Evaluation

The audience of "Amped" would be young individuals with the age ranging from 13-20 who love Indie music and Rock.
I would also aim my magazine to introduce new and upcoming artists, for instance Vagabond who I have done my double page spread about and I basically based the magazine on them. This would help give them become more well known and give them more of a boost into the music industry. This would incourage my audience to also not listen to just artists in the charts but bands that are not well known and are less successful as they still have talent and this would give these less establised artists a boost as they are popluar.

My magazine does conform to magazine conventions with the barcode and price information being included. The text is layed out similarly to other music magazines as it involves a large title at the top of the front cover with the images having a higher proportion of image to text. The magazine does use magazine conventions so that it is recognised as a magazine and then to make my magazine look like a music magazine my photography on the front cover involves the lead singer of Vagabond singing whilst playing a guitar.
Banners are used on my front cover which are used as a promotional tool mainly for competitions and free give-aways, for example on my front cover I advertise a free HMV voucher. I chose this to encourage the reader/buyer to use this voucher and not download illegally which is a major problem in the music industry today.

The colour scheme ended up being black, white, red, blue and yellow. The black was chosen as it is quite conventional for a indie/rock magazine, the white then contrasts with this. I thought that the black and red worked against each other well and then the yellow came from the guitar which was in my picture on my front cover. On the other hand in comparison to this my preliminary task of producing a school magazine included very feminine colours as I was aiming to attract an all-girl audience as I go to an all-girl school with the ages ranging from 15-18 (GCSE level and A Level)
The background image on my front cover is very different and I think unique as Vagabond are not a well establised band and therefore the lead singer who I used on my front cover is not very well known. This will attract people that are looking for new music as some may not recognise him. Even though I focused on one band for my photo on the front cover I used a range of artists as to cover a wider audience, with artists like, Kings of Leon, Florence and the Machine, James Morrison, The King Blues and Vagabond.

I believe I have learnt more about technologies by completing this coursework as I had very little knowledge previously on how to use Photoshop to edit my images but I now feel more confident when using this programme. Additionally I had never made my own blog before and at first found it quite difficult to set it all up and start writing, but once I started I soon got the hang of it and actually found it quite rewarding.

Since the preliminary task I feel I have become a lot more confident especially with the use of technology, the construction of media products and the ideologies behind music magazines.
Finally I think my music magazine would best suit being distributed by a conglomerate as if it was a smaller company then it would struggle to get the magazine in shops, whereas a larger company would have contacts and know more people within the industry to help with production.

My magazine pages

After finishing my first draft of my front cover, contents page and double page spread I asked my target audience for some critical feedback and here are some of the points they made:

• The writing on the front cover needs to be more clear and readable.
• Use more of a variety of fonts as only 2 fonts are used and both are similar with curly writing, why not block font?
• Good use of colours, the ones you have picked work well against one another
• On the double page spread it looks quite plain with a lot of writing.
• On the double page spread have a large picture of the band, as they are all quite small
• Allign everything on the page as when printed out the writing and pictures go off the page
• I like the name of the magazine, its catchy

So I will take these comments into consideration and apply these onto the pages for further improvement, but I am pleased that overall the colour scheme works well and the choice of name was a good decision.

Overall I have been finding microsoft publisher as a very useful program and Photoshop to edit my images which has allowed me to adjust the contrast, brightness and able to crop the images.

Choosing the name of my music magazine

I now need to make a final decision on what to name my music magazine, which includes a lot of consideration over as it is very important for the magazine. Below is the list of some of my ideas and from my survey:

Indielicious
Unplugged
Indigo Violet
Note
Amped
Amped up
Mega phone
Rock-it Fuel
Listen to the Beat

I then also had slogan ideas:

bring the music out in you
fueling your music
plugging you into music
get the hum on the beating drum
crank it up
bursting eardrums since 1970

As i had so many ideas, I decided to ask a group of people at school on what they would like my music magazine to be based on the ideas I had.
The most popular was the name "Amped" and the slogan "Crank it up" both with 7 votes
but "Rock-it fuel" and the slogan "Fueling your music" was slowly behind with 5 votes

In conclusion thought I decided to choose "Amped" and the slogan "Crank it up" as I thought it work better than all the others.

Survey Monkey Research Evaluation

I have currently only got 6 replies from my survey monkey, but here are the responses.

