Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Evaluation

By making our magazine ‘URBAN BEATS’ we have tried to make it just as realistic and catchy as the magazines you see in the shops. We first had to think of a name that would best represent the magazine itself and to appeal to our audience. We chose the name ‘Urban Beats’ as our title because we thought this would best reflect the type of magazine we are and the audience that we try to sell to. It shows the genre of music just by the word ‘URBAN’ which can also link to the street fashion, R ‘n’ B celebrities and the type of music that we show inside the magazine. To make our magazine look more realistic we had to decide on what type of music we would look into most in the magazine so that we would get a set target audience for our magazine.
We decided that the audience for our magazine would be teenagers to young adults who are into the R ’n’ B music and street fashion. We tried to show this in our magazine with the layout of the cover, style writing and the models we used. We chose our models specifically so it would reflect the audience we want to attract. If we chose the models that reflect our magazine, we thought that it would allow the audience to relate better and feel that they should buy the magazine because it would cater for things just for them. To attract the attention of our audience we tried to make the title of our magazine appealing and we had to make it stand out with the bold typography and the colours that contrasted together on a black background. Trying to grab the attention of a teenage audience we thought would be easy as the majority of teens and young adults listen to R ‘n’ B and Hip Hop music and mostly follow the street fashion. We found that easy as we also relate ourselves to that type of social group as well so we knew what others would most look out for in a magazine.
The social group that I think our magazine represents best would be the one that is most into the ‘Urban’ style music and fashion. The social group will also consist of people that are all of the same age range which in this case would be teenagers from about 13 to young adults which could be to 18 years old. It represents this social group as the majority of the population listen to this genre of music and this type music makes the majority of the charts. The magazine would appeal to them because it would relate to the type of music they listen to and it would have gossip on the celebrities they might admire and idolise.
The media institution that I think is best to sell our magazine is by advertising it on the radio, preferably the stations that play the type of music that fit into the genre of the magazine. This is because if they listen to the radio station on a regular basis and then hear that our magazine is being advertised they might feel that they should get it as the radio station is advertising it so it makes it even more appealing to the audience that we try to target. It could also be advertised over the internet as this is widely used by young teenagers and young adults regularly so the magazine will be well advertised over this.
I have learnt that in media you can do whatever you wish to, only if you know how. If there was something about a picture you did not like, e.g. if you thought you looked a bit to pale in the picture you could easily darken your skin tone or you could just darken the whole picture. It is easy fix it straight away if you use the right tools. It is quite easy to cut out a background of a person and place it on different scenery such as bricked wall background. If you have the skills and experience you could make it as real as you want it to be.
If I was to make another cover I would take a lot more pictures, use a variety of models and remember to use plain backgrounds as well as using the scenery. I would think more of what would be in the magazine so I would have more things to write about on the front cover of the magazine to make it more appealing. I would use different fonts to experiment with and maybe even design the font myself to make it even more original. I could also think of more colour schemes to make it stand out just that much more. If I were to make another over I would try to gain more experience and get familiar with photo shop as it would be easier and I could try and do exactly what I want. If I did a drawn plan on paper it would be easier to do it instead of thinking about it and designing it on the spot.

16.0ct.2008

MyLinh Hoang

Magazine Evaluation

My magazine front cover does challenges the forms and convention of a real magazine, this is due to the way I have placed my magazine title, the lay out the magazine, the colours and bold font I have used.
As a whole group we have made a joint decision that our magazine will be called “Urban Beatz” this is because we think it reflect some teenagers’ life and the kind of music they listen to in today’s century and in this case will reflect on our target audience’s life and the music they listen to. The target audience of our magazine will be young teenagers and hopefully young adults will be interest to read it too.
For the month that my magazine will be issue I have chosen my target audience will be female.
Before going ahead to make this music cover I have done some of my own research by looking at different type of genre magazines, this is to see how the lay out is done, the special offer, the freebies, and what I should include to name a few, when producing my own cover. By looking at these magazines I have decided to use bright colours to make it attractive to my audience’s eyes, I also include some interesting topic such as “The real reason why my marriage collapse”, winning tickets to Pussycat dolls’ live concert to, etc. I have decided to include stuff that I think would catch my target audience’s attention when picking the magazine.

