Evaluation Questions: 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

My target audience would typically be late teens/young adults, whom of which would be interested in the folk genre. This audience would be attracted to my magazine, but also other audience groups may be interested by the magazine for the following reasons.

Firstly, (probably) the most eye-catching attraction on my product's front cover is the extensively large logo that I have used at the top of the cover 'Woodhouse.'. This is due to being the largest text on the page and covers the entire width of the page. The text is bold and the font colour is white; I feel this stands out very well to audiences' who may capture a glimpse of the magazine on a shop shelf.

Furthermore, the banner at the bottom of the page would grab the reader's attention from the opposing colours used to make the text stand out - the red 'plus!', for example. The red sticker circle with the white text also may attract the reader to find out about the exclusive story of Vance Joy, as seen in the white text box surrounding the sticker.

All of these layers, colours and boxes create attraction for the audience that could well be passing by the magazine and grab their attention. I would typically attract my audience from the articles that I have chosen to use in the folk magazine. The main feature article would of course attract my target audience to read my media text by the main body image that covers the entire front page. I have tried to change the colours and fonts to prevent similarity within the appearance of the front cover.

On my contents page, I have tried to extend the theme throughout the magazine and not too much differentiation. Regarding how I addressed my audience in the contents page, I tried to use my original photography as the dominating theme within the contents page to inspire my audience to read on in the magazine. Visually, the audience are more attracted to images than text, thus influencing me to predominantly use these images to cover my contents. Saying this, I had to of course use text, so I addressed my audience to use the contents page easily from a simple layout; placing the text with the referencing page numbers on the right hand page, and predominantly the images on the left. 

My double page also followed the theme of line weighting and text fonts/colours. I have tried to attract my audience to quotes from the feature artist by filling the text box in black and the text in white. What I have also chosen to do to address my audience is move the artist's title 'Noah Brown' around the image, placing it on the landscape as if it is actually within mise-en-scéne. 

Evaluation Questions: 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Regarding the audience who would typically view my media product, the range would be very wide and stretch a very wide age range, from pre-adolescent/early teens to even the elderly audience. The audience who would typically read my media product would be the audience who enjoys the 'indie/folk' genre, who would typically enjoy reading music magazines of any kind or even who would see one of their favourite artist/an exclusive of the artist on the front cover. This may even stretch to smaller articles where fans may like to read the articles that are not just the exclusive artists - for example, in my magazine, Noah Brown being the exclusive artist.

Evaluation Questions: 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Publishing companies like IPC Media who owns NME and many other publications that are owned under a number of divisions; Inspire. Inspire also publish such magazines that deal with many other different magazine other than music. This means that IPC Media have the best experience when dealing with another genre of music. The 'Inspire' division publish 'Country Life', for example, which can relate much to the locations/setting of which folk music can be set in - typically, in my magazine especially, folk music is set in the woods or natural backgrounds; so IPC Media, I feel, would certainly have a large interest in publishing and distributing my media product.

Bauer Media Group who owns Q, Mojo and Kerrang may want to also distribute my media product due to being involved heavily with the music magazine, and have three of the best-selling and most popular music magazines (Q, Mojo and Kerrang). I have used and developed many forms, layouts and conventions from these three magazines as you can see from my product, especially from the front cover (as you can see below). I have similar conventions, such as the main artist title, other feature title, promotions (sticker) and barcode.

Evaluation Questions: 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My product represents particular social groups through stereotypes and conventions that the social group representation may offer - specifically, my product features an 18 year old male who is on an indie record label and has recorded recorded two albums, plus two other males who are performing and recording artists, who are also fairly young males, whom of which I will discuss later in my answer.

Concerning the feature artist of my product, the 18 year old male has been represented positively regarding representation of late-teens/young adults. This is because Noah has got himself a recording contract with a small indie label and has recorded two albums at his age - whereas the opposite (negative) representation of this would be teenagers who drink alcohol, do drugs, get into trouble with the police, cause havoc, etc. whereas, my product promotes the positive representation of a singer-songwriter male who is making something of their life.

Furthermore, the other two artists in my magazine also have positive representations too, similarly to Noah's representation. Art Haire - the acoustic soloist also holds a positive representation due to not causing trouble instead of making music, which is often at least one of the representations that late teens/young adults possess as a general characteristic. The same is attached with Pete Moss' social group representation - being in a successful band, as compared to being in the media for the opposite story, a negative storyline, more likely in a newspaper, for example.

