Written Evaluation

Harlequin’s front cover is quite conventional, as the masthead and the main sells are on one side of the photograph, a position typical of music magazines.

I developed a ‘house style’ (white, black and pink) and kept the writing to a minimum to create a very ‘clean’ and not fussy style, mostly focusing on the photography, similar to many fashion magazines, to aim at a sophisticated, feminine audience.

The contents page shows continuing house style, with a simple but pretty layout and design. These pages also focus mostly on the photography of the magazine, rather than a lot of writing. The pages are slightly unconventional as there are three photos, with small captions and not many main sells.

The double page spread is conventional, as the simple layout is designed around the colours and composition of the photograph. The article contains pull quotes to attract readers. This also has the continuing house style (a white page, with black and pink writing). I used the same font as the masthead for the title, pull quotes and drop cap to follow conventions of other music magazines, and to create another house style.


I dressed the main model, Gwendolyn Rose (my friend Charlotte) in all white to show youth, purity and a clean-cut style. Her talent as a ballet dancer is shown through her elegant pose. The bright forest setting adds to the bright colours of youth and the purity of nature.

The ‘Hello Glory’ models (friends Laura and Leanne) are in brighter, clashing colours, helping to create their ‘high school rebel’ look. The ‘Bella Killen’ model (my friend Lauren) is blowing bubbles in a garden flooded by sunlight, showing youth and a fun personality. All four musicians are young females, similar to the target audience.

The interview with Gwendolyn Rose is formal, with no swearing, a formal tone and few slang words, and is filled with information on her life and musical career. I chose to include a lot of background information in the interview so readers can relate to Gwendolyn and understand where her musical inspiration comes from, persuading them to buy her record. I gave the musicians all a bright, youthful image to show their music is colourful and uplifting, and to appeal to the young, feminine target audience.


My inspiration was Q magazine, which is published by Bauer Consumer Media. BCM is the largest privately owned publisher in Europe with over 230 magazines published worldwide in 15 countries, as well as many TV and radio stations. Their magazines cover many genres of magazine such as women’s weeklies, interest and lifestyle, TV listings, puzzles, men’s lifestyle, teen, music, film and specialist magazines.

They publish well-known magazines such as Heat, FHM, TV Choice, Practical Photography, Grazia and Mojo. Q’s circulation figures are over 113,000 sales per average issue (the highest in the rock music genre), priced at £3.90 and released monthly. An online version of Harlequin could be a good option, as it is accessible to anyone with internet access. Advertising an online version of Harlequin to the target audience through sites they would use (for example Bebo, Facebook and Myspace) could be helpful. I could also create a ‘Harlequin Magazine’ page on these sites to attract more interest. I could advertise in fashion or lifestyle magazines that the target audience would read to attract their attention.



After creating another questionnaire and collecting the results, I found that the target audience value their pets, fashion, playing musical instruments, make-up, music festivals, photography, surfing the internet, TV shows such as Desperate Housewives, dancing and gossip websites.

The audience was primarily females (90%), and their average household income was around £37,000. The average age was 2 (ranging from 16 to 23), with 52% still in education, and 45% working full time or part time.

A majority of the target audience admire legendary female artists such as Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and Dolly Parton, and also listen to music by newer female solo artists and female-fronted bands such as Florence + The Machine, M.I.A, Juliette & The Licks, Duffy, Leona Lewis, Santogold, Paramore, Girls Aloud, Little Boots and VV Brown. On average per month, the target audience spend £103 on make-up, skincare and hair care products, £167 on clothing and fashion, £55 on going out, £23 on DVDs, £110 on musical instruments, and £60 on upkeep of their pets. 65% of the audience have watched at least one episode of Desperate Housewives, 90% have or plan to buy a CD by an artist featured in Harlequin, and 31% are or would want to be musicians after subscribing to a music magazine such as Harlequin.


The USP of Harlequin is the genre, alternative folk & pop, by only female solo artists and bands. This would appeal to a female audience as there is no other magazine dedicated to only female musicians, and it’s a change from all the music magazines featuring mostly all-male musicians. A female audience would be interested in Harlequin for its unique and feminine style, the way it fuses music and fashion, and the fact that it is aimed purely at a female audience.

By creating a questionnaire and getting results from my target audience, I found that they preferred the magazines to be released monthly, sized A4 throughout, contain more pictures than text, feature signed and unsigned bands, and contain a house style with mostly pastel colours. Although most of the audience said that lures on the front cover would encourage them to buy the magazine, I didn’t include any on the front cover as I felt it took attention away from the photography and the main sells.

What have you learnt about using Photoshop CS3 and digital cameras during this project?
ê Installed brushes from psbrushes.net.
ê Cropping the image and using free transform to enlarge it.
ê Used the hue/saturation tool to make the colours richer.
ê Created text boxes for the double page spread’s article.
ê Created layers so writing overlapped the photographs.
ê Used gradient fill on the ‘Harlequin’ masthead so it was more than one shade of pink.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?
I managed my time efficiently at the beginning of the module, so I could finish a few days early, giving me enough time to correct any mistakes or add to the magazine and production handbook.
I created a questionnaire similar to the one I made for the college magazine, as that was very successful. I collected responses from the target audience (young females) and took their suggestions into account, as targeting the right audience through the magazine’s content and style is very important.

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