Rock Music Magazine Evaluation

 

I chose rock as the genre of my music magazine. The main color of the style of my magazine is red. Red is representing energy and powerfulness. It’s energizing and motivates people to take the action. I intended to produce a magazine that offers the reader entertainment and art in terms of rock music. I intended to produce a magazine that inspires the reader to possibly create a rock band & just to be creative and to continue buying my magazine, inform, educate the reader to a basics of rock music culture to complete against the NME magazine focusing more on music reviews. Videos I have chosen below are representing how artists that are talked about in my rock music magazine should look like:

1. Rock Group – We Are Scientists

2. Rock group – The Neighbourhood

3. Rock group with a female leader – GIVERS

The color scheme of my product is red, white & black what fits in with my selected social group, it would be attractive and eye catching to them along with the genre of music I have based my product on. Contents of my magazine include interviews with the popular rock stars, their life, path to fame stories. Additionally, there are some rock music chart updates every month and the newest album reviews and guitar playing advices. The audience for my media product is both male and female with the age between 17 to 25, whose interests involve, perhaps music, music gigs, who are interested in creating their own rock garage band, also art (people who consider music as a form of an art) and things similar to that. Favorite genre of music of my target audience would be rock, indie-rock and alternative. They would also be the type of people to read music magazines to keep themselves updated on the chart positions. I attracted my audience to my media product by using eye-catching colours along with unusual fonts and kept this throughout each part of the product I have produced to create a synergy between the pages of the music magazine I have created.

My media product uses similar forms and conventions of those of similar genre of music magazines I have analyzed and used as an inspiration and an example. For instance, the «Rock & Folk» magazine is the reason why I chose Red as one of the main colors of the magazine. It looks simple, but eye-catching at the same time and that’s why I was trying to do with my final product. In addition it has a black background, what I used in my magazine too. Black is a really brutal color what I thought will look perfect as my magazine background and I think it works perfectly for the rock audience.

What I like about my contents page is that it gives you all necessary information, which is headlines with the page number – it helps to find ou Also, my contents page uses a an image of a model that features on a front cover. A way in which my front cover differs from other rock magazines is through the pose of my model – it looks more ‘arty’, but for my magazine it’s a good thing, considering that it is called «ARTROCK». Magazines such as «Rock & Folk», «The Classic Rock» does not usually use this pose. And that’s when I decided not to follow codes & conventions of what I have deconstructed previously. My contents page uses an image of the model that is on the front cover of my magazine top of a guitar, rather than an actual image, which also differs from other magazines. Codes & Conventions of any magazine are one of the most important factors about magazine itself, because this what makes it recognizable for what it is. My magazine have used a wide range of conventions, including masthead – on my magazine it looks ‘scratchy’, what can represent wildness, which is relevant for rock.

My font choice was ‘Rebel Heart’ font and in my opinion it looked perfect as the masthead. Even the name of it says that it’s suitable for the rock magazine as ‘rock’ genre represents rebelness.

I chose Luiza, my friend as a model for my magazine, because she nearly looks like one of my indie-rock inspirations ‘Birdy’. I tried to re-create her style of photos in my model, so she could look like a rock artist. The style of my artist is dark, serious & artistic, what will follow the codes & conventions of a rock/alternative artist.

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I tried to illustrate why my target audience is relevant for this magazine. Firstly, design – black, white and red – it doesn’t look poppy or look like it’s for young girls aged 10-14. Three main colors but still eye-catching for those who love rock music. Secondly, content. For example, there is an article about David Bowie. Not everyone now, who is under 15, know who he even is. So, no under 15, for sure.

This is how my target audience looks like:

Definitely not like this:

I alienated groups such as black people and young girls under 15 as they stereotypically not listening to rock music. For instance, black people are into R’n’B music and young girls are more into a music that Justin Bieber or One Direction creates, so the target audience doesn’t really match.

The main interest of target audience is music and especially rock music, I definitely showed it by putting a guitar on the cover to make it seem like the female model is holding it. By making the language more formal, I made my target audience look more intelligent, not childish as this rock magazine suits mature people who have a mature look on rock music.

