For this task, we had to create a board and go in search of picture, words, designs as well Photoshop & Indesign techniques  you think might suit your magazine. To gather my images together I used Pinterest, to create my board of inspiration for my own music magazine. I found photos, designs, images from any manner of sources that I was inspired by and could use as inspiration for my own magazine. The moodboard will be a reference that I will use as I design my magazine.

To link to my pinterest board click here

For this task, we had to give our ideal audience an image, name, gender, relationship status, groups, status, likes, dislikes and portray it through a dating profile.

I researched into my audience the:

• Demographic- Who you are
• Pyschographic- Your personal ideologies (values, opinions and beliefs)
• Situated Culture- How and where you consume the text
• Cultural Experiences- Your previous cultural understanding and experiences

Here’s my dating profile I created for an example of my audience profile:

In this task, I looked at a number of back issues of Billboard and used YouGov for artists that appeared on those front pages. It has helped me in the production of making my own music magazine because I have discovered what my audience will enjoy seeing and how they will be drawn to the magazine.

A couple of theorists who considered the reasons why an audience would purchase the magazine were Blumler & Katz, who suggested that there were four reasons collectively known as Uses and Gratification. Their theory describes an active audience and suggested four reasons for people to actively seek out and consume media

The Reception Theory is written by Stuart Hall and describes where ideologies meet, meaning is made:

• Producers Ideology (encodes)
• Audience’s (decodes)

Music which is:

• Preferred- audience accepts the values
• Negotiated- audience accepts some of the values
• Oppositional- the audience rejects the values

When focusing on preferred reading in my own magazine I will encode all the elements my audience wants to see on the cover as they will then decode it in order to make my magazine perfect for the target audience and not be the opposite to what they are looking for, therefore not being successful.

After completing these tasks I’ve learnt that it’s important to focus on the target audience in particular because the magazine needs to attract the age group along with the trends that come with them. Also I’ve learnt to focus on the demographics that describe the audience:

• Gender
• Age
• Education
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Cultural background
• What ‘communities’ do they belong to?
• Where do they live, work and play?

Other elements that I have now learnt to think about is their values, attitudes and beliefs they hold about what’s important in their lives and the world around them. This is important to think about for the target to attract the audience as much as possible.

For my music magazine, I decided to choose the genre pop and call it Simply Pop. This is because I enjoy this music and feel though I can create a successful magazine based on this genre as I listen to this music in my everyday life. Some genres of music have very specific conventions and provide with much more scope for design decisions and copy style so I thought pop was a good genre for me to choose.

This is a word cloud that I made based on my research of the genre and the connotations behind it. The words are based on are linked to the genre pop and what might be included in the magazine.

Mission Statement

‘Simply Pop is one of the top magazines for those who have a love of pop music. It’s a fresh and interesting magazine written for teenage girls that see everything to do with pop as a part of their life. We provide our readers with the chance to keep up to date with all the chart music and artists that interest them. This magazine will recognise the great success of pop artists, and celebrate the fact that pop music is one of the most popular music genres today. Our big objective is to engage our audience with the magazine and include the artists that they love and recognise to ensure our audience has a sense of belonging and interest.

This task was to complete a thorough textual analysis of a music magazine that we researched as class. Our aim was to analyse the target audience and see how the different features link to what audience the magazine is aimed at.

For the magazine I chose, the target audience was aimed at millennials from both genders. As I looked further into detail, I discovered that typically people who enjoy rock would read this magazine as the band member from the band “The 1975” is featured as the main star on the cover.

From completing this task, it has helped me understand how each component and feature on the cover of any magazine cover contributes to how it appeals to the audience it is targeted at. This has also been helpful for when I’m making my own music magazine. This is because I will think about how every aspect links to the target audience and do so successfully.

As a task, we were allocated a music magazine cover from the slide show given to us and had the challenge of researching our cover and looking into the intended target audience. We looked into this because it is always essential when creating any media product that you have a clear idea of who your audience are and what they expect to read, listen, watch in your product. Media marketing experts will always carry out audience research to ensure they are providing their audiences with the ingredients they want (repertoire of elements) and also ensure they know how and where to find them so that they can maximize their sales, circulation or readership. The audience is an essential role to think about in the production of a magazine as well as all other media. This is because the audience itself has many roles, as they consume the text but also inform the producers of current trends and give positive or negative feedback.

In this Vibe magazine, we see that the main cover star shown is Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar Duckworth is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most skillful and successful hip hop artists of his generation. He is most popular among women and millennial’s and is the 29th most popular rap and hip hop music artist. He also receives a 20% of positive opinion which conveys he is popular in the rap and hip hop industry. Kendrick is included in this magazine as the main star because it will attract the audience and especially his fans from many classes as it is a cheap magazine so anyone can afford it.

The magazine itself uses many typicalities such as masthead, name, colours, design, articles, and images.

In the lesson, we were put in pairs to analyse the main design elements labelled on the magazine. We looked at many examples of magazines and analysed the colours, images and expectations and how they reflect the emotion and purpose of the magazine. Also we studied the similarities of the magazines by the prices and choice of words they use to intrigue the audience. Most of these elements are typicalities of any music magazine such as the plug, main cover star, main cover line, caption, inset, pug, masthead, issue, date, price, bar code and cover lines. I labelled each of these technical conventions on the magazine below: