Indie Music Magazine \\ Evaluation
This is my final design for my indie music magazine.1) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my media product would focus obviously on the Indie social groups but more specifically at a unisex for the young adult market, ages between 16 to 25.
I feel a similar product would be 'INDIE' magazine as it on average target 25 years old and as the slogan says 'The independent style magazine' is it a magazine with it's own style and it looks more like a pieces of art rather then just a magazine - Which was waht I wanted to achieve with my magazine.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product is a music magazine called "Soft" that focuses on the indie genre of music.
Therefore, the magazine has to represent the social group of Indie artists in a particular way.
The photographs of a Indie artists have to show their lifestyle, independent and strong personally and that what I have tried to make all my pictures to look like. Therefore I have to consider, how a want to dress my models in a particular way, use specific props and thoroughly think about the choice of background was vital to meet the representation of my target audience; I think the choice of model gender is also important.
In my music magazine I have made up stories about different made up indie singer songwriters, which I have tries to make as indie as possible.
On my front cover, I have chosen to let my model blow a dandelion, which I think is very indie like and I personally love dandalions it it reminds me about the summer and of my childhood.
It is also rather then taking a picture of someone there this blowing some smoke from a cigar which is very common in indie (rock) images, so instead blow somtthing there are beautiful and
sensitive.
3) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I have chosen to do a Indie music magazine and have looked at similar magazines of the same genre.
The magazine "Indie," "Q" and "NME" all have the desired look I want to achieve. In my opinion "Q" and "NME" are both cult magazines and have a strong following. After researching the style formats of these magazines I have tried to incorporate these styles into my magazine com pined with my own style.
They are three very different music magazines and I like aspects of them all, I would say "indie" is very simple, crazy and colourful. "Q" is intense, raw and very black, white and red. "NME" is chaotic, serious and raw. All of them have charming qualities which I need to try and incorporate into my magazine.
On the front cover of my magazine I have used a large photograph, a traditional music magazine front cover, it is covering the whole magazine cover and it is a medium close up of the model.
I got the idea of taking this picture quite spontaneously I saw all these dandelions growing next to the grey/blue wall one day and got my brother to be my model and blow one of the dandelions. I feel that this styles is very much in the ideology of indie magazines.
The font that I have used on my magazine is didot, the font has basic shapes and its simplicity makes it strong but delicate.
The magazines I have looked at are all written with capital letters but I have chosen to use lowercase letters. In my opinion this helps with the soft feel I was looking for.
My masthead is yellow/orange I chose that colour because orange and blue is complementary colours, so it give more attention, this helps my font to stand out.
The masthead is placed in the left side of my magazine and cover's a bit of my models face, I was a bit unsure about this but it doesn't compromise the picture and helps the font settle well with the photograph. In the beginning I placed it in the right side above their his hands, but it was hard to see what was written because of the light colours.
My font colour of the main cover lines are very light grey, because I think that colour compliments the grey/blueish background of my music magazine.
I have tried to challenge traditional forms of the cult magazines of indie music, i am aware the magazine in itself is part of the style of indie music but i wanted to take that style and make it more delicate but beautiful. As if the magazine is a piece of art.
4) How did you attract/address your audience?
I think one of the things that helps is to make sure to get the audience attention is that it stands out from the other magazines of the same genre, to try to achieve that I have used strong pictures in my magazine, a easy front to read and good colours theme.
5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If I am lucky and my magazine is successful enough, it may would be distributed by a large media distribution company such as IPC media. IPC media owns many different magazines and one of them include NME, This institution published only one major rock/indie magazine and this is NME, which I have look a lot on.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
My learning is mainly focused on photography, the shooting and editing, but formatting and transferring knowledge of typical conventions of a magazine genre onto my own work in order to produce a high quality media product has also been noticeable personal achievement of mine.
I have always been very interesting in graphite design, but have never really had the opportunity to try it - it's been really nice to delve into this. As well as learning Photoshop and Scribus, which I have tried before but never really understood fully.
Now I finally got the opportunity to doing and try it, which have been lovely!
I can really see the different from the original image to the one I have edited on photoshop!
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt loads since I made the preliminary task, because then I stared this magazine I didn't know where to stared, had never done something like this before. I had to learnt all the functions on photoshop and study other magazine from the same genre before I fully understood how to do a magazine - but I think it turn out pretty good, I happy for how it end.
I think it is funny to see what I first achieved to what I ended up to
This is my front cover and content page from my preliminary task, it is far from good, it is terrible!
This Is my front cover, content page and double page spread from my indie magazine.
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