Once I had established who I wanted my target audience to be, and what they wanted to see in a magazine. I then proceeded to address my target audience through my designs. My front cover was the main design that would grab my target audiences attention so I took extra care in ensuring that it was successful in doing this.

Here is my front cover:

As you can see I decided to conform with my target audeinces sterotype. I used bright colours such as purple, blue and green to reflect the bright lights which are always used in clubs, a sort of 'nu rave' style. This then has a direct relation to my target audience therefore by using these colours it creates a sense of relative style for my audience. I also included an urban type style, I done this by some of the fonts I used, especially my masthead as it comes off as a gritty street style.

I then used plugs such as including competitions to win DJ equipment. I used a plug like this because I thought it was a relevant way to entice my readers into buying the magazine as my magazine is based on the DJ side of the music industry.

I then continued to try and make my magazine as appealing as possible to my target audience. While I was making my contents page I took into consideration what techniques I had used on my front cover. I tried to continue with the same sort of style, again using bright colours with some of my text. With my contents page I also tried to continue with the urban style aswell. I done this by adding effects to some of my pictures. I decided to contiue with the same sort of style, firstly so I can create a hose style and secondly to reinforce the urban style that entices my targte audience.

To finish off my magazine I had to make my double page spread. I had to base my design around the two other desings to reinforce the house style of my magazine but I also had to make it as appealing as possible. As you can see on my double page spread I moved away from the mixture of bright colours on the page. I done this because I wanted to portray my artist in a different way, a more serious way. I chose to stick with the one colour: red. I done this because of how I wanted to portray him and I thought red had all the correct connatations to create suspision about my artist.

I done this to entice my reader to be more interested about my artist

Going back to the start of my magazine construction I needed to consider who my target audience would be. I had a rough Idea, which ultimately were people who were fans of the music genre. I kept my target audience at those people who were fans of the music. Purely based on the fact of the purpose of my magazine: to provide a magazine for people who were fans of electronic music or interested in the music industry. Once I had my specific target audience I then proceeded to make a questionnaire which would help me find out what I type of things I should include in my magazine for instance what topics people want to read about, artist interviews and competitions.

Here is the questionnaire I constructed:













The feedback I got from this questionnaire was great. It helped me in the way that the answers I got acted as a guide. It enabled me to start my magazine on the basis of target audience feedback, a magazine based on what my target audience wanted to read. This was good because I could then adjust my magazine to suit their needs specificly letting me reach a greater total audience once my magazine was created.

After the construction of my magazine I then created another questionnaire so I could get feedback about what I had created and to what extent my target audience valued it as a succesful attempt. The type of questions I was asking in this questionnaire were:

• Do you think the 'electronic' genre of my magazine is expressed through my front cover? why do you think this?
• Does the desing and layout of the doubla page spread make you more interested in the artist in comparison to the front cover

The feedback that I got from this questionnaire was great because it helped me understand whether or not I had been successful in creating a music magazine for my target audience. It also helped me find out wether or not my target audience thought my magazine design was suitable for the type of magazine I was trying to put across.

Here is the questionnaire that I made:

During my research and planning for my magazine I had to think about where I would sell my magazine and how I would advertise it. As I wanted my magazine to be mainstream I had to consider the major retailers of all types magazines. The main retailer that I initially wanted to sell my magazine at was WHSmith.

I chose WHSmith because they are already well known for retailing a vast majority of media products such as: magazines, DVDs, films and books. So by retailing my magazine at a place with a well established reputation for media products sounded appealing to me. WHSmith would not be the only retailer of my magazine. Other major places like Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys would also retail my magazine. I chose places like this because thats where a lot of my target audience can be found.

As some of the sub genres in my music magazine, Drum & Bass for instance is not a very mainstream genre of music. Although it falls under the category of electronica. Taking this into consideration I also decided to retail my magazine at music stores. Whether this is an independent record store, or musical equipment/musical technology store. I chose to also retail them at places like this because they are relevant places to sell a music magazine.

