Music magazine analysis and evaluation:

The background of the cover is light blue. This colour is frequently used by Top of the Pops and will appeal to both boys and girls. This means that the magazine will be more successful because it will sell to a wider range of readers.

The title of the magazine is positioned in the top left hand corner of the page, in bright pink and the i downloaded the font fro dafont.com. From this webite i looked at lots of fonts and this one was my favourite as it is bold, eye-catching and fun. Also, the bright pink colour works well with the pale blue background so it really stands out and catches the readers eye.

Above the title is the website for the magazine. I have seen the website here on real copies of Top of the Pops so decided to use the same style as it is in a clear place and easy to see.

The central image: For my central image, i asked my actors to wear dresses and make up and have their hair down so that they would resemble a fashionable girl group. I asked them to look directly at he camera to create a direct mode of address that i have seen repeatedly on real copies of Top of the Pops. This creates a friendly and welcoming feel to the magazine. If i had more time on this coursework, i would want to manipulate this image a bit more; i would change the contrast and brightness to make the picture look at bit more professional.

Across the central image is a bright yellow banner to advertise the 'exclusive' interview with the band featured on the cover. The buzz work 'exclusive' will hopefully make potential readers buy this magazine, rather than the one next to it because it will only be in this one. Also, my target audience is aged between 8 - 14 so anyone this age will rely on thier parents/family members for money so may not have enough to buy all of the magazines that are out there. This will set my magazine apart from others. In the corner of the yellow the banner, the phrase 'omg!' will appeal to the target audience and has a regualr appearence on the cover of a real Top of the Pops magazine. The colour of the banner is very important. Yellow is a bright and cheerful colour that will atract potential readers eye so that theu will read the text across the banner, find out about the 'exclusive' interview, and buy the magazine.

The three images across the bottom give the reader a taster of what will be in the magazine. The anchorage text suggests what the article that goes with the picture will be about. The three images advertise articles that the target reader would be interested in; tour news of the new girlband, stars going out together and a new member of a boyband. Also, in the top right hand corner of the cover is an image of a singer in a boyband. The anchorage text around it is indicating that if you buy this magazine, then you can win a date with this singer. The possibility of going out for the day with somebody famous will be very exciting, so it should encourage the reader to buy the magazine.

On the strip along the bottom of the page is the barcode, issue number and price. I have priced this magazine at the same price as Top of the Pops because i think, and my target audience think that this is the right amount. Also, from the questionnaire i asked people to fill out, this price was the most common one that participants said that they would pay for this magazine.

Finally, in the the bottom right hand corner is the text 'FREE posters inside!' this is the final lure on the page to encourage readers to buy the magazine. People love getting something free, so this is a final thing to get my magazine to sell.

The results of my questionnaire dissapointed me slightly. I was hoping that more people would recognice that i had based by magazine on Top of the Pops but only about half of the people actually did. However, i gave my questionnaire to a year 9 class and i think that they are slightly older than the average Top of the Pops reader and it may have been a few years since they have read or even thought about the magazine. Next time i will make sure thta i give the questionnaire to the right age group and hopefully get a better set of rresults.

I have designed my front cover to appeal to my target audience choosing the main colours carefully. I wanted to stick to Top of the Pops house style which usually includes blue, yellow and pink. This mixture of colours means that the magazine will appeal to both boys and girls, whereas if it was just pink, no boys would be interested in reading it. The actors in the central image had to have a direct mode-of-address so that they looked friendly and gave the image a positive feeling. It also fitted in with the pop genre of the magazine. It wouldn't be appropriate to have a scary looking, middle-aged man wearing and eyeliner and frowning as the central image. It wouldn't fit in with the rest of the magazine. The layout is very similar to an issue of Top of the Pops which i have analysed closely and it isn't too overcrowded, but just full enough to look fun and eye catching.

Whilst using photoshop the layers kept locking so this meant that i had to keep un-doing the work i had added to my front cover and start again. This was vey time consuming and frustrating. Next time i will be aware of this happening and save my work more often throughout the lesson ratehr than leaving it to the end of the lesson so i do not lose s much work.

I did not manage my time very well. I started off the project well by maing weekly plans of tasks i had to complete in each lesson but as the workload got more and more, both for this subject and others, I started to fall behind. Also sometimesthe things that made me fall behind were out of my control such as photos being deleted and having to re-take them or the computer freezing or not computer being available atall. Towards the end though i managed to get back up to date and finish on time.

