At the beginning of the year we were asked to do a preliminary task, creating a college magazine for Wyke college. This then led into us creating a music magazine.
I think that my music magazine has the same conventions as a real music magazine. I wanted my magazine to have similar conventions to real music magazines because it makes it look more realistic and makes it look more professional. On my front cover I digitally took a medium close up of my model holding two drumsticks, after looking at many different music magazines such as Kerrang and Mojo I noticed that medium close ups were very common among music magazines. Also many Rock based magazines usually have the cover artist/artists with their instruments to re enforce the genre of music, so this is why I chose to have my model holding the drumsticks .
I also made a banner at the top of the page with stories that would be included in my magazine. Banners are also typical conventions of a music magazine because they stand out from the rest of the page and separate the cover stories from the regular information that is shown on the front cover such as upcoming gigs and regular bands that appear in the magazine.
I used a large bold masthead which stretched across the full width of the page, again this is another typical convention of a music magazine. I think that the masthead looks much better when it fits across the full page because it stands out more from the rest of the text on the page and it doesn’t blend in with anything else on the page.
I included social networking sites in which the magazine is connected with and I included the magazine website along the side of the page, including websites and social networking sites is quite new to magazines now, but again is a typical convention which I chose to use in my magazine because its modern and as my magazine is targeted at young teenagers/students they will be up to date with all of the social networking sites and will go online to find more information about the magazine.
The obvious conventions that I included in my magazine would be the barcode in the bottom right hand corner and the price of the magazine above the barcode including the euro price.
In the contents page I included regulars and features, it separates the special stories and new bands that appear in the magazine from the regular information such as gigs and tours. I think that this is a really good convention of a magazine to use, and personally I think that if you don’t use features and regulars the magazine wouldn’t look like a music magazine.
In the double page spread of my magazine I included a quote from the artist who was being interviewed. Quotes from the artists in interviews are typical conventions of music magazines because they highlight important things that the artist has said or things that you may find interesting to read.
My music magazine is aimed at young teenagers-university students both male and female who have an interest in live music, especially rock music. I wanted my target audience to be young adults such as myself because I know what type of things people are interested in, in this age group. To make my magazine appeal to this age group I have added information about Leeds Fest, which is a very popular music festival with young people, so I thought it would be a good idea to include information about it.
Also the model on my front cover is a young adult which shows that the band members are young, the music is fashionable and contemporary, he’s also wearing clothes that young adults will wear and it shows that young people will like this band because his image is right for this age group.
There are many different music magazines out there targeted at young adults so there is a lot of competition for magazines to be sold, so I made my magazine very bold and bright, only using a few different colours so it stands out from the rest of the magazines, also after looking at other magazines and looking at the colour schemes, I think that my colour scheme is quite unique and different from the other magazines being sold.
Another way in which I have tried to attract my magazine towards my target audience is that I have put “upcoming gigs and tours” into my regulars section of the contents page, I thought this was a good idea as young people like to go and listen to live music and if it was a regular in my magazine people who read the magazine would be able to see what gigs and tours are on each month. I’ve also included “this months top 50 bands” in my regulars section because young people like to listen to the latest music out there and they would be interested in what my magazine thought were the top 50 bands this month.
If my magazine were to be distributed by a successful institution I think that IPC MEDIA would publish my magazine because,IPC distributes magazines such as Look, Country Life, NME, Marie Claire, Good To Know Recipes, Horse, Ideal Home, T.V. Times and Uncut, and as the only music magazine which is similar to mine is NME, I think that there is a gap in the market for my magazine to be distributed with this institution, and I wouldn’t be competing with any other magazines for sales.
The audience for my magazine “Amplify” would be teenagers and university students ranging from the ages of around 15-25.
I chose this age group because as I am 18 and I like rock music so I understand what type of things people buying the magazine will want to read about and hear about in the music world.
Also another reason for choosing this age range would be that many music magazines are out there for young people nowadays which shows that music magazines are popular with young people.
To attract my magazine to my chosen target audience I looked at other magazines which were targeted at younger audiences, like Kerrang and Uncut to see how they attracted their buyers attention. After looking at these I tried to attract my buyers in similar ways .
On my front cover I took a medium close up of my model, I asked the model to hold the drumsticks because many music magazines have props on the front cover, and also it will attract young people who play the drums to want to buy my magazine, and as my magazine is targeted at people which enjoy live music I thought that adding the drumsticks would emphasis that the artists like to play live music.
As my photo choice on the front cover is quite dark I chose to use bright and bold text to make the magazine more noticeable and stand out. Also as there are so many different magazines for my particular target audience out there already, colours in the magazine need to be bright and stand out to attract potential buyers attention.
From this experience of making a music magazine I have learnt to use Photoshop, which I personally think is a really good program to edit and create images and text on. I think that Photoshop is a really good program to use because it allows you to edit in layers and it also makes the work look a lot more professional. Another technology I used was Blogger, to upload all of my research, images and final products. Blogger is a good site to use and its very easy to use too, apart from a few times when it wouldn’t let me upload images onto my blog, but apart from this I think that it is a really good site to use.
I think that since the preliminary task of creating a College magazine, that I have improved and progressed, because I didn’t know how to use Photoshop in the making of my college magazine, and my editing skills were very poor. I have learnt how to create layers which makes it much easier to work with your product and edit it. Also I used many more conventions which a magazine would use in my Music magazine, and in my College magazine I didn’t use any conventions of a magazine because I hadn’t really researched much into the conventions of magazines whereas when I was creating my music magazine I researched many conventions which I could add into my magazine.
