Mgazine Evaluation - Nicole

My magazine uses forms and convections of real music magazines through the way i have layed and presented it. In some ways it similar to other music magazines due to basic layout. If you look at most magazines, their layouts are mostly either the same or similar. The title of the magazine is always placed right at the top of the magazine in a large, bold front, standing out. This is where the similarity comes in between my magazine and other music magazines, as i placed my title right at the top of my front cover, in a big, bold front, so that it can stand out, considering thats what catches my attention when i see a magazine, i felt like it would be appropiate to use it in my magazine as thats the same effect it will have on my target audience. Although my magazine layout was similar to other magazines layout, we chose our magazine title wisely so that the name can stand out itself, giving the overall magazine that effect, making it not just any typical magazine, but a unique magazine.
I think my music magazine cover represents certain social groups such as teenagers and young adults who are interested in RnB music, simply because my magazine contains contents which are based on RnB artists, and stories which relate to RnB. Therefor those who are not intrested in RnB will not buy this magazine as it is not their type of music. Also our magazine covers have young RnB artists on the front cover. This is a positive thing as this will atract and inspire young people to buy the magazine as RnB is a very popular type of music which alot of young adults and teeneagers listen to. Also in addition, our front cover shows images of artists from both sex, therefore, pictures of female artists will attract the male audience, which will also inspire them to but the magazine, and pictures of male artist will attract the female audience which will make them want to buy the magazine.
I personally think that out magazine covers will be part of the RnB institution, simply because the articles are based on nothing but RnB artists.
I have noticed that mucic magazines mostly seem to attract either teenagers or young adults, therefore in relationton to this observation, we decieded that our magazine will be targeted at teenagers and young adults from ages14-21. Reason for this is simply because this music genre seems to be mostly enjoyed by this age group. Other possible reasons are because they can relate to this type of music, as issues which may be song about may be issues which these young adults/teenagers may be going threw and therefore through this music, they are recieving inspiration, and a positive image of life. Also, in this day and age, RnB is seen to be "cool" and so many teenagers/young adults want to come under this image, therefore they tend to listen to it just so that they can come under that catagory. Media also plays a huge role in this. As the media promotes this music genre alot. This then manipulates people into wanting to follow this type of music genre, which is how this type of music is so popular.
Ways in which we attracted our target audience was by suing fonts and strap lines which stand out and catch peoples eyes which stand out on the page and from the images on the page, which attracts the audience to be aware of what the article is about. Another way which we addressed our target audience was by using bright colours, and the right type of clothing.
Based on this project, i have learnt alot about technology. Making a magazine cover is not as easy as we think. it takes alot of hard work and organisation, Ar the start of this project, everything seemed fairly simple and straight foward, however as we got further down the line into the project, things got tough and stressful, which made me realise that making a magazine is not as easy as it looks. I am happy i took part in this project as i learnt a new skill which was knowing how to use Photoshop Adobe. Overall i found that you could use technology to do alot of clever, sly things you would never imagine. however it takes some time in learning how to use different types of sofware.
If i was to make another magazine front cover, i would change the background which i used, and mak it more plain so that it didnt seem asif alot was going on. Another thing i would change is what i wore. In future i would dress up more, and make more of an effort in what i was wearing, in order to get that "super star" look, so that the overall magazine can be more realistic. However i think the overall front cover came out very good considering it was out first time, due to the hard work and determination everyone put in.

Using Photohop - Sevin Kahveci

I wasn't very familiar when using Adobe Photoshop but after being taught and given a tour on how it works and its functions, everything seemed so much easier to create. Today we learnt how to crop, edit colours in text, background and with symbols. I learnt how to enter text, move about features, change colours of features, i experimented with different colours and fonts for my masthead and cover lines until I found the best suiting font and colour. By doing this I believe it is a wise way to find the most appropriate feature to use when constructing a magazine front cover. I also learnt how to place images on one another, deface them and remove them without messing the structure of the other features. the image I have used for my front cover image was taken by a camera which was leant to us by Rebecca, one of our media teachers. I had taken the picture of two girls in my group and decided to use it as my magazine front cover's image as it seemed appropriate to me to use it. After placing the cover image on a A4 spread page I started adding cover lines using the text tool, changed fonts and colours using other tools. I also used box tools.

Music Magazine Front Cover - Sevin Kahveci

Music Magazine Evaluation - Sevin Kahveci

The magazine which I have created using Adobe Photoshop, uses forms and conventions of real music magazines, a few examples of these include; a masthead, banner, cover lines, bar code and boxed text. I have chosen ‘Platinum’ for the name/ masthead of my magazine; this name is appropriate as it relates to the music industry; it gives a rich air to the magazine. Its name also gives off the vibe that this magazine is good quality and worth buying, I have used a plain font for the masthead and a colour which stands out and added a white shadow to catch the audience’s eye. I have placed the masthead at the top of the page so it can be seen and is familiar to other music magazines’ that are on the magazine market. However, we believe that our magazine stands out from all the other music magazines because all our ideas and the forms of how we used the conventions are our own original ideas. We have been careful when structuring and planning our magazine front cover to make sure it does not look so familiar to other magazines.

To attract an audience and convince them into buying the magazine I have included incentives like; posters and CD’s. I have used a banner, the strap across the top of the page which has a red box and text is in white. I have used the colour red because it is one of the colours that attract the most attention.

I have used a range of ‘eye-catching’ colours for my cover lines; have made sure that all my cover lines relate to music and events that will definitely attract the attention of my targeted audience which are 14-21 year olds from both genders. I have used boxed text for the most attracting news on the front page and I found that using a boxed text attracted more attention when it was boxed and spread across the bottom half of the page. I have placed a bar code at the bottom right corner to make it like a complete real music magazine.

