Brief

In my specification for my AS media coursework I was asked to design and create 4 pages of a music magazine targeted at a specific demographic. I had the option to either cultivate or experiment common codes and conventions found within existing music magazines. A number of steps had to be carried out in order for me to reach a conclusion on the content of the magazine, the initial target demographic and their appeals.

 

A Preliminary Task, which was to design a school magazine, was set to become more familiar with the conventions used for any magazine and coding the correctly to appeal to the targeted audience, which in this case were teachers, students and parents/careers.

 

In advance of constructing any of my pages, an extent of researches were required to gather a range of information about modern music magazines. These researches aided me in discerning conventions and detect the way in which these were coded to charm to different magazines target audiences’. These tasks consisted of annotating and evaluating three front covers, 3 contents pages and 3 double-page spread; then relating the codes and conventions, mode of address seen with each other.  

 

Both qualitative and quantitative explorations were needed which included primary and secondary research. This was done in order to find who my demographic is going to be, what music genre was I going to write about and also the main aim of my magazine. A website called ‘QuestionPro’ was used to create a questionnaire from which a range of ideas could be collected; I was highly able to reach a wider audience by using social media platforms such as Facebook, which allowed my final results to be more effective and precise. Additionally, I had to produce a number of rough designs of the front cover, contents page and double page spread; this was done so that I could focus those designs at a group of people and then appreciate which design has the most votes.

 

Lastly, keeping in mind who my target demographic is and what genre I was going to write about, I was able to construct those four pages which were required for my final music magazine. After producing the flat plan of my pages, I had to evaluate my work and think carefully about certain questions. The representation of the magazine could be seen and reached by the Male Gaze Theory.