to align both columns of text to be the same width and in a size that can be read from afar, I kept the segment for my main article on my double page spread separate to allow me to use a larger font size to draw the readers attention towards it, also I included a separate coloured box to advertise the competition running in that issue as this would be one of my initial main selling points as it directly appealed to individuals that fall into my target age bracket of ages 15-25. I took inspiration for my cover from magazines such as 'NME' who stick to a basic colour scheme and arrange the information in columns with a separate box to showcase the main story the magazine is running.


On my double page spread I chose to not follow conventional styles of having a singular big photo of the artist but instead I included a number of smaller photos surrounded by text from the article, I chose this style as the content within my article was an insight into the life and childhood of the artist, I therefore found it suitable to use photos that appeared more natural and less styled to allow readers to connect with my artist. The language focuses on keeping the readers attention through being informative and interesting written without using too many extravagant words that may interrupt the audiences flow of reading. There are two quotes from the article embedded in the text that are in a larger font size and blue in colour, these are interesting quotes that causes a desire in the readers to explore the context behind the quote as it will be one of the first things the reader sees when first viewing the pages. I drew inspiration for this from magazines such as 'DIY' where the pictures are not as large as is conventionally seen and quotes are scattered throughout the text, I admired the simplistic but informative approach that I chose for my cover and contents and so decided to continue this in my double page spread.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

After conducting my research into my target audience for my indie/alternative music magazine, I concluded that my target audience would be between the ages of 15-25 who are both male and female, I think this is a suitable age group to target for my audience as my magazine is full of the latest news about current and upcoming artists, it will appeal to the young teenage audience as this is generally the age where people will be exploring new kinds of music anyway, and as seen from my research in UK Tribes, my audience are described as to be passionate about trying new things. I believe my magazine offers both musical and entertainment content that would allow readers to feed this desire. As well as the appeal for younger audiences, my magazine also contains content on the more popular and mainstream artists that although the younger end of the age bracket may not have developed an appreciation of, the older readers will have followed from their early teenage years. (Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks etc.) Both younger and older readers will also be able to share a common interest in content involving summer festivals, by also offering the chance for readers to win tickets to music festivals popular amongst 15-25 year olds it will further increase the appeal for males and females in this age range to buy into the magazine. A point I considered when designing my magazine was the issue of underage readers alongside readers of a legal drinking and smoking age, in order to appeal to both I included articles on concert venues where drinking is common but at no point referenced drinking or smoking, this would also be beneficial to real media products as it means no group of people are excluded at any point. As with all magazines mine will contain adverts order to generate extra income to cover costs, I will include adverts from relevant popular fashion labels amongst audiences such as Ralph Lauren and Lacoste, this will help in maintaining interest amongst readers whilst going through adverts.

Evaluation Question 3

Publishing companies must first decide on what type of texts they want to publish, for example they can publish books, newspapers or magazines, and then they can also select certain genres or types of these things such as music magazines, tabloid newspapers or fictional books. After this, editors must then select titles they wish to publish that fit with their publishing program and also are expected to succeed to a certain level, a timetable is set up for how often it will be published, deadlines for the writers and when the text is handed off to be published. The publisher will pay for all expenses for publishing the magazine upfront with no guarantee of a profit, meaning the publishers have to strongly consider if what they are looking to publish will make a profit.

After reviewing various publishing companies I have concluded that a publishing company that would likely publish our magazine is 'Bauer Media Group', they are a German based publishing company but operate in the UK for various successful music magazines such as 'Q', they manage a portfolio of over 600 magazines and so would be perfect for providing support and help for the magazine start up which could transcend into advice on the future of the magazine as it grows.

A distributor is someone who supplies goods to a retailer, in the case of magazine publishing they will be the ones who put your magazine in shops all over the country for people to buy. Frontline would be a good distributor for my magazine as they distribute to over 55,000 retailers and have experience in many different types of magazine including mojo music magazine. The majority of the business they do is UK based which is beneficial as UK indie artists do not tend to generate a lot of interest overseas meaning the distributor will operate mostly in areas containing our target audience.

There are multiple ways of raising the money to create the magazine, one of these ways is to ask musicians in the industry to promote the idea and get fans of the genre to donate on a kickstarter fund with a free first edition to all those who donate a certain amount, once the initial money is raised to create the magazine it will be self funded by money made from sales of the magazine. Another way to raise the money would also be to ask musicians within the genre to invest in the idea for a share in the company, similar to the music streaming service 'Tidal' which is owned and was funded by a number of hip-hop artists including J Cole, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Beyonce and Rihanna. This is the idea that I think would be best for my magazine as it allows for the chance to gain promotion through the artists themselves, an example of this is seen with Kanye West promoting 'Tidal' by releasing his 2016 album 'The Life Of Pablo' exclusively on the surface.

Institutionally my magazine is similar to 'NME' and 'Q' so my magazine would be released in a similar fashion. They are published every two or three months with a set amount each time, only around a quarter of all music magazines published go to stores as the majority of prints go direct to subscribers of the magazine, this is also the same for 'NME' and 'Q'. This is because most readers of the magazine each week are repeat ones and therefore a subscription is beneficial. 

Due to the decline in magazine sales across the entire industry, but especially so in music magazines over the last 10 years due to the ever fasting increase in popularity for internet based information and entertainment sources, I would not release my magazine in general stores as costs may exceed income generated from sales. Therefore I would sell magazines at music events such as festivals and concerts, but also at stores where magazine purchases are noteably higher above averages such as at airport WH Smith's.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My artist represents social groups of both genders aged 15-25, I used the website 'UK Tribes' to find a specific social group which best fits the audience I aimed my artist at. After carefully reviewing each tribe I found that the category of 'Alternative tribes' best fit the general description of my audience and targeted social groups with 'Young alts' being a more specific description of my audience. The description for the tribe is as follows: The tribe who want out of the mainstream - an experimental tribe trying anything from grunge to hardcore. It goes on to describe them as 'wanting out of the mainstream', this is essentially what indie/alternative music is based on and it is very common for lyrics about not fitting in to mainstream society to feature in songs from indie/alternative artists.

My artists and a real artist - Alex Turner, lead vocalist in 'Arctic Monkeys' both have similarities and differences. They are similar in the physical sense that they are both of the same ethnicity and have similar style hair cuts that resemble a purposeful messy look that aids in convincing audiences of the 'laid back' and carefree personality that both the real artist and my own created artist are attributed with. Both artists are slim of figure and are portrayed in a way that gives them an air of mysteriousness that intrigues audiences.

In the article on my double page spread I made use of the article to create a particular background for my artist that shows him to be a typically rebellious character with no concern for how people think of him in the media, this is a common trait amongst indie/alternative artists with many of them frequently referencing parties, getting drunk and drug taking. I made reference to such things in the article by talking about my artist making headlines for 'drunken bar fights'.