Magazine front cover contents analysis

Music Magazines Within My Genre

I have looked at the covers of, Top of the Pops, Mizz, Bliss and Billboard. All of the magazine covers have included the use of bright colours, the use of bright colours helps it look appealing. They have stuck to a basic  use of 2 colours in their colour sceme. They all look very busy with the conventions regularly overlapping. Many have used secondary images which are to do with the other feature stories included in the magazine. All the magazine covers have bright mastheads that stand out well from the backgrounds placed in large letters across the top. They have all done the title for the main feature story in large letters to show that it’s the most important, they all have pull quotes in the main feature story, all the main feature stories also link to the main image which is always placed in the middle of the magazine with the feature stories etc. surrounding them. All have a bar code and price and a skyline is included in some but not all of the example magazine covers, the mizz magazine skyline shows who the magazine is targeted at as it says ‘girls mag’ in it.

Somewhere on the contents page they all include the masthead from the front cover, it is usually small and placed in the top corner however the Top of the Pops magazine puts its masthead on the contents page by placing the magazine cover on it I think that this is a good idea because you can easily show which feature stories that were on the cover are on which page but i don't like it as i think that it makes it look quite rushed and badly presented. They all have photographs of what is going to be in some of the different features with page numbers of whats going to be in each.

In all of the double spread pages they show what the article is going to be about by putting a large picture of the artist/band that is being featured somewhere on the page. They place the story line for each particular article in bright, large letters so that it will be the first thing a reader will notice when first visiting this page. Most of the magazines have the name of the artist/band placed in the corner of the magazine. All double spread pages have secondary photographs as well as the main larger image.

My Music Magazine Genre.

       For my music magazine I have chosen Pop as my music genre. Pop music is a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular, it is a genre of popular music. It originated from in the 1950's, deriving from rock and roll. It is a genre of music that is aimed at the widest audience so this means pop sells the most copies, draws the largest concert audiences and is played most on the radio.

       Some examples of existing pop artists are Rihanna, Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, One Direction and Rita Ora.

       Although pop music is a wide variety of different music it is usually quite upbeat. Many pop artists look very fake in photographs, usually wearing alot of make up, they wear very bright and revealing clothing and usually pose rather seductively.Pop artists look optimistically happy all the time.

Pop music mood boards:

Evaluation.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Music magazine brief.

Main task: the front page contents page and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, produced by you - minimum of four images.

Evaluation.

What have you learnt from completing this task?

From doing this task I have learnt all the different camera angles such as medium and extreme close up two shot and high angle, I also learnt how to frame an image correctly. I have also learnt to use Photoshop properly, I learnt this when doing the introduction to Photoshop task. I learnt how to cut things out using the polygonal tool and that I need to increase the feather pixel when curing out something like hair or fur on an animal. I have learnt all of the conventions that are commonly used on magazine covers and their correct names are, for example I learned that the title on a magazine is called a masthead. I learned what all the conventions are called and why they are used. From doing the semiotics task I learnt that semiotics is the way we look at signifies in a text to create meaning and use them to figure out what a text means. I learnt how to deconstruct a yet and what all the terminology is. When doing the semiotics task I also learnt how to analyse a poster, I did this by analyzing a poster for pirates in the Caribbean. I have learnt to create and run a blog on blogger. However the main thing I have learnt from this task is how to stick to a deadline. 

How have you used technology?

I have use technology for a wide variety of things when doing this task. One piece of technology I used was Photoshop, I used this to create my magazine front cover, I did this on the Apple Macs and computers. To take photographs for the camera angles and framing task I used my Iphone, however to take the actual photos for my front cover I used an Olympus camera because they have a higher pixel quality and it would be too blurry if I took them on my phone, in the camera I used an eight GB sd card to store my photographs on. I used the internet for research, such as for finding magazine covers to analyse the conventions and researching/getting pictures for our mood boards. Another piece of technology that I used was PowerPoint, I used PowerPoint to create my digital drafts and to analyse magazine covers, I had to save these as JPEGS so that I could upload them to my blog.  To store all of my work I used a memory stick which was put into the computer in the USB slot. 

What conventions have you used and why? 

One of the conventions I used was a masthead, I used this because mastheads are on most if not all magazine covers so it was a necessity to put it on. Another convention I used was a pull quote, I used a pull quote to show what was in one of the feature stories and to interest the reader and make them want to read it. I used a skyline to give the reader an insight into the magazine, I kept this short and snappy so that it would be interesting and intriguing to the reader. I also used a main image, I used a main image because it's an expectation from the public for there to be a main image. I used feature stories, I used feature stories because they are on most magazine covers and they show the reader a little bit of what is in the magazine but I also used a main feature story, I did the main feature story about discounts as that will appeal to most if not all students. On my digital draft I place a footer at the bottom however on my actual magazine cover I didn't use one, this was because it wouldn't look right over the main image as she was wearing a black top and the righting would be black. I could have solved this problem by placing a whit box behind the text but I didn't because I thought it would kind of clash with the rest of the magazine because the other writing don't have boxes over them. 

What would you change if you were going to do this task again?

If I was to do this task again I would only use the computers as I found it very difficult and confusing to use pPhotoshop on the macs. If I was to do this task again but I had more time to do it I would play around with the mastheads colour, font and size more until I found a masthead that looked better than the one I have on this one does as I didn't really experiment with the masthead this time. Another thing I would do differently if I was to do it again is that I would take the photographs in a brighter area with better lighting so they wouldn't go as grainy, I would also take the picture with a better background so that I didn't need to cut around them again. I would also give my magazine a theme such as sports or performing arts, I would do this to make it more interesting and also to appeal to a more precise audience rather than just appealing to everyone. If I was to do this task again I would make it with a better looking, more professional looking colour scheme. I would also take a wider range of photographs so I would have more to choose from when picking the one which will actually go on my front cover. Another thing I would change if I was to do it again would be to find a way to put a footer on the magazine cover. 

Draft cover and contents page.

Cover photo:

Draft contents page.