Final products

Evaluation

My magazine includes basic conventions such as a main image, associated with my genre, a barcode, a masthead, coverlines and the magazines date and price. Using all of these elements it makes it easier for the audience to recognise my work as a magazine. These conventions have all been made to suit my magazine genre, such as colour schemes and an appropriate photograph. My masthead is bold, with a lightly coloured outline to make it stand out even more. By having a bold masthead, it should immediately grasp all attention from my desired audience, making them want to pick up the magazine or making the magazine easily recognised. I challenged magazine conventions in my own way. I kept including a signature picture (lips) throughout my pages in my project. This would also help readers identify my magazine. I thought this idea was quite adventerous compared to other magazines. In my double page spread and contents I have also used this generic symbol underneath page numbers. The majority of double page spreads in magazines have the models facing the text, making it more friendly for the audience as it makes it seem that they are actually directly talking to you. I have used this convention in my double page spread, as I felt it worked effectively.

My magazine represents social groups such as students. Students that tend to look up to different celebrities and see them as role models. The main thing that would attract this particular social group would be the fact the cover model is young, famous and predominently a role model to a variety of teenagers. The magazine is modern, including elements such as bright colours, pictures of the latest "celebrities" and recent gossip.

I think that the media institution "IPC Media" would be distributing my magazine. This is because they print similiar magazines to mine, and the majority of their target audience is females. My magazine would fit into a pop catorgory in shops such as WH Smith, along with plenty of other similar magazines. I feel that there isnt as much competition in the pop music In addition to my magazine being put onto a shelf in a shop, I think it would be a good idea to create a website for it. This is much more up to date and the majority of magazines have already done this, allowing you to download it to your computer when the magazine is issued in shops.
  My magazine is aimed at a typical teenage girl, aged 10-16 interested in typical teenage activities - pop/chart music, celebrities, boys, fashion etc. Although the magazine attracts mostly girls, you could argue that it may also appeal to boys who are interested in the previous list. The price of the magazine is reletively low to fit the teenagers set "pocket money" still being issued by their parents. Also, the language used throughout the magazine is fairly recognisable to this age group, using easy vocabulary and not too complicated for them to understand. I felt that the target audience was fairly popular in the industry therefore it was a challenge for mine to stick out to the desired people. To attract my audience I used obvious popular colours, such as red and pinks. The connotations of these colours immediately remind me of girls who are perhaps still in their youth. I also used bold fonts and sometimes lighter backgrounds behind the fonts to make the text stand out more. I feel that the colours could grasp the audiences eyes, and making it bold makes it much easier to read if it was just to be glanced at. Modelling the cover star to directly look at the camera immediately addresses the audience, it feels as if she is looking into the audience's eyes. By doing this, in comparision to a model looking away from the camera, it attracts the audience member in. If I were to go back and re do the photograph I think I would take a closer picture, a medium close up shot. This is because the features of the model would be clearer and wouldn't be uncomfortably close.

The main element from this project that I have learnt succesfully would be the use of photoshop. I now understand basics that can make a dramatic effect on my work. I worked with tools such as photo editing - learning to remove imperfections and airbrushing skin, changing colours, brightness and saturation throughout my images making them look suitable for my magazine and also very professional.  Without experimenting with this program through this project, I also would never have learnt to make my text stand out in such a way that looks slick and still does the job of grabbing the audiences attention. Drop shadows, outlines, colour overlaying etc all helped me to find the perfect text.  

I feel that there is a very big contrast between the college magazine task, and the task I have recently completed. Firstly, my photoshop knowledge was no where near as professional back then compared to the knowledge I have now. Throughout the period of time between the two magazines, I have learned the ins and outs of photoshop producing beginner yet excellent pages for my magazine. Although my photoshop skills weren't as brilliant in my preliminary task, I still had a rough idea of conventions I should be using and therefore this helped me create what should look like a magazine. I felt that the magazine I had previously made only had a basic structure to it, and the audience wouldn't be as attracted to it because of how plain it was. To try and overcome this problem, in my music magazine I tried to add different elements such as broad mastheads and powerful colours. I feel that I suceeded in this magnificently.

