My final magazine Cover

My final magazine contents

My final magazine double page spread

my preliminary cover

my preliminary contents

Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task,what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?


I feel like that, following my initial preliminary task, I have developed greatly in terms of my understanding of conventions and skills at creating a magazine. Firstly, I believe that when comparing my preliminary task cover and my final magazine cover, it is clear that I have progressed greatly. I made better use of the main image, which was not the best option for my preliminary task, because of a unsuitable background, needing to be removed. On the other hand, my final magazine cover has a suitable image for my magazine genre, with a close up accompanied by a brick wall background. Whilst it was a unsuitable background for my preliminary cover, it worked well for my final magazine cover. By recognising the correct uses of that particular background depending on the genre, I was able to develop a solid foundation for the cover. Another aspect of the page I felt that I have progressed from is my use of spaces and filling the spaces with text and images. On my preliminary cover, I left plenty of blank spaces all over the page, space that could have easily been filled. So when I begun to develop my final cover, I incorporated several conventions that I had learnt, such as anchorage text, secondary images and a slogan, all of which, plus many more, fills the blank spaces which make a cover look bland if not added.

Furthermore, I believe that I have progressed in my contents page from the preliminary task to my final contents. Firstly, I made sure to focus on creating a easier guide to what is actually inside the magazine, as in the preliminary task, my contents themselves are very limited and don't describe the limited number of articles well. Additionally, There is also a issue of blank spaces all over the preliminary task,  with the huge gaps wasting the space that could be used for text and images. So when I was developing my final magazine, I made sure to include images for several of the featured musicians, as well as making sure that there was a lot more text there to fill a entire magazine rather than just as few articles.

Overall, I feel that my magazine has shown great progression from my preliminary task, and as I have learnt the conventions and techniques of creating a magazine, I feel far more confident in creating one than I did previously.

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Through this  process, I have learnt how to adapt and use different software which would work well in the construction of my magazine. The most prominent example of this is Adobe Photoshop. I had already had experience with this software though only to a certain extent, i was nowhere near as efficient and comfortable with the software as i am now.This software was extremely useful when editing both my preliminary and main magazines. I used tools on the editor such as a rubber for the backgrounds in my preliminary task, text boxes to create and vary the text for the page,guidelines in order to keep the columns in line. These all helped massively when trying to create my magazine, and i progressed greatly in my skills from my preliminary to my final piece.

Furthermore, i have been using Apple Macs for my primary work at photoshop and indesign. I have never owned a Apple Mac, or any computer with Mac OS, so adapting to the different controls, functions and layout was a gradual process. Despite being used to Windows OS, i adapted to the Apple mac well as i can easily perform actions around files, internet browsing, screenshots and much more. 

Another piece of software i have been using is the website blogger. Blogger has allowed me to showcase my magazine's development and my progress on other software. The website was complicated at first as there were initial difficulties around creating blogs and generally finding a way around the website, though over the course of the year i have become used to the layout and learnt how to label my work for easier reference.

I have also used the website, Slideshare in order to present my presentation for one of the questions on the internet, as blogger does not support this properly. It was originally very simple as it required just a sign up process before i could publish my powerpoint. 

Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my target audience by using conventions and features that would draw in my target audience, which is professional working adults between the ages of 25-45. I feel that the primary feature that would attract my target audience would be the artists i have featured. For many of my artists, such as Elton John and Paul McCartney, their primary fan bases are in this age demographic, though more towards the upper end, at around the age of 40. This could be contrasted to the lower end of my age group, which would be more accustomed to the likes of Philip Selway, as well as my own original artists, Jordan Lloyd, Zhao and Navarro. By dividing the target age group with 20 years, but uniting them under the genre, the magazine could attract the target audience into the single magazine, thus selling more issues. This also served to broaden my target audience into different age groups, which would then make it easier to appeal to the mass audience, while including some features that the other parts of the target audience would enjoy.

