Final Front Cover

This is my final front cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

Evaluation: Question 1

Evaluation: Question 2

Evaluation: Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I had to consider who and how I would distribute my magazine through, this is extremely important in reaching the appropriate audience for my magazine. I researched two main distributors to the UK and compared them to conclude which would be more appropriate for my magazine. 

Bauer Media

Europe's largest publishing group which distributes over 300 different magazines in 15 countries. In the UK Bauer Media reaches 22 million consumers every week, showing Bauer media has a mass audience which when distributing my magazine is a main factor I would seek in a distributor. Bauer Media was founded in 1875 showing the amount of experience in publishing the company has and how successful they have been as they have got to the top of the publishing market and stayed there. They distribute magazines like MoJo and Kerrang! They also have multi-media platforms and own radio labels like Kiss and Absolute Radio. This would be useful for my magazine as promotion could be made through these as well.

TimeIncUk (Was IPC)

Another distributor I have considered is TimeIncUK (formerly IPC) they are a digital and magazine publisher with a big portfolio selling over 350 million copies a year. Founded 1968, they do not have as much experience as Bauer Media but in the time since they was founded they have global portfolio of websites reaching 25 million users a month. Although they distribute magazines like NME and Uncut which are similar genres to my magazine this is why I think Bauer Media after reviewing both of the distributors would be more appropriate as a means of distributing.

Digital Distribution

In order to fully expand the possibility for gaining audience for my magazine I would also digitally distribute my magazine. This would be done online through a subscription method I could also do this through the use of apps which would allow people to have the magazine on their phones and tablets, this encourages the portability of the magazine as convergence has greatly affected the way we consume media products like magazines.

Physical Distribution

I would also look at physical distribution across stores. Ideally a large store would be good for distribution like ASDA or Tesco which have many stores across the UK. This would allow my magazine to reach people all over the UK, paired with online distribution the physical distribution would work well together as some people may not look online for magazines and the same as some people may not like physical copies and find it easier to buy magazines online. Big chain supermarkets are my best choice for selling physical copies as they are now a main supplier of magazines whereas in the past there was specific magazine shops but now these have decreased and magazines are more commonly sold in supermarkets. 

Evaluation: Question 4

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product? 
When deciding on my genre I went for indie pop-rock which I felt there is a market for as it is becoming a increasingly popular genre which many artists come under. The aim of my magazine would be to provide the best information on all things relating to indie pop/rock music. I myself would be interested in buying a magazine like this therefore feel I had the required knowledge on what content would be appropriate to include. As I discuss later I also used a focus group to consolidate my ideas and get a general opinion on what my target audience would like to see included so it was not just solely artists and information I was interested in. I decided to target my magazine at the age category of 17-30. Aiming my magazine at young adults and university students. This is including students and people who will have careers. These will be the most likely demographic category to purchase my magazine as it mostly appeals to them. To create an idea of my audience I researched existing magazines reader profiles who are similar to mine. NME is an example of this, their average reader is 25 years old and they target ages 17-30 particularly men. I found ages over this particularly 40 + did not commonly read NME therefore did not target this age group. I did not make my magazine gender specific as want to keep the possible audience as open as I could. However I did try and focus choices towards the age group of 17-30.
To help me gather opinions on key information points for my magazine I carried out a focus group with 3 people who are around the age of my target audience and asked for their opinions on certain areas. I got to ask what their opinions were on things like the name and what artists they’d like to see featured. To get other opinions on an indie pop/rock magazine I produced an online survey, this helped me see age groups opinions on what genres they’d most like to see in a magazine and their opinion of an indie pop/rock magazine.
The pricing of my magazine was a similar price to NME’s weekly magazine of £2.50-£2.70 price. My magazine is a bi-monthly magazine priced at £2.22 which I felt is a fair price when aiming it at students and young adults. The social class of my magazine would be in the E, D and B band as they are mostly students and adults which are just starting their careers. This is why the pricing of my magazine is low and it is not a weekly magazine so that readers do not feel tied in to buying it every week. Twice a month allows the cost to be spread with a break between the spending of the customer. As a student myself, I could relate to this as a weekly magazine would be too much of a financial commitment. 
I had to consider how my magazine was going to appeal to the target audience I had set. One way I did this was through the use of the costume on the model which after creating my moodboard for outfit ideas found this colour scheme and style of clothing was related to an indie pop/rock look. As shown below when googling 'indie pop/rock clothing' the search results show overall darker clothing with baggy cardigans and tops being a main feature, therefore the fact my model wore a baggy maroon cardigan is showing how I attempted to reach out and create the right ideology for indie pop/rock with my magazine. 

My model was also a young female which might sway my magazine to appeal to more females then males. Reflecting on my magazine it may have been advantageous to add more content on the front page to appeal to more which if I was creating my magazine again I would take into consideration. 

Evaluation: Question 5

Evaluation: Question 6

Evaluation: Question 6 Photoshop Process

Alterations Made After Feedback

Evaluation: Question 7

Reviewing my prelimary task and evaluating how I have developed my skills and knowledge throughout the project to achieve my final successful product. 

