Complete magazine

These are all 4 pages that I produced for my magazine, I wanted to put them all in one post for convenience

Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms + conventions of real media products

Annoyingly, I had made a powerpoint on this, but it was too large to upload to Slideshare, a website which allows you to share powerpoints. This means I'll just have to type it out.

Front Cover

I kept to many conventions of rock music magazines for my front cover, using colours to draw the readers attention, and having a direct mode of address with the audience. I used the image on the right as a style I wished to replicate, and I believe I stayed true to the style displayed.

Contents

For my contents page I tried to stay close to styles already used in rock magazines. I used highlighted areas to show different sections of the magazine, such as news and reviews. I also used images down one side of the page as previews of whats in the magazine, which is also done in actual magazines.

Double Page Spread

There are several different ways of doing a double page spread in rock magazines. Some magazines for one full page of writing and an image, others go for more writing and some for less. I decided to find a middle ground and have a page of writing and a page with a picture. I quite like the style I used and I feel it kept to the conventions of my music magazine genre.

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

During our lessons we were told about SAGEL, an abbreviation of the terms Social group, Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Lifestyle. I will use these to explain the ideal target audience for my magazine.

Social group

This section refers to the social class of the readers. Generally, rock music magazines would be read by middle and working class youths, as these groups are where the genre normally gains fans and bands originate from.

Age

Generally speaking, magazines in my genre are read by younger readers, aged between 15-30. I would target this age range as I know they buy magazines of this genre and are fans of the music inside

Gender

After reading the NRS (National Readership Survey) and focusing on rock music magazines I discovered that there is a much larger number of males who buy this type of magazine than there is females. Using this information I would focus my magazine more on young males aged between 15-30.

Ethnicity

Although the roots of rock music can be traced to originate in black music, there is very little representation of black people in the modern incarnation of rock music. Due to this there is likely to be very few front covers or interviews with a black musician in a rock magazine. This would probably also affect my audience as there would probably also be not as many fans of the genre who are of an ethnic minority, especially since, when you link this to social groups there is a trend where ethnic minorities live in more built up, urban areas where the social class is generally lower (working + lower classes). In these areas music such as Hip-Hop, RnB and Drum and Bass would be more prevalent as the main genre, so this would mean that I would have a smaller ethnic audience than some other magazine types, such as RnB, would have.

Lifestyle

This would encompass a large group of areas and is difficult to specify, but the features that set the lifestyle of people who are fans of this genre apart from others is probably their passion for the music they listen to. Most fans of rock music are very keen to go to gigs, and are more often than not seen wearing merchandise of their favourite bands. Many also choose to have tattoos, and they are far more prevalent in rock culture than any other music culture.

Ideal Audience

From what I’ve shown here, my ideal audience is young, middle/working class, white males, who gravitate towards a similar lifestyle to the one shown. To this extent, I would use these people as examples of a member of my ideal audience:

Double page spread second draft

After being told i needed to do more for my double page spread, I have redone the page and included an article on the first page, with an image on the other side. I have portrayed the model as a typical rock music character, making them seem like an anti-hero character, somebody who is the opposite of a good role model for young people who listen to the music.

Evaluation: How did you attract and address your audience?

Double page spread

These are the two pages for my double page spread. I decided to make them as two separate A4 sized documents in photoshop, as I felt this would make sure they were both the same width

Contents page

This is the contents page that I am currently using for my music magazine