Music Magazine Evaluation

I would say that my music magazine challenges the forms and conventions of the music magazine industry today because rather than just looking at a particular genre (kerrang) or just looking at whats new (NME) I am looking at the whole picture and that includes old classic artists and music from generations ago, I also felt that it would to a wider audience this way, in fact it's meant to apeal to pretty much everyone because it looks at all different kinds of music. to look at these different genre I have different sections to my magazine such as the oldies section which looks at old music in particular, I have a top ten artists section which changes each issue because a different genre is looked at for example one issue it might be indie rock and thenext it might be pop .

Like NME I wanted to look at what was new in the music industry accept less tabloidy and more to do with the music because whilst I was in my reasearch stage of the project I realised that over the years NME's music content had declined and it became more tabloidy which is somthing that I don't like to see in music magazines, I want to read about music.

After the research I had done and generally having read different music magazines over the years I realized that there was'nt anything like what I have come up with, I also wanted to bring together the different music I love in my magazine and because the range of music I like is so wide I came up with this idea for a magazine. I also think that even though the younger generation will want to know what new sounds are out there that they are apreciating classics more and more.

Because my magazine looks at different music genres I had to kind of steryotype the different generations for example for the older generations, I have put a section on Jimi Hendrix in my oldies section because he is a music icon of the seventies (and just in the history of music) and for todays generation I have put added a section on Muse because they are very big right now and alot of todays youth really like them, I also added a section on the very popular metal band Slipknot because during my reasearch I read a couple of metal magazines (Kerrang, Metal Hammer) I saw thay they both had sections on their tenth anniversary so I thought that if I wanted my magazine to be one that kept with the times like NME does then I should include this so I did.

When looking into different magazines I realized that a good publisher for my magazine would be the same one that publishes The NME who are called Jellyfish. First of all because my m,agazine is similar to The NME in that it releases new information on current bands and artists but because this company specialises in publishing magaszines and has also published BBC Magazines and Which (more info on http://www.nme-magazine.com/company/publishers).

As I mentioned before one of my main inspirations for my magazines was to create a music magazine for everyone because it hadn't been done before so in terms of target audience I am not aiming this magazine at a specific age group or gender I wanted to create somehting that would essentialy satisfy everyone. I supose I had to come to one decision I would be that this magazine is aimed at music fanatics who are into all kinds of music and are not fixated on one specific genre which many are and that brings me back to my first point about universal apeal.

When it came to designing my magazine's look and layout I knew this would be I high point in my project because I am very creative and pationet for design and ilistration so I came up which a whole bunch of visual easter eegs to put in my magazine and I took alot of photographs which you will see in earlier blog posts, I am also skilled in the use of photoshop and publisher both of which I used to create and put together my final product. I found many interesting and cool fonts on the websit www.dafont.com which I used to add proffesionalism and an overall nice finish on my final product which I am quite satisfied with.

The images that I used in my magazine are very eyecatching and interesting for example my photos of the band I did my double page spread on are humerous and cool and I created some cool imagery using some sketches I scanned and coloured in on photoshop (see.

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph I used photoshop and publisher to put together my music magazine. Photoshop is something I have been using for a while now because I did many subjects that I could encorparate it with in GCSE such art art, graphics and media studies all of which I have continued in to A-level, I also used it in my work expirience during GCSE, I worked in a design company called 'Crumpled Dog Design' (http://www.crumpled-dog.com/). Not only is is a very useful program but I enjoy using it alot and I loved designing on photoshop for this project. Publisher is something that I have also been using for a while now and it has served me well, I have used it alot in this project, especially in the making of my magazine as it is a very sraight forward and effective program. using a blog to do all my coursework is actually new to me, in fact I had never created a blog before this project and I was quite worried when I was told this was how I had to hand in all my work but I have grow to like it alot, it is very easy to use and whenever I had some ideas or some research I could post it on the blog whenever which is a very convinient tool. The preliminary task was quite useful because it helped me to get to grips with using the blog and it prepared me for the task of creating my music magazine. it allowed me refresh my skills in both photoshop and publisher and I precticed researching which was good preperation for the main project.