Magazine Evaluation

Magazine Evaluation

Our task was to create a music magazine cover. We decided to make a magazine called “Classique” which was aimed at an audience of young people who like classical music. A lot of the other groups made Hip Hop and R’n’B magazines, so me and my group wanted to move away from a common and obvious music genre, so that’s why we picked classical. And also, no one in my group is a fan of classical music, so it opened our minds and took us out of our comfort zone which I’m pleased about. We tried to pull away from the common stereotypes of people that like classical music are old, middle-aged white people and show that even young people from ethnic groups can enjoy it. That’s the main reason why I and a fellow pupil who are both from ethnic groups work so effectively as the main cover image. Our slogan “class + kool = classikool” was to show the buyer that classical music is about having a touch of class yet its cool at the same time.

We used the same recurring elements on our front cover such as bar code, issue date and price to make look realistic. As we were making a new magazine, we of course had to have a free giveaway to attract customers. We used a graphic to highlight the fact that we were giving away a free CD. As my group and I all read music magazines, we all agreed that this should be the main focus of the magazine. As it’s aimed at young people and I know personally how hard it can be buying things on an allowance, so hearing that something is free is extremely intriguing. Especially when your passion is music, to know that you’re getting something that is free from people who know your art professionally is also good.

As were making the first issue of a magazine we were launching a new website, so that’s what our strapline was. Our main cover line was about introducing a new teenage classical group and having an exclusive interview with them. We chose to have “We used to hate classical music” in quotation marks, to show that you don’t have to begin listening to it when your 3 years old and start having clarinet lessons form then to be good at playing any classical instrument. We also wanted to appeal to readers who have never even considered classical music before, to look at the story and say “Yes, I agree with that statement myself right now…what changed their minds?”
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the resources that we had hoped to have e.g. Musical instruments. We were only told this one the day of our photoshoot which was very disappointing. However, we didn’t allow this to faze us and despite a minor setback we still continued as were all dressed up. Our costume was supposed to be a play on stereotypes: having one person smartly dressed and the other one a bit more casually dressed. We were trying to show that you can wear whatever you want to play classically, its not about wearing a suit and tie, its about whatever you feel comfortable in. I believe that no music should have a stereotype when it comes to clothing; even though there clearly is – we shouldn’t let this dictate us.

We tried to attract our audience by also giving away free tickets to the Proms – which is relevant to our genre of music magazine. We highlighted the important “Win!” and the “The Proms” to attract our audience. Another cover line we used was the story of “Having no arms hasn’t stopped me playing from playin the piano!”
This wasn’t done to turn our magazine into a gossip magazine, but instead to genuinely inspire others into following their passion despite all odds e.g. Race, Gender etc.

If we had to make another front cover I would have highlighted the cover line “top 10” and “events” as this was done to attract the reader it should be highlighted as well. Also the lower right hand side does look quite bare, so maybe an image of a classical event would be suitable.

As I’ve never used Photoshop before, I think that next time I could copy and paste instruments in and have the main cover image looking like how we planned. I’ve learnt a lot Photoshop from doing this project and I’m certain that next time my cover will look even better. This is because we had so many difficulties which with hindsight were quite insignificant and quite easy to handle; but obviously lack of experience delayed us greatly. For example, it took a couple of hours just to get the background of the music sheet the way we wanted it to be.

Overall, I think that the cover was a success and despite small obstacles, I believe we done a good job.