Evaluation.

Evaluation of Product.

1.My magazine follows a trend of music magazines presently on the market. The trends such as colour, font, photo placement and audience targeting. The current magazines on the market all use specific topics of that genre, the photo of the band on the front is a hook for the magazine to use, also the names on the front are all used to reel consumers in. The images on the front of magazines, bands/artists all depend on what genre of music they aim at. My magazine has colours and typical styles which connote heavy metal and rock, present magazines do this also through the use of language and feature writers. The conventions of real media products such as the music magazine are followed for the front cover because these conventions are successful and simple, yet the style and flow of the magazine is up to the genre audience. The convention of a music magazine having reviews is neccessary, but to how the reviews are layed out is all in the signature style of the magazine and audience. The language used in my articles and contents page challenge generic use of english, as this is a heavy metal magazine, then heavy metal language is used so the target audience is pleased.

2. My product is very representative of the intended social group. It does this by following styles

and trends of the target audience, for example the language and biased opinion on the genre is

the same as the social group.

The language on the contents page

and double page spread is definately representative. Also the colours are associated with the genre, black mostly worn by the fans of metal and rock. This how I think my media product represents the specific social group.

3. My product, like most music magazines, tries to sell to specific audiences. The general popularity of the magazine may determine the location of distribution, but hopefully this product would serve as a mainstream news source for metal fans so it would see the shelves of local newsagents aswell as chain institutions such as WH smith or major supermarkets. I think the product would be this successful because its an open spot in the market, there are few specific metal magazines out there and a new, fresh, accurate one could blow the rest out of the water. To say that WH smith may sell it could be expecting to much, but WH smith have nothing against this style of magazine so I dont see why not.

4.There is specific target audience for the product. My audience would be fans, bands, music business people of the genre. The majority would be fans, the magazine gives insight to tours, latest stories and gossip. Fans would benefit from this as they would feel close to their favourite bands. The audience would be a open minded, light hearted group of people as the music of the genre teaches. Fans would be the general audience of this magazine.

5.The feedback I gathered was through a short verbal questionnaire. Although not recorded via the comment function, I think that the response I got back reflected in the final product. The colour scheme and the topic of the double page spread were decided through this method. I addressed my audience by recognizing their answers to this conversation. In the long run the audience would be attracted by the front cover and the first impression through language used, as someone who fits the target audience criterea I see the front cover and it would be something I would by, this helped in the process of adressing the audience and thinking of how it may be attractive to them.

6.The proccess would not function without some editing software, and some manipulation programmes, I used some basic windows software called Picture manager to polarise the images

and I used microsoft publisher to edit and layout the overall final product. Below is the first image and the finished work, all the foreground was done using publisher by adding logs and word art. The columns added are of the main features and more logo's to suggest featured bands. I thought it would be safer to not use actual band names e.g Motley CREW instead of CRUE.

7.The preliminary task was a good way of warming up to the final product, the planning and layout of a magazine opened my eyes to what a successful magazine needs. The image manipulation was minimal for the preliminary task, this obviously proggressed for the main task. Throughout this project I have learnt that a magazine needs outstanding properties in order to be eye catching and effective, I hope some of this understanding has rubbed of into my final piece. The proggresion from the preliminary was gradual but as ideas come to me I knew what was needed to progress and make a final piece worthy of magazine quality. I feel like I have learnt that to make a real magazine would take weeks to create and to be properly edited would be a skill in its self, I recognised the effort that magazines in the market put in to get thet "wow" factor and be the one they choose to read and no one elses.