Music Magazine Evaluation
My music magazine is designed to represent the culture of R&B and Hip Hop generation; it shares similarity with conventions of current music magazines as its shares a lot in common one of them of which is its style and layout, it shows this as the text I have chosen for my magazines is relates with the genre of music that I have chosen. It to the genre as R&B and Hip Hop music has a lot to do about crime and violence, so I have decided to use a font which is slightly bold but broken up also in parts of it to give that feeling that its belongs to its genre, whereas the layout of the magazine points out who the audience is straight away as its clearly states by the pictures and the style and layout of the magazine that it’s for teenagers/young adults who are into hip hop music and latest stories.
I have given the name of my magazine ‘BREAKZ’ magazine this is because of the style of the layout I have produced on my magazine which shows with the 3 images layered over together it gives the felling of broken pieces. The name connotes, sound, party, loud, fast, rhythm, and beats, which creates the R&B and Hip Hop atmosphere.
The basic similar conventions of the layout that I have decided to use in my magazines includes the size of the fonts used for different parts of the magazine, where they are places and what position they are placed at.
Another use and development of convention of my music magazine is the colours and the props I have used, for me to be able to make sure that my image relates to my genre I had to make sure that I use the appropriate colours and props. This has a direct affect to the audience and who will buy the magazine and who won’t as people tend to see images that reflect their style and their likings. An example will of this is - people who are into rock music will be looking for darker colour which will include a lot of black, whereas props will include sharp objects, more scruffy style of clothing as they tend to have a lot of tears in them and tend to be shorter or tighter fitted. This will appeal only to a niche audience as different people will only buy this magazine according to their own style and preferences.
My music magazine represents teenagers/young adults into the type of genre I have selected as they use a lot of slag language which of modern day teenagers use a lot. These social groups are seen mainly by style and temperament that the magazine is trying to get across this includes the language it uses, the image types, shot types, camera angles, theme, body language, costume, background/setting, etc, to a certain audience.
All my shot types I have taken for my images for my music magazine shows that I have taken them all on a mid range shot between the camera and the my focus (image). This is because after researching current existing magazines in the R&B and Hip Hop genre I have found that the mid range shot is the best as its gets most of the body of the artist inside the shot which gives them the comfort to then make any posture easily without worrying about being outside the frame, this shot type is also seen as the most affective as it allows access to more space around the image which allow spaces for smaller clip images.
The camera angles I have used for my images shows the shots either on a mid level or slightly tilting downwards towards the person this brings in a connotation of respect and authority as it’s leans against a perspective which allows my artists to express their feeling with postures and facial expression to represent their music culture.
The costume I decided to use was simple but casual dress code which fit perfectly with my type of genre to my magazine. I decided to use t-shirt of which is a sports brand, Nike, I used this because the R&B and Hip Hop genre is well known for its sporty type/style in clothing.
I have also included props such as a New Era cap as almost all R&B and Hip Hop artist wear them to signify their music, this type of cap is used as a symbolization of their genre of music. Other props I added was simple jewellery which of is a silver chain, I decided this would be an excellent prop for my artist as my genre that I am relating my artist is well known for their bling.
Whereas the background I have used on my image is the music room in the performing art block; I used this because on my image I wanted to show that my artist is still working on his music with his comeback after a long break, this will attract my audience as its showing them that an artist is back with new album and stating a blown a4 size picture on the front cover page of him working on his music will get the audience immediate attention as its showing production process clips which are appealing to the age bracket that I am aiming my magazine at.
The kinds of institution that will be willing to distribute my magazine are companies such as EMAP (East Midlands Allied Press) which is a British media company, specializing in the production of magazines. I have chosen EMAP because they are the one of the largest professional magazine distributor and are publishing different types of media.
EMAP will take on my magazine as it shows the consistency of professionalism within the frame of the images and layout of my magazine, also because they are one of the biggest companies in magazine publishing they always look for more to take on. This will lead to my music magazines being available to local stores such as local newsagents, supermarkets, local music shops, etc.
