Lipi: Evaluation

Our task was to create a music magazine cover. Our group of four decided to make a pop magazine called ‘Melody’ which would be aimed at an audience of 11-15 year old girls. Our cover consists of a main image of Amrita, who is a well known pop star, who worked her way up from being just a model of the catwalk. The picture of Amrita is glamorous, glossy and girly to attract our target audience. She is also addressing the audience directly as she is looking at the camera. In our magazine there are 4 different cover lines. The main one is Amritas one, where it says, ‘Amritas exclusive interview from model to music’. This cover line goes across her picture to show it belongs to her. It also has a background that is faded out. The three other cover lines includes, ‘win 2 tickets to take that concert’, ‘girls aloud vs. sugababes’ and ‘Britney: the ups and downs of my life’. Our masthead ‘melody’ is very clear to see as it has a dark blue outline. This goes well with our background colour of orange. Just above our masthead it states our magazines web address ‘www.melody.com’ in the same colour as our masthead. Also right at the top of our cover there is a banner stating some of the things our magazine includes ‘music quiz*free CD case*high school musical poster’ Just below the masthead, our cover has a strap line that is ‘bring out the music in you’. We used this strap line because it is an encouraging slogan that everyone can remember. It also tempts the reader to buy it as the magazine brings out the music in the audience. In order to make our magazine even more realistic and professional we have added a barcode, price and date.
Our magazine has the conventions of a real pop music magazine as we looked very carefully at real life magazine covers in order to produce our own one. Like real magazine covers, our cover has a plain background, so that the items on the cover stand out very much in order to catch our audience’s eye. What makes it even more realistic is the use of the masthead that is very large, just like other magazine covers. We also have a strap line that is very catchy and encouraging to our target audience. In a real magazine cover you would find images that suits its audience, on our cover we have a glamorous, glossy image of Amrita. Our target audience of 11-15 yr old girls would see her as being the ‘ideal’ look. We also added Britney on our cover as she is a pop queen who succeeded alot in the music industry.
The social group that our magazine cover represents is girls aged 11-15 living in the UK with a normal lifestyle. Todays teens are attached to music and the media, they relate themselves to celebrities and the latest fashion and gossip.
I think ITV would distribute our magazine cover because, ITV broadcast alot of music related shows such as the x factor, pop idol, American idol etc. And having our magazine cover would attract more audience as it is a pop music magazine.
The technologies i used to create the magazine cover is the software, photoshop. To begin with, the software was very difficult to use. However after being taught and trained, i found it easier to use. I learnt that making a cover involves alot of patience and time. As while editing you can change your mind many times to make it look as professional as you can imagine.
If i were to make another cover, i would plan out my magazine more thoroughly. I think if i had more time we could’ve produced a better one. However i am still happy about the way it looks as it looks reasonably realistic. I would definitely change the main image of the cover as it is quite simple and no very attractive. Next time i would add more information on the cover and not leave it that simple.