1.) Suggest a name for a Indie music magazine.

indielicous
Note
erm.....NIM new. indie. music lol im sorry
Into Indie...i dont know haha.
unplugged
indigo violet

2.) What colours would you like to see in a music magazine?

red, green, blue, white
black, yellow, blue, white
black, white, red, yellow
black, green, white, yellow
black, white, blue, red
grey, black, white, emerald

3.) What bands would you be interested to see in the music magazine?

indie bands :P the kooks, arctic monkeys
Some small indie bands, e.g. Elephants?, as well as some more well-known ones e.g. Kaiser Chiefs, Editors, Kids in Glass Houses, The Cribs, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, etc
The King Blues, VAGABOND. ;)
razorlight

4.) What content would you want in the magazine?

Interviews-100%
Reviews- 83.3%
Album Reviews- 83.3%
Gig Reviews- 83.3%
Gig Dates- 100%
New releases- 83.3%
Articles- 66.7%
Competitions- 100%
Free Posters- 83.3%

5.) What price would you be willing to pay?

£0-£1 = 0%
£1-£2 = 33.3%
£2-£3 = 50%
£3-£4 = 16.7%
£4 or more = 0%

6.) How many pages would you like?

20 - 16.7%
30 - 16.7%
40 - 0%
50 - 50%
60 - 16.7%
70 - 0%

7.) How often would you like the magazine?

Weekly - 0%
Fortnightly - 66.7%
Monthly - 33.3%
Termly - 0%
Yearly - 0%

8.) What font styles would you prefer?

clear bold pretty
Big bold fonts
cool ones
Clear quite normal for the majority of the text, titles quite edgy and big/bold
bold, psychodelic. ;)
basic

9.) What prizes would appeal to you?

Tickets - 100%
T-Shirts - 66.7%
Posters - 66.7%
Instruments -83.3%
Other Merchandise -100%

10.) What do you look for in a magazine?

fun and gossip
Not too much block text that is not appealing to read.
entertainment, gossip
Lots of interesting interviews with good questions, great photography, easy-to-read, etc.
A good read about the bands I love. Eye catching photography. Articles about new bands.
easy reading

From these results I will be able to decide on how to create my music magazine and what I need to promote on my front cover to catch my audience and encourage people to buy the magazine. Also with what sort of bands I should feature and ultimately what the content should involve for example whether my double page spread should be a gig review, interview etc.

Plans for my Music Magazine

Colour Scheme
From my own individual opinion and answers to my survey my main colour is going to be black, as it is a basic colour and suits part of my genre of indie music which connotates to dark colours.
However other popular colours include, a bright blue, red, yellow, purple and white.
I will follow up the responses and use colours which the majority of people wanted to see on my music magazine.

Also for my double page spread I have decided to use a real band, but I could not do an interview on them as they have been at gigs and becoming more mainstream. They are called Vagabond and I have seen them twice now, so I am using my own pictures in my magazine which I have taken at the gigs. They played as a support band for James Morrison in Canterbury last summer and me and my friends liked them quite a lot, so I looked into them and noticed they were doing a small gig in a hall in London, so then we went to go and see them again. Here I took more pictures which were better because it was a smaller event so we were closer to them and you will see these on my double page spread. Unfortunately I could not have an interview with them, but as you will notice I have based the information on what I already know about them and on the gigs that I have been to.

Double page spread analysis

Kerrang Issue # 1292
An interview on Hayley Williams from Paramore.
The main title is white on a dark background which enables it to stand out more and therefore catches the attention of the reader.
The photograph is a close up of Hayley Williams and is clever because the image is in black and white apart from her lips which are pink. The image involves eye contact with the reader which is good as there is a connection with the reader. The colour scheme is very simple just involving black and white.
The puffs include quotes from the article which entice the reader to read the article and gives an insight into whats included in the interview. For example one quote is the words from Hayley Williams, "I think I need to write an apology to Madonna" which encourages the reader to want to read the wh

ole article and find out why.
The content of this article involves mainly how well Hayley Williams thinks Paramore have done in 2009.

























In contrast to this Kerrang issue #1259 involves an interview on The All-American Rejects.
The main title is "Dirty Little Secrets" with dirty and little in pink, secrets is in bright, bold red and block capitals.
The main photo is purposely taken and posed involving eye contact. The other four photos are smaller with no eye contact but are very relaxed involving laughter.