I attracted my audience by a range of features in my magazine: I used catchy, but still ‘formal’ colours to catch my target audience’ attention. I used some forms of slang in my music magazine, because my target audience is in the age, when they use it a lot on a daily basis, so it will be recognisable for them. Contents in my magazine reflect the results I got from my post-production poll daddy. I have added exclusive interviews with well known rock music artists, competition with a ticket win and I have added album reviews. I have also included rock chart history every month. This content should definitely attract my target audience as they chose to see content like that in the rock music magazine. The fonts I have used are pretty formal, however there are some sentences that were written in an unusual handwritten way, but do look perfect on the cover. The images I have used should engage the audience as on the front cover there is an image of a young alternative rock musician (female), which falls into the range of the of the target audience of my magazine, and she is looking to the right. The masthead that I have used on my front cover is very unique and unusual. It is big, bold and red and it can easily attract the attention of the audience.  In addition it ‘consists’ of different metal scratches, what follows codes & conventions of a rock mag, because metal texture is often associated with rock music. I used a bright colour for the masthead so that can be more noticeable can catch the eye of the target audience. The layout also attracts the audience in different ways, for instance – the cover line at the bottom that says ‘Top 20 funniest fails on stage” or the sell line that says ‘Montmella’ with huge red formal letters that can be easily understood and attract people. I split the article on the Double Page Spread Article so it could seem like there’s less text than there actually is. I did this so that the readers can actually be bothered to read it. The way I have organised my images and text should over all draw target audience’s attention. I tried my best to make my product as genderless as possible, so that’s why I have used color different to what’s on the cover, so people wouldn’t think that if it’s red and pinky everywhere – it is for females. In addition I have included a content that is suited for both male and female, so that any gender could find what they were looking for. My target audience would fall in the age range 16-25, this is because, stereotypically this is the age in which people would start creating rock garage bands or be inspired by many rock artists.  My magazine will also appeal to this age group as the hierarchy of information is formal. I intended to use more of a formal language, rather than chatty, even though chatty language is more related with the youth. My first idea was creating a rock music magazine, which will be ‘genderless’.

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Publisher of one of the rock music magazines (The Classic Rock) I’ve deconstructed is TEAMROCK.

http://teamrock.com

It publishes other magazines too, such as “Metal Hammer”, “PROG” &  “The Blues Magazine”.

TeamRock also has a YouTube channel, where they post different interviews with rock artists and even an ‘unplugged’ sessions with them, where they sing their songs only to guitar or any other acoustic instruments.

 

I think my magazine fit to their company style, because they all have rock artists on the covers of their magazines and they also have the same colors on the website as my magazine has, so this would be a perfect publisher for my magazine. It would add something new to their set of magazines, because it has some arty things with the rock music industry, so it would be a perfect fit.

Moreover, TeamRock has its Radio Station. Audience can access it by:

1. visiting their website 
2. By downloading an app called “TeamRock.com” as their website says, this app helps you to hear the “best in rock & metal 24/7, on the train, in the car, in the bath or wherever you are.” (By the way, they even have a video game distributed by the same company – “It’s a rhythm-action game where the music spawns the bad guys, in time to the music itself. So you can play the loudest tracks and the heaviest numbers, while taking down demons, straight from the depths of HELL.”
   

3. Apple Music – You can easily find a radio station called ‘TeamRock’ and listen to the rock music wherever you are.

 

Website presence is very important, in my opinion, because we live in digital era and paper copies are becoming less and less popular and that means that majority of magazine readers read their favorite magazines online, through different apps, because it’s easier. There’s no need to carry a whole magazine, when every single word and image can be read and seen on the smartphone or online. Moreover, paper copies might not be distributed in every single country in the world, what allows people from all over the world to access the website, app and enjoy all the articles, interviews, images and interesting stuff that weren’t accessible for them in a paper copy of a magazine. As all of these products are online, it is possible to comment any problems, issues or suggestion via email to main redactor of a magazine. It helps audience interact with the creators of a magazine, so it can be more interesting to read or gain even more popularity in different countries.

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The price of my magazine is £3.99, therefore is targeted at working-middle class and is pretty affordable. Magazines such as The Classic Rock are more expensive (£5.50) which may influence regular buyers of “The Classic Rock” magazine to turn to a buyer of my rock music magazine as it is much more affordable and could be more appropriate to what they want to get from a music magazine.

