Main Task: Evaluation 3

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

I have researched three different music magazines (from my chosen genre) that are all from different publishers, to decide which publisher is best suited to my magazine.

Kerrang!
Bauer Media

Kerrang magazine is published by Bauer Media Group, who also publish a wide variety of magazines, ranging from: Women's magazines (Closer, Heat), Gardening (Garden News) Fishing (Sea Angler, Angling Times) to Motobikes, Pets, Sports and more. This means that Bauer Media Group has vast experience in publishing magazines of all genres. Bauer Media group also has the rights to the Kerrang radio station, meaning that it distributes the brand across a multiple platforms.

I picked up a random issue of Kerrang! and discovered 58 different advertisements, most of which were advertising concerts/events, but there were also adverts for clothing and music, a couple were promoting Kerrang Radio and Kerrang Subscriptions, despite the fact that they are owned by Kerrang they are still classed as advertisements. Advertisers place adverts such as these.
The top advert is for a downloadable song by the band Laruso. Adverts like these are placed in Kerrang! because these bands - like Laruso - are of the genre of music Kerrang is based, which is Emo/Rock with occasional metal. Also Kerrang has numerous adverts like the one to the right. These are adverts for concerts/events that are in Kerrang! because the concerts/events are the very same that Kerrang specialises in, and so the advertisers place the ads within because it would appeal to more consumers through the readers of the magazine.

Metal Hammer
Future PLC

Metal Hammer is published by Future PLC who also publish magazines such as: PC Gamer, Nintendo Power, Digital Camera, Mountain Biking, and other music magazines such as: Classic rock, Total guitar and Revolver. Meaning that Future PLC appears to specialise in music magazines, becasue judging from their portfolio, that is what they seem to have the most brands in.
Again i flicked through a copy of Metal Hammer, and found 55 different adverts all advertising the same things as Kerrang but advertising for the genre of music Metal Hammer promotes - Heavy metal. One particular form of advertisement was only present in Metal Hammer, these were adult sex lines etc, this suggests that Metal Hammer's audience is older than Kerrang's, similar things that suggest this are the words used inside the publication and other features.

Rock Sound
Independant

Unlike most music magazines, Rock Sound is published independantly and the magazine proudly boasts this by saying "Publish by Rock Sound Ltd - a 100 percent independent operation" By remaing independant, Rock Sound have managed to attract their target audience of teenagers/young adults who reject the mainstream and prefer underground music, and a more unkown sound to a fabricated mainstream alternative.

Because Rock Sound is published independantly, you would expect it to have a lot of advertisemtns to regain some revenue. Which it does, 77 was a total i reached in a random copy of the magazine, they were all again clothing and music based. Another thing about the adverts in Rock Sound is that they are predominantly full page adverts, which would cost more money than small ads, perhaps this suggests that although Rock Sound is known for being independant, it advertises a large amount of mainstream products, such as the one shown.


I think that my magazine would benefit from being distributed independantly. If it were to be distributed through a company i think that it would lose its appeal to my target audience of "radical" teenagers who want to rebel against the mainstream and selling out. Sure a distributing giant such as Future LTD has it's advantages, but if my magazine were to be under their control, it would lose its freedom of speech and be cast into the portfolio of other magazines the company distributes.
Independant distributors do have hefty financial disadvantages, but once the magazine gains a cult following of readers (such as Rock Sound) the advertisers will flock to the magazine and pour money into it so as to get an advertisement within its pages.
Fuse magazine is solely independant, and the reasons why it does so well is that it is its free, and sold in places where their audience shops, i can't make my magazine free but as for the latter i can do. I would sell my magazine in places where i think my target audience would shop (aswell as newsagents and WHSmith) i would place the magazine for sale in: alternative clothing shops, CD shops, and music/instrument shops, mostly the alternative clothing shops such as fourleaf clothing.

Main Task: Evaluation 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In my magazine i have set out to challenge sterotypes and dominant ideology, i did not want to produce a product which follows a trend representation wise.

My magazine has presented teenage males in a positive light. Evidence of this is that the three males shown are all smiling and not looking menacing or threatening, which challenges the dominant ideology that teenagers (boys specifically) are of these characteristics. Another thing that my main sell challenges is stereotypes, the band shown are of the metal genre but their clothing and general appearance suggest otherwise, thus proving that the black hair, black clothes stereotype isn't a just one.

