Front cover analysis

Looking at the front cover its colour scheme seems to be white red and gold which has connotations of strength power determination purity faith joy and intellect, which correlates with the genre of magazine as the readers really understand and can get the idea as most musicians have a strong passion for their music and this style of genre.

The masthead The history of Rock is in two different sections, the history of which is the first part of the mast head is in a dull white which gives it the feel of it being old but also pure, which could be interpreted the real truth about the history of Rock. The second section of mast head rock is quite large and takes up a portion of the front cover. Along with that its in bright red which can also be seen as a relation to stage lights. the typography is rather broad and stands out the most rather than anything else on the mast head as it is very visible and eye catching and everything else is quite dull and smaller.

The main Image on the front cover who is partly covering the word rock who is dressed in all white can be seen to be the embodiment of Rock, as he is dressed in white it could be considered that he is pure rock and nothing else. 

Subheadings along the top right hand of the page underneath the letter K of Rock feature information on a monthly trip through music's golden years in this magazines issue 1969 allows readers to acknowledge what they are about to read and all of the contents inside of it which could be considered as vintage information. On the bottom half where it informs readers on the people who are starring in this magazine - where it says starring featuring the rolling stones and so on this tells us  about musicians and also groups who may be considered as legends and also the greatest. I have to come to this conclusion as the names of most of the people in this section are in gold and white which have connotations of treasure and pricelessness and also purity.

Audience analysis The history of rock

In my magazine i couldn't seem to find any advertisers in it, however i will be having further looks in detail to make sure that i haven't missed anything about any type of advertisement.

Price of the magazine £9.99

Magazine Content 

Talks and messages from bands and groups and reasons why the groups may have ended, also interviews about their upcoming tracks ( in their time  not now) and what they had to say about their upcoming single or track. Also had information about DvD or tapes on the songs such as one of the dvd's featuring David bowie on the contents page.

Segmentation in the Market.

Geographic - as the target market tends to be consumers that reside in the city state or country. Most of the magazines individual bands and stars are mostly British so it would make sense for this magazine to be a Geographic one as it can mirror the audiences expectations and also the general consensus. 

Psychographic - The target market would also be psychographic as they may have similar attitudes values and also life styles as most people that enjoy rock music (not all ) may attune themselves to this type of life style along with  the type of clothing that they wore in that period of time.

Beneficial - The readers that are targeted in this magazine can benefit of off reading this magazine because it as to their bank of knowledge that they currently have on this genre and also informs them of where this all started. They also can benefit from knowing someone of the top tracks in the 1960's and try and listen and search them up to get a brief understanding of what music was like during that time.

Behaviouristic - Tend to have their own style where they may dress like the music they listen to but can tend to stick their style despite the change in style in popular culture no matter that they will remain to how they dress but it can become a trend in the way that they dress.

Analysis > The history of rock (1969)

Range of age

The History of rock magazine has a vast range of diverse content packed inside of it. Looking at the front cover i can tell that this magazine is not presented just to the older generation who have not necessarily been around from the 1960's but for individuals who actually like rock music and would want to know where it all stemmed from. However i would say that the range of age for this magazine would be from the ages of 17 going on as i wouldn't necessarily put a limit on the age range of people who may like this magazine. Even looking at the masthead of the magazine you can tell it has that sort of 90's feel to it by the way it has been presented.

Along with the age range of individuals who may want to buy this magazine when i was examining the front cove of this magazine i noticed at the bottom left hand corner of the front cover names of 'rock stars'  that were being featured in this magazine. Most of these names i didn't know but even by looking at them i could tell that these names most likely could mean a big deal to those who actually remember them and like their music but also at the same time catch the eyes of the younger generation who are interested in rock music and allow them to discover the groups of people who started the whole genre themselves.

Also at the bottom where it says 'Plus!' there are additional names that wasn't mentioned in the staring section but i believe they may be newer rock groups or bands that have started out or may even be before the 1960's, I'm unsure as i have gotten to that section of the magazine yet but soon i will and will be able to give enough information about what the plus is about.

Gender
When i first looked at the magazine i initially thought this is going to be a stereotypical male dominated genre as i didn't believe their would be female rockstars, however to my surprise looking into this magazine i found that there are multiple women and also bands that are dominated by women and are loved by fans of the genre, such as 'The Bangles' and their song Walk Like an Egyptian. That aside this magazine was not set out just for men this magazine is for both men and women. On the inside of the magazine their are pages featuring clothing of the era and how also women and men who like this genre would dress, mostly ripped shirts baggy trousers and t shirts uncombed hair and so on.