There are several features that i feel would appeal to my target audience. Firstly, the house style is very reminiscent of Q and Mojo, which are not only my style models, but share a similar target audience to my own magazine. So the readers for them magazines are likely to buy my magazine as they will recognise the style and therefore genre. In order to replicate the similar house style of Q and mojo, i used a very similar font to mojo in my magazine which was used in a colour scheme which is similar to Q's primary colour scheme of red, black and white. The colours used represent both formality, seen with the black and white, and the rock genre of my magazine in red. I used red in order to stand out from the background and other text and attract my target audience as red is a colour that q associates itself with, so the target audience will be able to identify the genre from the colours i have used.

I also made sure to use very large and bold text for the headlines and masthead in order to not only stand out, but to also attract my target audience as it is a font and colours scheme which is reminiscent of Q.

Furthermore, i used features that are common across all magazines and directly address the target audience. The biggest example of this can be seen with the subscription offer in my contents page, which would attract my target audience as it offers a reward for the target audience subscribing to the magazine, which therefore would give them the magazine to read per issue, therefore ensuring that there is a fan base behind the magazine, regardless of the musicians included.

Question 4

https://www.slideshare.net/secret/nxVmgutCtGDI3p

This is a link to my Slide share response to question 4

Question 3

What kind of Media institution might distribute your product and why?

Bauer is a publisher that already owns Q, Mojo, both of my style models, and Kerrang! Kerrang! is a rock magazine that shares many similarities to my own, in terms of genre and some aspects of house style. Due to the success of these two magazines, both of which share my genre of music, i would feel confident in Bauer distributing my magazine.While they are a privately owned company, Bauer own all of the aforementioned magazines as well as many more across the world, although they do have a headquarters in Hamburg,Germany. A advantage of picking Bauer media over other publishers is that they already have had prior experience with music magazines, especially magazines of my genre, and they would be able to attract my target audience as they have proven to be able to do so with several other brands.

 They have shown to be able to adapt the brand over to different media platforms, for example, Q magazine now have success in radio and on digital platforms with websites and social media. Under the supervision of Bauer, my music magazine would be able to reach a much wider audience than it would from just print sales. However, the issue with using Bauer as a publisher is that they already own magazines that are similar to mine,including my style models and there wouldn't really be a gap in the target market for my magazine. This would limit the interest my target market and audience would have in my magazine, and this would be further decreased if Bauer put little funding and marketing behind my magazine in comparison to another of its brands like Q or Mojo.

Furthermore, i have looked at alternate publishers for my magazine, but the primary one i considered was Haymarket Media. These are a privately owned publisher based in the UK, however they have recently began expanding overseas and now have headquarters in countries like the USA, Germany,India and Hong Kong. This would help to appeal to a worldwide market and not just my target audience in the Uk, but fans of the genre across the world. Additionally, they operate over different media platforms and not just with magazines, and the companies use of these different media platforms would be beneficial in marketing over a larger audience than what is normally possible.

On the other hand, the publisher has had little experience with music magazines of my genre and target audience, which therefore gives doubts about their ability to market this correctly to the target audience. They would not know the correct sort of advertising for this, and they may not know crucial marketing knowledge, including where to put the magazines in the store, and what sort of features in my magazine they wish to market at my target audience.

Another potential publisher that i have looked at is Time Inc, who are a publisher that have a headquarters in the UK. They recently changed their name to Time Inc from IPC media, and they clearly have a successful history with publishing and distributing magazines, with their current sales of 350 million issues a year over their magazine subsidiaries They have published such magazines as NME, and i feel that they would be a good choice for marketing my magazine to a more mainstream audience, as they don't really have anything currently that shares my genre and target market. This means that they are able to put more attention into my magazine than Bauer would, as it does not have several other brands with a similar target market. The popularity and success of Time inc means that they are also going to be suitable for a large financial backing, again which i contrasted to how i feel Bauer would back my magazine.

Looking at the pros and cons of each individual publisher, both in terms of their popularity in terms of both sales and marketing, and their general suitability for my magazine, i can conclude that Time Inc would be the ideal publisher and distributer for my magazine. This comes down to a number of factors, however i believe that it is the mainstream popularity and a gap in the lineup of brands they own for my magazine which were the contributing factors in my decision.