This is all good, but I also needed a way to advertise my magazine to let my target audience know it was out there at the shops I was retailing it at. So I thought one of the first ways which would be easiest to reach my target audience would be on Facebook. I chose Facebook to be a place to advertise because you can connect with over 400 million people with in a matter of seconds so it seemed like a good option. To gain publicity I would also sponsor events such as dance festivals, Creamfields and Exit would be the ideal ones I would sponsor. Back to basic advertising though, I would advertise my magazine through simple things such as flyers and leaflets. I would do this by getting promoters to give them out at mainstream dance parties and festivals for instance places like ministry of sound.

Facebook would also be a good online collaboration with my magazines website as well. I would use Facebook to make a fan base for the magazine. I would then use it to upload things such as photographs of events that my magazine would have sponsored. By doing this it helps me keep my target audience updated about my magazine. I will also use the magazines website to do all this, seeing as Facebook is so popular it seemed relevant to use it.

When making my music magazine I had to take into account how I would represent particular social groups associated with the type of genre my music magazine was. Obviously with the genre of my magazine being Electronic music I only had to consider representing social groups that are associated with that. When I was doing this I decided to continue with the ideologies that already stand. The 'raver/party animal' type person. I decided to go along with their ideologies because they are my target audience and I thought it would be more appealing to them if I went along with their current representation, rather than if I was to challenge it and try to change the already established stereotype.

Drugs is also a major association with the clubbing scene so one of the major values of my magazine is help raise awareness about drugs and their effects. In a way i'm challenging drugs by conforming with them. I thought instead of trying to challenge drugs, raising awareness would be better. I chose to do this because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop people taking drugs from just saying that my magazine does not support them. So I believed it would be more beneficial if I could give my readers a way of making them more educated in a world they love (clubbing). Also by doing this I think it helps build a bond between my magaizne and the reader which helps create a sense of confidence for the reader.

Another major value of my magazine, is to give undiscovered talent publication. With the music industry being dominated by a few big names, I wanted my magazine to give my readers the oppertunity to listen and read about new talent in a bid to expand the music industry. I wanted this to be one of my magazines big focuses because I feel like it will be giving something back to music industry.

During the research and planning for my music magazine I deconstructed a number of front covers double, page spreads and contents pages of existing music magazines.

Here is one of the deconstructions

I done of a music magazine front cover.

By deconstructing relative magazines it increased my understanding of the actual construction of the magazine itself. After doing it a few times, I started to think about what went into the construction of the magazine, and I started to think about music magazines in more depth and more than just percieving it at face value.

I started to think more about the plugs and what type of plugs you can use, for example a pull quote from a piece of text. This helped me a lot when creating my magazine.

Whilst I was creating my magazine I decided to stick to the usual conventions of a music magazine. I wanted my magazine to be recognisable as a music magazine so I decided to stick to the formal layout as well.

Looking back at my preliminary tasks that I done, I feel that my development in using photoshop has improved a lot. Also my general understanding of design and layout has improved a lot aswell. As I have become more expierienced in both of these areas, It has allowed my designs to be a lot better than my original ones. The new skills I have acuired in areas of photoshop such as, using and adjusting curves, histograms and levels has allowed me to make the professionalism of my magazine pages to be of a much higher standard.

Here Is the front cover for my preliminary task.
As you can see from this my design was not of the highest standard. I didn't know much about colour schemes or design and layout. The main challenge I had whilst creating this was my lack of understanding about how to use photoshop. I overcame this by attending photoshop worksohops in order to increase my understanding of photoshop and the tools needed to create a professional standard magazine.

As you can see the difference in professional quality between the two front covers is very noticable.

During the creation from the prelim front cover to the real front cover I mastered
my ability to use tools such as the magic wand tool,
lasso tool and everything else I mentioned above. Due to this it enabled me to make my designs more professional and of a higher quality.