Not also is this a positive representation, but the fact that a young adult can have such a positive reflection on the more-or-less, if not, same age group as the artists, then this can also be a further positive representation of the artists.

Evaluation Questions: 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My music magazine, being a front cover, contents page and double-page spread, uses, develops and also challenges many forms and conventions from various media products that I have researched and also discovered from my own personal viewings of music magazines – such as NME and Q.

My front cover featured many conventions that I had used and developed from research in existing magazines. Here is the conventions that I had used/developed in my front cover: 

My Front Cover 

Q Front Cover

As you can see from these two pictures, my front cover has used the convention of big and bold text for the artist title, which can be seen in Q's front cover featured artist too - furthermore, it is also white, however I have gone for a full opacity white, whereas it looks as if Q have reduced the opacity (the majority on the right side of the title) to create a faded style. 

My Front Cover

Q Front Cover

I have also developed the convention of adding a quote to the front cover of my magazine. Similarly, I have also used the font colour of white for the quote. I feel that by adding a quote to the front cover, it grabs the reader's attention - being factual and everything.

My Front Cover

Q Front Cover

As you can see, I have used the convention of placing a circle (with text) to make it look like a sticker that has been placed on the magazine. When I researched into real media texts, I thought this was an effective convention to adapt in my magazine - as you can see you from my magazine, it ties the colour scheme of the red 'PLUS!' in the bottom strand and the red sticker effectively.

My Front Cover

Q Front Cover

As for the magazine motto, I have developed the idea of a motto that is placed under my logo - unlike Q, where it is above the logo in this case, however saying that, it is also presented sometimes under the logo; refuting my own argument I guess. I digress - the motto I have used is slightly more modest than Q's "The world's greatest music magazine", however they do of course have a much bigger status, and are one of the leading music magazines. Regarding the contrast in logos, both NME and Q as research differ greatly as compared to mine; with mine being a full name, and the likes of NME and Q being an abbreviation or a one letter logo. 

My Front Cover

One convention that has probably challenged conventions, certainly in my research (as you can see previously in my blog) and in my personal viewing of real media texts, is that logos for festivals or events aren't often used on music magazines as they often don't really fit in with the colour scheme or style/layout of the magazine.


My contents page featured many conventions that I had used and developed from research in existing magazines. Here is the conventions that I had used/developed in my contents page:


My double page spread featured many conventions that I had used and developed from research in existing magazines. Here is the conventions that I had used/developed in my double page spread:

My Left Page of Double Page Spread

NME Left Page of Double Page Spread

The use of a whole image to fill an entire A4 side on the left page of the double page has been used conventionally in my product from the research shown above in NME's issue featuring Paul McCartney. There are some differences in the left page with the specific content; NME has chosen a mid-close up of Paul and his guitar, and I have chosen to go for a long shot with Noah and his guitar. NME have an artificial background and I have natural woodland and brickery in front of Noah (as I have described to you in previous posts). Also, I have added a page number at the bottom (left) of my product's page, whereas there is no page number that I can see from the screenshot of the research.

My Right Page of Double Page Spread

NME Right Page of Double Page Spread

Just like the NME column text, I have used (three) columns to layout the main content of the double page spread. Similarly, I have used a big letter to go with the column text, however I have used two instead and placed it under the layer of the first column to outline the first two words - 'N' for Noah and 'B' for Brown.

Planning: Double Page Spread Update

Below is a recent update of how the Double Page Spread is progressing...

I feel that this is almost close to being finished. I am happy with the right-hand page as a whole, but feel that something different could be done with the left-hand page concerning the text over the picture - especially the black text as it doesn't stand out as much as it should do. Furthermore, I want to reduce the line space in the second column of the right-hand page as it looks a little to distant as compared to the other two columns - this is probably because of the paragraph spacing to separate the interview transcript. 

Planning: Audience Feedback (Contents Page)

I recently posted some updates of my contents page to a social networking site to gain some audience feedback. Note: The image below is a screenshot of the post that I shared on my social networking profile, and the screenshot shown here only shows two thirds of the magazine. The magazine that I used for the audience feedback can be seen in my three posts ago.

Audience Member 1

Audience Member 1 complimented the page.

There was not a lot of Audience Feedback for this page, except a few mistakes I forgot to change before uploading, so they were immediately spotted and changed.

My Media teacher said he likes it before I uploaded it, saying that the numbers that are integrated into the pictures were effective and delivered what is conventional of a music magazine contents page. Also, he said I needed more