There are some social groups that are absent from my work, for example: females, the disabled, ethnic minorities. Females are important in our society, but in music magazines, they are represented as sex objects, take Lacuna Coil's Christina Scabbia for instance. By leaving te female representations absent, i may have deterred female readers, however i could not get female models due to poor scheduling.

Main Task: Evaluation 1

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

My main inspiration for my product, was Kerrang! magazine, and I have loosely based my magazine using Kerrang! as a template.
The overall layout of my magazine is minimalist, because one of my main worries was that i was going to clutter the page with useless features.

I have used a bleeding effect, where my main

image slightly overlaps onto the masthead, however i didn't get it to cover the magazine name, as this would've completely covered the strapline which meant it would've been unreadable. My magazine name uses a screamer - similar to Kerrang! - the screamer connotes that my magazine has something to shout about (no pun intended)
The masthead itself is in a rough, gritty font ("Distorted and Scratchy") and this shares connotations with the metal/rock genre of which my magazine is based, hence why i chose this font for my masthead.

Front Cover Complete

My front cover for my magazine has been influenced most my the music magazines Kerrang! and Rock Sound.


The mast head of my magazine denotes the word "OUTLAW!" in upper-case white letters with an exclamation mark or "screamer" at the end. The text is set on a black background with two skull piles on either end of the text, beneath is strapline "SAY NO TO THE MAINSTREAM" again in white upper-case letters but in a different font to the masthead. The name outlaw to me connoted rebellion and is a symbol of free will, a rogue if you like, to my target audience the name Outlaw would appeal to them, because based on my audience research i found out that my target audience likes a sense of rebellion and freedom. Similar connotations also apply to the font i chose to type in the font naem is "Distorted and Scratchy" and i think that the same connotations for the name are appropriate to the font style as well. However i chose a different font for the strapline because i wanted it to be clearly different from the masthead, to do this i made the text smaller and in a different font style, the font i chose for this was called "nightmare" and i believe that it has slightly darker connotations than the masthead's font. The connotations that are in the strapline are more horror based and - based on my audience research - this was fitting for the genre of my magazine and audience i wished to target, these connotations also apply to the skulls that are on either side of the masthead. Say no to the mainstream was chosen as my strapline because it again connoted rebellion and individualism, this phrase isn't a question or a request "please say no to the mainstream" its a demand "SAY NO" making it seem more edgy and personal. The strapline also gives off theimpression that my magazine is unique in that it focuses on new music and not the generic swill that is churned out in the mainstream, thus appealing to my target audience.At the foot of my page is a bar which has all of the features within the magazine included, it follows the monochrome colour scheme and is simple but i think adds a flavour of professionalism to my cover. What i am most pleased with about this particular features is the inclusion of two white lines which act as a dived from the black background and the white text, and i do believe that this turned out far better than i first thought. For the barcode, i decided to have it in the bottom right of the page, mainly because that is where it usually is on most magazines, but for my placement of the issue number, date, price etc i chose to put that in a box above. The box above isn't a regular square because i thought that this would look too "blocky" and i didn't want to give off that vibe on my cover, instead it has a sloped edge which i think makes it look slightly less blocky which is good for me. My magazine is priced at £2.99 which i think is reasonable for what you are getting ut of it. As well as the date and price, included in this box is a web address, a minor feature but an important one nonetheless

The main sell for my magazine is a band called Murder at Midnight (the name derived from a high school band i was in, but i digress) and them recording their new album. I chose this idea to do because i had recently seen a similar feature in Kerrang! and thought that it played well, and due to the recording studio in college, i could easily take the pictures there. The image itself is of three friends of mine posing as the trio Murder at Midnight, they don't appear sinister or angry, but more approachable and average (not in a bad way) they seem like normal people, which i think is important to my target audience because the people used on my main cover don't appear to be fake, like the models on other publications. The font for the text is the same font as the strapline featured on my masthead, but this text is in a larger font and different colour. I chose the yellow-ish colour because it stood out against the blacks and greys of the colour scheme and looks rather fitting with the rest of the cover. The screamer was added on the tag line: "RECORDING BEST ALBUM YET!" because it made it seem like it was important and connoted that they really were recording their best album yet.
The coverlines you see on the page are directly taken from my plan ( as seen in a previous blog post) i did what i planned and made alternating coverlines, reversed-out and normal etc, i am really pleased with how this worked and am glad that it is on my cover. If you look slightly closely at the coverlines you would notice that they are on an ascending slant, this is intentional, because i wanted it to seem more lively than just plain, boring straight lines and i think i have achieved this by putting them on an angle.

