Moodboard

Dazed and confused (Dazed) analysis

Film Score Monthly Analysis

Initital ideas for music magazine

For my music magazine I would like to combine music and film in some way. One way could do this is creating a magazine about the artists whose music appears in films, so it would not have one specific genre but would focus on the artists from many genres, whose music appears in films.

Evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your student magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real magazines?

Before designing my student magazine I analysed the front cover of two student magazines, these magazines had many similar features. Common features of student magazines are mastheads, often relating to the genre of the magazine, a central image, usually including students and/or their interests, this helps the student audience relate to the magazine and wan to read it, and they usually involve give aways. Most student magazines have the same sort of theme, informing students, giving them advice and telling them about upcoming stuff.  In my student magazine, I tried to involve as many of the usual features of magazines, but I didn’t use them all because I didn’t want my magazine to get to crowded, which could make it quite confusing.  I wanted to relate my magazine to some sort of seasonal thing, which could attract more readers if the content interested them, and seeing as Halloween is just around the corner, I decided to base my central image and some of my articles on that, I also choose to add more of a theme to my magazine because I wanted it to stand out more from other student magazines already out there. 

Question 2: How does your student magazine represent particular social groups?

I chose my target audience to be college age students, so around 16- 18.  My images kind of represent the age of my target audience because the people in those images are of that age group. My central image does not so much represent my target audience as a whole, but more mixing students and my theme of Halloween.  For my target research I found that students aren’t willing to pay much for a student magazine, so I decided to make it as cheap as possible, and if it wasn’t a very big magazine I think anything for 50p or below would be good price, also if the magazine is basically free more students are more likely to read it, giving the magazine a bigger audience to influence.  My colour scheme for my magazine is quite dark but it does have bits of colour in it, this makes it less in your face and patronising.

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

I think my magazine would be produced an distributed in a college, because it’s for students in college, so would work best if it was sold in a college, because it would involve things to do in college, but also outside of it, I think most of the content would be inspired from student opinions.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your student magazine?

My target audience would probably be students between the ages of 16 and 18, because it is a college magazine. I think my target audience would be both boys and girls because it’s quite gender neutral. My audience would probably have to be interested in movies, music and things about college and life. 

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

I think my magazine could attract my target audience because my central image is pretty shocking, and not what you would normally see on a student magazine, so would make people look twice at what it is. I tried to make my fonts clearer to read by making them lighter that the darker background and making the font bigger. 

Question 6: what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the student magazine?

I used Indesign to design and create my student magazine, it was a little tricky and frustrating at first because I had never used it before, but after a while got the hang of it and I think that the skills I have learnt will help me in creating products for media in the future.