In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When creating my magazine, I designed and used a conventional layout throughout which allows my magazine to appear genuine. On my front cover, I included a main heading (title) subheadings, storylines, a dominant image, barcode, price, magazine issue number and continuous colours. For my contents page, I also designed and used a conventional layout. I included a modern design which included, a list of the contents, an image, and boxes which attracts the readers to look at and take note of the information inside. I also used a continuous colour scheme which allows consistency. For my middle article however, I decided to challenge a conventional layout, by using a simple layout where I just had a heading, sub heading main article and main image. This was challenging for my magazine, as many music magazine articles are much more complex and include a number of images and also some quotes. I feel that my layout is successful, as it is easy to read with just one dominant image that attracts the readers as they browse through the magazine.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
After having researched music magazines that are already available to buy in the shops today, I decided that I wanted my magazine to fill an empty gap rather than be too similar to music magazines that already exist. For this reason, I created my magazine to promote chart music created and performed by female artists, whether they be solo artists or in a band. I represented these people as strong, influencing artists who each create individual and unique music and I did this by my main cover story, which represented a young female artist, who went from being an ordinary girl to a chart topping singer. I used clever captions and an article which I created, that talks about my artists realistic ‘rise to fame’ story. I feel that this challenging representation will allow my readers to relate to my artists story and continue to feel interested throughout the article. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Although my magazine is unique and like no other already on the market, I feel after having done some research, that Blender magazine could possibly fund my magazine, as they publish similar magazines but not based on one parti
cular gender or type of music. I feel this magazine would find my product likely to make a profit, as it fills an empty gap on the market today and it aims itself at very large audience. The simplicity of the design is very similar to Blender magazines design, as it has a bold heading (title), a large dominant image, and then other cover stories around the image which promotes some of the contents of the magazine. The similar layout and design could therefore suggest it is from the same publishers. However, my music magazine also carries its own personality, with brightly coloured text, backgrounds and attractive fonts.Who would be the audience for your media product?
I feel that the audience at whom my magazine is aimed at
I feel that the audience at whom my magazine is aimed at
and the audience m
ost likely to purchase and enjoy my magazine is an age group of around 16-34 year old females. However, this does not limit my audience as I do believe that a percentage of males would also buy and enjoy my magazine and feel that males of the same age groups are an appropriate secondary target audience. I feel this is a good audience to target as females are potentially a large mass audience as I found more females read music magazines than males and so with my magazine being mainly aimed at females, I will be more likely to sell m
y product and make a high percentage of profit. Looking at my audience feedback, there was more positive comments from females than males and statistically, 80% of the positive feedback was from females and so I feel that my target audience was a great success.
How did you attract/ address your audience?
I choose my title when thinking of words relating to the key word ‘music’ and felt that ‘sound’ was a clear connotation of this. I didn’t want the title to appea
How did you attract/ address your audience?
I choose my title when thinking of words relating to the key word ‘music’ and felt that ‘sound’ was a clear connotation of this. I didn’t want the title to appear too girly or feminine as I didn’t want to absolutely restrict my audience to strictly females. I chose a light, bold blue and bright yellow as colours for the text on both my front cover and contents page, as I felt the brightness looked attractive and striking and especially as the colours were on a black background causing the bright colours to stand out more. The image on the front of my magazine is a very large image which appears extremely dominant and therefore attracts passers by to purchase the magazine. The shot is close up and therefore allows the reader to feel in connection with the artist. The lighting on the image is light and bright, which contrasts with the dark background allowing the image to clearly stand out. I created storylines of some of the contents of the magazine that are most popular on current music magazines to allow the reader to promote the other features, other than the main s
tory which is promoted by an image. I used ellipsis when creating these, as this omit’s some of the words from the sentence, stopping them from being too long-winded, but still allows the readers to understand what is meant from the context. Some of these on the cover, included ellipsis such as, competitions, personal articles such as guides, and extras such as allowing the reader to get involved and vote!
