For my Foundation Production Coursework Piece in AS Media Studies I created two magazines for different audiences. For the preliminary task I created a school magazine consisting of front cover and contents page, the main task was to create a music magazine consisting of a front cover, contents page and a two-page spread. My target audience for the music magazine was older teenagers of both genders that listen or have a preference to the metal/gothic rock genre, what is good about this is that it’s not biased to the opposite genre; in fact the featured band had a female lead singer. Because of the target music genre the colour scheme was dark colours. To represent the chosen social group I used both mainstream and non-mainstream bands and the more known band names were changed to give it a comical twist.
To appeal to the audience I made the main feature about a teenage metal band, I took photos of classmates, removed the background, made the contrast higher and gave them a glow around the edges to make them look like a real metal band. I took photos of them in other positions around the interview in the double page spread to make it look more realistic. A realistic convention I used in my magazine is album information and background stories focused in my double page spread. I looked at the layouts on other music magazines and developed an idea for mine based upon them, I tried to do it in a way that it did not look too much like them to give mine originality. By doing this I think I have enticed the reader with the realistic conventions and engaged them with the original back stories and humorous artist names.
One thing I tried to achieve most is consistency; throughout the magazine I have tried to keep the colour, style and overall theme the same to make it look organised and professional. The band/magazine names and logos were made by me from scratch and I think by doing this I have avoided making it look like a direct copy of another existing magazine. Throughout the magazine I have used a very good background made up of a single colour and enlarged vectors, giving it a very ‘Metal/Goth’ look, I encountered a problem when entering text which was that it was hard to read. I found a very simple and effective solution; I created a shape (like a square or rectangle) and set the opacity to about 60/70% to make the text readable while maintaining the good background. For the titles in the contents page for example I used blended text (a red outer glow and a dark stroke) against a small shape.
I think that the mainstream music institutions like Kerrang, NME, Scuzz, MTV would be happy to distribute my magazine. All the magazines were made using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Fireworks and I developed my skills further through this project. I used a wide range of techniques while using these programmes ranging from the basic techniques (brushes, selection, , layering, changing opacity etc.) to the more complicated techniques (blending text, rendering, filtering, masking, vectors, advanced layering etc.) using the tools provided in both programmes. The basic fonts available were not sufficient in making the magazine look good enough. I used dafont.com to find and download free fonts to use, once I found a suitable font I installed it then used it in Photoshop and Fireworks. I feel that I have progressed alot since making my school magazine for the preliminary task as I have researched more about music magazines and their conventions; without this my magazine would not have developed very well. This further research has helped me focus on the different aspect including the layout, colour scheme, images etc. I thought about my target audience and genre of my magazine and how these aspects would affect the way my readers would respond to it. I believe that Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop have also contributed to the progression in my magazine as they are professional programmes and have made my magazine as professional as possible. Overall I think that I have been successful in making my music magazine as I think that I have created a magazine that would appeal my target audience.
