The genre of music upon which we decided to base our music magazine cover was classical music. Being teenagers we are very much aware that classical music media is geared towards the more mature audience, and little effort is made in seeking out and satisfying the classical music interests of the younger generation. To defy this concept we created a cover appealing to both female teenagers and young adults (aged 14-25). To ‘branch-out’ and appeal to a wider audience and to also make young people see classical music in a different perspective as opposed to the stereotypical views of classical music being mundane and for ‘old’ people.
The programme we used to edit the images we took for our magazine cover and to produce the cover was Photoshop elements. As we were new to the software we found it difficult to progress smoothly onto each stage of our magazine cover. This however created a challenge for us and spurred us on to work harder in order to create a successful magazine front cover.
The title of our magazine is ‘Classique’ to resemble the words ‘class’ and the sounding of the word ‘chic’. This was too appeal to both teenagers and young adults. For our cover decided to have a basic colour scheme of mainly black and red and other colours used were to make certain words stand out e.g. new and win.
Many aspects of the cover have the ‘typical’ conventions of a magazine, we did this because we wanted our audience to class classical music in same the category to all the other ‘trendy’ music magazines and for it to appeal equally with other types of music magazines. Our magazine cover has a masthead, slogan, logo, banners, graphics, main image, anchorage text relating to main image and feature articles.
The main image is of two females doing the same pose on a ledge with the background being musical manuscript referring to the planning, the aim of our magazine was to represent both young and old audience so one of the females was dressed casually and the other sophisticated and smart. Initially our idea on addressing the target audience was to have the two females standing side by side with an adapted image of the older female holding a cello and the younger an electric guitar. This image would have been edited so that it would show both the females holding the same instrument with the instrument being half a cello and electric guitar. The purpose of this idea was to merge the popular rock scene among teenagers with classical music, again appealing to the teenage half of the target audience. However due to lack of resources we decided to have two females in the same pose. This image connotes not only females being independent but anyone can be a classical musician and it is not just for the stereotypical ideology that classical music is for ‘old’ people meaning ages 30+.
In the right hand corner of the cover is the logo for our magazine which is two musical notes. This instantly informs the reader of the genre the magazine is. Having this logo makes the magazine instantly more understandable as the main image does not include any musical instruments. Our slogan which is above the masthead in a smaller font is ‘CLASS + KOOL = CLASSIKOOL’ represents both target audiences and connote that being classy and cool is possible with classical music. The word ‘cool’ is also spelt in slang and therefore will attract the teenage audiences attention and will instantly make them feel as though the editors of this magazine know what they’re talking about and have opinions worth listening to.
Both the slogan and masthead of the magazine are on a black banner keeping with the colour scheme. The ‘Q’ in classique comes out of the banner onto the background image of the magazine. We did this because the ‘Q’ vaguely resembles a musical note and the style of it was identifiable so it could be associated with our magazine in the future. There is also a banner running down the left side of the page and had feature articles inside of it. The bottom is then covered by a CD that is being advertised an given out free in the edition of the magazine. Overlapping the corner of the image and in the centre of the cover is the graphic saying ‘Free CD!’ in cold font.
One of the main feature articles on the banner is entitled “Having no arms hasn’t stopped me playing the piano”. This quote is similar to the style of an article for a gossip or teen girl magazine, we chose to have an article like this to attract the female audience because if they were to ‘skim’ the front cover this article would stand out and they would want to read the full article.
If I was to produce another magazine cover I would definitely make a rough sketch and plan my feature articles before starting the production process on the computer. By doing this I would definitely have more time to perfect my magazine overall and have ore time to explore creatively with what I can do to make my magazine more attractive to the eye.
From producing this magazine, I am definitely more appreciative of magazine editors as the positioning, colour, size of every aspect and feature of the cover is crucial when trying to appeal to a certain social or age group. I found that making a cover took time and was something that cannot be rushed as everything is important when trying to produce to a certain standard. Overall I feel satisfied with my work and it is completed to the best of my ability considering technical problems we encountered with Photoshop and the lack of knowledge on how to use it, the process of making a magazine cover was definitely an enjoyable task to endure.
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