My music magazine cover can represent certain social groups due to colours, the background and the model on the front cover. This can represent teenagers so therefore relate to them.
I included particular female artists so that it could relate to the genre of the magazine and know that my female target audience will like and be interested to read.

I would distribute my magazine to “cherry red” and “EMI” media institution as they would help to improve my ideas and headlines and therefore will become buyable and very popular like “NME”.
However, I believe record companies that specialise in the Hip Hop and R n B genre such as Def Jam Records, Konvict Records and Ruff Ryders Entertainments, to name a few, would distribute our magazine front cover because it appeals to teenagers who listen to this specific genre of music.

I attracted our audience by using bold colours, bold font and by featuring promotional offers and competitions like for examples: how to win, money and concert tickets on the front cover. I chose to have my magazine background white because it will blend in with the bright clothes my model is wearing; making her stand out and attractive. The white background also help to make my main cover line, cover lines stand out and my choice of colours make our magazine look more presentable, colourful and attractive. The contents would attract our target audience because we used free signed t-shirt as a promotional offer for people who purchase our magazine, we featured exclusive interviews with R n B stars and introducing new artist, like I have done for my issue, this will attract readers because we have a good topic lines, good gossip, good prizes waiting to be win, and good exclusive interview with the stars etc.

Before producing the magazine I wasn’t very familiar with Apple Mac computers to design a magazine. Therefore I learnt how to use it properly and effectively.
I’ve used Photoshop before at my previous school and for photography but I wasn’t aware of all the techniques, I have learnt and different types tools I were able to use on my magazine cover to make it more realistic, eye catching and attractive to readers.
I think as a group and individual we have benefited from the Photoshop tutorial because it helped us to produce a good looking magazine and saved us from wasting precious time to work out all these techniques ourselves.

If I ought to produce another music magazine I would like to have more variety of pictures to choose from and have wider range of topic to include in the magazine. However, I am very happy of my final production and I believe as a group we planned the magazine cover well as we all agreed on the name, the genre and what kind of pictures we wanted for the magazine. We have used the lesson effectively and worked as a team, through out this project.
To criticise myself I didn’t do as much research on the genre my fellow group mates and I have chosen because we already knew a lot about it, so therefore we just used the knowledge we already had to help us create out magazine cover. However when writing up my magazine evaluation I did not know a lot of music companies so I have asked friends to me some of the companies’ name and then I research using “Google” to find out about them and what type of music genre they promote.

3.10.2008

Today was the last day to finish our magazine and start writing up our evaluation.

URBAN BEATZ MAGAZINE

Last lesson we had a photo shoot with people in our group and also featured others. We chose specific locations that we thought would reflect the genre of our magazine like outside on the benches and on the stairs. We also took a few pictures on plain backgrounds so that it was easier for us to edit them when we came to producing the actual magazine. We had to make sure that the people where dressed according to the genre of our magazine and to try and grab the attention of our audience. We had to make sure it would all relate to the Hip Hop and R 'n' B genre. 

Creating The Cover & Evaluation!

Last lesson we created our magazine covers, we were give a tutorial on different techniques we could use on Photoshop which would help us create a attractive front cover. I chose bright bright colours for my title and fonts because my magazine is on a black background and I wanted to make it stand out. Near the end of the lesson I also started to type my evaluation of the front cover - where we have to write about why we chose the genre, why we chose our target audience, and just general questions on the production and planning of the magazine cover.

This lesson i just finished off my evaluation and made a few changes to the magazine cover, i just put the issue date on it (october 2008) and i put the price of the magazine on the front cover as well.

                            Magazine Evaluation

Alex

10/10/08

Our music magazine’s target audience is teenagers/young adults, and we created our magazine with a UK Hip Hop/US Hip Hop/R n B genre and named it Urban Beatz. Our magazine used competitions, exclusive interviews, celebrity news and music reviews to attract readers just like a real music magazine. We also had special offers of free music downloads, chances to win concert tickets and cash by entering competitions that get readers involved in music and dance, this challenges real music magazines because we want to get teenagers involved with the magazine as well as just buying and reading it – therefore this could inspire teens to get involved with the music and dance industry.