My audience for my music magazine will be teenager and young adult within the age range of 16 – 26 year olds. I have decided to choose this audience as they tend to be more interested age range in music and gossip. I have particularly chosen this age group as the genre of music that my magazine is only aimed at a niche group of people as depends on both their style and age category. E.g. people who are only into street style, crime, violence, slang/strong language, will choose to listen this type of music as it shares a lot of the qualities, whereas age wise people no more than 26 – 28 will listen to this fast type of R&B and Hip Hop genre as usually they tend to get tired and it doesn’t stay with their preference no more, unless it’s calm and sophisticated R&B/Hip Hop music, e.g. Jay Sean. This tells us that older audience tend to listen to calmer music rather than those who are younger.
I attracted my audience to my music publication by targeting it at a small niche audience which will have similar interest and style to those artists in my music magazine. To make sure that I get to this audience I had to make sure that I advertise my magazines on the right place at the right time for it to be successful. By targeting at a small niche audience I am sure to be aiming it at the right audience that I intend to.
To make sure I target the niche audience that I specifically looked for I advertised my magazine on the Internet and posters as these are popular advertising methods that my target group audience will look out for as they provide information in the places they usually visit, e.g. on the internet and on street poster.
In the process of making this magazine I have learnt a lot to do with the software applications I had to use to develop my magazine, theses included Adobe Photoshop, and Pages. One of my confidence that I have mostly grown with in the process of making my magazine is using Adobe Photoshop on a Mac computer, this is because before I just wouldn’t use Adobe Photoshop on a Mac computer because all the function act differently to a normal PC, so I didn’t know how to use them or control the features as well as on a normal Windows PC.
Adobe Photoshop is a professional digital imaging software, with an endless selection of drawing tools, filters, and colour adjustment capabilities for manipulating items in almost anyway. Photoshop allow you create eye catching images and typography by placing text on paths or within shapes, perform shadow and highlight correction. Whereas Pages is a desktop publishing application from Apple. It’s an application that allows the publishment of any media types such as business cards, newspapers, forms, poster, banners, etc, and allows easy design features.
On Photoshop I learn how to easily develop professional looking images by experimenting with different features of the programme. I learnt a lot in terms of how to get my image looking how I want it to, for example, if I wanted to add something in the background of my original image, I would have to make sure I have a clear background while taking my image so it will be easy to cut out using the magic wand tool in photo shop which selects the bland spaces and gets rid of them.
Another skill that I learn while in the production of making my music magazine is how to blend images together so you can see through one another using the opacity tool. I used this to blend 3 images together one on top of another, I decided to use this because originally I wanted to put more than 1 image on my front cover, after experimenting with Photoshop I came up with laying 1 image on top of another and setting the opacity to 50% for each image, this gave the slight street style feeling as there’s a lot going on in the image.
Other skill that I learnt were a lot of shortcuts on the Mac computers, as I already knew how to use shortcuts on a normal PC, I wasn’t too sure with the Mac’s as they weren’t the same, so I was interested to know them like I do on a PC, because I tend to use a lot of shortcuts instead of using the cursor. I have stated below some of the basic shortcuts that I have learnt how to use on a Mac:
Description Keyboard shortcut
Empty Trash Shift-Command-Delete
Open Command-O
Save Command-S
Print Command-P
Undo Command-Z
Cut Command-X
Copy Command-C
Paste Command-V
Looking back at my preliminary task of my school magazine and comparing it to my music magazine it shows that I have learnt a lot since to then as in terms of the production process, the style and consistency, of laying out my magazine relating to the image itself. As I first started doing my preliminary task I wasn’t too confident with what I was going to do and how the outcome was going to be in the end.
When I first started to develop my music magazine after I started taking my picture I wasn’t confident in using Photoshop on a Mac computer as they were quiet difficult to use, so some bits of the of my school magazine didn’t go too well and didn’t end up how I’d planned them to be. Whereas when I went onto publishing my music magazine I felt more comfortable with using the applications as I have previous experience with it which made it more comfortable to use the software more freely as I knew what I was doing and how to do it.
Overall I am happy with both my preliminary task and my music magazine, but my music magazine’s outcome was better than my preliminary because it had all the convections of a music magazine on all the pages that I developed including the front cover, contents page, and the main article pages. These came out to a better outcome than the preliminary task because I worked on it a bit more carefully and took the process slowly to get everything how I wanted it to be.
