Evaluation.

1. Evaluation. I have produced a music magazine called “What the folk?” aimed at teenage (thirteen to twenty-one year olds) who are lovers of folk music. A photo of this is on the next slide.

2. Who would be the audience for your media product? • My intended audience is that of thirteen to twenty-one year olds who are fans of the folk music genre.

3. How do you attract/address your audience? • My magazine uses graphics suggesting free iTunes downloads in order to catch the reader’s eyes on the page as by seeing something free it makes the reader think that they're gaining something extra for the price they paid. Another thing I did to attract my audience was to use attractive images. My target audience, through my original research (see questionnaire), on question 7, when asked which magazine they preferred the majority circled the magazine blender, which has the artist Fergie half naked on the front. To put a nude or revealing photo on the front of a folk magazine would completely go against the forms and conventions of a folk magazine it would attract a lot of male, and some female attention. However, this sort of image would be inappropriate for my age range, as they are still maturing. Instead I opted for an image of an attractive model, who is wearing clothes but would still drawn in readers due to her good looks, making them want to read the article about her to find out more about her. A third thing I did to attract my target audience is the name itself of my magazine. My magazine is named “What the Folk?” as many of the folk music magazines on the market are serious in the context of the music genre and I opted for something which would be seen as “rebellious” to a youth (whom are of course my target audience) and

5. The photograph I used for my front cover is similar with conventions of folk music magazines when compared with “Irish Music”, an actual folk music magazine. Firstly, when comparing my Image with that of what is used in Irish Music, both subjects of the images give direct mode of address (eye contact with the camera) in order to look directly at the reader. Both magazines do this for effect. Irish music uses to so to give the piece a form of direct address at the reader, which I also did whoever, I unlike Irish music used my model’s features in this case her eyes which are a beautiful blue colour which accompanied with a smile it gives the reader direct address but the emotions portrayed through these two features add friendlies and beauty which would entice a reader to pick up the magazine for want of that beauty. With my piece aimed at teenagers (thirteen to twenty-one year olds), by seeing the image of a beautiful girl on the front cover it attracts BOTH genders meaning my magazine has no specific gender target. It attracts males by the use of beauty and an element of lust. By placing an attractive girl in their own age range on the front cover of the magazine it will make them want to pick it up to stare at her and wish they had a girlfriend who looked like her and this would make them then want to go further and read the article about her. With girls, it makes them jealous in the sense of they want to look like her but in a level of admiration jealousy that they want to look like her so they will buy the magazine to see what she’s wearing or how her hair is and then try and -

6. Copy her style, or even her emotional and physical behaviors and can do this by purchasing my product and then reading her articles to find out more about her in order to copy her. This completely varies to Irish music’s model who has little or no beauty and when giving the camera direct mode of address, gives off different effects like the use of ugliness perhaps draws the reader’s attention due to the fact that this model is different looking to the convectional idea of a musician therefore there must be an interesting article about him and that would make someone want to pick up Irish music. My image also varies from Irish music in the sense that my model’s apparel purposefully links with the background whereas, Irish music’s model’s apparel purposefully contrasts with the background. The colour I chose of my model to wear was blue. The blue and white striped T shirt she is wearing gives off the emotions of relaxation and soothing. This links with my model’s actual story as she comes back from depression and self harm, showing she is now calm and recovered from. To emphasize this, my model has a blue background and also those beautiful blue eyes. Blue is also a very popular colour, as is red which is the colour of my model’s hair which brings up the earlier mentioned emotion of lust. By combining the two colours it gives off a sense that my model Is calm and clean but can be feisty and even dangerous when she wants to be, as danger is another emotion portrayed by the colour red. To link that further still with the white on the t shirt which is specifically chosen as white portrays purity and better still perfection, which is hard to see that when the other colours give off different emotions. When comparing my use of colours to Irish-

