1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My media product follows the majority of conventions that are used by real products.
I took a lot of inspiration and influence from the music magazine ‘Rocksound’. The
contents page and convention of the purple colour scheme were used in this magazine
for young people who are interested in the ‘Rock’ genre. I wanted to make my
audience more music-specific, and used the genre ‘Pop-punk’, which applies to
mainly an age group of 11-18 year olds.
The contents page’s layout was based off of Vibe’s1 and
Rocksound’s layout [one main image with the contents
listed]. I liked this style of the contents page as it is simple
and not complicated to navigate [unlike other contents pages
such as Kerrang! Which have multiple photos, sections,
textboxes etc]. So it would be more suited to a younger
audience who do not wish to spend as much time searching
for an article they would be interested in; younger audiences
are much more likely to use the internet to gather information
that could be found in my magazines, so I tried to make it as 1 -Vibe’s contents page
easy as a search engine to navigate through. 2 – Vibe’s front cover
In Rocksound’s issue where they interview Mindless
Self Indulgence [who are also on the front cover]3,
they use purple as a theme colour as it is a part of their
outfits. The masthead and parts of the article were in
purple, which gave the connotation of continuity. I
wanted to expand on this idea so I made it a base
colour throughout the magazine pages. I also felt that
purple was vibrant enough to stand out and catch the
attention of the audience. Purple is also not seen as a
particular colour specified to gender [when in the right
shade], so by using purple I made sure equal
3 – Rocksound’s ‘Mindless
representation of my target audience was achieved.
Self Indulgence’ issue
Vibe magazine also used greyscale [aka monochrome,
black&white] and colour together to make colours stand out. On the cover of an issue
with its main article on Rhianna2 it used a bright blue as a key colour and the
greyscale made this colour ‘pop’. I used this same scheme with the colour purple to
help attract attention and make sure that there are no clashing colours.
Almost all magazines have a consistent ‘key’ font that is used throughout the issue. It
is often the same font that the magazine’s masthead uses that is used as the title of an
article or section. I used the ‘Stencil’ font for this conventional method of creating a
professional-looking product. A research example of this method is Kerrang! using
the font ‘Birth of a Hero’.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I want to represent social groups that were interested in the ‘punk/pop’ music scene.
My magazine would achieve this by giving reviews on concerts, albums and festivals
of the same genre. I would also like my magazine to be distributed at festivals [as Q
have been doing at Glastonbury Music Festival].
As most of my audience would be of a more youthful generation, I would also have
my magazine online so people on the web can stay up-to-date with it. According to
the ‘find your tribe’ questionnaire, the majority of my audience would spend the

2. majority of their time on the internet researching new bands, gigs, etc. My magazine
going online would benefit from this.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would want my magazine to primarily be distributed through print. I want this to be
its main distributor because magazines in music are often seen as the most reliable
source of information for things such as reviews and interviews whereas the internet
can be less reliable. Print is also available to almost everyone living in the UK today
as newsstands are often not too far away from an audience member’s home.
Online distribution would also be an important factor in my magazine. As my target
audience would spend the majority of their time online
Who would be the audience for your media product? (Refer to your research)
I
based my research off of the ‘Find your tribe’ results. I took the quiz a few times and
got a range of different results, so I knew what kind of teenager/young adult to aim
my product of. Most of these teenagers will be listening to music constantly and are
often very loud, making going to live concerts an important event in their lives. They
usually wear dark colours or dark colours with a flash of bright colour [this also
inspired my colour scheme]. Loud or rather ‘undiscovered’ musical artists would
attract this audience’s attention as they are strong believers in being ‘original’ and
‘individual’. As my ideal audience would be listening to music and finding music
online, I would have more features on online events and music events than on events
that were related to TV soaps, for example.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I used a competition, mentioned in the contents and on the front cover to attract
attention as I hope the audience would become interested in the prize [VIP tickets to a
concert] as my target audience would be very interested in live music.
Using bands of the same genre also helps attract my audience as they would probably
recognise the band’s name and want to either read more about them/gather
information on them/get opinions on their music/live atmosphere etc. By using more
‘well-known’ bands, I can introduce smaller, more independent bands which would
also interest my target audience as they like to discover new artists.

