Post-Production Evaluation

Evaluation

My front cover, contents page and double-page article were created in-keeping with the form and conventions of rock magazines.

I chose to focus specifically on rock magazine Kerrang! as it included the aspects of rock magazines that I particularly liked and targets the audience that my magazine would be targeting. By focusing on this rock magazine specifically, I would be able to make sure I include the common aspects of rock magazines but would also be able to develop my own ideas and challenge the conventions of a rock magazine.

My Front Cover

On my front cover I decided to use certain conventions that are associated with rock magazines. For my masthead, I decided to use a font that looked decayed/eroded. This connotates death and destruction which are associated with rock music, similar to those that many rock magazines use, including Kerrang! I really like the way that my masthead turned out, however on reflection, after gaining more skills and knowledge in media, I think I could have improved this further by adding a drop shadow or another effect.  

I used a colour palette of dark red, black and white on my front cover. These connote blood and death, these colours contrast really well and this contrast makes them each stand out against the others, drawing attention to them.  I thought these worked really well, however I feel that I could have used up more of the white areas that I had with other aspects such as a coloured texture or pictures. I also incorporated a flash into my front cover, I decided to round off the corners and use a paint splatter effect on the edges to make it similar to the magazines of rock music and its rebellious associations, I was really pleased with the way that this and the drop-shadow effect text, inside the flash, looked, they contrasted well and made the advertisement for ‘free posters’ appear 3D.

My central image consisted of one male stood in a commonly seen pose for male band members of the rock genre, his attire consisted of a checked shirt (something that is noticeably seen on both bands and fans within the genre of rock) which also incorporated the colours red and white. This related to the colour palette that I used for other aspects on the front cover, I really liked my central image, however the unused areas around the model, I thought could have been filled to diminish excessive space, however on reflection of other rock magazines I decided that there was a good amount of space around the central image. I applied a lot of drop shadows to the bigger texts, I did this to make them appear to stand away from the page and make the text catch the eye of the reader, they are a common feature in rock magazines.

My Contents Page

On my contents page I also used a drop-shadowed and 'eroded' font. I really liked not having anything else at the top of the page alongside the masthead, as this drew the main focus to the masthead. On my contents page, I continued to use the colour palette that I chose for the front cover as I noticed that front covers and contents pages tend to carry on a certain aspect to tie them together.

The composition was also a main priority when creating the contents page, as a common feature of rock magazines is to separate the large amount of pictures (which are of featured articles and stand out) and the contents list, which has less area coverage than the pictures do, as the people who are fans of rock magazines tend to be a younger audience and they focus on pictures more than they do on the text. I challenged the risk of simplicity by incorporating eroded fonts for the contents’ sub-headings and making the shapes of the pictures different by moving the borders diagonally with the aid of the ‘pen tool’, this made my pictures more rock magazine related, as they appeared more ‘edgy’ in comparison to circular or square pictures.

I used a variety of editing techniques on the featured article pictures, however on reflection after gaining better knowledge of editing, I would brighten the central image (the largest picture) to draw the majority of attention to this article. I decided to use a small banner of colour to place the captions to the pictures on, this isn’t generally a common feature of rock magazines, however I thought that it helped make the captions (the band names) stand out and they still looked relevant to the contents page as I made them a burgundy colour, tying in with the colour palette and made the font ‘edgier’.

My Article
 For my article I decided to use a background, as these are quite commonly seen among rock magazines to show that the two or more pages relate to each other, however I decided that I wanted to challenge this aspect and so I took a picture of a leather covering on a desk. This scratched and decayed image would  relate well to the associations of rebellion and corruption instead of using a simple, coloured background. However, I decided to make this relate to my front cover and contents page by altering the colour to a faded rusty-red, which matched with the colour palette of the other two pages of my magazine. 

 An example of one image being displayed on the background of a double-page spread to tie the two pages together.

I used a simple font for the text on the page, as I noticed that this was common for articles in rock magazines as it is still important for people to be able to read the articles, as well as them looking like they belong in the magazine. I used a drop-shadow and used the rotation tool to create and edgier look on the lifted quotation.

