Evaluation - Question 4

4. Who would be the audience for your media product.

Though I did try to give my magazine as wide of a target audience as possible, it did have a more specific audience. 

The age range for my magazine, as detailed in my Pitch, was to be between the ages 16 and 25. The overall aim of my magazine was to expose a younger generation to an older type of music. 

In doing this, I did also give my magazine a more classic and old-school appearance. In the magazine may attract the attention of more generations, young and old, including those who can remember the music of the past. However, in attempts to attract this younger audience, the models I used for my photography were both members of my target audience's age range - This could work in my favour to attract more younger people, who may be drawn to the magazine by the inclusion of younger people inside it.

Again, in an attempt to attract this younger audience, I put the price of my magazine to £3.69, which I thought was quite affordable and below the more conventional £4.50, or around that mark. Alternatively, the magazine is also a bit more expensive than a typical, conventional pop magazine, mainly due to the amount of content featured in the magazine with much more writing than flashy subheadings. 

The culture of my magazine has always been for more of a western culture, focusing almost entirely on music from the UK and the US over the last 60-70 years. In this respect, the magazine may not appeal to those more immersed in European or Asian culture, who may not necessarily respect the genres and music that is heavily featured in the magazine. 

My magazine, I believe, may appeal to a more traditionalist audience that perhaps aren't so interested in the pop music of the present, and instead want to stick to that of generations gone by. 

Evaluation - Question 3

 

3.  What kind of media institution might distribute your magazine and why?

Wenner Media LLC

As referenced in my pitch, I think one potential institution that may be interested in my magazine could be Wenner Media,


This institution has published one magazine that is very similar to my own, and has provided much of the inspiration for my own magazine. Though they may be reluctant to publish a magazine with so many similarities to their own. 

I believe that my magazine, however, may offer the selling point of being more focused on music whereas Rolling Stone features politics, entertainment and films much more heavily. Though some of these elements are touched on in my magazine, they are much less of a dominant feature. 

They could consider publishing my magazine as a branch off from their own, publishing a magazine that becomes much more focused on music, allowing the original magazine Rolling Stone to still focus on other elements.


Bauer Media

Perhaps from a less specific perspective, I also chose Bauer Media as one of the institutions that may consider publishing my magazine. 


Unlike Wenner Media that specialised more on a few specific magazines, Bauer Media covers a wide array of magazines from Birds to Cars, however one particular theme is for music magazines. They publish several music magazines ranging to all kinds of different genres.

One particular magazine, with the most similarities to my own, is Mojo. Much like my magazine, Mojo does look back at some aspects of music from the past - when it was considered Pop - and also featuring reference to how this genre is still being shown today. 

Perhaps one stand-out difference between my magazine and Mojo is that my magazine looks back further, as far as the 50s as well as focusing on the music's impact today and how it is still being performed.

Evaluation - Question 2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups

When developing my magazine, I tried to make it cover a wide range of social groups, age, gender and genre, for example. I think I conveyed this by having a more wide-scale genre of simply pop from the past, which could cover a large range of musical genres from Rock to Swing. In this respect, I do feel that genre may have been evenly spread - however, It is still quite limited, and doesn't necessarily go too in-depth with any other genres besides contents page descriptions. 

Alternatively, I do think that age has been represented fairly in my magazine. At first glance, it may seem like the genres and topics are that of a more older generation, therefore blocking out younger generations. However, I feel I countered this by using fairly young models for my images. This should show that, though mostly concerning music of a generation gone by, it should still grab the appeal of younger generations - closer to that of the 16 to 25 age range that I originally aimed for.

Opposed to this, the magazine uses a lot of darker colours, which may not resonate particularly well with some people that may prefer a more colourful and eye-catching magazine.  I thought that the darker colours would perhaps help to establish the magazine as not being similar to the common pop magazine, however looking back now it may be a bit too dim.

In terms of social class, I didn't set any particular boundaries. Although the magazine may appeal more towards those with more cultural capital, typically found in higher classes. The amount of content included in the descriptions for the contents page and in the double page-spread may put some people off, but hopefully this was counter-balanced by the Pull quotes and headings.

Evaluation - Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In many respects, I believe that my magazine follows the typical conventions of a music magazine in forms of layout. I tried to lay things out similarly to the pages I had analysed previously, however I did still attempt to make some deviations that may challenge the conventions.

Front Page

On my front page, for example, several of the basic and common conventions of a magazine are being shown, a masthead centered towards the top of the page in eye catching, contrasting, colours to attract more attention. The puff located below it is similar to that of a conventional puff, a small piece of text - often for a competition or giveaway - that stands out from the rest of the page. Similarly, the splash does follow conventions being a heading, followed by a smaller sub-heading. Alternatively, I believe I may of challenged the conventions with my cover lines which are located in different areas of the page, the top left and the bottom right. This does not, perhaps, have a huge impact on the overall appearance of the magazine, but it does allow more information to be displayed without obstructing the central image.

Contents

Similarly with my contents page, I did stick to many of the conventions I saw in my contents page analysis. I listed each notable page in the magazine, followed by page number, a title, and a small description, similar to that of the Rolling Stone contents page I had analysed earlier - as well as most magazines in general. Perhaps not so common in magazines of the genre I aimed for was to have more than one strip for contents, Instead I chose to have two columns on each side - this allowed more information to be displayed and give readers a bit more insight into the contents of each page.

Double Page Spread

Finally, my double page spread also stays true to many of the conventions, a central image taking up all of the first page, with the second page being comprised entirely of text. A couple of pull quotes were also added in, a convention common for interviews and discussions. However, I also added a larger masthead and subheading to the double page spread, which may of made the piece look more informative - similar to a newspaper article. This may fit in better with the artist and the genre of music.

Magazine Final

Front Cover - First Draft

Front Cover - So far