Presentation

I think my magazine looks professional and wouldn’t be surprised if a magazine just like mine would be sold on a shop shelf, this compared to a recent issue of Q magazine and NME which are two of the UK’s top-selling music magazines, they all look like they could be real magazines, the biggest difference is the photography where they can afford sets, props, and a professional photographer. Another one of the differences is that the Q magazine has a title of “The Killers” and NME has “The Last Shadow Puppets” and mine doesn’t have a title apart from the logo in the top left. I feel that my magazine has a good colour scheme that looks professional and smart. I decided to go for the smart look when I was researching into Q magazine.
The similarities are that all 3 magazines logos are in the top left, and all have other features going the down the left hand side of the page. They also don’t have that many people in the shots where here there is 1 or 2, not a whole band. They also all have a bar code near the bottom right corner.

With my preliminary task I approached it well I thought although now looking back on it, I feel I have done much better with my final music magazine, this is because my school magazine looks more like a newspaper with 5 images on it where my final magazine only has one image which after doing research is the norm for music magazines, this is why I feel that my magazine is much better than my preliminary task school magazine. I feel that my preliminary task I kept a very good colour scheme keeping 2 colours as my main colours and carried them onto the contents page as well, I also did this for my final task using black, blue and white, where my preliminary task colours were purple and white, for both tasks I was able to carry the scheme over to the contents page as well.
I feel the biggest difference between my two tasks now is that my main one is much more professional, the preliminary task was the first time I used Photoshop and designed a magazine and I think that that shows, I think that my magazine shows how far I have come with my research and my understanding of music magazines.

I felt that to get my magazine looking like a professional magazine that could be sold I had to my front cover almost perfect, so I devoted most of my time and research to front covers and contents and layouts of different front covers. I ended up spending about 6 hours of time on the front cover, this included lesson and free periods where I would play about and edit my front cover until I was 100% happy with how it looked. I intended to spend about 1 and a half hours on the contents because I knew what I was going to include in it and most of the content to put in, I ended up spending about 2/3 hours in lesson and free periods to get it the way I wanted it. With the A3 spread I wanted to spend less than 3 hours on because it shouldn’t be too hard because I knew about the layout I wanted. I spent about 3/4 hours on it which was mostly in lesson time.

To make my music magazine I had to use Photoshop, which I had not previously used before attempting my preliminary task, we had one of the ICT technicians show us how to do it originally and was then around for a few lessons if we had any questions, I feel that got to grips with the new software quickly and managed to do what I wanted without many problems.
I had a problem when I was trying to sort the picture that I wanted for my front cover out, I managed to get round the issue I had which was that the logo of my magazine was covering the lighting which gave the picture a good amount of colour and light. I did this by reversing the picture so the light was on the other side and the image was not effected a great deal.
I am much more confident using Photoshop now and feel that I can edit a picture well if I want to, I this could help me a lot next year if I continue to do media.

I feel my images are all very good with a good range of medium and long shots, I feel they offer a good variety in terms of lighting and are not all repeats. I also feel they look professional live photos. I think I have picked the best picture for my front cover as it has the best lighting and background with all band members in. I think all the locations are relevant because they all are taken during a live performance.

I feel that I have further had my style of professional and smart magazine with the language which I feel has good grammar and is not hard to read. I feel that because of this my audience will not get thrown off the magazine while reading it, and that it fits the genre well. In the course of my research I read and analysed the language used in the articles and tried to copy the style.

I feel that my magazine fills the gap between the genres of Q and NME with a more professional and smart look towards rock and indie music. This is why I feel that my magazine could be professionally sold in newsagents if it was a real magazine.

I would use Bauer to sell my magazine if it went on sale, this is because they have magazines such as Q and Kerrang so they obviously know how to produce a successful music magazine and what to do with it.

I feel that my audience for my magazine would be mainly males between the ages of 13 and 30 because of the rock genre and the colour scheme is more of a male colour with black and blue. This is only the main audience I also feel that the magazine could aim at mainly university students boys and girls.
I asked a few people about my age to assess my magazine and they said that it looked attractive and had a good colour scheme.

I feel that my smart colour scheme and background colour is a very good aspect of my magazine and would attract potential customers. I also feel that keeping the house style throughout is a huge plus. I feel that my magazines smart style of layout and writing can connect with university students because it is a lively genre of music but sophisticated magazine at the same time.
I also included a website that I mentioned on my A3 spread at the bottom right corner.

I feel that my magazine has shown me that with research and time and effort I can make a good looking magazine that isn’t far off professional standards. I feel that my photos helped me a great deal because they were live acts and I got some very good shots.
I feel that if I printed out the front page and put it on a shelf at a newsagents people who saw it would not recognise it’s not a professional magazine.