When viewing my prelimary task I feel like my skills to compile a magazine have improved a lot. Firstly I think the music magazine looks a lot more professional and follows the conventions more for a magazine then the college one does. The masthead was not conventional for a magazine as it had a blue background square and border, normally they do not have this. Similarly the feature stories have a background behind the text, I did this because the background was too patterned therefore the text was not clear, but by adding a background this made the magazine not look professional and I think it also made the cover look more cluttered. I took this into consideration when taking my pictures for the front cover, which is why I chose a plain white background, this then made it easy to change colour on Photoshop as her dark clothing stood out from the background. In my first draft I did change the colour of the background but after receiving feedback I kept it white but made the colour stronger as the white background I used from the lighting had a yellow tinge. The placement of the barcode was also not conventional in my college magazine therefore when doing my music magazine I made the barcode smaller and put it at a vertical angle. This made it more realistic to real magazines and was a way I have improved. The placement of the stories on the prelimary task also covered the models up and distracted from the picture, therefore when framing my front cover image I made sure it was a medium-close up which in editing I could then write stories around without interfering too much with the model. I also found that the use of the main story in my college magazine was not clear enough with the main story not clearly been shown to relate to the image. Therefore when doing my music magazine I made sure ‘Delfina’ was in a large font which shows that this is the main story and we can clearly see that the model is called ‘Delfina’.  I have also experimented with more styles of writing in my music magazine by using italic style, bold and changing the colours of different parts in a story this allowed a more professional look and showed more variety in my skills.  I think overall my skills are shown to have significantly improved between my prelimarly task and the main task, this can be shown in the more realistic look the music magazine has and I am really happy with the outcome of this whereas I found I could quite heavily now criticize my college magazine.
Throughout the process of starting the project I found my knowledge and skills have significantly expanded in the following areas: 

Research:
- Learning to compose a LIIAR analysis was part of my planning to effectively look at the way other magazines have successfully reflected their genre and appealed to the audience
- Creating moodboards to collect together an ideology of how my magazine is going to represent my genre through the use of hair, makeup, clothing, possible positions and props. 
- Creating a reader profile which allowed me to decide on my target audience and researching current reader profiles for similar products. Also researching demographics which added to creating my target audience.
- Researching behind the scene shoots of artists who are part of my genre to gather a feel for how production teams conduct photoshoots to achieve successful images. 
- I also looked into the charts and highlighted how many of the songs featured in them are part of my genre to represent the popularity of my genre. 

Terminology:
- Learning and understanding new terminology was an important part to fully understand the magazine industry and what features in the creating of a magazine
- Ideology
- Masthead
- Skyline
- Plug
- Reader profile
- Demographics 

Composition:
- Developing an idea of what was an effective layout for my magazine was vital to creating a professional looking magazine, I did this by creating hand-drawn drafts and then creating digital drafts of these. From physically drawn to digital the drafts changed as once on the computer I found I changed my mind about certain original ideas. Which when creating my final product I found a lot of the layout placement was based on the image and fitting text appropriately around the main image. Which links to image placement and the sizings of images as this was important especially when producing the contents page. The images used on the contents page are smaller than the main image used on the front cover, this is because it includes more images and more information on therefore the placement and size of the images on the contents page took more thought as some images I wanted to stand out more than others.
- The colours used in my magazine did change as I re-drafted my magazine but I felt I learnt throughout doing this what colours worked best and stood out yet still kept the genre of my magazine. 
- Deciding on text font to work with my genre was something I had to tackle, my main aim was to make sure it was clear and read-able therefore I did opt for simpler fonts but believe this was the correct choice as I am happy with the final choices on text font. 
- I had to also decide on what conventions I was going to keep for my magazine and which ones I would leave out. Conventions like the masthead and main images are compulsory for magazines but others like footers, taglines and plugs are not essential and therefore I did decide to leave some of these conventions out which I justified my choices for this in my evaluation.

Photography:
- To take the images I used a DSLR camera. Luckily I have my own which I was quite new to using but had grasped the basics when it came to the photoshoot of my magazine. I did not just have to rely on the camera to produce a successful set of images but also had to set up lighting in the studio. I used three-point lighting which consists of the Key Light (Primary light source), Fill Light (Second light source) and Back Light (Separation light) these work together to create the right conditions for taking an image in artificial light. The key light acts as the main source of light to directly shine onto the model, the fill light acts as a secondary light source to add to this and the back light creates a separation between the model and the background so there is some depth of field to the image. 
- I also learnt about shot types which were useful to develop my knowledge of cinematography and also I could recognise the commonly used shots in music magazines so therefore I was prepared with what shots I would need to take in order to create a professional looking magazine. 
- Shot types also fits in with learning the framing of images as how I framed my image effected what kind of shot I had. I used a medium long-shot for my main image which allows the model to be viewed from the waist upwards so the audience can see her emotion but also get a sense of the fashion she is wearing which reflects the genre. 

PhotoShop:
- This software was a key part to editing and composing my image therefore I significantly developed my skills in this area. 
- I learnt different tools such as: 
      - Lasso tool
      - Magnetic lasso tool
      - Adding text and re-colour, re-sizing and moving it
      - Creating different layers 
      - Locking layers to prevent any further editing to this layer 
      - Levels to balance out the image
      - Brush tool
      - Highlighter tool
      - Eraser
      - Brightness/contrast levels
- These were all really useful for making my image as although complicated and sometimes frustrating to get to grips with through learning the different tools and ways of editing the image they allowed me to edit the image in ways I did not previously have any idea how to do. 

Feedback on first draft of the front cover

Feedback: Click Here

First Front Cover Draft

This is my first draft of my front cover. I personally liked the look of my magazine and think the layout of the magazine is a conventional layout. Although I think the pale pink perhaps does not stand out as much as it could and the grey background blends in with the models top meaning that she does not stand out as much as she would if it was another colour. I think this gives my magazine a 'dull' appearance which I am not happy with because I feel a brighter magazine would appeal more to the audience. This is what I will think about when creating my next draft.