7. Music which has their model in white, which again shows the same idea as afore-mentioned idea of purity and perfection yet the character is completely different to the conventional ideas of what male perfection looks like. The model is then stood in front of a whole black background with no other colours on the page. Black is of course associated with power but also mystery, which adds to the model’s facial colour which Is red which could show he is an alcoholic but we aren’t sure of this. My piece is similar in the fact that both model’s backgrounds are mystery’s and this can be portrayed through the colours on the page, but the variation in my piece to that of Irish music is that of my piece uses many colours to give off many different ideas and assumptions, whereas, Irish music uses one maybe two ideas which forces the reader to read the article about the character rather than just read the front cover in order to understand them better but also to entice readers into reading my magazine in order to find out about those characters. I went for a similar masthead to that of Irish music, a flat, easy to read, horizontal masthead across the top of the page so it doesn’t take up too much space of my image, but big enough to be the largest text on the page. My masthead varies to Irish music’s in the sense that I went with what later became my magazine’s house style of having every masthead’s first letter being a lot larger than the entire masthead itself. I did this so that the audience knows where to start with the text as it is the largest on the page, but also graphologically it improves the look of the page as “Irish” is very smaller than Irish music on their masthead. My masthead, due to its easy-to-read font –“Tahoma”, its large letter at the start and the ending question mark-

8. Allows my masthead to become a brand image for my magazine which, would entice a reader by itself as it would be an easily recognizable image. I chose a very basic font – Tahoma – which I used throughout my 3 piece’s in order to show consistency through my product. My font can carry a mood, through its basicness, calmness, as well as readability. I chose this for a folk magazine because folk music isn’t aggressive as rock, its calmer and therefore went writing a music magazine on the music genre a calm font was needed. On my front cover I used the same font throughout although in the drafting process I did attempt a different font for the masthead to try and make it stand out more, however, this looked unprofessional and also unattractive when in the perspective of my receiver's. Masthead differences – notice the different places of the tagline under the text on my text and the tagline above on Irish music.

9. Contents page

10. on my contents page, in order to comply with my target audience of teenagers who want to be able to read the piece without the piece seeming too arty and being simple and easy to read. I have followed this conventional style so sought after by my target audience due to the fact that it’s simplicity will attract them to my piece. The colour scheme used, the brown background, is a grungy brownie colour in which I would associate with folk music as the brown connotes the idea of filth which can sometimes be associated with folk music. Before choosing this background I opted for several others: a basic white background which made my text easy to read but was far too bland; by then adding many coloured boxes in order to add colour to the piece in order to make the piece seem more attractive to the reader, which my target audience would want to see. Many colours goes against the typical conventions of a Folk music magazine which is usually one or two basic colours. My reason for going against this is because of the fact that my piece is aimed for teenagers who are often stereotypically portrayed as rebelling against the norm in which in my piece I want to portray this feeling of going against typical conventions due to the fact that my piece is aiming Folk music different to the norm in order to gain a teenage audience mainly as folk music is seen as an older persons music type. The many coloured approach was making my piece harder to read and clashed with many of the photos so I therefore opted to use a relevant image for my background. I opted for a guitar on a black background so my text would be white making It easier to read. However, even with adjustments the guitar was unattractive to my target audience but also clashed with my images covering up a lot of the text. But, by using the one basic and “grimey” brown in my final piece which shows that although my actual piece wants to veer away from typical conventions of Folk music magazine, shows that despite that the one same colour means my piece sticks to typical Folk music conventions. Basic background showing clear similarities of conventions of Folk music magazines.