 I researched the types of photographs that get taken of the band that the article is based on and in one particular rock magazine I noticed a technique that looked really effective and that I wanted to replicate, where the members of the band appeared to be coming out of their picture boxes. In the magazine that had this effect, the picture boxes were just plain white with a thick black border, however I decided that it needed improving a little and so I applied a black and white gradient, which looked very effective and worked well. I edited the photographs of the band mainly by increasing the contrast a lot, this is common in photographs taken for rock magazines and I think they turned out well and looked effective.


www.kerrang.com

www.paramore.net

 My magazine incorporates specific aspects that relate to the genre of rock and represent the social groups that are based around rock music. The people that I used in my magazine all had features such as brightly coloured/dark hair, relevant clothing and appropriate attitudes. Incorporating these features in my models was incredibly important as the social group which rock magazines are aimed at is generally people with brightly coloured hair, piercings, tattoos and what is classed as 'alternative' clothing. It is so important as these people need to be able to look at these artists and so that they are able to relate themselves to each artist and will take more of an interest in the magazine compared to if the artists didn't resemble the target audience. The target audience must be able to identify these characteristics. It was also really important that the article included information that the target audience would actually be bothered about reading, as there would be no point in writing about an artist or band if the information isn’t interesting or relevant. The colour palette I chose consisted of popular colours among this 'alternative' group, I thought this was important as my magazine needed to really appeal to this group. The lexis used in the article are colloquial expressions used by fans of the genre rock. They include: ‘Awesome’, ‘stoked’ etc. by using these it helps the target audience relate to the magazine.


  

I think that ‘The Bauer Media Group’ would be the best distributors for my rock magazine, as they operate in 15 countries, this would mean that my magazine would have worldwide distribution and I know that they have made other rock magazines, such as Kerrang! extremely successful, resulting in other media productions of these, such as radio stations and television music programmes. This media institute would distribute my magazine as they have knowledge on how to make rock magazines sell really well and already have rock fans buying magazines, which if the existing rock magazines stopped publishing, would buy my magazine.






 My magazine would be aimed at fans of the rock genre whose ages generally range between teens and early thirties although other people could enjoy the magazine. However usually as the artists or band members are often in this category, the ages of the people buying the magazine are similar. 

After creating my rock music magazine, I formed a questionnaire which I asked ten people who fit the target audience of the genre to fill in. 

A sample of the questions I included were:

-What is your favourite type of music?

-Do you buy music magazines, if so from which genre?

-What attracts you to music magazines?

-What aspects do you particularly like / dislike in my music magazine?

-What attracts you to my music magazine?

-How could it be improved?

Analysis of my questionnaire data

I asked five females and five males to fill out my questionnaire to make the results fair and I also asked for participants whom I didn't know personally to gain non-biased results. 

From the results of the questionnaires, I can see that 100% of the participants stated that their favourite music genre was rock, which makes the testing for my rock magazine's suitability for the target audience reliable. 

Only 50% said that they usually bought music magazines, all of which were from the genre of rock, however 90% stated that they would buy my music magazine if they saw it on display. The 40% increase means that my rock music magazine would be not only be appealing to existing rock music magazine buyers but would entice other rock fans to become music magazine purchasers aswell, this would mean that my music magazine would be successful.

Generally, from the results I can tell that the colour palette, visual effects and pictures were the main attractions for people to buy a music magazine and every answer stating what they liked the most included these, which is very positive as it means that my magazine is in-keeping with common conceptions. 

60% stated that minor details could be improved, for example: 'freebies' and competitions. If I was able to produce a full, complete music magazine these would be things that I would consider putting in, however seeing as I didn't I believe that on reflection I could have advertised these features on the cover / contents page.

I believe that carrying out this questionnaire has helped me to reflect further on my music magazine with the critical eye of a potential buyer. I am generally very pleased with the results that I recieved and have recieved constructive criticism on extra ideas that I could have considered.

When I first started Media Studies I found the Photoshop and InDesign packages very difficult to use, as I had never used them previously, however I now feel very confident in using Photoshop for tasks such as: editing photographs and creating effects (drop-shadows and paint splatters etc) I feel that by creating and working on my magazine that I have now mastered the basic tools as well as the harder techniques such as skin smoothing and replaces parts of an image, both of which I used in my photographs. I am now more knowledgeable in using InDesign to layer up the parts of my magazine pages, and I feel extremely confident in using tools such as: the ‘pen’ tool to add ‘anchorage’ points along a pictures edge to then alter the shapes of pictures, I create the layers efficiently and with good organisation of colours and names etc.

 Looking back to my preliminary task now after development of my skills and broadening of my knowledge, I realise that my skills have greatly improved over the course of my studies and I have a lot more knowledge of how the music magazine industry has to portray itself in particular ways to particular social groups. My skills were limited both knowledge and technology wise when I created my preliminary task of a school magazine, however since then I have learnt about target audiences and how to address them, composition of pages and how to create effective photographs that are relevant to the genre. I now feel confident about the magazine products that I have created whereas when I created my preliminary task I felt embarrassed that I wasn’t as skilled as some of my peers and confused at what and where to put magazine features on my magazine. Whereas now, I feel that I have learnt enough to create a professional looking magazine.