EVALUATION

1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

It was important to use traditional forms and conventions of existing media products to produce a genuine music magazine. Some of these forms I have developed to create a unique and interesting product so that my product has an exclusive selling point compared to other similar magazines that are on the target market.

I have analysed numerous amount of different existing music magazines and it was clear that the name of the magazine was always placed at the top of the front cover page and sometimes towards the left. I then used this convention throughout my front cover and double page spread as this was a key layout to.

A colour theme is important to give the magazine a sophisticated and structured look however I have noticed that the more colours used, the more crowded and unorganised the magazine looked which does also reflect the rock genre which I am not looking to have for my music magazine as the genre of my magazine is R&B/ hip-hop. My contents page also follows the forms and conventions of a real media product as the contents colour scheme is regular which does relate to the front cover of my music magazine which doesn’t prevent any confusion to my target audience and does look authentic.

The straplines are used to advertise the content on the front cover as it looks bold and appealing. However the straplines are not essentially used in all magazines that you come across. I have noticed they are often used on magazines aimed at a younger audience and teenagers with a more crowded front cover. I have decided to use straplines at the top of my magazine developing typical forms and conventions to make a more appealing and visual front cover, which is what my target audience is looking for.

A convection that many real media product use are puffs which I also included in my music magazine. My puff is a chance to win concerts tickets for 2 for ‘Leanne sheers’ tour. My puff will attract the target audience as the ‘FREE’ would be eye catching to my target audience.

In addition, I have also challenged the convention of the contents page as when I analysed some music magazine contents page the mast head of ‘Content’ was always at the top of the page however, with my contents page I have placed ‘contents’ on the right hand of the page going down across the page. I placed my ‘content’ like this in order for it to look unique from other music magazines. 

 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

My media product represents a group of teenagers to young adults, mainly from the UK, aged around 16-25 years old. I represented my social group firstly through the use of language and mode of address in my music magazine. The mode of address of my magazine is informative but in order to fit my magazine to the lower half of the age group I made it easy for all of my target audience to understand no matter how intellectual they are or not.

My music magazine is aimed at both genders as my magazine include both female and male content that the audience would enjoy reading and also is not biased if it was directly aimed at one type of gender.

My music magazine content is mainly focused around what my target market want such as interviews which I have included and top charts which I found out by doing research and conducted a questionnaire which I received feedbacks from.

In my music magazine the genre are R&B, Hip-hop and rap so therefore I did not include any classical music as from the research I conducted I have found that it was not popular within my age group.

The design of my music magazine is simple as I wanted to make it look elegant and not cluttered and disorganised. However, I did want my music magazine to attract to my audience therefore I used bold colours and unique layouts and used images that are simple but effective. The main cover image of my music magazine is of the celebrity with the double page spread ‘Leanne Sheer’. The main cover is a female and this is a way of sex appeal and get my target audience attracted to my magazine

For my media product, the price I’ve chosen could represent a specific social group for example, as I am targeting my magazine to the everyday teenagers and young adult, they would not spend a lot of money on magazines as they may still be in education or may want to spend money on things which may be better to spend on such as clothes. From using the feedback from my questionnaire the majority of people answered that they would be willing to spend £3 for a music magazine therefore I chose to price my music magazine £3 which seems like a decent price for a magazine as its affordable for a high quality music magazine like mine.

Q) 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The media institution that I’ve chosen is called ‘Bauer Media Group’. The institution caters over 19 million UK adults every week and has more then 80 media brands such as Kiss 100, 4 Music, Kerrang, Parkers and many more which spans a wide range of interests.

The type of genre that my magazine will be is RnB and Hip-Hop. The reason why I chose this institution is because it has a wide range of brands and magazines that the other institution does not have for example like, IPC, Emap, and Hearst etc.

My target audience that I want my magazine to cater is roughly the age of 16 to 25. I do believe that my institution caters for the target audience that I’ve selected as ‘Bauer Media’ has wide ranges of brands that engages with the audience.

‘Bauer’ would be suitable for my magazine as oppose to ‘IPC Media’ because the institution is more based of music brands however ‘IPC Media’ publish magazine which are more based of TV, News, Sports etc. 

‘Bauer Media’ joined the media group in January 2008 and the group employs around 6,400 people.  They publish a variety of magazines such as Empire, Mojo, and Q etc.

The institution that I’ve selected does use cross media convergence such as radio station such as heat, kiss, magic etc. The institution also has cross media convergence such as TV for example Box, Q. Kerrang, and 4 Music. Etc.

I would distribute my magazine places where people go for transport, for example I would distribute it at places like airports, train station, bus stops. The reason why I chose to distribute my magazine at them places is because they are usually busy and more people are likely to buy a magazine when they are travelling as it would company them through their journey. I also would have a mini stand by each place where the magazine would be sold. I will also distribute my magazine in supermarkets near the till, as it also a place where many people most likely to go to and the reason why I would have my magazine near the till is because its will catch customers attention.

