Magazine Evaluation

For my media magazine, we decided to choose a hip hop/ r'n'b music genre, called 'GAGE'. My magazine reflects the conventions of real music magazines because the contexts contains subjects which the real target audience would be interested in. My magazine front cover represents certain social groups because it combines all the popular music genres and artists into one magazine. For example, 'Bashy' from the underground grime scene, and 'Chris Brown' from the r'n'b scene. Because of the diverse content, there is a wider target audience for the magazine.
Also, my magazine mirrors real music magazines because of promotional offers such as the chance to 'win a free Bashy mixtape' ,costume and layout design. The costume of the main image is modern, since the girl is wearing a fashionable winter jacket and anchors the fact that my magazine is the winter edition. She also has a fashionable haircut and posesses a trendy look. This suggests that to the audience that the magazine is 'hip'.
The target audience for 'GAGE' magazine is young adults aged 14-21. This is a rather large audience because the music featured is popular amongst those age groups. Although there is a vast target audience for age, there is also a large target audience for race and gender. Since the music consist of mainly urban and r 'n' b, there is a large majority of black orietnated artist, therefore the stereotypical audience would be mainly black people youths. However this does not mean that only black people can read the magazine. The magazine also highlight other cultures in addition to black culture.
The use of language, colour, title and contents all affect the magazines attractiveness/appeal. Firstly, the front cover star is a beautiful young female artist (Danii). This appeals to the readers because girls who see the star on the cover may want to read more about her and look like her, therefore persuades people to buy the magazines. The male gender may see a pretty girl on the cover and appeal to her because of physical attraction, and by purchasing the magazine allows them to see more of her pictures and become closer to the artist. The layuout of the front cover also anchors the magazines appeal. The main colour theme is blue and white because it is the winder edition of the magazine, by using cold colours gives the impression of coldness. Content of 'GAGE' is also alluring because they are things youths of the 21st century would be interested in, for example an 'Exclusive interview with Chris Brown and Rihanna'. These two artists are extremely sucessful therefore an 'exclusive' interview with them suggests that only 'GAGE' magazine has new information about the two artists.
Throughout the process of constructing the magazine cover, I have learnt numerous technological techniques from Photoshop and Apple Mac. I have learnt to merge images together, insert images from the internet on the Apple Mac, extract unwanted parts from the images. change font styles and textures and many more. In addition I have developed the importancy of a clear layout and ways to make the cover look professional.
If to make another front cover, I would change the font colour becasue some were too light and difficult to read. Other than that, there is not much I would do to alter the magazine.