My music magazine Myoozik mainly focuses on the R&B and Hip-Hop genre. When creating my magazine I had to think about ways to make my media product look real and to do that I created online polls and asked my audience what title blocks, logo and other conventions will be suitable for the genre of my music magazine, just like real media companies would. I also did some research using a survey to find out what my target audience required, all my decisions made for my magazine was based on what my target audience taught.
Just like a real music magazine I used an image of one person for my central image, and I used a direct mode of address by using an image of my model staring right at the camera, I knew this was an important feature of the magazine as most people in my research said that the front cover of a magazine persuades them to buy one.
My title block, central image, text and other images were placed in a suitable layout also to catch the attention of my target audience and to make my magazine look real. I focused the style and layout of my magazine to ones such as VIBE magazine, and it is also similar to the layout of typical music magazine such as Q magazine.
I challenged the way title blocks are placed on magazines, instead of putting my title block behind my model I put it in front of it, not to show the importance of the title but plainly because the title wouldn’t have been seen if I was to put it behind; also putting the title in front of the model makes my magazine easily recognized.
Another thing I challenged is the direct mode of address, because even though my model is staring straight at the camera, it’s wearing glasses which covers his eyes, however I don’t think this might affect my target audience much because even though he is wearing glasses he is still looking directly at them; this should make them feel engaged with my model.
Based on my previous research, I decided to aim my magazine at 15-20 year old both male and female who are into urban type magazines and music. Hip-Hop and R&B are common examples of urban type music and that is why I based my magazine on those genres as most of my target audience were interested in those genres. To attract other audiences I had a range of sub genres inside my magazine, to do this I put the names of other artists from other genres of my front page to attract other people who are interested in other genres. Doing this gives my target audience and other people a sense of belonging; it makes them feel almost like they belong to a culture or group.
Myoozik magazine gives out a very positive vibe for all types of music readers; to do this I used a very positive coloured theme for my magazine (yellow and white), I think the colours I used should be able to attract both genders to my magazine and shed a positive light too.
I think IPC media would be the most suitable media institution to distribute my magazine as IPC is a huge magazine distributor in the U.K that distributes and publishes both niche and mainstream magazines for a wide range of audiences, giving that my magazine is a mainstream type magazine. IPC media also publishes magazines such as includes NME, Look, Uncut, TV Times, Marie Claire, Loaded, Nuts and many more which is similar to my magazine style. They publish a range of magazines for both genders at no particular age group. Also IPC doesn’t have a main particular audience as the magazines they publish have a wide range of audiences. This is one of the reasons IPC is one of the biggest publishing company in the U.K, because it publishes for a range of age group, audience type and for both genders.
The target audience for my magazine would be teenagers between the ages of 15-20, both genders who are interested in R&B and Hip-Hop and celeb gossip, mostly people who are interested in urban type music at no specific race as any race could be interested in urban music, and teenagers mainly living in the east London area. VIBE magazine would be a typical example of my magazine; however I think there is a gap in the market for these types of magazine aimed for people like these because urban magazines don’t really sell much in the U.K, probably because they are distributed in the wrong areas. I think my magazine will fill in this gap as I used research to make sure my target audience get exactly what they wanted, and I used real magazine conventions to attract my audience.
Like I said earlier on I used an image of one person for my central image, and I used a direct mode of address by using an image of my model staring right at the camera, I knew this was an important feature of the magazine as most people in my research said that the front cover of a magazine persuades them to buy one. Even though my model was wearing glasses I don’t think that should affect my audience because the fact that he is facing forward and looking directly at the camera should make my audience feel engaged with the model.
My title block, central image, text and other images were placed in a suitable layout also to catch the attention of my target audience and to make my magazine look real. Instead of putting my title block behind my model I put it in front of it, not to show the importance of the title but plainly because the title wouldn’t have been seen if I was to put it behind; also putting the title in front of the model makes my magazine easily recognized, doing this also attracts my audience as recognition of a magazine is important.
I used a yellow and white theme for my magazine as it sheds a positive light as they both represent positive things; it also attracts both genders to my magazine. I used a very basic font ‘Arial’ on the front of my magazine to make it readable and as clear as possible, as if my audience cannot read what they see then they would refrain from buying it, no one wants to strain their eyes so doing this would also soothe my readers.
I used sell words and puff words like “FREE” and “WIN” in big, bold, capital letters to draw the attention of my audience as people love to see words like that. I included an opportunity to win an iPod touch and other goodies as special offers, as this gives my readers an even more reason to purchase my magazine.
Just in the process of creating my magazine I have developed many skills and learnt things I never knew before, these programs and websites could become really helpful in life as they are convenient and really easy to use, and give a high quality of work. To present my work and to help get ideas for my production I used Adobe Photoshop and Blogger. Blogger was a very helpful site that came in handy for when I had to do research, e.g. creating a poll to ask my target audience what they taught was suitable for my magazine. Photoshop came in handy for my production work, including editing, retouching, typing and other basic production elements. I have learnt a range of things I didn’t know before and improved my skills in Photoshop e.g. retouching images, cropping, erasing backgrounds, highlighting people, adding focus on an image and blurring.
You can see a huge difference when you compare my preliminary task to my final product, and you can also see how my Photoshop skills have improved vastly. As I said earlier on, I have learnt a range of new skills and new programs which could really come in handy in life. I have learnt how to construct image to make it the main focus on a magazine, I have also learnt how layout and the position of objects, e.g. title blocks affects the target audience, and I have learnt how to attract them to my magazine.