Development of double page spread

Firstly, I picked out a suitable photograph from my photoshoot. I chose the following picture as the model is facing the potential text, giving a unity between the text and the image. The image adds to the mode of address, giving a connection with the audience almost as if the star is talking to the reader.

I added my photo to photoshop, along with the title of the story and the page name. I kept the background plain again, keeping aspects of my colour scheme yet a little different.

Next, I wrote my story. I used a quote from the celebrity and placed it in the text in bolder fonts to make it stand out and give the story more character making it look more interesting for the reader. I alligned the text to the centre, so it looked even. However, this created some problems as some words and letters were too spaced out. Time played a main part during this project and if there was more of it, I would have went back and corrected this problem but I felt there was more important things to correct.

Finally, I added finishing touches to my page. I wanted more elements of my colour scheme bought into it to make the magazine look more professional, therefore I placed a 'kiss' picture underneath the page number and put a large red letter "C" behind my text. The letter C is relevant as it is the start of the artist's name that the story is about.
I also added a line between the title and the article as I thought the two pieces of texts needed breaking up.

Production of contents page

Taking the same font and red colour from my front cover, I began to produce my contents page. From using similar elements from another page in my magazine it begins to give my magazine a house style making it look more professional. I coloured my pictures in black and white to give a little twist on the page. However, I felt I should keep some of the colour scheme, so I therefore chose pictures that all showed nails and I then coloured the nails in with red using photo shop.

I then began to add the subheadings on my front cover, onto this page. I featured the "lips" picture from my front cover and placed them behind the page numbers. I did this because it added a little more colour and then also related back to my front page. After I'd finished including articles from my front cover, there was a little bit of space at the bottom so therefore I invented some more pages and included them under the title of "Features". My contents page was nearly finished.

I felt that the titles didn't stand out enough, like the headings on my front cover. I solved this problem by adding thin boxes behind the titles, identical to the front cover ones. I then added two final "lip" pictures to then finish my contents page.

Development of front cover

I first experimented with different fonts to use for my title for the front cover of my magazine. I used the colour red to fill the text as I felt that it was a typical colour for teenage girls. The colour also matches the title, when the word "pout" is used I always think red is connotated because of red lipstick.

Finally, I decided this would be the final design for my title. I like the 3d effect I put on it, I feel that when placed on my magazine it will make it stand out more in comparison to other elements on my magazine. Also, the curves and the puff make it seem quite childish, attracting my target audience. The baby pink outline also reflects youth and adolescence.

Putting the title onto my front page, I added the cut-out cover star and filled the plain white background with pictures of lips. I used these pictures as I felt it associated with the title meaning, as well as using the same colour scheme as the title too. When I first added the picture of the cover star, it covered the majority of the title. Although I felt this looked presentable, it would be difficult for the audience to read what the title says. Therefore, I solved this by putting the models hat infront of the title and the hand behind it. This way the title and the coverstar both stand out without making the font look unrecognisable.  

For my next step I added subheadings which were little hints that would potentially be featured inside of my magazine. I still used the colours red and pink but added a black shadow to them because if I didnt do this, the text wouldn't have been easy to read and wouldn't grab the readers attention as much.

Finally, I added pink boxes to put behind the text.

Mood board

This is my mood board for pop music. I have chosen these pictures as I feel they associate with the genre pop music. The elements of this moodboard such as shopping bags, shopping brands and tv shows are all lifestyle connotations. I could include these elements in my magazine to attract the target audience even more.

Photoshoot

These are a few of the photos from my photoshoot. For these pictures, I will cut around the figure to remove the background. The reason why I'd do this is because I feel the background looks a little tacky, some showing the coloured flooring and the white wall, or both. For one, I don't think a white is a very good background colour for my magazine as its a little boring and plain, and doesn't compliment the model.