Original feedback sheet and pie chart results

Evaluation

<< This is a front cover I used for research.

When I first looked at this magazine front cover, I liked the idea of putting some of the text in boxes. So not all of the text is the same and just place anywhere onto the cover. The man on NME front cover is holding an instrument, I liked this idea because it tells the audience what exactly this magazine is about and it entails. Therefore that's why when I was photographing my model, I thought it might work effectively if I had him holding and posing with his guitar. I thought it also gave the impression that the photo is almost catching him in the act of playing and is quite realistic. I chose not to have my model looking directly at the camera and into the audiences eyes for instance because I wanted my magazine to differ from most magazine competitors, for it to have a unique substance about it and make it stand out from other magazine in the leading market. I also thought it made him and the magazine as a whole, a lot more mysterious and qwerky, I think it tells you a lot about the individual themselves. I noticed that the 'NME' masthead text was very bold and bright, not in any funky font, instead in a nice more effect plain one. When thinking about my masthead and what I wanted it to look like and more importantly what I actually wanted it to say, I wanted it to be on the similar lines of magazines such as this NME one. I wanted it to be very short and snappy, to attractive the audience in from the very first glance. For it too be in plain font and for it too be very big, so it stood out massively. I thought 'CULT' might work well as the magazine name because it's easy to remember, it's also quite an up to date word in society and can also relate to people that are very cultural, as 'cult' is short for culture. I used the idea of including band and artist names for my skyline like the NME magazine did at the bottom of their magazine but changed it slightly and put mine at the top, I did this as a sort of advertising thing but I also thought if a potential buyer was looking at the magazine and didn't necessarily recognize any of the main stories or artists, then they might of heard of some of the bands/artists on the skyline, which then may persuade them to buy it. On their NME magazine I noticed they used an advertising gimmick which is used to persuade people to buy there magazine: 'FREE mag inside' ! I thought this was a great idea to give people another reason to buy the magazine. So therefore came up with my own similar idea of making a splash and in that splash including 2 tickets that were available to win to go see the courteeners abroad. I thought it worked well with the rest of my magazine, I believe it really catches the audiences eye and gives them more reason to buy the magazine.
On my front cover I included the price and date directly underneath the masthead, I made them quite small because I didn't want them to take any attention away from any of the other features on the cover which were far more important, and frankly the price in particular, you don't really want your target audience to take hardly any notice of, therefore don't make it too visible to see. The issue and barcode I placed in the left hand bottom corner, as it placed well with all the other features around it and again didn't take much attention away from the more important features. I thought really well into what my main cover line would be, and I decided it should be related to who's in the image on the cover. Therefore made the main cover line the bigger piece of text to the rest of it, so it was clear to the audience that who is shown on the front cover is in fact who's being mentioned in the main cover line. I included smaller images right above this cover line as well to make it more obvious and for it stand out more.



       <<This is a contents page I used for research.
This contents page was a massive influence on what made me want my contents page to look like. When I first saw the contents page, I instantly really liked the way the images were set out and how much text was included. I liked the idea that the images was a big focus of the page. So I thought because I really liked the way it had been done and I felt it worked really effectively, I wanted my contents page to be like it in some way, as I thought it would make a big impact on the sales of a magazine. So I firstly decided that I was going set my images out in a similar way, with one big main image right bang in the middle. I wanted that to be the first thing the audience looked at when looking at this page, so I made sure that image was related to the band that was mentioned in the main cover line on the front cover, so it would instantly trigger the audiences memory. I also liked the idea of including a little column of titles and page numbers of what else was inside, I think this also makes the audience want to buy the magazine even more, as it's giving another taster of what's to come inside the magazine. I thought having one box in one corner or somewhere on the page a different colour to the rest of the page was effective, as it gives you a chance to include something in that box whether it's text or an image that you want to get across to your target audience, that you regard as important to get across. In my case it was another advertising bit, to again make the readers want to buy the magazine and to include the magazine website, which is highly important as readers will then go on to going on your website and your magazine becomes bigger and more successful worldwide.

