Final magazine cover

In this evaluation of my front cover i will answer the following questions... (extra information may be in a separate blog)

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

This is my final magazine cover, I am very pleased with it after many changes and difficulties making it I am really happy that I have learnt how to use photoshop.

I am going to take you through the decisions i have made for my magazine and how it compares to other magazine's i have previously talked about.

As you can tell form the image of my magazine cover I have went for a completely different image that i had originally wanted. After taking my main photograph i looked at the style of it an thought it still looked rock/indie but would be better to be labeled as a special "trance edition" due to the style of the original image. This seemed better suited but i decided that this would just be a one-off edition and the main article would still have an indie/rock genre to it, other music magazine's often make special editions such as NME's Christmas edition. I will explain all the details of how I found the effect for the picture later on.

First i am going to look closely at the codes and conventions of my magazine in comparison to the coldplay one, which was the genre I was originally going for (indie/rock). First of all the conventions of my magazine compared to Q magazine look completely different at first glance. The Q cover is a lot more subtle with the black and white painted image whereas mine grabs your attention more with the bright colours. My cover also has a lot more puffs compared to the Q one. I try to capture the readers attention by using phrases such as "he dives into the world of trance", whereas Q has a more relaxed feel saying "and now for something completely different...". This is also one of the reasons why i chosen to do a one-off cover for my magazine as it allows the look of it to be different and more unusual looking which is main convention of trance magazine's compared to the contemporary look and convention of indie/rock magazines, as they use more subtle colours and a more relaxed layout/modern.

Some conventions of the two magazines and mostly all magazines are always the same. As you can see a bar code is featured on the two magazines, this is always apparent on every magazine.
The masthead's on both magazine's are in bold: "Q" and "Newbeat", they are usually placed at the top so the reader can immediately see what magazine it is, this is the same here. The text is bold for both the masthead's so it stands out and is one of the main features, apart from the picture. The picture is also a main convention of a magazine, music magazine's always display an artist/band. The Q cover's main image is more natural than mine and looks more relaxed whereas mine looks "posey" and displays a DJ type image, which is obviously a convention of a trance magazine and not an indie/rock magazine which is why the images differ.My inspiration for a trance image came from: http://www.rave180.com/uploaded_images/rave-trance-744824.jpg

Both covers also have a strapline, which most also do. Q's strapline or "sell line" is "Britain's Biggest Music Magazine", whereas mine is "exclusive trance edition". To inform the reader that this edition will discuss trance music. A normal convention of magazine's is that strapline will usually inform the reader, as mine does. The strapline's are usually in smaller text and this is the same of mine, this a normal aspect of a music magazine, and as we deconstruct its conventions this appears to be one.

Perhaps the most important convention of music magazine's is the demographic they try to appeal to. Each one has a different look so it can appeal to its own audience. Obviously, mine has that "dance" exciting look that will appeal to trance music lovers. And Q has the indie/rock appeal but i think the coldplay edition particularly appeals to older people just by the relaxed style of it and there are not many puffs and additional information. I decided to keep the puffs mainly about indie/rock artists/bands so the demographic would still be the original indie/rock audience as well as people who like trance music.

My magazine could be said to represent teenagers. As many teenagers are associated with trance music and known to like it as a lot of it is often played in clubs/bars which are also associated with the younger generation. However, this is just a typical stereotype as i actually know a lot of older people that also enjoy trance music, so my magazine could be said to be representing them also. As my magazine also has puffs that include the indie/rock genre it could also be said that it represents indie bands/artists, it represents how successful they are as in this day and age they are mentioned on most music magazine's around the world. This could be portraying that indie/rock music is becoming a very successful genre, and is not just popular for the younger generation, but for any generation.

I think you could relate my magazine cover to Laura Mulvey's theory of feminism. Even though i did not want to portray this image but it seems my magazine has a domineering, successful male on the front of it. From this we can infer that males are still shown in this way. I did not want to portray this effect as i do not agree that females are passive to males. However i feel this magazine if it were to become a full 30/40 page one, would feature females, and portray that they are equal and as successful as males.

I am sticking with my decision that the Bauer Media Group would distribute my media product. They are a very successful worldwide company, and i would like my magazine to be worldwide. I have previously researched the Bauer Media group and it appears that they own music magazine's such as Q and Mojo. These are very popular magazine's and both appeal to the indie/rock demographic, which is why i have chosen the Bauer Media Group. I also think this "special trance edition" would be a good promoting product for the media group because it suits there style as an indie/rock music magazine but also promotes a one-off style of trance music, which is something different.

Whilst making my front cover i have learnt many different techniques. I started off by getting my picture to take this i used an apple mac book laptop, which has a special editing technique called comic book which create a bright effect that makes the picture look unusual. I then put this into photoshop and edited the picture and changed the brightness levels and the contrast to get the effect you can see on the front cover. At first i found it difficult to move the picture into a magazine size but after practicing for a short while, i soon got the hang of it. Photoshop on the whole was very hard to get used to as i wanted to make my magazine look as professional as possible. I spent quite a few days getting the text right for the masthead and the strapline as i didn't want it to be over the top, it needed to be realistic. I found the text in photoshop similar to use as word, i decided on the text "myriad pro" to make the text quite big for the masthead i needed to type in a larger size instead of just selecting one.

I feel that my I.T skills have developed more as photoshop was different to any other programme i have used before. I learnt that you have to use the tools on the left hand side, these helped me to draw shapes and text. On the right hand side of photoshop there are icons you can use to make borders around the text, which is what i have used for the "DJ JOE T" text to make it extra bold and appealing to the reader which most main titles of music magazine's also do.

When taking my picture i learnt about the rule of thirds, that the picture must be able to equally divide into thirds i have also learnt through research on the internet that this is one of the main aspects of photography, and makes a picture a good one. I have also learnt through others in my class that to take a good picture you must line it up and there must be no bright light behind the picture as this makes it unclear.

From my preliminary task to now i have learnt many things. When creating my preliminary task it was easy as i was using Microsoft Publisher, so i actually liked the challenging aspect of using photoshop. As you can probably see my preliminary task looks completely different to my final magazine cover. I think this is because of the technology of photoshop allowed me to edit the picture (its brightness and contrast) and use more professional text. Most of all i am pleased that my photoshop skills have developed, from starting off learning how to put a picture in to making it look realistic and adding text and puffs.

I found this website useful for learning how to use photoshop: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/interface-tutorials/how-to-make-a-highly-textured-site-layout-in-photoshop/

Let me know what you think of my finished product!!