Magazine Evaluation


In media studies we have looked at different magazine covers and analyzed each of them to gain an understanding of what audience they aim to sell their magazine to, what they do to attract their audience and how they design their covers. After we each designed our own magazine cover in groups featuring the music of our choosing. Then once we had finished our magazine covers, we had to write up an evaluation of the work we had done over the past few weeks.
First we got introduced to the programs we would be using and the different tools that would be at our command. This one lesson gave each of us ideas on how to finally make our magazine covers. First of I chose my colours to be blue and purple simply because along with the pictures and items I was going to use, I believed that they would all work well together. Also I added a separate background to some objects on the cover so that they would stand out more then the rest to catch peoples eye and get them interested. After I had all the pictures and information on the page, I would crop and move pictures about to get the best effects for the page. Then after I was happy I had to print out a copy in black and white to test the cover and see if anything had to be altered in any way. After I made some changes and was certain I was happy with the product, I looked at the work of the other group members and compared their covers to my own, this let me make sure that we all had the same information on our covers. Furthermore when I saw that everything checked out I printed out a version in colour, to be used as my final product.
My magazine cover has been designed to use the forms and conventions of real music magazines to appeal to our target audience by using appealing pictures of celebrities and advertising exclusive features to my magazine.
My music cover represents the social group of ‘teenagers’ as it is also the target audience of my magazine. I appeal to this particular social group by using certain techniques to attract and address my audience. The techniques I used represent and appeal to the vast majority of the teenage social group today.
I believe that the music institution along with the media will distribute my music cover on the magazines through stores because it will attract the important generation of teenagers. The magazine will also sell a lot of copies at the small price of £2.75 each issue, which is really small, compared to the magazines that sell a lot more in stores, after all they would be the magazines that we would be competing against in the music and magazine industries.
The audience for my magazine cover will be for the teenagers of today, also people who are a bit older or younger then the target audience will buy the magazine. I attracted and addressed my audience by using certain techniques and items that would appeal to me if I were looking for a magazine to buy, these include big pictures of famous celebrities that I would want to read and learn about. Lastly I added things that a typical teenager would like, such as a low price, a free CD and information on upcoming games or celebrity events.
I also learnt a lot about technologies from the process of constructing the magazine front cover for my work. I learnt how to easily use an advanced version of Photoshop and how to edit particular sections of any picture I wanted to and combine it with others. I also learnt how big sellers would do this sort of work on their own front covers, that to us seem genuine and real but in fact are just edited in Photoshop. Also knowing these facts were a help in producing the cover, because I knew that it wouldn’t be too difficult to create some of the great front covers that are seen on today’s shelves with Photo shopping techniques made very easy with the technology we were using.

By Michael Crowther