Amah's Magazine Evaluation

Our task was to create a music magazine cover. We decided to create a magazine called 'Classique' which would be aimed at an audience of young people (in particular those from ethnic minorities) who are interested in classical music. The challenge was to make a genre that does not normally cater to young people appeal to them, as an obvious genre choice of ‘young music’ would be something like Hip-Hop, RnB or Indie.

To make our magazine look genuine we used conventions of real music magazines. The barcode was positioned in a place where it would not distract from the things we wanted to stand out (such as the main cover image), instead we put it in place where it was easy to find for scanning but not obvious to the readers eye. The issue date and the price are written in white on a black strip down the right hand side of the page. On a similar black strip spanning the width of the very top of the cover is the masthead. It justified to the left of the magazine so that buyers will still know which magazine it is by the first few letters if the magazine is overlapped on a shelf. We felt that the name ‘Classique’ gave a modern and youthful edge. The classy embossed font (which is used in all issues of the magazine) is stereotypical of a classical magazine but the banner ‘Class + Kool = Classikool’ is indicative towards young people as it uses colloquial language.

The main cover line, ‘Adaggio: The Street violinist’ is unusual as ‘Street’ is not usually associated with classical music. This sets our magazine apart from other classical magazines as it shows that we are addressing a different type of classical audience; not the stereotypical mature, middle-class and white audience. Underneath the main cover line is a quote. The font is similar to the masthead font as it is red and embossed. This makes our magazine look uniformed so it does not clash.

The main cover image challenges the conventions of a real music magazine because the subject is not looking straight into the camera. However, we chose this image because we felt that it portrayed social group we wanted the magazine to represent. The image shows a young male musician from an ethnic minority playing a violin. His attire is typical of youth from ‘urban culture’- he is wearing a t-shirt with a contemporary logo, has plaited hair and a silver chain around his neck. The image was cut out and placed behind the quote and the graphic on a grey-scaled music sheet using Photoshop Elements, which adheres to our classical theme.

We used a graphic to highlight a competition to win tickets to see Adaggio (our main cover image) live in concert. The red text is placed on a yellow circle to make it stand out. To make it even more noticeable, we circled the yellow circle in red. The words ‘TXT “WIN” TO 88796’ are in a larger font to grab the readers attention because they would then read on to see exactly what it is they could win. Then, written in a smaller font is the text ‘FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN EXCLUSIVE TICKETS TO SEE ADAGGIO LIVE IN CONCERT’. The use of words like ‘exclusive’ make the reader feel that these tickets are very sought after and limited thus making them more likely to enter the competition. Furthermore, text language is used (‘TXT’) which appeals to and attracts young people, our target audience, as it is something that they are more than likely to use regularly for example texting or on an instant messenger.

Along the bottom of the cover are boxed text and images. The bottom third of the page is sectioned off by two red parallel lines and then divided into two equal sized rectangles by a single vertical red line. In the left hand segment is a picture of my group posing as a young classical group called ‘Classikidz’ and a cover line in a similar red font as the title that reads ‘Interview with classikidz!’. The groups name immediately suggests that they are not your usual classical musicians. This further implies that our magazine is addressing a young audience. In the right hand segment is a picture of an open classical music book and scattered classical CD’s. Written on the image in the same red font along the top is advertisement for a competition to win the contents of the image.

From this task I have learnt that a lot of thought and planning goes into making a convincing magazine cover. The technology used (Photoshop) is quite complicated if you are not familiar with it, a lot of our time was used trying to understand how to use the program. Depending on how you use the program to manipulate images, position text on so on, is reflected in your final products credibility. If I had the chance to produce another front cover I would spend more time planning it as this would allow us to produce the magazine faster because we would spend less time chopping and changing. Overall, I feel that we did a very good job producing the magazine and I was satisfied by the final result.