After looking at how many different music magazines are laid out, I was then able to use some ways in the development of my front cover. Most music magazines had an artist, dominating the front cover and their sub-headings were short and precise. In my front cover I tried to use as little sub-headings as possible, so that the viewers main focus point would be on the artist and their story. Also, the fonts and the colour of the text had to suit the genre of the magazine; as my genre was rock (with elements of pop), my font had to be simple but colourful at the same time. However, the font of the title of my magazine was ‘edgy’ and ‘weird’ as this had to relate back to my main theme of rock! Other elements, which I had used in my front cover, included the ‘free inside…’ to help attract readers to buy the magazine and also other catchy story lines, which would make the readers want to find out more.

My music magazine, as a whole, represents the social groups consisting of both genders, who listen to rock music and also those who are interested in not so much heavy-metal rock, but rock with lighter beats. This included bands such as N.E.R.D. and McFly, and also artists such as Pink and Avril Lavigne. However, my front cover especially, represents more of the female rock gender, as it consists of lots of bright colours and the main artist, in the front cover, is a rock-chick!
My music magazine cover would most likely be distributed by the media institution of rock as the main genre of the magazine is about rock. It would mostly be advertised in certain music stations, such as ‘X fm’, who’s listeners are mainly the rock type. Also, my music magazine cover would be advertised on t.v, during certain music programmes such as ‘Hit 40 UK’. My music magazine would be sold across different newsagents throughout London and also readers would be able to subscribe to the magazine on the magazine’s website. This is because my magazine’s target audience are people of the age group 16-25, so they are most likely to have access to the internet. Also, the magazine was chosen to be at a reasonable price of £2.00, as most of our target audience consists of young people who are unemployed or living on low spending budgets.
The audience for my music magazine cover would mostly be females, aged 16-25,who listen to rock music and who idol artists such as Avril Lavigne and Pink. My audience could also consist of some males, also aged 16-25, who are interested in the world of rock.

I have learnt a lot about new technologies, throughout the course of the making of my music magazine front cover. I have learnt how to use different tools, in the programme Photoshop, to enable me to edit any photo in any format and in any way. This has helped me to create my music magazine front cover, as I was able to cut and crop my pictures to fit in the front cover. I used a lot of cropping and also text effects to help me to style my magazine, similar to previous rock magazines, which I hav researched to help me. I have also learnt that it takes a lot of work and dedication to finally create a music magazine front cover!
Lastly, if I was to make another music magazine front cover, I would spend a lot more time editing my magazine as I felt that I could have put more time into my work. I also felt that I could have slightly changed the background and I could have used a ‘rocky’ type background. This concludes my point in saying that I could have spent more time, which would have shown through the effort of work created!

Evaluation.

My magazine is called, 'ROCKAbeatz' which automatically shows a musical element. I used the basics of a magazine e.g. a head mast, captions, a primary image, offers, barcodes, prices, dates, issue number etc...
My issue is specifed on the rock; jazz/classical theme which is my speciality. I did some research on some jazz/classical magazines and took a few ideas from each and put them together to make my magazine. I thought of the 'sitting on Cello' look would make the theme stand out more.
The main photo is of the 'star' sitting on a Cello, which automatically you will notice since it's the main image on the cover, judging by that you will also straight away get the hint of it being a musical magazine. We based our magazine around the theme of Rock, we have: Jazz/Classical Rock, Indie Rock etc.. a wide variety of rock is used throughout our magazines. My magazine is on the theme of Jazz/Classical. We had many ideas in mind on how to make a classical instrument look like it is used for a rock theme. So I figured that if I had sat on my Cello rather than sit with it, this changes the image of the classical instrument. We also took this photo outside on the grass, rather than it being indoors on the floor, because this also creates a wide theme of rock in the outdoor world. My magazine features many musical themes which makes it seem more real magazine type.. e.g. "The world's worst rock band revealed!" this immediately makes the reader know that the magazine features music.
My magazine has a twist of rock and classical music, people who this magazine would represent are those who enjoy both rock and jazz/classical, who enjoy soft music with a beat. I chose to do this to help represent more than one social group, wider the variety the more this magazine would appeal to others.
My cover is aimed at those who enjoy listening to rock with a twist. The cover is aimed at any ages but preferably older teens to late 20s or early 30s, who enjoy classical music and rock. Also due to the price, only older teens+ would be able to dish out that kind of money for a magazine. My theme of a grassy open area reflects on the open and carefree world of rock. Rock has many forms as me and my group has shown. The clothing that im am wearing also represents the carefree matter, if i was to be playing in an orchestra you would not see me dressed like that. I would be suited up in black and white, the more formal wear. I used bold colours on my cover to draw the attention of the readers, I used a minimum amount of photos as possible to not drag the attention away from the text/captions, which are one ofo the main priority of the magazine.
My magazine has a yellow and green main theme as the two colour go together, this helps draw the attention of the readers to both my main photo and the heading.
What i have learnt is not to over crowd my cover because this becomes to busy for the eye to respond to, which causes the reader to not fully respond to what is going on, on the front cover.
I used a simply main photo and text which are bold over the green and short snappy captions to help the reader look at it and go, "wow! thats the magazine i'm looking for!" rather than, "oh, what? too much text. what's this magazine really about?". I've learnt how to use Photoshop in a more detailed manner, which is very useful for me and my photoshop works. Photoshop is used widely throughout the Media industry: Air-brushing, editing backgrounds, editing most stuff that can really be done to a photo to make you look 'good'. Cropping is also used a lot through editing because usually a photo of a person is taken then a photo of a setting is taken and merged together to make one photo, this becomes very handy to make the impossible, well... possible.
Creating something interesting is very important in the media industry, because creating something boring will draw no attention to it. I've now understood that over crowding a cover or not making the main photo interesting or relative to the theme will simply not gain any audience or appreciation.
What i would do differently next time will be to; retake my main photo at a different angle, because the image is making me look a bit 'fat' and slightly hunched over. Next time i would also change the colour as the whole green makes this magazine look abit like a gardening magazine.

music magazine evaluation

Media- Music Magazine Evaluation

I based my magazine cover around the generic features of real music magazines in order to promote a recognisable standard of professionalism. I noticed that magazines have stock features; a head mast, a primary image/ subject with a backdrop, captions, offers, and then the more compulsory factors; bar code, issue number, contact details and a date. As well as including the conventional features I also understood how each magazine issue would have its own unique design to it and would only share a select few traits throughout all the issues i.e. head mast font etc. and therefore developed my magazine front cover so it would have a uniqueness befitting the genre of music. The genre that the magazine would explore would be the vast genre rock. My issue would specifically explore the sub-genre indie-rock. In prompt to that I analysed the indie-rock world, including common colour schemes and graphics, and in accordance to that I chose a basic colour scheme that ran throughout the cover in order to uphold a substantial standard of professionalism. This colour scheme includes a regular occurrence of a light brown and black with hints of white. The light brown and black are the two dominant colours where as the white is only used to add a contrasting effect which is important in order to accentuate important information within a front cover.

In order to differentiate between my rock genre magazine with the conventional rock magazines, instead of trying to make it obviously distinct from popular magazine covers I had designed my cover so that it conveyed a significantly more subtle scheme. This, I believe reflects the nature of the indie-rock scene in comparison to the more heavy rock genres as indie rock has always been recognised for its more pleasant sound. However, the layout of my magazine cover was very traditional and did not oppose any substantial traits composed within other rock magazines such as; a large image (regardless if it is engaging or not), lively fonts in various angled positions and images that portray the including contents of the magazine.

