Questionnaire

In order to create my magazine I have to create a questionnaire to decide what genre of music will be talking about in my magazine. This will help me a lot in terms of finding a target audience which I will have to try and capture.

Age

10 - 15          16 - 20           21 - 25             26 - 30             30 +
     6                  16                  15                    10                   3

Preferred Music Genre

   Pop            Grime             Dance               Rock              Indie
     3                   7                    30                     5                     6

Do you read Magazines

    No             Yes
    13               37

If yes how many per month?

  0 - 5             5 - 10               10 +
    19                 15                   3

I used an opportunity sample of 50 to find my results and help me in developing my magazine. I found that most of my participants were between the ages of 16 - 30 with 41 votes, this will be my target audience. The most popular music genre was dance suggesting that this music genre identifies with a younger generation. I also found that the majority of my sample read magazines frequently every month proving that there is a market for this. So my final magazine task will be on the genre of dance music and will be aimed at ages between 16 - 30.

Comparison with the preliminary task

I feel I have come a long way since the preliminary task of print. I feel I have learnt more in the terms of layout, representation and essentials in a magazine through my research. The music magazine looks more professional than the preliminary task as the contents has improved in terms of layout, color and consistency. My front cover has improved dramatically as there is more on the front cover not looking bare and boring. My front cover also has a kicker on the front cover suggesting to the reader what's inside the article. I feel I have a better understanding of media concepts as I have had to use them in my magazine such as lifestyle and representation, as I have represented experimental and anti-authority through images in my magazine.

Print over film

I decided to choose print instead of film for my final task as I preferred creating the front and contents pages than filming because I like to be creative and design different things. I feel filming would be more of a challenge for me to do as I know more about music and layouts than camera angles and could be restricted to do things whilst filming such as weather. I also chose print as I haven't yet used Adobe Photoshop which I am keen to learn how to use the program as it will add to my ICT skills

Group Work

Our group had decided to research our own ways an design different issues of our magazine 'iDJ'. This meant that our original background we all had, had to be manipulated to look like different issues. Even though we worked separately whilst researching we helped each other in the process by sharing ideas. I feel we planned our time well except from actually creating the magazine as the blogger was down which delayed adding my research to the blogger. It was only in the last week I could put my front page, contents page and double page spread. As I didn't have enough time in class I had to use up some of my spare time during lunch and after school periods in order to complete the coursework, my magazine

Photo Shoot

From analysing magazines such as Mixmag which are also based around the same genre as my magazine I have found that I must consider mise-en-scene, props, costume and bodylanguage as all of these are codes for the chosen genre of music. I have to have the photo shoot taken where I could use graffiti as the background maybe brick lane for example as the graffti codes for creativity and experimental. This shows that my magazine is trying to identify with experimentalists who like to be creative, it also symbolises the genre of music as most songs are remixes etc. For props I was thinking of using alcoholic drink bottles to code for happiness, very relaxed as this tells the reader what the music is about how it makes you feel. It also shows that this type of music brings people together such as clubbing, place for socialising. For my costume I am going to go for a casual look such as jeans and top with a rolling stones T-shirt as this is shows that the magazine is about music. Add some colourful props or other parts of the costume to amke it seem more materialistic.

Mixmag Font cover analysis

Planning

In order to create our magazine we had to analyse other magazines and a popular dance music themed magazine is ‘Mixmag’. The analysis has helped me to realise what I need to include in my front cover such as codes for dance music relations and to make it bold to make it stand out to our main target audience which is the ages between 16 to around 30.

To promote our magazine I have decided to include a free giveaway as this promotion idea is very popular with other magazines and is used to attract customers. In my experience I find that free giveaways tend to persuade me to buy a magazine.

When creating my magazine I must take into consideration codes such as body language, props and fonts as this will distinguish my magazine from other music genres to show this is a sole purpose dance magazine.

As Dance/Club music attracts both females and males so I must make sure that the magazine caters for both genders and show that it isn’t male dominated or female dominated. I must make clear that this magazine is for both males and females by including images related to both genders and words used on my front cover.

As dance music is related to raving in nightclubs I may use different fonts to make the magazine look a bit messy to act as a code for dance music.

I must make the front cover eye catching as the front cover is the first thing a customer sees when looking through a rack of magazines so must attract and impress.