Evaluation of AS-Level Media Project

AS Media Studies - Product Evaluation on Prezi

Magazine Analysis - 'Metal Hammer' Double Page Spread

The above image is my first double page spread analysis taken from Metal Hammer. Clicking the thumbnail will enlarge the image.

Magazine Specification

The results from my questionnaire have brought back the following guidelines to bear in mind upon designing my magazine pages:

• The design is to be targeted at a male audience.
• Likewise, the age range is roughly of 17-19 year olds.
• Current magazines that have a similar genre are Metal Hammer and NME - I will use these for inspiration.
• ..Out of the two, Metal Hammer was labelled 'metal' more frequently, therefore the best out of the two to rely on regarding layout, photo dynamics, magazine name, etc.
• The double page spread is to have new album news and an interview of the band.
• One comment that stood out - from the final open question - was that editors of articles can be too obviously opinionated or biased - I will try to write a fair but unique article bearing this in mind.

Audience Expectations - Questionnaire Conclusion

I created the following pie charts by utilising an online service - click here.

This blog post will house the full analysis of the questionnaire I produced. Its intention was to gather information regarding the expectations of music magazine audiences. I was focusing particularly on the genre of metal, and so the majority of the pick-and-choose options were metal-orientated. As usual, click the thumbnails to expand the image to a clear size.

The above image - once clicked - displays my findings in their entirety and will therefore be the base from which I make the following conclusions. For the interest of validity I have decided to declare the second answer in both cells E8 and F8 void; this is because I stated clearly that the participant of my questionnaire should choose just one answer, and their most preferred at that. I will therefore take the first answer out of the two as their actual entry into the results - as crude as it is, I do not have sufficient amount of entries to simply disregard them completely.

Question 1 was simple; what was the gender of the participant. The information gathered from this will be useful when: deciding upon the colour scheme, choosing which band photos are used, and general lexical choices used within the project as a whole (this refers to dialect rather than grammar).

Question 2 had the purpose of finding out what age range I will be targeting. As the chart dictates, the clear 'winner' was the 17-19 option. This will drastically weigh on decisions such as the placement of page elements, colour schemes, band photos, and of course lexical choices throughout. It would be clearly illogical to attempt some sort of go-between to appeal to all ages, and so from now on I shall be analysing just the information provided by the 17-19 age-range participants. This way I can exclusively cater to my - now official - target audience to the letter. I will, however, keep displaying the total percentage of votes using these pie charts to show a wholesome report on my questionnaire results.

Question 3 was unanimous: do my target audience actually buy music magazines? Well, of course they do.

Question 4 was made to see which magazine is the most popular among the total amount of participants. In conjunction with question 5, the magazine that was labeled 'metal' the most was Metal Hammer. Go figure. This means that I can justifiably use MH as a sort of magazine presentation bible; I too am creating centering around the genre of metal, and so I can see how the designers of the magazine have decided to present their product - and try to understand why. This will greatly help my own design choices.

The following results are heavy on the quantitative side, and so I will simply list the options that I gave and then state how many votes they each got:
Question 6 - What do you like about this (/your chosen) magazine?
Articles and news coverage - 7
General appearance - 3
Artists covered and interviewed - 9
Branding - 1

Question 7 - Regarding content, what would you most prefer to see in the two-page spread?
General gossip - 3
Tour news - 4
New album news - 7
Exclusive album news - 1

Question 8 - What would make you consider buying a different music magazine?
More band interviews - 8
I wouldn't - 1
Improved appearance - 1
More album news and reviews - 3

The final question - 9 - was asking for an open response, and so there is no point pasting the answers in here as it will be of no extended use as viewing them from the image at the top of this blog post would be.

In conclusion, the results gathered from my questionnaire will heavily influence many of the decisions I make when producing each aspect of my project. For example: I know that the majority of my audience is male, and that I am specifically aiming the aesthetics and lexical choices to that of 17-19 year olds. The results from question 6 onwards will decide what type of article I will be creating for the double-page spread, and finally question 4 has determined the magazine Metal Hammer to be my main port of call regarding general layouts and band-photo dynamics.

Magazine Analysis - 'NME' Contents Page

The image above is my second contents page analysis. This time i have analyzed a page from NME; although not typically thought of as a metal magazine, bands of the genre are commonly featured inside and so it is justified. Clicking the thumbnail will maximize it.

Magazine Analysis - 'Kerrang!' Contents Page

The above image is my first contents page analysis. It is from the magazine Kerrang!, and clicking the above thumbnail will maximise it.

Magazine Analysis - 'Kerrang!' Front Page

This is my second analysis of a magazine front cover, this time on Kerrang! Clicking the above thumbnail will maximise the image.

Magazine Analysis - 'Metal Hammer' Front Page

This is my first analysis of a magazine front cover - Metal Hammer. Clicking the thumbnail above will maximise the image.

College Newsletter Analysis - Revised Front Page

This is my final version of the Deyes College newsletter. The reasons for choosing the various elements and layout can be read in the post below titled "College Newsletter Analysis - Mock-up Front Page". Click the above thumbnail to enlarge the image.

18/02/2010 - On reflection, there are a few design choices I initially made to produce this newsletter revision that I now believe were not the best to make. To elaborate:
The duplicate school logos placed either side of the top banner are not only of bad quality (rough edges) but unnecessary - only one logo is needed as an image anchor. Ink/cost trumps symmetry as the newsletter is handed out for free (does not need to aesthetically please consumers).
Keeping on the subject of the banner; "DEYES HIGH" does not fully align with the below "NEWSLETTER" sub-title. This is a minor grievance, but I feel it retracts from the overall professionalism the design portrays.
Moving down the page, my choice of puff positioning (the left-aligned article titles) go against conventional design. Typically the main article title is placed at the very top of the list, subsequently listing the less important articles below. Although not necessarily a bad decision, I personally believe it would simply look a lot nicer than my current placement.
Finally; the blue translucent box that houses the main article title is clearly too big height-wise - a considerable amount of empty space can be seen. This is a clear error regarding refinement.

With this final analysis of my college newsletter revision I have expanded my placement and design knowledge, and will bear it all in mind when creating my music magazine pages.

College Newsletter Analysis - Mock-up Front Page

Above is the mock up I produced for my version of the Deyes College newsletter. Despite my earlier analysis of the current newsletter – stating that it does not need to be changed – I decided to create my own version to practice using software such as Microsoft Publisher, and also the concepts of magazine layouts and presentation. For this reason I aimed it at a more particular audience, namely that of high school students (roughly between 11-17). Because of this I inserted a large image of a student who attends the school, and put less emphasis on the professionalism of the school being a special science college. The main colour of the cover is obviously blue; it is known to give connotations of loyalty and calmness – retaining at least some elements of the school’s ‘Proper’ image that it would no doubt want to retain.

College Newsletter Analysis - Existing Front Page

This analysis serves as research towards creating my own version of a school newsletter. Clicking the above thumbnail will maximize the image.