Production Log 4

The contents page above follows examples from Mojo and Rock Sound magazine, as seen in this blog: http://danbmedia.blogspot.com/2010/02/post-planning-new-ideas.html
For my contents i struggled to find relevant features to include on it, the contents page above is very bare because of this. Admittedly, the page does seem pretty basic but this is because i felt as though this would be too cluttered, and based on my audience research, my target audience does not like pages that are too cluttered. Originally i intended for the "features" section to beon a slant, but i felt as though this looked bad adjacent to the straight "regulars" section.

My complete contents page is the one above. Since the contents page at the top of this post, i have included numerous features which back the page look far less bare. I changed the "features" section so that it was no longer on a slant and straight like the section alongside. I had intended to include a "note from the editor" style section since the early stages of planning and so this was a must for my contents page. Within the note from the editor section i have included a mini image of the front cover, which i think connotes professionalism. To include this section i needed to shrink the main image down from its original size so as to fit the section in. The red and black bars leading into the note from the editor is a "next week" segment, this was a last-minute idea which i included because the page still seemed bare, this part only lists the names of bands that will be featured in next weeks issue, looking back on this i feel as though i should change that to "This week" as oppossed to "next week". In the top left and bottom right corners of the page are simple techniques used to fill space, this idea waws given to my by a colleague in the class, and i believe that they really do fill the space well.

Production Log 3

This is a near complete front page, however i still think i need to work on it, add a little more, but i haven't decided what yet.
So far the front cover includes the main sell "Murder At Midnight" which is in a gold/yellow colour to stand out against the monochrome colours behind. I have stayed true to my plan of having the coverlines reversed-out and not reversed-out respectively. The background of the fading black to white, is still a debateable feature that i may yet change due to its simplicity and that it looks child-like and too plain.
One part that i am most proud of, is that i have magaged to get Gregg Wookey's (Centre of the main sell) head just behind the masthead and strapline but infront of the black box i have included in the masthead.

Production Log 2

The double page layout has followed by design layout (below) almost to the letter, however some features in my plan i later discovered were problems and difficult to realistically achieve. Looking at my construction so far, you can see that the puff has shifted from the centre right of the pages to the far left of the double-page, this was largely due to my lack of photographs to fill the amount of picture boxes i had included in my planned layout, so to overcome this i replaced a picture box, with the puff to fill in the gap. The bold quotation at the head of the page was a later feature i added, which was inspired by a kerrang! article i read which used a similar idea, naturally i placed this quotaton whee there was a space, and by looking at the plan you can find that the space is at the top of the left page.

Post planning new ideas

This is an issue of Rock Sound. On this cover there is one feature that really stood out to me as unique and a genius way to incorporate the barcode in a less generic fashion. In the bottom right corner of the cover is an image denoting a woman (Christina Scabbia - Lacuna Coil) appearing to be holding the barcode. I will attempt to incorporate this idea into my magazine by merely taking a photograph of a person holding a blank sheet of paper and then photo-shopping the barcode and neccerssary infomation onto the page.

The above contents pages are examples from RockSound and Mojo magazine respectively, these are not the main traditional contents that you would expect in a magazine, but more of a brief summarised form with only the main points featured. From these i thought that a contents page in this style would not only be easier for me to accomplish, but provide me with a strong contents page with minimalistic values, that of which i think is appropriate for my target audience.

With that said, there are examples from other contents pages that i would like to incorporate into my own. For example, in the Kerrang contents page above, at the top of the page there is a "note from the editor" section, this i find works well and i think it will be good to include this into my contents. However i find the small image of the cover featured on the contents page greatly effective and professional, this is one feature that i will definately include on my contents page above all else, mostly because it connotes a sense of professionalism, plus i think it is a grand idea which is a bonus really.