Main hobbie of my target audience will be rock music & art. These are people who always create and love to create something new. They don’t shop a lot, but if do, they would buy CDs for their collection or different Vinyls.

 

My target audience is not spending a huge amount of money on the expensive and exclusive clothes, they would wear what they feel is comfortable for them and looks good on them. That includes large-check shirts (usually red or black). Jeans, huge leather black shoes.

In addition, as my magazine would have an app, then my target audience will use smartphone on a daily basis, to not check only my app, but different social media.

For my magazine, I used demographic research where I have created a survey involving people I know in school and out of school and I wanted to compare each person’s attitudes towards rock music.

I conducted a post-production survey, where people had to answer questions after looking at my magazine.

First question of my survey asked people about their age – 70% of people asked are from sixteen to eighteen years old, 13% percent are from nineteen to twenty one years old, 8% are from thirteen to fifteen years old. People from twenty two to twenty nine years old and from thirty to thirty nine years old together are 10% of asked.

There were more males asking my questions than females (fifty six percent against forty four percent)

42% of asked have achieved high school level of education, whereas 40% have achieved a college level of education. University Undergraduate and University Post-Graduate are 8% and 10% on my pie chart respectively.

 

When I asked people what are they currently doing professionally right know, I got  these answers: 74% of asked are still studying, 19% are still unemployed or looking for job and finally 7% are employed.

Next question was if these people would buy my magazine. Majority of them (77%) clicked the ‘YES’ button, whereas 23% would not consider buying it.

Then, my respondents were asked another question, why would they consider to buy my magazine, in other words, what did they found interesting enough in my magazine worth giving their money for it. Majority of respondents (thirty nine percent) chose photography as the main reason, thirty six percent of respondents chose design as their main reason to buy this magazine. Content, Genre and button that said “Wouldn’t buy it” were chosen by twelve percent, six percent and six percent respectively, whereas they didn’t even notice the price, so they didn’t really care about it as my magazine seems attractive by its photography and design.

My next question was “what did you like the least about my magazine”. It might seem strange but 71% of respondent did not like the Free Ticket offer, which I was thinking would be the opposite as people of my target audience like going to different gigs and concerts. 24% of the respondents did not like the articles I wrote for the magazine and 6% did not feel right about the models that were chosen. Photography, Language Used and the Style of my magazine seem to be fine, so nobody chose none of them here.

Later on, I asked my respondents if the genre of this music magazine was obvious to them through the style and a title – forty eight percent answered that it IS obvious through the style and another forty eight percent answered that the genre IS obvious through the title as well. four percent of respondents answered that it was not obvious through the style and there is no percentage for not being obvious through the title.

 

Were the photographs presented appropriate for the type of magazine? – ninety three percent of respondents have answered that yes, the Photographs that I have made were appropriate for this type of magazine and seven percent did not feel like the photography was appropriate.

My next question says ‘What was NOT appropriate about the photography?’. The majority of asked answered that everything about the photography was appropriate, but nine percent thought that the pose of a model didn’t make them feel like it’s a rock music magazine.

There is also a question that is saying ‘Was the main article interesting for you’ and the majority of people that were asked (seventy six percent), thought that it WAS interesting enough for them and twenty four percent chose ‘no’ as their answer – they did not find the main article interesting.

When I asked respondents what could have been improved about the main article, seventy percent of asked answered that everything is fine and nothing in their opinion could have been improved. Twenty percent of respondents suggested that the content should have been improved before distributing my product and ten percent did not really liked the photography and suggested me to improve on that. Layout, Content, Genre, Font, Title and a Language Used do not have a need to be improved.

The final question of my survey is ‘Was the front cover eye-catching?’ Ninety three percent of respondents did find it eye-catching, so that is why they chose ‘Yes’ as their answer. ‘No’ was chosen by seven percent of respondents.

 

Overall, I think I have succeed in conducting a good post-production survey which really shows what  wanted to know and what could have been improved, if I was a real magazine maker.