Additional information
Looking at the contents page it shows a wide range of information that allocates each individual section of the magazine to an artist for example on page 12 it will feature Bob Dylan and on page 22 it features the Kinks.
Along with that it also features information about the individuals success and also the record hits they have made and also news on how they are doing currently.

Looking at the information that i have gathered up form actually reading this magazine to an extent i have summed up a brief idea of what the lifestyle choices and aspirations of the audience this magazine would be. From what i presume they obviously like the music so they may be interested in the clothing and the fashion ideas that they had in the 1960's and may still dress that way to an extent. Also if their may have been any recent releases on refurbished cd tapes of old songs that they enjoyed when they were released they would most likely buy it or go to a concert if for example a band got back together that got separated.

Price - Earnings of audience
The price of the magazine normally that i would of had to pay for it was £9.99.  This price isn't that expensive but to my surprise i was shocked at how cheap it was. The reason as to why i was shocked at the price is that the amount of content that has been put into this magazine isn't reflected in the price as i presumed i may have to be a high price. Seeing this i believe that people who are fans of this style and genre of magazine can go and buy this weekly or monthly depending on their salary as it isn't that expense                                                                                                but if they have been inspired by the rock magazine they may have become musicians so i'd say monthly.

                                                                                         
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Brand eye - unable to do at the current time for The history of rock.

the current pc that i am using doesn't have power point or word documents so i am unable to complete a brand eye but i will do so as soon as possible.

The history of rock

Today I went to Whsmith in harrow in the store St ants and bought this magazine called the history of Rock. This magazines price was 9.99 but with some of the whsmith vouchers i had from previous purchases at the store i knocked the price down to 6.99 so it wasn't that expensive.

The history of rock is the first music magazine that i have ever bought and also will be the first magazine that i will be researching and analysing for my preliminary task. This is a rock magazine and I'm not too much of a fan of rock music but to have a wider range of knowledge i have to dive into all sections of music to get a true understanding of the genre and how the genre of music can affect how the initial design of the magazine.
This is the front cover/page of this magazine i have taken the photo as you can see proof of my hand being there.

Increasing the amount of content that i put out

From today for me to try my uttermost best and better myself and really go for a high grade i have realised that i will need to be looking into and buying more magazines allowing me to evaluate them. having Photos of magazines online is useful however it is much more better to have a copy at hand that i can really compare it with other magazines that i have and see the differences and try and understand why those changes were made and apply that knowledge to when i create my own magazine for my preliminary task.

Marking my working using a mark scheme

Marking my own work

In the lesson that I had before I was tasked with marking another students work that they had produced over an amount of time, now I will be using that same criteria to mark my own work.

Action plan

Looking forward from this point I have a well informed standing of how I want to pursue my main task. as I now know the common mistakes that I made and make throughout the work that I do and also how it can affect my individual grades.
The mistakes that I make now are good in a sense that I know that this isn't the main task so I can make mistakes now as long as I learn from them and try to perfect my weaker areas.

An idea for the future would be for me to get better images to have for my magazine. The reason why I say this is that looking at my front cover page for my magazine page that I made it is clearly visible how blurry and pixelated the image is of the individual. By me getting better images for the main task it will allow me to try and get across the ideas that I had while taking the shot and also connecting with the individuals who are looking at it.

In the post that I will be uploading tomorrow I have shown that I have the ability to mark my own work fairly and that I was able to locate the weaknesses that I may not have seen at the time but after taking a step back and really looking at what work I have produced I can see that I could have done much better with certain key features of it.

For my main task I am thinking of using different formats of technology to help people get by my work rather than being bored with reading pages and pages of writing. A good example of this would be for me to use power point or even Prezi or even voice recordings. Furthermore I think having a recording of me actually producing work would be a greater achievement/feat to pull off during my work.

In what way does your media product challenge real media products

 Before I started doing this task I wanted to have a brief idea of what other magazine pages and covers looked like so that I could know what I wanted to base my own one off of. Now Seeing other media products they all generally have the same basic design when it comes to the contents page and front cover. Now when saying this I don't initially mean that they are all identical but I mean that they have the same design concept. An example of this is on  the left with the contents page. They generally have a chunk of information on one side or going straight down the page telling us where and what pages certain information are on which is the main idea of a contents page, However then they have the general idea of sticking pictures round the edge of the page to fill up the gaps but also keep the readers and the audience entertained enough to continue reading. This general idea of contents page is generic in some sense and as you can see with my own contents page I based my own off of this same idea.




