Finished Product Analysis

Final Front Cover Design
When producing my final product, I had a lot of decisions to make that would affect whether or not my magazine would appeal to my target audience.
The target audience for my magazine I had decided would be young readers and teenagers around the ages of 11-16 years old. I had to keep this in mind when creating my final product so that my work would be as effective as possible.
When choosing each aspect of my magazine, I referred back to the research I had made on teen pop magazines, so that my magazine would follow the conventions and would be appropriate for my readers.
The main thing I noticed about the teen pop magazines that I researched was that the front covers were all very bright and colourful, which would appeal to the eye of younger readers and would appear very attractive and stand out on the shelves amongst magazines with a blander colour scheme. I decided there and then that I would try and make my magazine front cover as bright and attractive as possible so it was in-keeping with the conventions I had looked at.
I also had to make sure that I kept the average conventions of a music magazine the same (masthead, headline, plugs, main image, ect), so I referred back to my earlier research to do so.

The first thing I chose about my magazine is the background colour. I wanted a bright and bold colour that would stand out from the page, and would make the magazine look attractive, and would fit in with the bold and bright colour scheme that I was going for. I chose a bright purple colour, because I hadn't used the colour anywhere else in my magazine, and it was a bright and attractive colour, which I think would attract my target audience and make them want to pick up my magazine. I also had to pick a colour that could be seen as gender neutral, although from my research, it was shown that the majority of readers for a teen pop magazine were going to be girls rather than boys.

I placed my magazine masthead in the top left hand corner of my cover, which is conventional of most magazine front covers that I have looked at. I made the majority of the masthead black, as there was lack of this colour on my front cover, and I thought it would stand out from the purple background. I chose to make the first letter of the masthead a different colour though so it would make it look more attractive to my audience. I chose yellow as it contrasts with the black lettering of the rest of my masthead, and the purple background colour. Another convention I'd noticed when researching most magazines, is that they featured a strapline of some sort, so I thought it was only right to include one of those in my final design. I had the idea to include two straplines, rather than one though to really let my audience know what my magazine was about. These are located right across the top of my magazine, and just underneath the masthead. I made the one across the top 0f my magazine (which reads "your one and only stop for the latest in pop") stand out from the page by using a yellow and pink font. This made it look attractive, and noticebly different from the other strapline underneath my masthead (which reads "britain's top teen pop magazine"), which was just in a plain black font, so that the audience would relate that strapline to the masthead. I thought adding these two features to my magazine would help the audience understand what kind of music genre they would expect to find inside the magazine, if the rest of the front cover was not a good indicator.

I wanted the main focus of my magazine cover to be the main image used, so I tried to make it as large as possible, which I found was also one of the conventions of any magazine. Because of the genre of my magazine being teen pop music, I wanted to make the image I would use be really bright and colourful, so that it would not only be attractive to my audience, but it would also relate back to the content of my magazine. I chose to use three models dressed in fairly bright clothes, and all dressed in different colours, so that they would all be noticed from each other and would stand out on the page. I chose to edit out the background of the original image and add in a white background to make the colours of the image really stand out and pop, so that the image would work to its full potential. I also made the models in the image look up, with the smallest model in the middle (which was convenient being the only female) and taking the shot from above. I think the shot works as it is flattering as the angle works really well. I didn't want to use too many other images on the cover, so I used one other smaller photograph in the bottom left hand corner of my cover. Because all of our images had to be original, I had to improvise when creating artists for my magazine. I used a medium close up image of my model, and I again edited out the background of the image, which made the image more noticeable. I chose not to add in any other background colour, and just added it over the top of my purple cover background. I added a bright headline over the top, in fairly small font so it would not be too dominant of the page, but would still be readable. I also added a plug detailing the page number of the said article.


Final Contents Page Design

Final double page spread Design