original photographs.

These are the original photographs taken by myself for my coursework project.

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?

The picture above is a comparison of my preliminary task (Left) and my main task (Right).

I feel the progression i made from the college magazine to the music magazine was very great.

After doing the college magazine i realised that research would be key to making a good magazine, gathering idea's and different formats of the basic conventions would help me create my own magazine that follows these conventions properly and looked good as well.

For the research i looked at a few magazines, 2 i specifically looked at were 'Classic Rock' and 'Bass Guitar Magazine'. I felt these pretty much covered the style i was looking for.

Obviously for the music magazine my audience would be different, i was aiming for rock fans between about 16 and 40+, i used magazines like classic rock who have a similar target audience to refer to when making decisions, like should i include slang words or swearing.

This sort of research helped me greatly as i had a solid idea of what to put in my magazine for the target audience, when before i had to take a blind stab at what would be mildly interesting to the majority of students.

This is somewhat different to the approach I had taken when making my College Magazine, with the Music one I had references in other magazines to look at and gain ideas, but with the College one It was based purely of ideas in my head, meaning it was of a much lesser standard when compared to my music magazine.

Such things can be seen quite clearly, such as the layout on the contents page. Since I had a physical magazine to give me guidance and ideas it's much neater, my increased knowledge of photoshop allowed me to achieve this whereas the college magazine is less neat and wasn't put together with any sort of guide.

Also to make the magazine look much more professional i had to learn to use the tools provided in photoshop to a greater degree than previously. As you can see on the college magazine front cover, the hair or the cover model and headstock of his bass guitar are somewhat badly cut out in photoshop, i further learnt to use the tools to pull off a much more professional edit with my music magazine as you can clearly see.

When creating the contents page and DPS i learnt how to use the rulers in photoshop, obviously to make it look professional the spacing or gutters between columns of text had to be neat and equal, by using the rulers i was able to easily create these gutters when moving the text around, the same goes with aligning some of the larger objects such as the title of the article and various sidebars.

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

For my coursework everything was edited and created within Photoshop. Prior to the assignment i had a good thorough knowledge of photoshop since i had been using it for almost 2 years, although mostly for recreational purposes it allowed me to become familiar with the tools giving me a slight head start with the assignment since i could almost skip the 'How to use Photoshop' stage when we started making our magazines.

But this doesn't mean i didn't learn during the course of making my magazine. Although i knew what most of the tools did i never used them in this sort of situation.

After seeing just what it can do to make a magazine i can understand why it's considered the norm to use this in the magazine industry.

It's main advantage is that it's very user friendly, although it may take time to get used to it when you start you're given a blank sheet with all of your tools neatly laid out, no complicated set-ups or options. But on the other hand like i said it does take practice to remember and get used to using specific tools for all sorts of different situations.

One disadvantage is that it's easy to get confused with all the different layers. This can be made easier by grouping them but even so, when working with 30/40+ layers it becomes more of a chore trying to find the specific layer you want to work on in amongst those 40.

During my project i used the website flickr. flickr allows the user to upload images for easy view, but unlike other websites such as photobucket flickr has many neat features such as the ability to share the images with other users easily, blog them to a multitude of websites (In this case i used blogger) and add annotations for easy evaluation. flickr is a website and not a program so it could be accessed from anywhere and this made it very easy when working from home or anywhere outside college.








The other main website i used was blogger. Blogger is a simple to use and set-up blogging site, although it can be used for any sort of blog I have used it to upload my various pieces of coursework, including picture of my finished product and these very evaluations. Blogger has the ability to connect with websites such as the above mentioned flickr so i could share images across the two websites, it also saved space, instead of cluttering my blogger page with lots of large images i simply including posts with links to the flickr page so those wishing too could comment and view the annotations.

The post editing could have been better in my opinion, although i didn't do this in the end it might well have been easier to type up any long pieces of text in a word processor and copy and paste it into the edit box on blogger.

The website was also customizable, i could change background colours and themes to my own personnel tastes, although not really necessary it made the blog look a bit nicer and would certainly be useful to someone wishing to make theirs very personal.

How did you attract/address your audience?

It is vitally important for your magazine to appeal and even relate to your target audience by keeping it's style consistent with the personal tastes of your audience. Doing so correctly will allow you to keep a firm and loyal reader base.


Here we have my front cover, it attracts the reader in many ways, one of the obvious is the bright yellow sticker in the middle which tell the reader the magazine is cheaper than usual. If the reader might have been interested but not wanting to pay the full amount they might be persuaded by the price reduction and buy it. The colour of the sticker in bright yellow which not only stands out but fits with the colour scheme of the magazine.

Next we have our cover model, as you can see his clothing, pose and facial expressing is anything but serious, this relates to the readers who may have a more care-free and less serious lifestyle. The slogan 'Take a walk on the wild side!' further backs this up.

The bright colours on the plain background stand out very well, this could also draw the readers eye towards in when browsing through magazines, the font of the masthead is also similar to that of Glam Band Motley Crue, fans of the band may recognise this as similar and develop an interest in the magazine.

the header also informs the reader of many promises including competitions and exclusive interviews, naturally competitions will appeal to those people looking to win a prize and the use of the word 'Exclusive' further interests the reader as they know they will be getting any important info first!


This is my contents page, this time around it adopts a slightly more serious feel, the bright colours (although still sticking to the colour scheme) are replaced by organized and neat columns, with my target audience quite old the slightly more serious tone might appeal to them more than an incredibly jokey tone with excessive use of slang.

