Magazine Evaluation

Jack Beedle

Media Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I think the image that I used on my front cover really represents the type of person that I think would read this magazine. I didn’t want young people to be stereotyped in this magazine. Erica has the rebellious rocker look but I don’t think this perceives a younger generation in the same way. I think the audience will know that Erica is an adult and she is doing her own thing and not trying to fit in with the crowd. On the other hand, it kind of does represent the whole 16 – 25 category in the ‘younger generation’ band therefore a social group of younger people could be being stereotyped as all of the same type of person.

This being said, there are young people who don’t fit this image or don’t like this type of music and wouldn’t buy this magazine that would hit out at the publication for being too stereotypical if younger people but that is not what I am trying to show. I am trying to show a particular representation of the people that actually would buy this magazine and not everyone else.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The main target audience that I have chosen to target is 16 – 21 year olds with another larger audience maybe ranging to a maximum of 30 years old. This is because I don’t think that that many people over the age of 21 would buy this magazine but it might attract to a few people that are over the age of 21. Also, this is the magazine’s 24^th issue and people who were 21 at the time of the first publication may continue to buy the magazine if they like it. The target audience that I chose had to affect the price of the magazine that I chose. It had to be relatively low since the income for most 16 – 21 year olds (16 year olds, certainly) may not be enough to fund a magazine that costs £3 weekly which is why I have chosen to sell my magazine at £2.20 for a two week magazine which is a figure that, I think, doesn’t look daunting to young people. I would have chosen to make it a monthly magazine priced at £3 per issue but since there are so many other music magazines out there, I think that not issuing anything for a month is too long. Other magazines will get their information out faster than you and people don’t want information that they have read weeks before. I think weekly is too often but monthly isn’t often enough so I think bi-weekly suits my publication best.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract my target audience with this product, I knew it would have to be something eye catching and bold to make it stand out quite a lot. I decided to use orange and black as a house style and is a running theme throughout my product. My model is wearing red and black which was the original influence for that. The target audience is young so I wanted the person on the front cover to represent young people which is why I chose my friend Erica. She already has the kind of rock look that I was going for and she is the type of person that I am marketing my magazine at. The image needed to make a statement so I had her grabbing her hair and making an angry-ish face which a lot of rock stars do but then I didn’t think she looked rock enough. She didn’t look like the rebel-y character that I was trying to pass her off as which is where the orange fringe came from. The idea initially came from the house style of black and orange but then someone suggested to me that it was Hayley William-esque (lead singer of rock band Paramore) which solidified my thinking that this was a more rocky look.

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

Technology can be used in many different ways to aid the magazine world. You can now put your magazine online to reach a wider audience, using websites you can generate more hype and get the product out there more and, ultimately, you need technology to create the product. Before looking at this task, I don't think I fully understood the power of having an online magazine. It is quite similar to the actual magazine but they only mostly give enough to whet the appetite to make you want to buy the magazine in hard form. They also allow you to create a membership to the magazine to get you things like discounts, email alerts, etc which make you feel as though you are part of the magazine group. This project has also taught me quite a bit about Photoshop aswell. Before starting media at this college, I already knew my way around Photoshop quite well but I was quite samey in the styles that I used in my work. I knew what changes to the images would look good so I used these effects quite often and whilst editing the images for my music magazine, I explored Photoshop quite a bit more than I usually would and I have discovered things that I knew were there to use but they were things that I had never thought of using in the ways that I did before.

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

I feel like I have learnt a lot more about audience research for the product. When I first did the advertisement task, I didn’t really think about creating an advert that would appeal to a specific audience, I just created something that wasn’t specific to anyone. It was just an advertisement designed to appeal. When we created the magazine for the college, obviously, the target audience was mainly college students which was quite easy to get the audience research for. But when creating a music magazine, the audience is slightly more broad than the college magazine so I also sought the advice and feedback of adults that may also read the magazine since it is mainly aimed at young adults.

How my magazine uses typical conventions of a Rock Magazine: Masthead The masthead of my magazine is bold. Usually, mastheads stand out from the background and are eye catching. Mine is a bright orange on black using a shattered glass/scratchy font. This gives it the rock connotations that gives the impression that it is a rock magazine.