The same idea generally goes for my front cover page as they generally have the main image going down the middle of the page as seen present below. Then they have all the other information on the sides of the main image which will then briefly cover them over or overlap. Also they have the mast head behind the main image along with other typography near the face of the main image. Seeing this design concept I went along and did pretty much the same but it could have been a lot better in my opinion however at the time I was still getting to grasps with switching from InDesign to Photoshop but even on Photoshop my magic wand laso-tool skills aren't up to the standard that they need to be.



As you see below this is my idea that I had created for Redbrooks high which could have been a bit better as when I look at the main image it is visible where the editing has been done as their are pixelated areas of the image. However I went along with general idea of most front cover magazine pages have which is the Main image down the middle however the image that I have taken isn't generally down the middle as the main image bends into the photo rather than standing up right and the mast head isn't behind the image either, however most some of the words are overlapping the main images body.








Looking at my work now and comparing it with my peers I have learnt a few new techniques of how I can improve my work for the future and how I can make adjustments to most of the individual concepts that I use to make it look professional compared to the ones present because it is easy to tell that it was made by student when comparing it to professional magazine pages even though I'm not necessarily going to be on that level of editing yet.

Who would the main audience be for my Media product

 

How did I attract my audience

Attracting my audience was probably one of the most difficult things that I had to for this task as I even though I thought I was doing the right things to get attention and attract an audience is was very difficult to obtain at the start. As my target audience are teenagers which most of them are generally older than me but some are the same age I looked at my self as an individual and tried to understand what kind of things would attract me to read something. so first I tried to using catch slogans or use colourful editing. Doing this I was only able to obtain 3 potential viewers which abstained from perusing my magazine after 3 days. After doing this I realized that I needed to change my initial approach so instead the whole class used a survey to have individuals answer them and get them to try and really get into the idea that I was going to be creating a magazine. This was much useful as I learned that most of my generation don't really want to go out of the way to pursue anything unless it is important or unless it interests them. Also most of the teenagers that I know generally use social media to stay in contact with someone or people so keeping my attractions and blogs online allows them to stay in contact as its a better approach of me waiting for them to come to me and instead let me go to them.

What have I learnt about technology from constructing my product and also frmo further research

At the start of this course I was given the task of creating a magazine front cover and contents page, initially I wanted to use a Photoshop to create my magazine product, the reason I wanted to use photo shop at the start as I was more accustomed to using it from using for my GCSE course, however we all used to InDesign to create the magazine. I using InDesign I learnt how to use contour lines and also how to change different letters in a word to different colours while keeping the rest in black for example. However the skill that I still haven't mastered yet is the one that I struggled with while I was making my Gary Barlow front page which was getting the Text behind an individuals head. Also I also want to learn how to mask using InDesign as I know it very useful. During the lesson I watched Youtube videos which taught me how to use InDesign much faster as there was multiple tutorials on it.
During the actual preliminary task I will be using InDesign as I found it much more easier to use rather than that of Photoshop which sounds strange but once you really understand the basics of InDesign it is much easier and in some sense a it more reliable than Photoshop in some areas.

When I actually start doing my preliminary task I will be using other media formats rather than the just common style of using Microsoft Word and just typing away, I would like to use other media formats to show that I have knowledge of other media formats and to show off some of my own individual skills and that I know how to use editing software without going overboard for example.

Evaluation Task

Through out this section I will hence forward be analyzing the contents page and the front page that I have created as a preliminary task in lesson. As I do so I will be analyzing my work using technological platforms and aspects such as using a recording system to enable people to see that it is actually me creating and performing the work that I have published on my blog. Also I will also be using slide shows and possibly a voice over on the slide shows to talk people through the initial process that I have gone through to be able to continue the work that I  am currently doing at this time.

On indesign I was tasked the objective of creating a brief draft of my initial front page along with my contents page. These screen shots above are from the work that i've  completed as the preliminary task. This was no easy task as i had to do multiple things to achieve even the smallest feats using this application such as finding ways of changing the colour of different sections of the text of my mast head as you see on the front page where I edited out rooks to make it initially red. For me i believe the hardest part was using photo shop and trying to neatly delete sections off of my front page image without making it looking too pixelated but at the same time easy to see. One of the easiest pieces for me was actually starting off with aquiring information from other magazines to try and get a brief idea of what I wanted to have for my magazine. The fun part was getting people to pose for me to allow me to take the pictures that I needed for my front cover page and also the picture of me where I had to pose on my contents page. All together I thought this task had an intermediate range of difficulty and fun mixed in with it which I found enjoyable enough for me to continue working at it to even come after my college day and do my best to catch up and finish of pieces that I hadn't done.