I also used this contents page as research. On this one I found that the 'Band Index' on the left hand side was really effective and caught the audiences attention well. I found it was good to get a lot of artist and bands names across to the audiences and give them publicity. I thought a band index would work well on my contents page because I had quite a lot of free space down the left hand side and because before including the 'band index' it didn't have much text on the page, so thought it balanced the text and images out quite well, therefore suiting to all the target audience's tastes.

<<This is a DPS I used for research.
I came up with my own idea for the main headline in my DPS 'exclusive interview'; I thought I had to make sure it was clear to the audience that what they was reading was what they saw on the front cover in the main cover line. I made sure it was bright and bigger enough to see for the audience. From the DPS that I looked at before making my own, I liked it from the start because I really liked the colour scheme it had going on within in and thought mine would look really well like that. I also really liked the positioning of the model in the image, how he was stood etc. I also decided I wanted to have a pull quote on my DPS, but in a slightly different way to how the producers of that magazine had put it, even though it worked well, I thought it wouldn't work as well on my DPS as it would look a lot like a headline as well as a pull quote, and with me already having a headline, it would look silly to have pull quote that big within the page. I ended going with that same type of colour scheme and I thought it worked really well, I also put my model in a purplish t-shirt, so it all went together and matched well. I liked the way there text really stood out against the background and was really easy for the reader to read. When doing my article, I made sure the text was easy to read and not too much of it. As you don't want the audience to look at the page and instantly think there's too much text, so can't be bothered to read any of it.
 
Throughout my front cover, contents page and double page spread, they all are meant to represent the stereotypical ‘indie’ social group. The layout and the colours that I used tried to represent an indie sort of theme. The pictures particularly were the main feature on the magazine for it to come across as an indie magazine. I used colours which I thought were quite subtle and gave off an indie vibe. I was successful with making my magazine clear to the audience that it was an indie magazine, as my feedback results show that everyone that filled in my feedback sheets said they thought the magazine came across as an indie magazine.  In the contents page I included a ‘band index’ column on the left hand side, I made up band names that sounded indie, and this indicates that the magazine contains indie bands and not any other genres, therefore making it very clear to the audience. For the main image on my front cover I used a stereotypical indie looking sort of guy, as this is the first thing that the audience look at and take notice of.  I stuck with this image throughout the whole process of making my front cover, as it was the best image for the way I wanted to lay all the text out and the layout in general. I thought the photo I picked was the most ‘indie’ looking out of all of my original photos.

If I was going to get anyone to distribute my media products I would get IPC media because they distribute NME magazine and it’s of the same genre of my magazine, therefore I would be confident that it would be well publicised. 

My target audience from the very start was going to be mainly aimed at males aged 16-24 with the sub-audience of females. I decided I wanted my target audience to be people that are dedicated to music and have a passion for the music they listen to. I decided I was going to target my magazine at people that are interested in new up and coming bands, like going to gigs and festivals, can maybe play an instrument or are interested in being able to play one, someone that has access to the internet therefore can regularly buy things.  The SEG is to be a range between D and C1 as I want my magazine to appeal to the younger generation such as students, whilst still having that appeal for a working class adult. Originally my magazine was aimed towards an SEG range of D to C2 but after the production process I felt my magazine could appeal to a group socially higher than C2. My target audience are people that are more individual and have their own more individual style. Their style is predominantly inspired by artists of this music genre.