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I have also conducted a pre-production survey before making my final product. As a result, I have found out a lot of details, that helped my magazine find its right target audience. The age of people who were taking a part in my poll was from 16 to 25 years old – 91%! 9% were older than 25 and no one was younger than 16, also there were more males than females (54% vs. 46%) – that could mean that the target audience for my future rock magazine will be these people aged 16-25 and m0re males in average, but the difference between male and female voters isn’t big, so that could only prove my genderless magazine point. My next question was about people hobbies. Not surprisingly that the highest percentage belongs to ‘Music ‘with 53%! Then it goes reading with 21%. Sport and Socialising with friends took the same 16% of people that voted. Dancing & Clubbing gained the smallest percentage of asked – 12% & 10% respectively. 27 voters or 65% of asked prefer digital copies or streaming services for consuming music in my next question “Do you buy CD’s?”, however 21% buy CDs very often and 14% buy it rarely. When I asked people what kind of prize they want to see if my magazine had a competition – majority of them answered that they want free tickets for a gig. 31% percent of asked chose a real autograph from their favorite musician. 15% would like to get a free CD, whereas only 11% would like to receive a poster.

52% of people would spend from £1 to £4 on a high quality magazine. 41% would spend from £4 to £10, 6% would spend more than £10 and nobody would spend less than £1. 80% of asked always buy magazine in the shop, so that can mean that I will use a barcode on my cover to make it look like it’s an actual physical copy of a magazine. Speaking of the cover, main image is the most important thing on the cover, because more tan 50% of the people voted that it attracts them and they magazine mainly because of the main image! More than 20% look at the bright colors first, 11% on the text and 5% on the price! In addition majority of the asked people want to see Album Reviews, Interviews and Celeb Stories in this type of magazine.

I was thinking about who should I put on a cover of my rock magazine. Since, 54% of the voters were males, I decided to go with putting a female on the cover as it would attract them more. I think that either way I don’t think I could have produced an image that would make both genders equally attracted to the image. To make it interesting to choose between good and bad images I have created a vlog that shows what kind of photos I have taken for my magazine.

 

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My very first draft of a magazine looked different, however the only thing that was the same is the model, however the image was still different. And the main color was blue. As I received feedback, I decided to go with color red as it more attractive than blue. I also have changed the font of my masthead and fonts, because there was too many of them on my cover. I tried to use some dark colors, what can be more related to rock. What about Contents Page Draft I created synergy between cover page & contents by using nearly the same dark colors, with the exception of bright colors of “Contents” text and “Regulars” text. In my real contents page I will add more articles and pictures probably will be more straight located. My DPS draft is definitely more synergetic to a cover page and that creates a relationship between the article and the main image on the cover what only good thing for my magazine. However I’m probably going to change the picture, but it’s going to be the same composition with blue chair and a model in a white shirt.

I used the internet during all stages of my magazine planning. I used it a lot for research into existing magazines and then mainly for inspiration – I wanted to see layouts or poses of a models I could use for my magazine. It helped me everytime and everywhere I needed. I have never used photoshop before I started doing Media Studies as my A-level, however I have used other photo editors, such as “Pixelmator”, I used it for about 3 years and created a lot of beautiful pictures and different covers. To learn how to use every single tool in the Photoshop I used video-lessons on YouTube, and that was really helpful, without these video I wouldn’t have created my final product. Photo shop was great for my magazine as it has lots of tools that enable you to produce a creative and artistic image which is what I was trying to achieve. As I used it more often it started to seem easier and easier, and now I can tell that from now I will be editing photos mainly in Photoshop. The tools I found most useful when creating my music magazine were the lasso selection tool (this allowed me to cut round images and was useful to cut round the image of my model on my front cover), the crop tool (to crop out part of an image) and the type tool (this was useful when I created my masthead and any other text on my front cover).

When I created my double page spread I learnt about In-Design, a software that can be used to experiment mainly with text and I found it extremely useful. I also was watching tutorials on YouTube for this one. It was difficult to use In-Design as you can’t be free to move and play with the image like in normal photoshop, however after watching tutorials and experimenting with text, photos and fonts, I succeed in creating a professional quality double page spread. For my Double Page Spread I also did use the brightness and contrast effect to make some parts of the photo stand out and make them look noticeable and some parts I wanted to hide, for instance I made my models’ eyes whiter and made white curtains more dark, so I could place white text on them.

