Analysis of AS Magazine Project

Post an analysis of your first year magazine work onto your A2 blog.
-Analysis of Representations
-How these issues impacted decisions
-How you targeted your audience
-Use theories that you have been introduced to this term.


Judging by the tagline, "Welcome to the Leading Underground and Unsigned Music Publication, Where the Best Musicians Strum, Squat and Never Shower" my target audience were young alternative people who are disillusioned with the current popular music industry, saturated with reality tv contestent winners and people they judged to be talentless and inauthentic. I wanted my magazine to present acts popular with my fellow students, but also to showcase unsigned talent. The design of the magazine itself was inspired by a more avant-garde, abstract idea, and I think that this appealed to my target audience, who would buy my magazine for its design and artistic features, not just its content. This stylised artistic look was used with photoshop brushes that consisted of retro magazine clippings, stamps, old postcards as well as more modernised paint splatters and a person inspired by Lady GaGa promotional material. Unusually for a music magazine, the photographs arent the main feature on the front cover, one of the photos is a girl holding a guitar, the other a boy wearing a hoodie. This is because I wanted the magazine to be unisex, also, I think that the girls reading my magazine may dislike the sexualisation of women on magazine covers, and would be pleased that the girl on the front cover (whose face is covered by her hair) looks strong and is holding an electric guitar (I wanted my music magazine to present an idea of focusing on the music and not of the idea of celebrity antics or gossip)I didn't nessecarily target feminists, but I think that my target audience would appreciate a more alternative representation of women in the music industry.
When it came to deciding what would feature in my contents page, I sent out a survey throughout the college and on my circle of friends, asking them to list their 5 favourite bands, the ones with the most votes (number 1 being A Day To Remember) were included, as well as ones that I thought would be a good representation of bands my target audience would listen to (an example being The Velvet Underground). I thought that my target audience would have other interests other than music, so I included some article titles from film. An example of this being "Nouvelle Vague and Neo-Noir", I think that this shows my target audience of educated young people because these words are more likely to be familiar with those who do Film Studies or have an academic interest in film. The article title "Jerk 0ff While Your Parents Are Out" is just an inclusion of adolescent humour. I also decided that my target audience would have an interest in art, so I included designs that incorporated polaroid photos and vintage, distressed wall-paper. When it came to showing my staff, and selecting which photo would be included for which member of staff (e.g Editor) I think I subconsiouslly chose more traditional representations of gender, for example, the only female member of staff is Style and Fashion Editor, and the chief editor is male. My target audience I think would be experienced and appreciate controversial media such as violent movies or offensive adult comedy, therefore I wanted to cater to this without deliberately going out to offend people or to look too shocking, it is because of this that I deemed it appropriate to showcase a photo of a statue of an angel, with a gun drawn next to her head and a red splatter. I knew that doing this would restrict the amount of people who would buy my magazine, but I think the groups of people I specifically targeted would appreciate this, other images used were specifically associated with music, for example, one of the photos was the main editor sat next to a piano, and photoshop brushes used include cassetes, musical notes and keyboards. When it came to writing my double page spread, I wanted to communicate the idea that who I was interviewing was a "real musician" who is authentic, albeit misanthropic, and is not at all concerned with the idea of celebrity status, whose only priority is creating good music. The fact that he started out in the music industry through busking and squatting relates to the idea that my magazine is all about the talents of underground and unsigned acts, and the influences he cites are those that I think my target audience would appreciate. The emphasis of talent and authenticity over materialism or status is also shown when he says his prized possession is an acoustic two-stringed guitar.