Brief

For AS level Media Studies, we were instructed to study and create four pages from a music magazine aimed at a specific target demographic we would have to find for ourselves. We had to study the codes and conventions of music magazines and decide whether we would challenge them or develop them. Before beginning the construction, we had to analyse in depth the conventions of the form of music magazines and the mode of address used by magazines to ‘speak’ to their audience. This entailed analysing existing magazines such as ‘NME’ and ‘Kerrang!’

After studying current magazines we then had to carry out our Preliminary Task, our first, mini construction task. We had to design and construct a school magazine aimed at a wide audience; teachers, students and parents. This was done so we could get some basic practise on magazine construction and so we could learn about applying conventions in magazines.

Before our actual construction phase we had to go through various stages of planning in which we found out who our target market are, what they like/dislike and what we should do in our magazines to appeal to them. We used the online survey website question pro. We used social networking websites such as twitter to get a large amount of responses to our questionnaire. After this, we analysed our data and learnt who our target market is. We then created an audience profile. This is a ‘poster’ that displays all of the information about your target audience through statistics and images.

We then got to begin the actual construction of our music magazine and had to make a front cover, contents page and a double page spread that fit with our audience’s mode of address and appealed to them.