11. my contents page’s articles are split across the page in a basic format in which is easy for my target audience to follow. By splitting my images ether side of the page, with “columnists” on one side and relevant images regarding the articles on the other showing clearly to the reader how the magazine works. By making my magazine easy to read and follow allows the reader to easily find what they want to find in the magazine in order to keep the audience interested. The articles themselves have the headlines on the page in a larger font which I have done on purpose in order to gain the attention of the reader as they made read a snappy and eye catching title for a headline and make them want to go to that page. By having larger text than the titles to distinguish each section of the magazine are placed together allows the reader to again easily find their way around the magazine. By having “The Regulars” smaller font than the “headliners” shows the level of importance the magazine has placed things. This is due to the fact that headline stories only come around once or twice in a piece and by doing so means my contents page does what a music magazine such as “Kerrang” does, despite it not being folk it is still a music magazine which displays it’s headline articles in a larger font than every other item to show importance to the reader making them want to read those articles. I opted to have the small writing at the bottom which shows “who wrote what” in my magazine. Many music magazine’s do this to give credit to those who worked on the magazine and by adding this in gives my contents page an idea of authenticity. I did not do this on my front cover due to the fact that the front cover was about attracting the reader’s attention and by having it on this page fills in the space at the bottom of the page but also I placed it close to my social networking box so the readers of the magazine, targeted at a teenage audience, many of whom use social media and would be attracted to the box at the bottom of the page would then read this small box of “who did what” due to its closeness to the Facebook/twitter box and then see who made the magazine. By having images of the articles on the right hand side of the page it allows the reader to become attracted at what is inside the magazine due to the fact my target audience would be attracted to read an article if they liked the pictures they saw which would make them want to turn to that page which I s why I combined the images with page number so to allow the reader know which images links with which article and page. This sticks to the conventions of a typical music magazine as many music magazine do this for the same reason.

12. I kept the house image of my piece which is to have a large title here being “Contents” and having a large “C” as the first letter. I again do this so the reader instantly recognises my magazine just by the titles on my pages.

13. Double Page Spread

14. On my double page spread I opted to use the same model as to my front cover in order to keep the relevance throughout my piece. My double page spread moves away from the typical convetions of a folk music magazine for a double page spread. This is due to the fact that Irish music, the text I am comparing mine with, is extremely wordy and not very much picture wise which would put off my target audience, being teenagers as my target audience want to see a mixture of images and text as their attention spans can be small stereotypically of course. So by splitting my page into three images and splitting my article’s writing into 4 columns across the page allows my audience to read and not lose attention due to the addition of the images. I chose to split my images of Emily, my model, into 3 in order to link with the story of the page by showing her with her eyes closed to show her depressed after her heart-breaking failure, half opened in order to show time healing and fully opening showing the artist’s recovery which is what the story is about. The use of props, a yellow flower links too with the story of course due to the fictional artist’s obsession with flowers. The yellow flower was chosen for this page due to the fact that yellow connotes clarity from decision making and relief – all of which my artist has experienced. Rather than opt for a story dominated by music I chose to write my story about something which young teenage girls can relate to. A story of self-harming which is sadly writhe with young teenagers not just girls in society today and is very personal to myself so I therefore wrote about something not only due to personal reasons but so that young teenagers (preferably girls in this story however, my magazine is of course a mixed gender piece) then this would make my piece want to be read by the reader. This again shy's away from typical conventions of a music magazine due to the fact that the story is dominated by music by still Is based around a musician which is the opposite to articles in Folk magazines such as Irish music. Difference in amounts of text.

15. Also in my double page spread I added a small box with the advertisement of the artists new album. I have done this In order to again add a sense of authenticity due to the fact that magazine’s articles today are done by artists in order to advertise their songs or albums. I have also chosen to do this to keep within the convetions of a typical music magazine. I opted to change the font of the title – slightly breaking my house style - in order to make my title seem more attractive to the reader as the basic Tahoma font was extremely boring and was used throughout my piece so by opting to change it on the most attractive page in my magazine shows my attempt to hold the reader’s attention through attractiveness. But, I did keep the first letter of my piece larger than the rest of the title to try to keep my house style about titles. I gave my piece a small opening paragraph just under the title, a kind of long sub-heading, in order to give the reader a small insight into the piece itself and to entice them to read on. But, image wise by placing this just above my model’s eyes of which I used the software, Adobe Photoshop in order to make them stand out more than they already to attract the reader into reading on due to their beauty. I opted for the traditional large letter at the start of a paragraph in a magazine to make my piece seem more authentic but to also try to stick to the convetions of a typical folk music magazine, one can seen this being used in both my piece and Irish music’s double page spreads.