Critical Evaluation

My magazine is called ‘We own the night’ as I felt this title portrayed the metal genre, the concept also is dark like the magazine.

My magazine includes many of the key features, such as a mast head, sub headings and unique selling point; I did not include a barcode on the front as I felt it would make the magazine look cluttered amongst everything else at the bottom of the page.

The house style for my magazine has been kept quite straight forward, for my colour pallet is black, white and turquoise and all my fonts represent the metal style.

I have continued this house style through out my magazine making sure everything is coordinated and constructive.

The images I have used are of an actual musician in a band, as I felt that using someone who actual knew something about the music industry would know exactly what a target audience of this genre would want to see.

The images portray the artist as being representative of the metal culture, whilst the image from the interview shows him in a different light, and makes the audience feel like they can relate to him.

I also used a stage image of the vocalist from a fear most fatal, which is featured on my contents page.

I have looked at the magazine publisher IPC media, and believe with more encouragement and experience that they could publish my magazine; to achieve this I would need to feature more artists, and focus on the importance of a music magazine and what the target audience are really looking for.

My target audience is based around middle to late teenagers, as being realistic to the artist and their music, a metal magazine is going to include more adult material for example strong language.

I have included local bands and my unique selling point is having a free poster special which is eye-catching and draws them into the magazine, also I have included competitions, gig reviews, upcoming gigs, and everything a metal fan would enjoy and expect in a metal magazine.

Whilst working on this project, I have learnt that content is key to a successful magazine, as without a centre piece or strong topic you are unlikely to attract the necessary readership therefore the use of techniques I have learnt on Photoshop such as downloading brushes and gaining confidence from the last college magazine helps to make the magazine the more conventional and interesting.

I handed out several surveys to a number of people who I thought would fit the audience including band members as well.

A lot of them said they could not tell the music genre from the artist on the front and admittedly it is hard to figure out, it was mistaken for more punk or hardcore music but they are closely related to the style I was trying to achieve and I’m pleased with that.

Most of them also stated that my magazine would be focused more on teenagers rather than your average typical long haired metal head, but that is what I wanted to accomplish because everyone expects that from a metal magazine and I wanted to try a different approach to see if I could bring out the other side of metal.

Everyone felt that my artist was represented in an honest genuine manner, not fake like many other music artists and the interview is not just self promoting which is positive, they also said that the images used are what you would expect to see and the interview has the same feel, so it makes the artist look more professional.

Overall I feel that my magazine is very successful in what I was trying to attain, I believe it was successful because it doesn’t try to cover too much at once and has an interesting and unique aroma about it.

If I was to change anything about my magazine, I wouldn’t want to change a lot because I feel it reaches every aspect of a music magazine and entices the target audience, but if I had to change one thing about it I would make the genre stand out that little bit more.