I have used a professional camera before as I have studied in a film school during one summer. So I got a chance to shoot films and take great photos, which I used then for posters. After borrowing a camera from the school’s office, I started to plan photoshoot and asked models, if I can take photos of them and I made a table, so it could be easier to plan for me. Throughout the first task, I think what I learned was the importance of planning because I did design my magazine according to my flat-plan and it saved me a lot of time and I think it really plays a huge part in making the magazine as good as possible. I also made a checklist prior to every photoshoot, is this the model I want? What props should I arrange? should this be indoors our outdoors? What outfit should they wear? All of this would be shown as a mise-en-scene of my magazine. I also did test shoots before the actual photoshoot to test the lighting and the quality of the photos.

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Most importantly I learnt how to ‘communicate’ with my audience, how to manipulate the mise-en-scene and how to create a media product that could attract my target audience. It is important to make a product that will suit the age you are making it for, because you need to know what the TA expects from your magazine. And technology such as poll daddy and iPhones has made it easy to obtain market research, it allowed for a producer of a magazine to communicate closer between companies that distribute the magazine and the target audience. I also have a better understanding of how my model should look like, if I’m taking pictures for a rock magazine. These little things such as how the artists are dressed and what fonts I use could directly affect what my magazine looks like. I am now able to look at a real magazine cover and understand the meaning behind the image. I also learned that it is important to use all of these elements to contrast your genre in your magazine because if the target audience will not recognize and decide it doesn’t attractive enough for them, they will not purchase the magazine.

This is a table that shows how did I plan everything for my photoshoot for a magazine. Green color stands for names of models I have used. Red one is for the location. Yellows is for the props (Guitar, Clothes). Blue is for the equipment.

One of the teachers had arranged a photo-studio set in the Sibly Hall in our college with the lighting and white and black background, so we could take professional quality photos and we all succeed.

I have improved in using professional softwares such as Adobe Photoshop and In-Design  and also have gained new skills and remembered the options I can do in them. I have  gained more confidence in using these kind of softwares as I wasn’t familiar with using these in the past. I didn’t have that much confidence when I first started to create a school magazine, so that’s what it didn’t turn out as good as the music one. Although it took me quite a while to get used to Photoshop and In-Design. In comparison to My School Magazine, I wanted it to be focused on the music in my school. It’s having all the music concerts information & calendars. It also includes some interviews of music teachers about their job and music experiences as well as interviews of any other teachers and their thoughts about the music. My school magazine contains some researches on music such as ‘what kind of music do most of our students listen to or how many hours per day they’re listening to the music’. I tried to make design look as simple as possible and as I look back, the masthead appears tacky and not appropriate towards my target audiences.

 

Target audiences was the students of Wycliffe and everything on the cover looks formal, but it shouldn’t be. I appeared to use a lot of different colors. On my school magazine one of my weaknesses was sorting out the layout of my elements and I only added small amount of cover lines, which is not appealing and would not interest the target audiences attention as it appears half empty and plain. I also didn’t put the price on the cover of my school magazine and I fixed it when I created the music one. On my school magazine one of my weaknesses was sorting out the layout of my elements and I only added small amount of cover lines, which is not appealing and would not interest the target audiences attention as it appears half empty and plain. There were a lot of empty space on the school magazine cover, whereas on my music magazine I tried to get rid of the empty space as much as possible. I also didn’t put the price on the cover of my school magazine and I fixed it when I created the music one. The student is directly looking at the camera and this catches readers attention. In further improvement, I had added more detailed cover lines and other appropriate context for my genre of music magazine, such as updating the readers with the news and reviews. I also decided to include a chance to win a ticket for a gig. In order to advertise and distribute this product to my audiences as it would give away a ticket for free if a reader will enter a competition. I didn’t use the right font styles for my text as it didn’t blend well with the colour scheme chosen I also said that I needed to improve my journalism technique as I didn’t include much context for my school magazine. I can say for sure, that my school magazine had helped me understand and learn from my mistakes to make a better magazine, that will mostly follow codes & conventions and will look like it’s a real magazine and would appear more professional and suitable for the type of music genre I chose. It had helped me build up my self-confidence as I was confused back then on how I would design an actual music magazine but then I thought to myself that it takes real patience and understanding when it comes to doing things you haven’t done before.

All in all, I feel that I have produced a product with a really good quality and that this product could potentially do good if it would be distributed.

This is my final product:

Cover Page

Contents Page

Double Page Spread