Feedback

In order to get feedback for my music magazine I chose to give a questionaire to 20 people who have had a chance to view and analyse my media publication. The majority of whom were part of my target audience, however I chose a few who were outside of the 16-25 year old male group in order to get some different opinions and get a feel of how broad the actual audience of my magazine is.

Above is the short questionaire I handed out. The questions were fairly basic yes/no answers regarding people's opinions, however I added a comment collumn and a blank section for written thoughts so as to get more qualitative data. Here are two examples of the feedback I recieved from my questionaire, one was positive, one was quite critical, they represent opposide ends of the spectrum of results that I recieved.

This was the most positive questionaire I revieved back. the person who completed it was an 18 year old male, which is part of my original target audience. This questionaire suggests to me that I made a successful publication which was appealing to the reader, conformed with magazine design, was pleasing to look at and, with a bit more editing would be ready for sale in the mainstream.

Above is a completed questionaire which is highly critical of my publication. It was filled out by a 40 year old woman, which is far outside my expected target audience so I did not particularly expect it to come back with positive feedback. The questionaire suggests that there is room for improvement in terms of image quality and layout. However she did state that she thought it was representitive of the genre and that it would most likely appeal to a younger male audience (which is what I was aiming for) but that it did not interest her.

Though I had varied responses to my publication, I found that 75% of the questionaires that were completed showed a majority of 'Yes' answers and positive feedback. From the 25% that were more critical I have drawn some conclusions:

In order to improve my magazine, I need to improve the quality of some of the images, possibly by taking them in better conditions, and learning more about Adobe Photoshop in order to edit them more thoroughly. I should also tidy up the front cover by blending the colours more effectively so I do not draw attention away from the main flash.

Evaluation of Finished Magazine

Above are the three finished pages of my media magazine, the front cover, contents, and double page article.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwZ6BI-TzDuuYjM4Y2RjMDAtNTkwYS00ZTgyLWJlNGMtMDU3ZTdjYjYzMDYy&hl=en

Above is the link to the general evaluation of my finished magazine.

Here are some comparissons between my finished publication and existing publications to show how my product uses and challenges the conventions of magazine design.

This is the masthead of my magazine contrasting with the masthead of a Kerrang! magazine which is an existing publication of my target genre. I used the same sizing of masthead in proportion to the rest of my cover as the Kerrang! magazine does because I thought any smaller would be not as noticible but any bigger would divert attention from the rest of the cover. I used a similar strapline above the masthead to advertise a give-away competition as I think it sparks the reader's interest as soon as they glance at the top of the magazine and would make them more likely to buy it. Instead having the name of my magazine in big lettering across the masthead, I decided I would make it a smaller and more recognizable logo, and instead draw attention to it by placing it at the center of a circular colour scheme. It creates the effect of a bullseye and implies that my magazine is at the dead center of the music business, hence the name CMS - Central Music Scene. I also put the date and issue no. in my masthead because I thought it looked tidy at the top of the page as opposed to the bottom, and is more noticible when trying to order a copy for example.

This is the editor's note from my magazine's contents page (top) and one from a Kerrang! magazine's contents page (below). I added an editor's note to my contents page because I think it introduces the magazine nicely, while giving some personal thoughts from the people behind the publication and making the reader feel on equal terms with them.I used the same colloquial writing style for my editor's note to give a feeling of personal connection between the reader and the editor.

Above is the center of my double page article (top) and the center of a double page article from an NME magazine, which is an existing publication from my genre. I used an image in the center of my article because it breaks up the text nicely and makes the page much more pleasing to look at. The image also reflects the article, additionally I laid out my article in the same collumnular format to make it appear like a newspaper publication, and give the implication of seriousness. Something I did differently to the NME article was that I did not use a large pull quote with my center image, only a caption. Instead I used two pull quotes on opposide corners of the article to break up the text more and summarize the collumn that they were in. I think this makes my article look better than the NME article because it is more spread out as opposed to being focussed entirely on the center of the page.

A couple of things I did that challenged the conventions of magazine design were my use of images. I only used one image for my front cover, which was for the main flash. Some magazines use more than one image on the cover for the main sells etc, but I decided that doing so would have drawn attention away from the main flash image, so chose to only have text-based main sells. I also only used two images in my contents page, unlike the copies of Kerrang! magazine that I had analysed that show around 8 images. I thought that having so many pictures in the contents page would have made it seem too cluttered, I wanted my contents page to be easily readable and navigatable.

Planning and Evaluation of the Article

Above is the double page article from NME magazine that I chose to analyse. The language and writing style that it uses is similar to what I want to create in in my own article. It uses extremely colloquial language and large sections of transcript in order to appeal to the reader by creating a personal tone. The language used is full of profanities which makes the text less formal but also reflects the anarchic element of the genre, and is something I will most likely do in my own article. The NME article is also quite humerous which is illustrated by the pull quote 'You've still got your hair in a bag? I'll fucking buy that off you!' which just sets the tone of the article really. All of these things are engaging to the reader because the informality creates the feeling that the article is more intimate and directly conversational with the reader themself. My own article will be very colloquial and informal also, but probably be more reminissant of an interview than an article because I think the more direct quotes from the band that are featured in the text, the more comfortable the reader will feel and the more they will get out of reading it.

I also used an article from NME magazine as a model for writing my own, which equally used a selection of colloquial language. It was a review about a live show containing the writer's opinions and comments from fans that went. I have decided I will use the personal tone adopted by the writer to make a connection with the reader, but I will still write an interview as opposed to an editorial-style article.

Above is the finished version of my double page article.