The different bands, artists and topics listed on the page would appeal to my audience, most bands on there are easily recognised so the reader might feel safer turning to that page knowing they're going to enjoy the article rather than taking a risk with something completely unknown.

The inverted black and white colour scheme make the text really stand out and gives the page a bit of added style to it, where it makes up for lack of bright flashy colours and images.






One of the first things about the double page spread that captured the readers attention and attracts them could be the pull quote, since it mentions already established rock singer Rob Halford, fans might decide to stop and read the article since they know it may have a section mentioning Rob Halford, regardless if they know who the article is actually about.

Again it follows the colour scheme further imprinting, for lack of a better word, the magazine's house-style into the readers mind, making it become more and more familiar each time they see it.

The title 'Home Sweet Home' attracts the attention of the reader to the text and almost hides what the article is about, but it leaves room for questions and leaves the reader with the desire to know what the title means or is referring to so they may decide to continue reading.

The pose of the model is also very striking and eye-catching and the fact that the whole left page is taken up by the image only draws much more attention to it.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For my Magazine I tried to make it appeal to a fairly wide range of Rock music fans. It's aimed directly for fans of the particular genre that is Glam Rock but to increase overall interest and sales It has content such as album reviews, Interviews and articles about Classic/Hard Rock as well as Glam. Hopefully this will fill a gap in the market as well as please those looking for an alternative to magazines such as Classic Rock.

Let me paint a picture of who my magazine would be aimed at, the reader would be 16-35/40, quite possibly play a musical instrument such as Electric Guitar, have a long or unordinary hair style, of course enjoy Rock music especially older artists such as Motley Crue, Thin Lizzy and Guns'n'Roses. They would casually wear worn out blue stonewashed style jeans, perhaps skinny with a t-shirt sporting their favorite bands logo and on a night out at perhaps a gig they would wear a variety of leather clothing such as a biker style jacket and maybe even gloves. Alternatives would be a denim jacket as well.

The clothes mentioned above would most probably be purchased in independant stores or less trendy larger clothing chains, it's quite unlikely they would be following the latest fashion trends and would mould their own look, possibly based upon favorite music artists.

I expect them to have some fairly good degree of educucation, thus having a decently paid job giving them the disposable income to buy this magazine. I also expect that they would be mainly male, which is reflected in the style of magazine, being Classic 70's/80's rock in which the majority of bands were all male.

The image to the Right is an example of someone at the older end of the spectrum of my target audience, someone who may have lived through the era of 70's and 80's rock.

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

After some careful research I've decided that my magazine might be distributed by world-wide publisher 'Future PLC'.

Future PLC have a fair bit of experience publishing music magazines, try the largest publisher of guitar magazines in the world and music magazines in the UK and US, especially rock and metal themed magazines, some that have been going for more than 25 years, considering the average life-span of some magazines it's clear future know what they're doing.

With a company like Future PLC backing my magazine a believe it could get the coverage it needs with advertisements in it's other magazines that would most probably have readers interested in Glam rock.

One risk though is that they already publish the magazine 'Classic Rock' which could prove to be a competitive rival. Hopefully because my magazine is more Glam Rock orientated it will fill a gap in their portfolio between Classic Rock and the Heavy Metal magazine 'Metal Hammer'.

The magazine will also need a synergy, some form of advertisement in another media form to increase profit. An online viral video would be a great way of advertising as well as adverts on official video's for bands of this particular genre would bring in a possible audience. An online version of this magazine may help, although it's debatable whether or not to make this service free or for subscribers.

Of course the magazine will have to make itself well known before Online versions can be published due to costings and whether it's worth taking the risk. If we build up a solid audience and customer base such moves wouldn't be as risky

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Here we have an image comparing my cover model Sam from band Bad Shuck to Ex Guns'n'Roses guitarist Slash. Both are a medium-long shot and the picture of Slash is slightly more stern and serious compared the more wild feel of the picture of Sam.

This could connote that Slash is more experienced and for lack of a better word been round the block a few times making him more of the older and wiser one as apposed to Sam who's loose arms, smile, spread legs and wild hair connote more of a younger care-free feel.

The shot distance shows us from the knee up which gives ample space to show the full typical 'Rocker' pose, rather than a medium close-up in which we wouldn't be able to recognise the pose as this at all.

The clothing and props are also very similar. They both have long curly/wavy hair and a pair of rather large almost identical sun-glasses on. Both are wearing a pair of tight black jeans, and they both wear a silver necklace of sorts around their necks. Slash however has his signature top-hat and a loose fitting chequered top and whilst Sam is wearing a loose fitting top he is also wearing a black waistcoat over it. The tops do however have something else in common in that the top few buttons are let down to show the necklace and upper chest.

The guitars in each picture also show the point i was making earlier, Slash's guitar is more of a standard and classic wood looking colour again reiterating the point that he's somewhat more serious than Sam with a bright zebra-print guitar of the same shape.

Generally the magazine isn't written straight for the Rocker. It's accessible by almost anyone who is interested, the lack of modern slang and a classic layout makes it more appealing to older audiences as well as the younger readers.

The magazine itself however has only one article about a female mentioned on the contents page, and this woman is in-fact a fashion designer. This pushes on the stereotype of Classic Rock being more manly since back then very few hard rock/glam bands had female members, and the only women connected were often backstage workers or groupies.