Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Seeing the difference between my preliminary task and my finished product, my skills have obviously developed greatly. Before I had no knowledge of photoshop and found even the most simple tasks difficult. I looked online to get help with a lot of things because there is many good tutorials that are free to use, I also asked my teacher for help. It goes without saying that I wanted to put a lot more effort into my final product than I did my preliminary task, if I wanted to do something with my final product I would work hard to find out how to do it, whereas with my preliminary task if I couldn't work out how to do something I would change my idea as I realised it was not as important. As you can see by the pictures below, my college magazine is very plain and only uses two colours, it's not very attractive and I don't think it would catch people's eye like my music magazine would. Because my final product has a lot more going on, but doesn't look tacky. This is a plus because it gives the audience information without confusing them.

I think something that made a big difference to my final product is the fact that I looked at other magazines and took ideas from them. My college magazine is something you would never see in a shop because it has no conventions, nothing about says it will be a good magazine because you wouldn't really see it as a proper magazine. It just looks dull. When I went about making my final product I looked at magazines such as Kerrang! and Metal Hammer to get inspiration, this helped a lot as I found conventions and then knew what looked good.

When using photoshop for the first time I was really confused, I'd never used it before and it was all new to me. That's why my college magazine turned out so bad, I simply didn't know how to use photoshop. After a while I gained a lot more skills and I think this shows in my final product. One of the techniques I used most was the 'outer glow' on text. I used it on my front page and double page spread because I liked the effect it gave the words. I used it on the most important this and the things I wanted to stand out the most. It helped because when something has a glow around it you tend to notice it more. For the photos I liked the effect the 'brightness/contrast' tool gave. Because I know you can photoshop pictures to make skin clearer and teeth whiter etc. But I didn't know how to do this and it would probably take up a lot of time I didn't have. So I settled for making the pictures brighter so the skin looked clearer. I didn't want to overdo it so you couldn't see any facial features because it was too bright, so I only adjusted it slightly. It gave a model like look, because it looked as thought she was 'glowing'.

My final magazine definitely appeals to my audience. As I listen to metal and rock music my self and buy Kerrang! magazine, it is something I would pick up if I saw it in a shop. The layout and design is attractive because the dark colours contrasted with the bright yellow give the magazine an eye catching effect. The fonts used also contrast with each other, 'Afterlife' is in a messy kind of font whilst 'Lacuna Coil' is in a scripted sophisticated font, which gives the magazine something which will appeal to everyone. Whilst finishing my music magazine, the fact that I read Kerrang! and Metal Hammer definitely helped me come up with my design and layout and they both use media conventions. I also found it easier to write my feature article because it gave me ideas of what type of questions to ask, and how I would go about impersonating 'Cristina Scabbia'. I got most of my feedback from my friends who have a similar taste in music to me, this helped greatly because as they liked the music included in the magazine, they could give me an honest opinion on how I represented it. They gave me constructive criticism so I could change things that would help me attract my target audience even more. I obviously needed to be very attentive to detail when creating my magazine because I didn't want to either under or over do it. I think I got a good balance and made it interesting to look at without going too crazy.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Whilst my magazine was coming together I used a few different programmes to get it how I disired. Creating my magazine was done on photoshop. This is the first time I used photoshop so I was learning from scratch. Throughout the process I actually learnt quite a lot. I found it very confusing and things went wrong a lot at first, but after some time I got used to and learned how to get what I wanted done. I think photoshop is a really good product to use, because it gets what you want done and to a high standard. If I had previous experiance with it I think my magazine would have turned out better but I spent some time learning how to use it and am still getting used to it now.

Flickr is another website I used. It is a photo and video sharing website. It is free or you can pay for a Pro account to upload more photos. But I wasn't uploading many so paying would be pointless. I found it perfectly easy to use and no problems with it. I have never used it before but would definitely use it again if I wanted to use an image hosting site. It let me annotate my magazine easily and instructs you how to do things. I liked how I was able to highlight certain points of my magazine and write about them seperately. It was like sticking sticky notes on it.

Another website I used is Blogger. This is the website I used more and have presented my magazine and evaluation here. It a really good website and very easy to use. It's even better that it's free. It allows you to do anything you want, you can upload pictures, and it doesn't have a limit on how much you can write which I found very useful when wanting to explain things in detaill. Sometimes I had problems because the spell check is quite unreliable and also it wouldn't upload my pictures sometimes so I would have to log off and on again. It's also quite difficult to move pictures around once you have them in a post. I have very little complaints because for a free website it works really well and gets the job done.