It was important for me to design my front cover before I started to make it so I clearly knew what I needed the photos to look like before taking them then realising that they weren’t what I wanted the having to re-shoot them which would of been very time consuming. It also helped me to have a clear idea of what I wanted to final outcome to look like. I knew that I had something to work towards and wouldn’t risk doing too much and ruining the look.

In relationship to the image editing on Photoshop, I planned to use the magic wand too to cut out the band from the background for my central image on the cover, but as this didn’t work very well because of a lot of different colours on the background, I used the magnetic lasso tool which created a smoother line around the image and looked more professional.

The double page spread was very difficult to create on Photoshop so I used IWork instead. I found this much easier and less time consuming so I am glad that I chose this option as I don’t think that I could of achieved what I wanted by using Photoshop.

The photo shoot for my magazine front cover took around 30 minutes. I wanted to capture my band from different angles and distances. I have included a few of the best pictures on the cover and the double page feature. In my folder I also have a couple of images that I have not used and explained why. They only props I used for the shoot were chairs for the group to stand on so I could get a full length shot of them. I wanted their clothes to look fashionable and fun so I asked them in advance to wear dresses and make up to represent a typical girl band. I asked them to meet me in one of the media classrooms to take the photographs as it didn’t matter what was in the background because I planned to cut them out of it anyway. Also, by taking them in the media suite I had easy access to cameras and computers to put the images straight onto my memory stick and not risk them being deleted off of the camera before I had a chance to save them.

The next stage was to design my actual magazine front cover. From looking at a few copies of Top of the Pops magazine I had determined the house style and used this as the basis for my design. I already had a good idea of what I wanted my cover to look like from looking at so many real ones but I made two quick sketches to make my ideas clear. I then merged aspects of each design together to create my final design.

I approached the research stage by looking a t a variety of music magazines from all genres so I could decide which genre I wanted to focus on. I annotated copies of real front covers to see the common features of music magazines. I also did research into target readers of the different genres of magazines. Once I had settled on a pop/Top of the Pops style magazine I researched more into this type of magazine. I looked in more detail at the target reader for this type of magazine and then using this formed the reader profile for my own magazine.

I have noticed from the music magazines that I have researched that many of the big names e.g. NME, Tops of the Pops and Q all have a very similar house style with every issue. The layout of Top of the Pops is very similar each week; the central image is usually of the band or artist which is being interviewed. This image is posed and the mode of address is direct. There are buzz words around the image advertising what is in the music magazine; such as ‘new!’ and ‘exclusive’. In magazines like NME or Q where the genre is very different to Top of the Pops, the central image is still of the artist or band featured in the magazine but the buzz words aren’t so ‘’in your face’’.

If I was to start my magazine cover again I would manipulate the images a bit more as I have now become more familiar with Photoshop and am aware of the functions it can do.

Initially getting the photos onto a computer then finding out that they had been deleted a day later delayed the start of my front cover but I managed to catch up on the time I had lost form having to re-take them.

Photoshop enabled be to layer the photographs over one another and create a ‘scrapbook’ feel to the magazine which would be and inviting and appeal to a younger audience (years seven and eight) as well as older students (year eleven and sixth formers).

My final outcome is a lot like my final designs but not completely identical as I underestimated how large the photos would be once they were on the page but the overall look is very similar and how I intended it to look.

Once I had successfully loaded the second set of pictures onto a computer I could start to build up my front cover. To begin with it was hard to get the photos to do or go where I wanted them as I haven’t used Photoshop previously but towards the end I managed to get the hang of it.

I took photographs of students working and around the school site like I had seen in the other magazines and of buildings including the sign at the front of the school and the maths block. I then uploaded these photos onto a Mac ready to start on my front cover the next lesson, but unfortunately, when I came to use them the following day, I found that they had been deleted. This meant I had to go and re-take all of the original photos. Thankfully I could remember what most of the pictures were like and who were in them so I could get them almost the same.

I approached this task by researching school magazines both from my own school and from others. I annotated copies of the front covers to see if all the schools magazines used a particular house style. After closely looking at a few I noticed that they all contained images of pupils and buildings from the school. I annotated a contents page from my schools magazine then drew some quick designs for the front cover I would eventually produce. I later developed these four thumbnails into two larger, clearer sketches of final designs using elements from all of the original designs.