Evaluation

Before constructing my music magazine, I researched into stereotypes and how appearance and image creates assumptions about that individual’s character. An artist’s image or the way they present themselves onstage effects how their music and those who listen to it are perceived by the rest of society. Chelsea, the main feature of my magazine, is dressed in rock attire while wearing Glam Rock-inspired makeup which gives an idea what her music could possible sound like. The colour scheme I have chosen (red, black and white) also reflects the rock genre - I researched into other magazines and found that their colour scheme and house-style indicates the genre of the product, for example, a 'pop' magazine would use light pastel colours, a classical magazine would have a much more formal house-style and a rock magazine uses darker, bolder colours. My audience is in the bracket of ABC1C2 class and aged 16-25 because those are who would be able to afford buying it on a regular basis as well as being interested in the music genre and style.  

I think my magazine would fit in with the institution ‘Emap’ (http://www.emap.com/home2). Institutions such as IPC Media and Bauer already publish music magazines similar to the one I will produce (NME and Kerrang) so there would not be a gap here. Emap specialises predominately in the ‘b2b’ (business to business) publishing space and publishes magazines for nursing, retail and media. My music magazine ‘Demo’ is priced at £2.20, therefore could afford to be a self-published magazine without advertisements, which are what fund a lot of independent institutions which sell at a lower price. A competing music magazine like NME is priced at £2.40 which would make my own product more appealing to consumers. My magazine could be distributed through different shops if it joined to a popular entertainment shop (HMV, for example). If my magazine was self-published, it would gain full profit however there would not be as much advertisement and publicity involved which would affect the sales rate.

I found that the most appropriate age range is 16-25 year olds. The image portrayed from my magazine relates to a younger audience rather than a more mature audience like ‘Q’ magazine's. Having a female artist of the rock genre means it is not intended for a specific gender; I thought having a magazine which fixated on one gender narrowed the target market too much. When I was planning my magazine, I thought it would be more appropriate to aim it at a male audience because, after researching other music magazines and looking into their statistics, their target market is most commonly male. The colour scheme could attract both male and female readers. Considering the demographics and Socio-Economic Groups of the magazine, the working class are those most likely to be against the stereotype and label thrust upon them. When researching my genre of music and looking at the demographics, I found that the majority of my audience are frequent attenders of festivals. I therefore invented a festival name that could appeal to them based on the genre of music. Psychographics consider the attitudes of individual people and their values. I found in my research that, particularly in my chosen age group, that people use media products to imitate a certain style of living which gives them some form of identity by associating with a particular group of people in society. People who read music magazine are more than often interested in finding out about new music and gain access to less popular and familiar music to be a more unique person. these outer-directed people are enthusiastic and devoted to buying music and supporting the industry which relates to my story about music being leaked against the artist’s will – outer-directed people would normally purchase their music as a finished product instead of illegally downloading it before the artist intended for it to be released: “Why can’t I just put my music out when I want to?”. When trying to improve my understanding of my audience's psychometric profile, I found that many of them spend their leisure time with friends in social settings and most have attended a live music concert before - however some are more regular gig-goers than others. The majority of the people I interviewed have a part-time job and spend much their money on luxury items like music, clothing and entertainment technology. This information about my target market is useful for the publisher to guide the contents of the magazine as well as attract advertisers.

I created a survey using Microsoft Office Excel and asked 10 people within the target market to fill it in. I found that 100% of the audience new that the genre was Rock. 50% would buy it weekly which is what I intended my magazine to be and 50% would spend £2.50 on the magazine which is more than I initially had in mind which means I could possibly raise the price. 80% of the people who answered my survey said they would take advantage of the subscription feature. The 20% that said they would not said it was because they do not read music magazines often enough to want to subscribe even if they saved money on it. They said I could possibly give the contents page a better structure, the article could be longer and the genre could be broader.  

When constructing this product, I have learnt various techniques on Photoshop and other technologies which I have illustrated previously on my blog. 

When I started working on my front cover image, the first thing I edited was the levels and curves to make the image more prominent and richer in colour. I used the burn tool to enhance the make-up on the lips and eyes, and the eye colour as well as burning the edge of the page which frames the image. I originally planned to use blue and white for the title but eventually changed the colour scheme to red, black and white after much thought about what would be most appropriate for the rock genre (the blue looked more electronic than rock and also blended in too much with her blue-highlighted hair). I gave the title an inner glow at 75% opacity in black (24 PX size) and an outer glow at 100% opacity.  However, the blue highlights in her hair reflect her name and image by using the brush tool and changing the opacity of the brush to make some sections of hair lighter than others. I went through many different fonts before finally deciding on a font which I thought looked iconic and suited my genre; it also reminded me of the ‘ACDC’ logo. To create the mirrored effect, I duplicated the title layer, inverted it, and used the eraser tool to delete the bottom half of the text which looks like a reflection which is a more interesting feature for the front cover to have. To make my own individual barcode, I found an online barcode generator on Google and copied it onto Photoshop.  I originally put a box shape around the name ‘Chelsea’ which is in a different font and colour but changed this which I found stood out more when the writing was in bold black writing. When I first put in the red circle shape, I set it as a solid red colour using the colour blending option however this drew attention away from the other features on the cover. I highlighted the names of the artists and blended it by adding an inner and drop shadow. “Glam Fest 2012” is covered by the word “cancelled” to look more alarming and attract the audience’s attention – I had to use two separate layers for this. I highlighted the writing by adding boxes with a thin drop shadow on each so it did not blend into the colour of her skin. I added a drop shadow to the splash feature because I thought the white colour was too bright and is too big of a contrast with the rest of the page. On the double page spread, I airbrushed her skin and enhanced her makeup using the burn tool. I enhanced the blackness of her top as well as the purple in her hair. I adjusted the brightness and contrast, colour balance, exposure and channel mixer in the double page spread image. I found it difficult to choose the right font colour for my article heading because the background is both light and dark. I chose black and highlighted “my music” in red which keeps to the colour scheme of the magazine.