One of the initial purposes of a music magazine is to successfully represent its target audience or social group. The social group I aimed at was of course people interested in the indie-rock scene; this is a massive audience, however, in any given music genre, there are stereotypes and coupled with these there are generic traits favoured by the audience. Such as the fashion; the subject wore a fedora styled hat; a shirt, waist-coat, and tie combination, jeans and converses. Although this may not be a main stream fashion style in the indie scene, it is still suitable for the music magazine none-the-less. I also understood that the background is relevant to the image that the magazine is trying to portray and can contribute greatly to the appeal of the magazine. Knowing this, I used a poetic backdrop in order to portray a more inventive and artistic feel, which, I found was a common factor throughout the targeted social group. This backdrop essentially was simply a single tree in favourable weather; bright sunshine, blue skies and white clouds.

What kind of media institute that might distribute my magazine would entirely depend on the contents of it; if it included insightful information on bands that expand beyond its own specific genre, then this could very well be distributed by online corporate companies. On the contrary, if it included miscellaneous information then it’s most profitable distributor would be high street shops. However, because I have designated the price to be £2.00, traditionally speaking, magazines at that price would usually sell in high street shops, unless of course the target audience had the option of ordering monthly instalments.

I had thought carefully as to who my audience would be. I deciphered that the majority of the indie scene were working class, carefree people aged 11- 30, however, the idea that only ages 11- 18 would still buy magazines at these process narrowed down my audience. Therefore, my target audience would be students ranging from secondary school to college; those in secondary school would not have a large budget to pay for luxuries, this justifies the reasonable price of my magazine. Also I previously described my audience as “carefree” which is the reason as to why I chose the backdrop; it portrays a calmer, “carefree” life which is relevant to the indie scene.
Not only must I have needed to know my audience, I had to know how to effectively entice them. I did so by effectively conveying the indie-rock style as I would not want to seem inexperienced and this would in turn insult my targeted audience and have an unproductive effect on my magazine. The colour scheme was familiar to the indie-rock scene with would make it easy for the audience to relate to, the subject image and backdrop conveyed an appropriate reflection of the indie world and the fonts along with the graphics were bold, engaging and respectful to the genre of music.

Throughout the production of this magazine I had learned an essential amount of the technologies that go into the production of any magazine and from that I can understand or estimate the technologies of the higher class magazines. I used Photoshop Elements in this production and came to terms with many useful tools and the effects they could build; airbrushing is a very popular device within the media industry, cropping can capture different angles and therefore manipulate the image the magazine wears. Also, I have learned a substantial amount concerning layout; how it is very important to try and balance the cover and how it is possible to manipulate the eye of the audience, leading their vision to where you wish. By doing so, the producer can keep the audiences eye focussed on one matter of the magazine whilst they can also present glimpses of other relevant or desirable information.

To give myself constructive criticism, I would say that if I were to redo this production I would have one large factor on my magazine cover that would contrast with the entirety of the cover whilst also in some elements relate to it. I would have a self-designed graphic occurring throughout the cover and a possible slogan. In regards to the subject, I believe I would use a more suited one, regarding fashion, composure and the general body shape. By altering these few factors I believe I would be able to build a more competent magazine cover.

Magazine Cover.

The final draft has been completed (09/10/08), the title has remained ROCKA Beats. I believe the subject image reflects the nature of indie rock as essentially it is just a more subtle form of the conventional rock genre. i used a specific colour scheme; a light brown with black, which i believe emphasises a more professional atmosphere. In order to reinforce this professional standard i also used a reoccurring font type called "crusher". However the only exception was the when i was naming the bands the magazine would include because i felt it would be more engaging for the audience if each band had its own font and when stating the mandatory information such as prices, contact details and deals.

the production of this magazine was a  process of trial and error, everytime i introduced an idea i sought to gain feedback from surrounding individuals, eventually i came to a final design that i was content with. 

Not finished.

For the past two lessons, i've started and also finish my magazine.

the initial idea was to create simple magazine, with the photo's we took on photo shoot day.

but i disliked those photos, so i took a few with Wing in the next lesson where i had brought my Cello into college. The sitting on the Cello look was my initial idea for my front cover, and i was very impressed with final results. I finalized my magazine by editing it for my liking.

We chose to have the same font mast head but different colours, to suit our theme.