I learnt much more than just how to use the programmes presented above. I also learnt what worked well while taking pictures. Although the camera I used wasn't very high quality. I think my pictures turned out looking OK. A plain background makes the person in the image stand out more which is what I wanted, as the music artist is the main focus. Angles and location are also something I had to work with, but overall I am please with how the pictures turned out, because i'm not exactly experianced with taking photos and for my first time trying I don't think they look too bad.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Annotation done on Flickr

Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is a picture of a what a male who read my magazine would typically look like. The genre of music I include has a very particular audience and the way they look mirrors their taste. The image of the left shows a male with medium length dark hair. This is very typical as most bands or artists in the rock metal genre have very dark long or medium length hair. If you see someone with hair like this on the street you would imediatly assosiate them with metal and rock music. The way he dresses also gives this of, he is wearing a 'Drop Dead' jumper. A brand that I would likely advertise in my magazine. The brand is very well promoted by metalcore band 'Bring Me The Horizon'. The band are very popular within my specific target audience, so it is likely they would often wear it and give away that stereotype. Skinny jeans are also associated with the stereotype 'emo' which is what a lot of fans of metal and rock music get negatively called. And again, my target audience would wear skinny jeans often as it is part of the fashion that goes with metal and rock music. The psychographic profile of my audience would be mainstreamers. Normal people who take life as it comes, often seen as rebelious and negatively stereotyped as the majority of them will be teenagers. I think the way they dress will also have a negative effect, due to the fact that it is a sort of new fashion, which people aren't used to, and older generations don't like to see change.

The reason this type of person would be attracted to my magazine is because of the whole image. It is unlikely they would have this fashion sence if they weren't into the rock/metal music scene. They would want to know all the latest going ons in the music that they listen to and interests them. As you can see from the image, there is posters of the wall of bands such as paramore, again signalling what genre of music people with this image listen to.

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

I would think my magazine would be likely to be published by a major company such as Bauer which is the largest privately owned publisher in Europe. They also publish Kerrang! and Q magazine which are both popular music magazines which include rock music, so this would definably be a good publisher who would get my magazine noticed, I know this because Kerrang! and Q are both very popular magazines and generate a large audience, so it is likely that Bauer would do this for me. Bauer has distribution agreements with outlets in the UK and internationally, for example you get an issue of Kerrang! from anywhere WHSmiths to Asda. The more places that distribute my magazine the higher my sales would be.


The problem with my magazine being published by such a large company wold be that a lot of the money it makes would go straight in their pocket. And also probably lose quite a bit of my editorial control. Magazines make money from the price and the profits from advertising. And a bigger company like Bauer would find it a lot easier to secure advertising because of their position in the publishing world. There are also both positives and negatives of self publishing. One positive is that you would avoid the editors scalpel, although then you would lose the expert critique that editors give. Also, if a major publisher is not involved, it is likely that my magazine would lack exposure and it is more money out of my own pocket if I did choose to go with self publishing. It is possible that if I was to go with a major publishing company, I would go with IPC, they are Bauers biggest rival in the UK. Bauer publish Kerrang! which is a magazine similar to mine, so my magazine would be up against Kerrang! as the publishing companies are rivals.


I think it is important that magazines have synergy. In my magazine I advertise a website 'www.afterlife.co.uk' which would be the online version of my magazine. This creates a larger audience because most modern people have the Internet, and my target audience are likely to spend a lot of time on the computer. So it can make my magazine accessible almost all of the time, in between issues there could be updates and hints of what is coming in the next issue. Kerrang!'s website has an online store which sells band merch. This is an advantage because they probably make a profit and it makes bands aware of the magazine. As they are helping sell merch they would be more willing to give interviews etc.



How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When designing my magazine I had to think about the social groups and what kind of people I would aim my magazine at. My magazine only includes music and is not a hybrid genre so I didn't have to think about making it attractive to more than one audience. My magazine is aimed at people who like rock and metal music, who are interested in new bands and want to keep up to date with their favourite artists.

When choosing what I did my article about, I wanted it to be someone who is well known in music industry, I also wanted it to be a female, because it is very rare that you will see a woman on the cover of a rock magazine (with an exception of Hayley Williams). I stuck to my idea and chose Cristina Scabbia who is lead singer of band Lacuna Coil, they are very well known by fans of rock and metal music and are highly rated in the industry.

