2. 1) In what ways does your The colour scheme used in both “Top of the Pops”
and in “Pop it” are both girly and eye catching. I have
music magazine use, develop used 4 colours in my magazine to keep it simple but
not too dull, too much colours would clash and not
or challenge forms and look very aesthetically pleasing. For my colour scheme
I have used a light pink, white, black and red because
conventions of existing these colours are girly and youthful suited for my
target audience. This colour scheme is maintained
magazines? throughout my magazine. The graphic images used in
both magazines are also girly and feminine, hearts are
My music magazine follows typical forms and used a lot in the “Top of the Pops” magazine clearing
conventions of music magazines, as before I created indicating that the audience is young girls. The central
my magazine, I researched the conventions of a image used in “Top of the Pops” magazine is a
teenage pop magazine (Top of the Pops) and I have worldwide known boy band, One Direction, so to
discovered ways to attract my target audience with make my target audience want to buy my magazine I
the various uses of images, language, colour, font have used a celebrity (that I have made up) that they
sizes/styles and graphic images. Like the “Top of the might want to read about.
Pops” magazine, I have used a central image of the
main artist to grab the reader’s interest. The artist
has a direct mode of address looking and smiling
directly at the audience to grab their attention.
Existing magazines also use buzz words, I have
included some in my own magazine “Exclusive”,
“Win” and “Free” to engage my target audience.
I also altered the language in throughout the whole
of my magazine to suit my target audience (of 12-16
year old girls) using colloquial words and phrases
such as “Celebs”, “Cheeky Chaps” and “erm...” This
type of language is light-hearted and is more
informal and friendly than formal.
3. For my contents page I have also followed the forms
and conventions of teenage pop magazines. I have a
title, clear subtitles and text to add more information
about the pages, and the pages are all music themed I
have pages on upcoming gigs, album reviews and
celebs and gossip. I have also included a message from
the editor and a subscription which is usually found in
music magazines. On the contents page, I have six
subtitles all in columns so it’s clear and easy to find
specific pages each labelled with clear page numbers
in red so it’s understandable and user friendly.
I have followed the usual structure of a double page
spread/article with having an image first then a part of the
article running through two pages with smaller images seen
throughout then ending with another image. The article also
has enlarged quotes in it to draw the audience’s attention
towards the article. The page numbers are all in the right
places along with the name of the magazine with it being
placed on the bottom left hand side of the page when the
page is the left page in the magazine, and with the page
number being placed on the bottom right hand side
of the page when the page is the right page in the magazine. The page numbers also correctly ascend as the pages start
and end. The Top of the Pops article has a lot of graphic features of hearts, for my magazine I have used a graphic feature
of a kiss stain, almost as if the model is blowing a kiss at the audience as a valediction. In my article I have integrated
images and texts, on the third page of my article; I have placed four images as imitating small Polaroid pictures that have
been scattered across the page in between the text. I have done this so my article looks more fun and not so plain.
4. 2) How does your music
magazine represent particular
social groups?
My target audience are 12-16 year old girls who listen to mainstream pop
music that’s why I have chosen a teenage pop star on my front cover and my
article so the target audience would read it and be able to relate to the artist
as they are close in age. The artist is presented as girly, youthful and fun
loving. The images on the article show her using making gestures like
pretending to be shocked with both hands at the side of her face and
blowing a kiss, this shows that the artist is playful and isn’t so serious. The
anchorage text “Zayn’s like my big brother!” is also directed at young girls
who are interested in pop stars as girls are more interested in reading about
relationships and especially when it involves another celebrity, girls are more
drawn towards gossip and finding out what’s behind it while boys wouldn’t
be as interested as girls.
The artist is also dressed in a particular way to represent the type of
girls that would be reading my magazine, she is wearing different
dresses (white, floral and black) and the way she is posed nothing too
serious. The article itself is about the artist being lucky starting out as
a normal girl (just like many of the readers) finding her way to
stardom. The target audience would be able to relate to her and may
want to follow in her footsteps; she is presented to be a role model to
these young teenage girls. Her story is similar as to x-factor
contestants, they start off as an average person then they make it big,
just like the Little Mix girls that won X-factor 2011.
5. 3) What kind of media
institution might distribute
your media product and why?
I have chosen Immediate Media to publish my magazine; Immediate Media also publish
magazines for the BBC so they will have some experience.
The Immediate Media Company also has a wide range of audience especially different
age ranges such as Cbeebies, Charlie and Lola and BBC Top Gear.
Although they publish magazines for older audience and very young audiences, they
only publish Top of the Pops for a teenage audience, so my magazine will fill a gap in
their market.
6. 4) Who would be the audience
for your music magazine?
My primary target audience is teenage girls roughly around the age of 12-16 because females
typically enjoy pop music and catchy songs about love and relationships that they can relate
to. The audience will be young and easily influenced so that’s why I have made the artist to be
a positive role model for them. The teenage girls, would more likely to buy up to date catchy
singles rather than albums and they would be attracted to young pop star boys like one
direction and Justin Bieber. Their role models would be famous girls such as Taylor Swift and
Katy Perry. I am not targeting at any particular race or ethnicity as there are people of all
different races in my images I am not directing it at any certain race/ethnicity. The target
audience’s interests would be in celebrities, music, their friends, boys and relationships.