By using two teenage girls as a main cover image gives us an idea on what age range our audience may be between and which gender may be reading or show interest in this magazine. Although the image is of two teenage girls, the cover lines and incentives I have used indicate on which certain social groups it is aimed at. As our magazine is targeted at 14-21 year olds we’ve made sure to include information on our front cover which our audience would be interested in.

I think that the RnB institution may be interested in distributing in our magazines as our magazine and cover lines all relate and refer to an audience who are interested in RnB as all our cover lines include RnB artists. Another institution that may be interested in distributing in our magazine could be EMAP.

When writing my cover lines, I have been careful when choosing what to write and which artist to include. This is very important as cover lines are one of the key conventions which are used to attract and address an audience. I believe I have chosen good cover lines because they’re ones which our targeted audience can relate to and are interested in. Using these conventions attracts teenagers’ attention; as these days teenagers are more interested in what is going in the music industry, what is going on where and upcoming events they can take part in. For a  teenager, media plays a big role in their lives as it is media that is the connection between the young teens and their admired celebrities.

From the process of constructing this magazine front cover I have improved on my designing and structuring skills, I have also learnt more about Adobe Photoshop and its amazing features on editing images and how to do it. Before constructing my magazine front cover I hadn’t had much experience or practice with Photoshop which is why at first I was having slight difficulty on where and how to start. However, after being given a quick run through/tour of the program I felt reassured, started exploring it and finally got the hang of it.

If I were to be given the opportunity to create another magazine front cover, I think I would choose a different issue season and include pictures of males instead of just females. I think including more male pictures on the front cover would attract more male’ attention. Another thing I would change is where and how the front cover image is take, as our magazine is a music magazine it would be more appropriate to take an image where it gives the impression that it is for a music magazine that specialises and that the genre of the magazine is RnB music.

Music Mag Evaluation Rebecca Hurst

My Evaluation of My Music Magazine PLATINUM
Our the course of three to four lesson me, Nicole, Sevin and Stephanie constructed ideas to make our RnB magazine. Therefore, we started by choosing its genre which is RnB, the target audience with 16-24 year olds and the name of the magazine.
Our magazine conveys a real magazine by the way its layout. For example, the banner is along the top advertising upcoming tours and free CDs to attract the reader to the free goodies, pictures of girl bands, Rappers and rivalry between bands. the name of our magazine is "Platinum" so we placed the title of the magazine right at the top, just like any other magazine, this is because all magazines have their title aligned on the left hand side so we didn’t want it to be too different in comparison to other magazines that are available. We also did not want our magazine to camouflage with the rest so we used bright colours and bold fonts for the title so our magazine stood out.Our magazine targets to teenagers and young adults interested in RnB music. Many teens would be attracted to our magazine because they are interested in finding out the latest in this worldwide music genre. Most young adults enjoy this music genre as it shows them the real life through music and this gives them a positive image of live.
My magazine title was hard to decide. However, we decided platinum due its association with music e.g. multi-million records sold is platinum and because we wanted the aspect of bling in our magazine.
We had decided as a group that our magazine would be distributed quarterly every year, winter, spring, summer and autumn. My theme was winter so I went for a warm winter because if this magazine is selling worldwide them there are places that have warm winters. I used ivy to represent Christmas in my background. The colours in the title green and red are significant as those colours are mostly associated with the Christmas season.
We decided this because it is an easier way and we would have very established fans would be regular readers and not just the occasion buyer.
In photoshop, we had to decide on a font that the whole group would use. We also had to use the magic wand to cut ourselves out of the background, now that was hard because the day we took the photographs we were all in contrasting colours so we could not find a suitable background.
My magazine cover has a picture of two girls who are x factor winners, an mc to interest boys into this magazine as its targeted to them as well, latest girl group and interview with two other girls who are in the music industry. By the production of my magazine, I have realised that using iMac is very difficult and that photoshop is even more difficult. When we first actually started using photoshop all the icons looked very complex but as we used it more and more often we became use to it.
If I were to design and produce another magazine cover, I would plan the page and have many solid ideas and layout structures.

Music Magazine 3 Rebecca Hurst

On 2nd October we spent a whole lesson taken pictures for our cover of our individual music magazines. We decided to take our pictures in a garden area even though it’s more difficult to cut us out of the background in Photoshop.
Using photoshop was very difficult as i had never used it before so i need to learn the basics. We had to add different layers to the page to make it look as like a magazine as possible.
We started by selecting our pictures then we transferred them to the page which would be the cover of our magazine. We had to adjust the size for our magazine though to internation paper A4.
In photo shop we choose the font that goes will with our theme.

Using Photoshop - Lesson 5 - 9/10/08

This lesson was basically just a follow up/continuation of the previous lesson, as the main aim was to just finish our magazine front cover to the best of our ability. It was in this lesson that a couple of important things were changed as our front covers were almost finish, we were all able to get an over view on what the outcome was going to look like. Based on this we could automatically tell that the front style we did choose priviously was to fancy and not bold enough for our magazine. It was also not suitible for the genre which our magazine was aiming for, so as a group, we all decided to change the front style/text into a more bold, outstanding text which was more appropriate for our magazine, and decided that we will use the fancy writing for sub-titles etc. It was in this lesson that we were expected to finish off our magazine, ready to hand in, unless we attended workshop (which i did). We were all working hard, and was highly concentrating in completing in our magazine.