From looking at the feedback and comments of my drafts, I have learnt that I will need to do a few things to improve the magazine, for the front cover, content's page and double-page spread.One of the main things that I will need to improve on is the use of images. This is probably the most important, as the images will be used on all three pages of the magazine. I will need to ensure that I get the best quality shots possible, including a variety of as many shots as I can. Things that will improve the final photos that I get will be: the outfits, the make-up and the setting. From my test shots I found that I need to get a much better location, rather than having the shoot taken around school. All of these will make the photos a lot more relevant to my magazine, than my previous shots. I will also need other images to include in or on the magazine so that I don’t just have photos of the band. I could take shots of males to include on the contents. The target audience for the magazine is aimed at girls aged between 15-21.
For the front cover, I have decided to change the magazine to a monthly edition, rather than a weekly one. I will need to change the subheading ‘The weekly pop music magazine’ to ‘The monthly pop music magazine’. I think this will be a lot more suitable for the magazine. On my draft, I thought ‘£2.99’ suited the price well for the magazine. However, I found this was too expensive just for a weekly magazine, especially for my target audience. People aged between 15-21 probably wouldn’t be able to afford or willing to pay £2.99 a week, especially with cheaper competition such as ‘Heat’ and ‘Closer’ for under £1. From looking at inspiration of monthly magazines, I have decided that a price such as ‘£3.40’ would be suitable for my magazine. This will be affordable at a monthly cost. I will need to consider how many pages my magazine will have. For £3.40 people would expect a magazine with lots of pages. I also came across an error on the page.
The date of the edition was entitled ‘Feb 2010’, instead of ‘2011’. I will need to ensure that I change the date, and ensure that it is the correct one as this is vital. Many magazines come out onto the shelves every month. If the date was printed wrong, they would be thought to be out of date, and people would probably be put off buying them if they thought it was an old edition.
For the content’s page I will need to include a variety of different photos, using different shots and images of other artists. On my draft, all the photos are of ‘Ultralove’. This doesn’t fit in with the magazine, as the whole magazine isn’t just about Ultralove. I will need to get more models and come up with new artist names to come up with other artists. This will also improve my front cover, as I will use the new artist’s names in contrast to using existing artist names such as ‘Rihanna’ or ‘Miley Cyrus’. I want to include a variety of different shots so that I can get photos at all angles. This will make the magazine look more interesting, as the photos will all be different.
Music magazines have many pages, usually into 3 figured numbers. My final magazine will be a monthly edition. Monthly editions in any magazine tend to have a lot more pages than a weekly edition would. For my draft, the contents page only had up to 16 pages, which is obviously far less than any ordinary magazine. To improve this on my final magazine, I will have to ensure that I include a lot more pages, especially considering it will be a monthly edition. I will need to make the contents more specific, by including a lot more information. This will need to fit on the page, so I will need to have a suitable font size, and brief simple sentences or phrases.
For the double-page spread, I will need to improve the quality of the photo. The editing looks poor which gives a very grainy effect. This makes it look blurry and unclear, which is not professional for a music magazine. For the final magazine if I decide to edit the photo, I have decided that it will be best to stay clear from the special effects, as they all are quite blurry. I will probably only adjust the colour tone of the image, by editing the brightness and contrast. The size of the image was also too big, as it was over half of the page. Although, this doesn’t look too noticeable on an A3 blank sheet of paper, it would be very noticeable in a magazine as the pages usually consist of A4. This would cut part of the image off down the centre of the page. I had a problem with this particular image as it was landscape and therefore didn’t fit in proportion to a portrait image. I will improve this by ensuring I take portrait photos as well as landscape.
Another problem with the double-page spread was that the article was not professional. It is not clear to the reader exactly who the interviewer is. I couldn’t fit the whole of the article onto the page, so I had to cut a big chunk of it off at the end. Music magazines have very interesting articles that makes the reader want to carry on reading. Interviews will be cut down by including the best parts. To improve this, I will need to narrow down the amount of words, by cutting out the ‘boring’ bits. This will ensure that I will be able to fit the article on the page. Because of this problem, the ending was just cut off. There was no conclusion to end the interview, but instead just finished with another question that showed no relevancy that it was the final question. I have decided that I will end it by including a conclusion that will thank the interviewees and say goodbye so that it is clear to the reader that it is the end of the article.
Page numbers are always used at the bottom of mostly every page throughout any magazine. At the bottom of the pages, I included page numbers in a bubble like effect. I think this worked well. However, I noticed that on the contents page, the size of the font, and the colour of the bubble was different to the double-page spread. I will need to ensure I don’t make the same mistake on my final magazine, as page numbers need to be exactly the same throughout the magazine to make it look professional.
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