My finished article is an interview with three speakers, the CMS representitive asking questions, and the two band members answering them. I based the interview in my piece from a real interview I conducted to get a feeling of how people would answer the questions, and then typed it up in a more colloquial manner, trying to make the band members appear more care-free and fit in with the ideaology of rock/indie music to appeal to my target audience. I used profanity to emphasise the rock and roll attitudes of the band, and wrote it as if it were spoken, with phonetic spelling to imply their accents and make it seem more personal. I'm overall quite happy with my article, I feel that it looks like something you would expect to find in a real publication, and is both interesting, engaging to the reader, and amusing.

Edited Photos

These are the images I have used for my magazine, before (top) and after (bottom) they were edited on photoshop.







For this photograph I decided that the image was too dark, so I increased by the brightness by about 50%. After seeing how it would fit into the space on my front cover I also decided I needed to move the two models closer together, I did this with the lassoo tool to outline the model on the right and move him slightly so he overlapped. I think this also creates a sense of dimensions to the image, making it seem more 3d as opposed to just a flat image, which is something used on the cover of Kerrang magazine to make images appear closer to the reader and attract them to buy it. I also removed the background by again using the lassoo tool to highlight both models, crop them and put them on a white background. I did this because the green I had originally used did not fit with the red black and white theme of my magazine logo and front cover, and also the lack of a background highlights the image and makes it seem sharper. One thing that I was displeased was with this photo was that I had to crop the top part of the left-hand model's hair to make it fit and level properly, but this was only a small inconvenience and I managed to make it fairly un-noticable when I added the image to my front cover.

This image was taken with a few objects in the background that felt out of place for a rock band's living room, which was what I wanted to make the set look like. I used clone stamp to remove the desk, painting and beanbag from the image, adding more carpet and curtains to the right hand side of the image. Originally the curtains I had edited in looked too straight and tidy for the rock-theme so I decided to re-edit them and make them look a bit more torn and scruffy. I first used filter to add noise to the image in order to make it slightly grainy (see below image) in order to make it look more like the image used in the existing NME magazine double page article that I looked at, because I thought it gave the image a quieter and relaxed tone. But after putting the image into my publication I decided that the noise made the picture too distorted and the detail became unrecognizable. I then chose to re-edit the image without the filter, increasing the brightness to enhance the detail of the image, I also tidied up the edges using the blur tool and added some more shadows using the clone stamp to make the curtains look more three-dimensional. I ended up with the finished image (see above right) which I think fits very well into my publication.

For this photograph I cropped it slightly to make the model the focal point of the image. I also used clone stamp to remove extranious detail from the background such as the paintings on the wall, and the pattern on the chair fabric because I wanted the background to as neutral as possible. I considered making the background white but after trying it I decided it didn't look as good when put into my article, the coloured background of the image sets it apart from the white page of the article and makes the image seem more solid. Lastly I auto-coloured the image, increased the brightness and contrast and sharpened it slightly as well in order to make it an eye-catching center-piece for my article.

I edited this image quite a lot in order to make it look like an album cover to use in my contents page. I inverted the colours in order to give the image the black/blue look, I then smoothed out the background using the paintbrush in order to make it fully black. I chose to make the album cover black because it gives the idea of serious rock music. Many well-known rock bands have used black album covers such as Metallica, AC/DC and the scorpions. I also used the paintbrush to remove some of the highlighted areas of shadow from the models' clothing in order to make it seem more simplistic and tidy. I then used the clone stamp to take parts of the glowing edges and placed them around the outside to create detail for the cover to create a space-type theme. The name of the band is Trial By Crack and the Album is called Freebase, so I thought it would fit appropriately with the drug association to make the album look 'spaced out'. I also altered the hair and faces of the models slightly using clone brush and the blur tool in order to make them look more unkempt and distant.

Photos

These are the photos I took for my music magazine. I used different backgrounds, camera angles, camera distance, lighting, degree of eye contact, facial expression, and clothing to some degree in order to get a varied range of images for editing. I used models who are part of my target audience in order to familarise them with the magazine and appeal to them further.












I asked the model to play a song on guitar for this photograph because I wanted to introduce the band I had created as having a casual relationship with the audience. I didn't want the images to show them up on a stage or in some glamourous pose, I wanted them to appear like regular people interested in music just like the audience, which I felt would create a feeling of familiarity between the reader and the people in the photos.

I wasn't originally going to use this image because the model on the right smiled where I had wanted it to be a more seri0us pose, I considered cropping it and adjusting the image to incorporate only the model on the left, but eventually decided against it after spending some editing it and did not use this image in my final magazine.

Again I tried to give this photograph a personal feel by trying to show the members of the band in an everyday setting, I used props like the beer cans, whiskey bottles and guitar to try and show their 'rock and roll' attitude, theming with the rock/indie genre of my magazine. To further the familiarity of the image I took it from a higher angle so the reader would be looking down on the image, which creates a feeling of comfort and position of power. Making the reader feel at equal with the band members instead of just an insignificant fan. This is something I wanted for my magazine in general, to make it as appealing to the target audience as possible on a personal level.

I took this photograph against a bright background because I think it made for a more lively image. I had the models stand in profile back-to-back because I thought it gave a feeling of teamwork, that they had eachothers back. Which I thought was appropriate since the idea is that they're band-mates, I thought it would be appealing to see for the readers. I was originally going to use this image for my front cover but then I decided that eye-contact was essential to engage the reader and encourage them to buy the magazine, so I used this image elsewhere.

I took this photo for use on my front cover so so I had the models give complete eye contact, as is conventionally used on magazine front covers in order to give a sense of personality for the reader. I wanted them to have neautral poses without much facial expression to convey that my magazine is serious. I wasn't as happy with the photograph as I would have liked to have been though, due mostly to the lighting and shadow which I had assumed would come out better in the photograph.