The front cover of our magazine represents to teenagers because we chose to mention artists that they are interested in and would like to read about. Also by having competitions where people can get involved in and win money and prizes for example concert tickets to see their favourite artist. We used good prizes because usually people enter competitions depending out good the prize is, so if we mention prizes that will interest readers there’s bigger chance that more people will get involved and enter them.

I believe record companies that specialise in the Hip Hop and R n B genre (for example; Def Jam Records, Konvict Records, etc) would distribute our magazine front cover because it appeals to teenagers who listen to that specific genre of music, an it has bright, eye-catching colours, exclusive interview and news about celebrities in the music industry which attract people to buy the magazine. Also if people read our magazine, they will learn more about the genre of the magazine and could encourage them to purchase new albums out from artists that are signed to the record companies, so the company would benefit from it.

The audience for our music magazine cover is teenagers/young adults who listen to UK and US Hip Hop and R n B. We chose this as our target audience because we are teenagers ourselves and we based our magazine genre on the type of music we listen and the majority of other teenagers, so we know what they look for and expect in an R n B magazine, also we are teenagers ourselves so we also know what kind of special offers and competitions that our target audience would be interested in.

We attracted our audience by using bold colours, bold font and by featuring promotional offers and competitions on how to win, money and concert tickets on the front cover. I chose a black background and bright coloured font (bright green title and pink font), so it would stand out on the dark background and attract peoples attention. The contents would attract our target audience because we used free music downloads as a promotional offer for people who purchase our magazine, always we featured exclusive interviews with R n B stars this will attract readers because they are getting a lot of their money – our magazine has a lot of offers, plus we also featured competitions where readers can win decent prizes.

Before these lessons I wasn’t very familiar with Apple Mac computers so I learnt how to use one properly. I used Photoshop before at my previous school but I wasn’t aware of all the techniques and tools we were able to use on our magazine cover to make it more realistic, eye catching and attractive to readers. I think the class benefited from the Photoshop tutorial because it helped us make our front covers look genuine and eye catching and saved us all time trying to work out the programme ourselves.

If I was going to produce another magazine cover I would take more pictures so I have a larger selection to choose from to use on the front cover, but I believe as a group we planned the magazine cover well because we all agreed on the name, the genre and what kind of pictures we wanted for example; we wanted someone break dancing on our cover, also we wanted a photo of ourselves (as a group), so we took those photos so we could use them. We didn’t really do any independent research but in lesson we did research on real magazine covers – so we knew how to make ours look realistic and make it standout. We didn’t do any research on the genre we chose because we already knew a lot about, so we just used the knowledge we already had to help us create out magazine cover. Also I this our group would of kept the genre the same if I was going to make another front cover because it’s the music that we all listened to the most and knew most about, so it was easy for us to find a large variety images of Hip Hop and R n B artists.

1.Oct.2008

Well today we had a practical lesson.
My fellow group mate and I went out to take some pictures for our magazine.
Befor taking some photos, we had to decide where to take it, what kind of background we wanted and what pose we wanted our model to do. I found this quiet difficult as we only had a particular space and area to choose from also we didn't really have the correct proffesional equipment and props to do this properly.
We also had little time, therefore we was kind of under pressure so the pictures was not that nice and was'nt really what we was hope for.

Urban Beats Magazine!

In today's lesson we got put into a group of 4. In my group there is Billy, Mylinh and Bianca. In our group we must create 4 front covers of a music magazine for 4 months, e.g issues from September, October, November and December.

We want our magazine to appeal to teenagers, so we chose hip hop/r n b as the genre because the majority of teenagers listen to this type of music. We have to take photos for our front covers in 4 different locations, e.g on issue 1's front cover we are going to have each member of the group pose like a photo shoot with just a plain background, and for issue 2 we will have a picture of people break dancing.

For each issue we are going to have different topics that will appeal to readers, which will be featured on the front covers, e.g in the first issue we will have a interview with someone famous, or from the hip hop/r n b music scene, and then in the second issue we will have celebrity gossip and news from the hip hop/r n b industry.