I did various things to attract my audience’s attention; I included a splash on my front cover which was a competition to win tickets to see The Courteeners, I did this because it brought more emphasis to the competition, therefore creating a ‘want’ for the audience to buy the magazine. There is small graphic of an aeroplane in the splash, which suggests to the audience that the competition is a pre-paid flight abroad, again appealing to the want of the audience. I included a skyline that provides a contents tease, these being the bands that are included in this issue. In the main feature of the image (the guy stood at the right hand side) I tried to make him stand out slightly more than the rest of the image, so I messed around with the curve tool to give the image a red tint effect, this also made his body brighten up especially his face. It also highlights the shadows on his face. For him to stand out more I also played around with the exposure tool, I did this to make the white brick background a brighter white and to also make his trousers a deeper black, it also darkened his hair colour. Doing all this it just made the picture more effective as it was a lot sharper and came out more to the audience, as the original image was quite dull and didn’t really catch your attention. To attract my audience’s attention I also decided that I was going to include an article from inside the magazine on the front cover, so included “INTERVIEW with Pippa and the Argonauts”, I did this because I thought it would attract the audience’s attention and give them an incentive to buy the magazine. I wanted to address the audience in a way that when they look at the magazine they feel as if they can instantly relate firstly to the person that is on the front cover and secondly just the magazine genre in general.

When constructing my front cover I used various different tools to change things. I firstly used the curves tool to change the colour tint in the photo; I then altered the black and white colours with the exposure tool. In the photograph there was a man stood in the bottom left hand corner unfortunately, that looked really out of place and wasn’t any relevance to the photograph; so I decided that I wanted to remove him altogether from the photo, I did this by using the patch tool, so the man was completely gone. I didn’t want to leave the man in the photograph because I thought it would have really confused the audience to who the actual main feature is on the front cover. This would have then confused the audience to knowing what piece of text goes which individual. When I created my splash in the bottom right hand corner, I wanted to keep with my red and white colour theme throughout. I put an inner shadow and an outer shadow on the splash to give it more effect, because without it the splash looked like it had just been stuck on, but with the shadows it looked like it belonged more and fitted in and still stood out to the audience. When I started to include some smaller images down the left hand side, when in the process of doing this I noticed that a piece of the original image didn’t really look right and didn’t fit in. It was a painting that was on the white brick wall in the background of the image, so I decided to remove it from the photograph. I firstly had to use the clone tool to remove the painting from the image, but once I had done that the photograph as a whole didn’t all fit right together still. So I then used the blur tool to merge the edges of guitar with the white background, which then made it look like nothing had ever originally been there. I then put inner shadows on the smaller images on the left, to give them more of an outline and for them to also not just look like they have been stuck on, it finally makes them look more professional.

When constructing my contents page I firstly decided that I needed to carry on the colour schemes from my front cover onto the contents page. So I carried across the burgundy colours into most of the text. I also thought I would use the hint of blue that was in the background of my front cover image, for the background of the contents page. As at first I made the contents page have a plain white background, as I thought keeping it nice and simple would be most effective. But after playing around and changing the background colour to a pale blue, it looked a lot more effective and appealing to the audience.

When constructing my double page spread I kept with the colour schemes again, by using the curves tool again to make the original image have a redish tint. With the main feature in the photograph having a purple shirt on, I decided it would be an effective idea to make an article splash bubble of the same colour, so it followed the theme. I played around with the colour of the text, as my first thought was to have the text the burgundy colour that I’d used previously on the front cover and contents page, but after applying that colour to text I realised it blended with the colour of the background too much and didn’t stand out very much at all. After trying various different colours, I came to the decision that white was the most effective colour to use, so therefore made pretty much all of the text on the double page spread white, apart from one piece of text “with close encounter of a third kind”. I made this text a different colour; I made it an orangey/yellow type colour. I also added a black outline to the orangey/yellow text, as it made it stand out more. I also put the text on a slight slant; I did this to make it look more qwerky and stand out to the audience more. I wanted it to stand out to the audience as the piece of text is getting an important piece of information across to the audience, telling them who the interview is with. This information could be the difference between the audience wanting to read the article or turning the page and skipping it. Another reason for white being the best colour for the other text is it also contrasts well with the white stripes on the main singers top in the photograph.

FINAL EDITED DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

FINAL EDITED CONTENTS PAGE

FINAL EDITED FRONT COVER

Magazine Feedback

• complete LIIAR analysis
• put orginal images in contents page
• make clear that the person on the front cover is the person representing the band
• finish text article on my double page spread
• add comments to pictures on blog
• more research and planning on contents page

draft of Contents Page