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I used the internet and the search engine Google as my main source for researching, which I found was the quickest, easiest and most reliable source to get my information from. I researched music and the music charts on the radio one website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 as part of my audience research and popularity of certain genres of music. When creating my magazine, I used the software Photoshop, to manipulate and edit my photographs to make them look more attractive by altering the brightness and contrasting the images. I also used Photoshop, to cut out images which allowed me to remove any backgrounds from my primary photographs and just be left with the main image of the ‘artist.’ I did this by using the pen tool were I carefully cut around the object and then created a vector mask which removed all traces of anything outside the pen line and the image that I had cut around. I then used the software ‘In Design’ to mock up my magazine and place all the features where I wanted them. I did this by creating guide lines and borders. I changed the size of the image by stretching it out so that it would appear dominant on the front cover and look in proportion with my heading and text. I also changed the size of my text in In-Design and also carefully selected appropriate text which I had downloaded into the software from the website dafont.com. Technology played a huge part in my coursework, as it was the software that helped me create a professional look and allowed it to look official and attractive for the readers to buy.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Although I was rather happy with the outcome of my preliminary task, I feel that I learnt to lay my features out much more carefully and that the smallest things such as selecting a font makes a big difference to the quality of the product. I took much more care on my full product, when selecting fonts, colours, and the way I arranged my images.
Overall, I feel that my magazine was a great success. From my feedback, the name of the magazine, colours, images and layout all appeared to be popular with the audience when receiving my feedback and 70% of my audience feedback said it was the bright colours and bright, dominant image that attracted them to the front cover. I managed my time well and completed my magazine within the allocated 10 weeks given to me. I feel that the hardest parts of creating the product, was creating an article and choosing the fonts but once I had done this, I found it rather easy when arranging everything and laying out my images etc. I feel my weaknesses when creating my magazine, was the font size in the article, as did my audience, as when I was evaluating my audience feedback, 60% said one way in which I could improve my magazine, would be to make the font size bigger in my article. As I had to fit my main image and a heading with sub heading in a double page spread space, my font size was rather small. I also feel my sub heading font didn’t really go well with the genre of the magazine. I therefore changed this once I had got my audience evaluations back.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I used the internet and the search engine Google as my main source for researching, which I found was the quickest, easiest and most reliable source to get my information from. I researched music and the music charts on the radio one website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 as part of my audience research and popularity of certain genres of music. When creating my magazine, I used the software Photoshop, to manipulate and edit my photographs to make them look more attractive by altering the brightness and contrasting the images. I also used Photoshop, to cut out images which allowed me to remove any backgrounds from my primary photographs and just be left with the main image of the ‘artist.’ I did this by using the pen tool were I carefully cut around the object and then created a vector mask which removed all traces of anything outside the pen line and the image that I had cut around. I then used the software ‘In Design’ to mock up my magazine and place all the features where I wanted them. I did this by creating guide lines and borders. I changed the size of the image by stretching it out so that it would appear dominant on the front cover and look in proportion with my heading and text. I also changed the size of my text in In-Design and also carefully selected appropriate text which I had downloaded into the software from the website dafont.com. Technology played a huge part in my coursework, as it was the software that helped me create a professional look and allowed it to look official and attractive for the readers to buy.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Although I was rather happy with the outcome of my preliminary task, I feel that I learnt to lay my features out much more carefully and that the smallest things such as selecting a font makes a big difference to the quality of the product. I took much more care on my full product, when selecting fonts, colours, and the way I arranged my images.
Overall, I feel that my magazine was a great success. From my feedback, the name of the magazine, colours, images and layout all appeared to be popular with the audience when receiving my feedback and 70% of my audience feedback said it was the bright colours and bright, dominant image that attracted them to the front cover. I managed my time well and completed my magazine within the allocated 10 weeks given to me. I feel that the hardest parts of creating the product, was creating an article and choosing the fonts but once I had done this, I found it rather easy when arranging everything and laying out my images etc. I feel my weaknesses when creating my magazine, was the font size in the article, as did my audience, as when I was evaluating my audience feedback, 60% said one way in which I could improve my magazine, would be to make the font size bigger in my article. As I had to fit my main image and a heading with sub heading in a double page spread space, my font size was rather small. I also feel my sub heading font didn’t really go well with the genre of the magazine. I therefore changed this once I had got my audience evaluations back.