I looked around and found very few magazines which had actually included Cristina Scabbia as their cover star. But I found she had appeared on the cover of Kerrang! in 2009, this was perfect because the main inspiration for my magazine came from Kerrang! as it is directed at the exact same audience as Afterlife. I looked at the photos and found they where all very simple and taken on a plain background. I think as my magazine is focused on the music rather than the image of the artist, the photos being quite simple wasn't really a problem because it's not the most important aspect.

This the issue of Kerrang! I took my inspiration from and next to it is my magazine. As you can see, the main images are quite similar, I wanted someone who looked sort of like Cristina Scabbia as it would give my magazine a more authentic feel. I made sure some of the aspects were different so it wasn't exactly the same, for example Cristina Scabbia has her hand raised to her head, whilst the person on my magazine doesn't. They are similar in the way that the background is plain, they are both looking directly at the camera at eye level, so it does not look as though they think they are above the reader.

I think the stereotype shown by my main image is strong. The dark hair, make up and clothes represent what any female reading my magazine would want to look like, it is likely that they admire Cristina Scabbia. It also generates interest from the male audience as there would be a sexual attraction towards her. Being a music magazine, my magazine would have a pro-consumerist stance. They would advertise music, gigs and also things like clothing brands, but they would have to fit with what the target audience like.

Close Connotational Analysis

Here you can see all the conventions I have followed for my front page, contents and double page spread. I followed the conventions because people don't want to be confused by seeing different things in various magazines, it's a way to make the reader comfortable and I think it helps with giving them all the information they need, they know where to look for it.

The title of my magazine is 'Afterlife' it's the title of a popular song by a band that a large majority of target audience would love. I also think 'Afterlife' represents how music will be around forever, for generations it will change and my magazine will not just stick to one particular genre as music is subject to change. All of my images show a young female, there is no props, this is to make sure the reader's focus is on her as she is the magazines main feature and all attention should be on her. The clothes she is wearing change, but not very dramatically, this is to show her style, and also you could connote the genre of music she makes if you had not heard of her band before. The attitude she is showing in most of the pictures her expression is blank or she has a very slight smile, this shows that her image is also important to her as well as the music. The font I used for my masthead is called ______, I used this font because I think it stands out, it easy to read and the way it looks goes with the image of the readers and type of music they like. It is not neat and has parts missing meaning the things included in the magazine will be quite rough around the edges and loud. The placement of it is right at the top at the centre of the page, I did this because it is the first thing people will notice and  if it is on a magazine stand in a shop, my audience will be able to see it above other magazines.

The written content in my magazine very much goes with what my target audience would want, it is written in proper English with little slang but also in a chatty manner. Most is kept short and simple because the readers want to get straight to the point and don't want have to go through a lot of pointless information to get what they want to know. An exception for this is my double page spread, people who are interested in the main feature will want it to give them as much information as possible.

I think the music genre suggested through the style of my magazine is quite clear, I think it screams out rock and metal music will be included. I get this through the dark colours and the title of the magazine, it is not something you would expect a pop magazine to look like. Also the bands included on the front page are all of this genre, making anyone who is interested in this style of music will be instantly attracted to this magazine. Another thing, the fact that there is a competition to win tickets to Download festival gives away the style and Download is very much a festival for rock and metal bands. The bands included on my cover are likely to have played or play there in the future.

My contents page included both features and regulars as most magazines do. Features are things that are not included in the magazine every week, such as interviews with different bands where as regulars are something you would expect in the magazine every week like feedback, news and live reviews. The layout is very simplistic, this is to make sure the audience are not confused by a flood of images and texts. They can simply look at the page and find what they need to find. I have included one image only of my magazines main feature, I did this because as it will be the main thing is this issue of the magazine I think it should have the most space possible.

My double page spread is again quite simple with a plain background so the text and images stand out as this is what the readers want. The two images instantly tell the audience that this is an important feature as does the way the page is layed out as though it is important. Like most double page spreads it follows basic media conventions, it has a kicker to give the reader a preview of what will be included in the article. A drop cap, as I think this shows where you start reading from, in this case, the kicker. It has gutters and body text and pull quotes also.

To conclude, all of the above combine to and overall theme, a dark red is used consistently throughout the magazine as is white, I think this gives it it's own style which people will come to regcognise. All of my work fits together in that it is very simple but not boring, it is not busy and will not confuse my audience. It all comes together well and will fill a gap in the market, although there is some metal and rock magazines out there, there is not as many as there is for pop music. It will give my audiece another insight whilst doing this it will target a specific audience.