Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Cover Evaluation

The music magazine that I have created does challenge forms and conventions of real music magazines due to the bold fonts, the words, colours and the picture. This can give the reader a hint that it’s a hip-hop and RnB magazine. Compared to other leading magazines it is similar because of the different colours in the fonts. I used the colours yellow for the general information. And the colour white for words that I wanted to stand out. For example the main heading, ‘Switch’ and other words like ‘Beyonce’ and competitions.

I also included the website so that readers could always get the latest information as the magazine is only a monthly issue. I also included two free latest CDs so that more readers would be persuaded to purchase the magazine. I priced the magazine at £1.99 because I feel this is the appropriate price for a young girl to afford. My magazine cover also has its own logo of an arrow next to the heading so that readers will automatically know what magazine it is as this would be our signature logo. Therefore in this way it has a convention of a real magazine.

My music magazine cover can represent certain social groups due to colours, the background and the young girl. This can represent teenagers and the reader can therefore relate to them. I included female artists so that it relates to the genre of the magazine. As it is targeted at females, I thought it would be good to have interviews with female artist, as this would attract the audience.

I would like my music magazine to be distributed to media institutions like Emap, they will help be with ideas and headlines and therefore this will sell more magazines.

My target audience for the magazine will be young female teenagers/adults. I will attract the audience through interviews and latest news from artists. For example, winning VIP concert tickets. I will also attract my audience through the bold colours and the use of language, for the readers to understand.

I have learnt many technologies from the process of constructing this magazine front cover. I learnt how to use Apple Macs because I have never used it before including using Photoshop and learning hints/tricks to emphasize the picture and how different layouts can make the magazine cover better.

Before I constructed my magazine cover I made a small questionnaire so that I could find out what my target audience wanted and expected. From the questionnaire I found out that my readers mainly liked the colours yellow, white and blue and this is why these were the main colours of my cover.

One of my questions in the questionnaire was what kind of music do you mostly listen to?
I found out that people mainly like RnB and hip-hop music and this is why I chose this genre for my magazine. I also found out what kind of cover lines people would be interested in, people mainly wanted to hear about interviews with artists, what’s hot in the charts and if there was any competition for fans to meet their idol. Based on these reasons, I these were my main cover lines.

If I were to make another cover, I would take much more pictures so that I have more of a variety and most likely have a better picture. I would also have more props in the picture to make it more abstract. Before doing the photo shoot I would have done more planning, this includes doing more background research and looking at other genres and seeing which one I would be best at.

By Shahida Choudhury