The price of my magazine would be £3.95 each, the reason I chose this price is because my magazine will be made from recycled material which is environmentally friendly and I would like my magazine to be high quality with loads of information and news which will be worth it for the price.

For my magazine, I have considered control and regulation for safety. I will follow the editor’s code of practice in order to maintain a high professional standard.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience for my music magazine would be aged between the late teens and their early twenties (16-25), I believe it is suitable for the kind of magazine that I have created, this is backed up further by the price of the magazine, it has to be made affordable because of the ages of the audience as the price is £2 which seems fairly decent. I made sure my target audience would contain a mixture of both females and males as I do not want my music magazine to be stereotypical and promote it more than the other. 

  5. How did you attract/address your audience?

With my music, I attracted and addressed my target audience in many ways, for instance;

Taken professional pictures for my magazine which looks high quality and not juvenile also the use of imagery that has a clear connotation and representation of a typical R&B/Hip-hop music artist however also keeping the originality of my magazine of a youthful look.

Used a people in their late teens to model for me and be in my magazine which related to the target audience as having a child on my main cover image would not address to my target audience.

 Bold titles and masthead to draw the attention of the target audience. Using colours which suit both genders for example the colour gold and black.

-        Making sure the colour scheme is consistent throughout my music magazine to avoid any confusions or distractions.

-        The use of variety of bold and vibrant colours and the use of extreme style of text included in my magazine. 

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

Throughout the process of creating my media product I have gained many abilities using different technologies. The equipment’s that I had used were the mac computers, cameras and adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop was one of my main technology I worked with over the process of my media product. The Photoshop program was very difficult in beginning as I have never used it since my preliminary task which I didn’t feel like I used Photoshop well. Photoshop was very hard to get use to and was very stressful throughout the whole process of my media product however, without Photoshop my media product would be very poor as it mainly consisted in using the program to edit photos etc. in addition, The Photoshop tool came in extremely useful in the construction of my media product and was the handiest tool we were provided with as I used it a lot to edit my photos.

Throught the process of constructing my music magazine, I also learnt how to use powerpoints, publishers and word much better. As i did most of my research using the programs. 

The image that I have used for my double page spread was not taken with a plain background instead, it was taken outdoors. By using Photoshop I used brush tool by changing the background to white and gave a faded background and reason why I did not crop the background one instead was due to it looking messy and the edges would not be refined so instead I used the brush tool which made me feel satisfied with the background. I then blemished the face by using the healing tool brush and also the spot healing brush. After, I used the brush tool again and selected the shade black to add more eyeliner to make it more bold and also I changed the colour by using the eyedropper tool and selected the eyebrows which automatically gave me the same colour which them I used to go over the eyebrows and make them more bold and neat.

Overall, throughout the construction of my media product i have gained the ability to use many different technologies which are helpful in the media industry, all of which came in unbelievably handy in the production of my magazine and will help with other things over time.

7.  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back on my preliminary task, I have learnt various new technical skills as well as how to create a successful media product. During my preliminary task, my product was very bland and included much creativity. However, in my full product I have ensured a consistent colour scheme in order for all my pages to look as though they’re from the same magazine.

My school magazine looked very crowded whereas my full product has a small amount of writing to match my style model of Q! However, still looked like a legitimate magazine. I feel that since my preliminary task I have progressed as beforehand I did not really understand how to attract an audience successfully.

My contents page looked dull and looked like it was something you would see on a newspaper as there wasn’t much colour that attracts to the audience. However in the full task I ensured that my contents page fit in with my cover using eccentric colours effectively.

I believe that my final product looks a lot more professional and elegant as I think this is because I had a style model to follow as well as research I had done on various other magazines

My preliminary task helped me to reflect on what I was doing wrong so that I could improve this within my final magazine. I realised that image quality and model choice was important, in my school magazine I used blurred images however my final product images were better quality.

The layout of my magazine was also important. My preliminary task did not have a specific layout causing it to look disorganised and unprofessional, to ensure my final product could be sold next to huge magazines such as Q! I tried to follow the layout of my style model in order to create a genuine feel to my product.

My Photoshop skills lacked at the beginning of the course however after the preliminary task I was able to learn how to use various tools such as blur and brush tool, this helped as I used these on my final product.

With my school magazine, it was target to a small audience however, my final media product is aimed more to a wider audience as it is within the age group of 16-25.

Having an audience feedback to create my media product helped me be able to create a successful product.

In addition, overall after creating my preliminary task I made sure that my final media product had majority of the forms and conventions for a music magazine.