NVR Magazine Evaluation

My music magazine genre is drum & bass. My magazine employs the conventional elements of a music magazine The conventional elements of a music magazine are bold headings and a very eye catching main image. Additionally, the main image is a picture of a specific artist, in that genre. This commonly has a bold heading stating the artist. Another conventional element is the masthead is eye-catching and easy to understand. A logo is commonly placed in the corner of the page to signify it’s brand of magazine. It also has tag lines or cover lines that tell you what the magazine’s contains in that issue. These try to attract the reader and make them want to buy the magazine. The layout is usually quite simple, not too confusing or complex, and each magazine conforms to a colour scheme of it’s own. Furthermore, it has price, dateline, issue number and a barcode.

My magazine conforms to the stereotype of a music magazine. 

Firstly, it has a main image of an artist in that genre with a bold heading next to it. Telling the reader who the artist is and what the magazine features about him. The eye-catching heading is at the top just above the main image so the reader’s eye is drawn to that afterwards, with the logo next to it. Advertising the brand to the audience. I also used a tag line to try and attract my target audience “The no.1 D&B music magazine”. Also making that bold and easy to understand. In my front cover I stuck to a very simple and clear layout with a colour scheme of black, yellow and red. I chose to apprehend these multiple conventions to give my magazine a sense of realism and professionalism. This is because my audience will tend to buy a more professional looking magazine as it is more appealing.     

My music magazine is aimed at young adults and older teenagers, more male dominated, who are single and living at home or at university. The older teenagers interests might by Disk Jockeying, loud music, partying and dancing. My magazine represents this social group in an insane, active way in need of entertainment and fun fulfillment in life. My magazine’s uses and gratifications is Diversion as this group need entertainment.

My magazine provides that by diverting them away from life’s trouble’s. My magazine is also aimed at a slightly older audience too, attracted by the layout and design of my magazine. My front cover is simple yet effective in looking professional and therefore attracting my older audience. My older audience don’t want a kids magazine with lots of prizes and games to win on the front with text scattered everywhere. So I decided to design a more formal layout. Keeping the text and image clear and concise. It represents this social group in a more relaxed and laid back fashion, like the main image on my front cover.

This attracts my audience as it represents them.  My younger audience are also attracted as they aspire to be like the older audience. The range age of my audience is (18 – 25). Both genders are attracted as this genre isn’t particularly influenced by gender. The hobbies they might be into are things like record collecting, mixing and dancing. I have employed some information (e.g. New Vinyls and their price) in my magazine to attract a suitable audience. 

The shops that my audience would mainly go to would be record shops. Not WHSmith. Therefore, I would sell my magazine in small shops and chain record shops. Because I have a niche audience I will need to distribute my magazine as spread out over the nation as possible.  Furthermore, my magazine is sold monthly and is cheap (£3.00) so it allows any spending bracket on the socio-economic scale to buy my magazine. Especially since the drum and bass listener usually isn’t the most well off person. That listener is most likely living at university, in lots of debt. Or at home still mixing songs on his decks, being very unproductive and loud. Another reason why I would sell it monthly is because not enough tracks, albums and new information in the drum and bass genre released each week. As it is a niche genre, growing bigger. Therefore, a monthly magazine makes more sense at the present. My audience more likely to be reading is older so the language and structure, as well as writing is more formal. However, the younger audience brings along much new vocabulary (colloquialism) to the world that are added into the articles. This will attract my younger audience. In designing my magazine I had to use a macintosh. A whole new operating system. During this time using a macintosh I have learnt to come and love them. I have leant new apple shortcuts making work much easier and faster. Additionally, I have found that the macintosh applications run noticeably faster when open with other applications on a PC. To design my magazine I used two different applications. ‘Adobe Indesign’ and ‘Adobe Photoshop’. To design my double page spread I used ‘Indesign’ as this is more practical for the layout and design features a double page spread.I used skills such as putting text into columns. To design my front cover and contents I used photoshop as this is easier to design an A4  page as you can be more precise. The progression I have made from my preliminary task is that I can use photoshop a lot faster and that images and text can be modified to look a lot realistic. I know these future skills will help me in future projects. Moreover, the skills I have learnt help make computer’s much easier between programmes and operating system’s.