3. My colour scheme aims to be aesthetically pleasing as the colours are co-ordinate and
do not clash. Grey often makes other colours stand out, even black and white, so I
decided to make ‘purple’ my key colour [taken inspiration from VIBE and
ROCKSOUND magazine] as it is vibrant and a unisex colour and made everything
else greyscale so it stood out, catching the reader’s eye.
My magazine name/masthead is also a way of catching my target audience.
‘Megaphone’ gives the connotation of something being loud/amplified/noisy, similar
to an atmosphere at a festival/concert. This connotation would work well with the
‘punk’ scene as it is all about rebellion and making your voice heard, so I believed
‘Megaphone’ would be a good name.
I also mention festivals in the contents as a well-known band give ‘tips’ on how to
survive them. Not only is this useful information but also it is relevant, as I would
have my magazine sold at music festivals and my target audience would often attend
music festivals like Glastonbury, Reading, Edinburgh, etc.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
I used slideshare and blogger for the first time in this project. These websites allowed
me to upload my work straight from my harddrive so I didn’t have to copy and paste
and reformat, or take screenshots and upload as photos.
I also used a canon digital camera to take my photos, paint.NET [a free photo editing
software] to edit them, Microsoft Publisher for my preliminary task Used InDesign
for it allows text and image to work on simultaneously.
I used paint.NET – a free photo editing software that I commonly use at home. The
software allowed me to work with layers, colour selection [the ‘magic wand’ tool
enables you to select a section of a certain colour and move it, cut and paste it, etc],
saturation and brightness/contrast levels, etc. Layers allowed me to work with
different photos or different parts of the photo separately, adding separate effects. For
example, I used to magic wand tool to move the purple dress of my model to a new
layer, and desaturate the layer I cut it from.
In paint.NET I was also able to merge these two images together to create a more
‘surreal’ and interesting photo
Adobe inDesign was the publishing program I used to compose all of the raw
elements of my magazine together. In this program I could import images, text from
word documents, and create titles. I could also use the eyedropper tool to select
colours from text or photos in order to create colour consistency.

4. From inDesign I could publish all four pages
[contents, front cover and double page
spread] into a PDF file so others can read it
and I can put it online.
I found inDesign a much more practical
software to use compared to Microsoft publisher fur multiple reasons.
1) inDesign has more tool such as the
eyedropper tool, more text formatting
features, etc. These all helped my magazine
look more consistent and professional
compared to my preliminary task.
2) inDesign could import text from Microsoft
word documents, allowing me to use the
article I had type out. If I was using Publisher
I would have had to copy and paste, and
resize, etc.
3) The ‘text outlining’ feature of text formatting
allowed my text to stand out from photos and
solid colour – Publisher does not have this
feature and I could lose visual impact from this, or my text would be more
difficult to read.
4) inDesign gives many more options in terms of formatting, publishing, etc.
Text spacing between letters is a feature I found particularly useful.
A downside to using adobe inDesign is that it was not free and only installed on the
school’s computers – therefore making it impossible for me to work on it at home. I
tackled this problem by converting a copy to PDF regularly and making notes at home
on it if I wanted to work on it/make changes. I transferred my work between
computers using an external hard drive and email.

5. 7: Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?
I have learnt a lot about different technologies,
especially publishing software during my time
on this project. I learnt how important and how
much of a difference it makes to have more
formatting capabilities with text, and I feel as if
my skills as a photo editor have improved
[looking at the comparison between my
preliminary and final pieces, I think my photo
editing is much better in the final piece].
I have also learnt about representation of certain
social groups such as age [my music magazine
is made differently and has different content
and styling because it’s aimed at a wider age
range than my school magazine]; gender - I
tried to make both pieces as equal as possible,
but looking back at my preliminary, it looks
like I’m targeting a male audience more as I use
the colour blue and only use pictures of a male
student. Likewise in my music magazine, I only
use photos of a female artist, but this is because
see is the main focus of the largest article, not
because of her gender, and purple is also a non-gender specific colour; and other
factors such as clothing styles and music tastes.
I also see I could have made improvements to my final piece, such as being more
diverse in my photos, and possibly having too much purple. If I have more
time/another chance, I would have taken more photos of multiple people to add more

6. diversity