7. 5) How did you
attract/address your
audience?
From my initial survey I devised before I
planned my magazine, I discovered that my
audience (young teenage girls) mainly only
heard of “Top of the Pops” magazine, so for
my research I analysed the cover, contents
and an article from “Top of the Pops”
magazine. to see what and why my
audience enjoy it. I decided to make a Pop
magazine because my survey results show
that my target audience listen to Pop the
most, out of the other genres. For my
double page spread I decided to do an
interview as they are easy to read and that
is suitable for my audience.
8. To attract my audience, my front cover has girly colours, images of One Direction and the
main article is of someone that they would look up to and see as their role model. I have
also included buzz words like “Win” and “Exclusive” to draw them in. I have also used
colloquial language in throughout my article like “cheers”, “OMG”, “cheeky chaps” and
“cos”. I have done this to make the audience feel comfortable and make them feel like
they are talking with a friend rather than talking with someone more superior to them.
The images I have used are all fun and carefree rather than straight and serious poses.
This also makes the audience feel more comfortable. Overall I have made my magazine
look feminine, so my target audience would instantly be attracted to the cover.
9. 6) What have you learnt about
technologies from the process
of constructing the product?
From making my magazine I have gained
many skills because I created the magazine
pages on Adobe Illustrator, I have learnt to
put my all my images and text together along I used a digital camera to take all my images, the
with adding coloured boxes and camera has various lighting settings so I was able test
experimenting with a range styles of text and them out and use the ones which suited my magazine.
colours. I had prior knowledge on using The camera also had different zoom settings as well so
Adobe Photoshop (rubbing out a background I was able to get many shots out of one position of my
or selecting and deleting parts of an image) model (longshot, midshot and a closeup). I also took
but I have now learnt how to change the images at different angles and positions varying my
exposure of an image, and I was able to choices of images to use for my magazine.
experiment with an images contrast/exposure To present all of my work I created a blog using
to see what looked best for my images. I have Blogger. I have learnt to upload my work, edit the
also learnt to blur out parts of an image to texts, add images and links to surveys. I also had to
make it look more pleasing plus I have learnt organise my posts to make it easy to access.
how to use the brush tool to create a shadow To have audience feedback, I created surveys, using
effect for one of my images. SurveyMonkey. This enabled me to devise several
surveys without any difficulty. SurveyMonkey is user
friendly and is easy to use for the audience taking my
survey.
10. Here I have used Photoshop to edit these images to make them look
more appealing and suitable for a magazine. As you can see in the
first image, I have changed the brightness and contrast making the
image more interesting, and I have also blurred out the background
to make the people stand out more. For the second image, using
the help of Photoshop, I was able to place my original image on to a
background that I found on the internet to make the image look
more realistic as they are suppose to be celebrities.
To share this PowerPoint, I have used a website called SlideShare
which allows users to upload, present and share their PowerPoint
without any complications. It was easy to use, and the slideshow
was presented nicely.
11. 7) What do you feel you have My layout of my contents page has also
improved my final magazine contents page
learnt in the progression from looks a lot more exciting and professional.
the preliminary task to the full While making my preliminary contents page I
didn’t think about the amount of pages I had to
product? include, and from my survey the audience
wanted to see more pages, so therefore, my
Looking back at my preliminary cover
final contents pages had a lot more pages to it.
magazine, I did not know how to manipulate
My preliminary contents page is quite plane
images and I did not edit any of my images I
and boring while my final contents page had a
just simply cropped them and put text over
lot more colour and images.
them. For my magazine, I edited all the images
used to make them look better I have
smoothed the images, sharpened them, and
brightened them. This made my images look
more professional. After researching and
analysing other music magazines, I learnt that
I can add banners on my front cover, graphic
features and other images on it along with my
central image.
12. Audience
feedback
From this result, the audience was able to
recognize what the genre of my magazine
was, all of the participants answered
correctly. From this, I have gathered that the
genre of my magazine was very apparent
throughout my magazine.
This question asked who do you think the target
audience is, and from the results the audience was
able to identify my target audience of my
magazine (teenage girls who enjoy pop music) this
suggests that the colour scheme, images used, and
the article are easily identified as youthful and
girly.
13. Here I have asked the audience to
rate out of 10 (with 1 being the
lowest and 10 being the highest) how
realistic they thought my magazine
looked.
The answers ranged from 7-10
showing that my magazine looks
somewhat realistic . The majority of
the vote lands on 9 suggesting that
my magazine doesn’t look 100% like a
real magazine, but close enough.
Some of the written responses say
that my magazine looks real, more so
the article and the contents pages.
Other written responses say that my
magazine looks real due to the colour
scheme being consistent throughout
my magazine pages and has all the
typical magazine conventions.
