2. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
• Stereotypically, young males tend to be slightly fashion-conscious, as they intend
to impress the opposite sex and want to look good. This is suggested by both
images, as both have styled hair, brushed over to one side quite neatly. Both are
also wearing a buttoned-up collared shirt, which is quite trendy – still supporting
the intentions of impressing girls and looking good.
• Both of their poses still support the stereotype of younger males trying to act
cool and impress the opposite gender which can be suggested by the indirect
gaze in my image and in both images – having their heads turned away from the
camera implies that they think they are cool and
more important than other males their age. Young males are also
stereotypically confident which is quite clearly connoted by each of
their poses – NME’s image suggests confidence
through Alex Turner (from Artic Monkeys)’s
folded arms and my image connotes confidence
through the way Ben (the subject of the
photograph) is holding the edges of his shirt.
Both stances also look quite laid back and
relaxed, which is yet another stereotype of
young males.
3. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and why?
• I believe that Bauer Media would distribute my magazine, as Bauer
Media already covers a wide amount of different music genre
magazines, but after researching the different music magazines they
distribute and the genres they belong to, I noticed there was an
absence of any magazine belonging to my genre of indie/indie-
rock/alternative music. If Bauer Media were to publish ‘UMD
Magazine’, they would widen their market to an even larger audience
of readers, as their selection of music genres would almost cover every
genre. The reason I decided not to go for IPC Media, is because they
already publish a popular indie/indie-rock music magazine, ‘New
Musical Express’, and it is unlikely that they would want two conflicting
magazines within their own institution, as either magazine would
affect each other’s sales.
• This is another reason why Bauer Media is the ideal institution to
publish ‘UMD’, as they need to challenge competing media institutions,
like IPC Media, by publishing as many music genres as possible, as it
gives a reader of a certain genre an alternative to the magazine they
currently read. For example, a reader of NME published by IPC Media
may discover UMD magazine published by Bauer Media and begin
reading it out of curiosity and they could find that they prefer the
magazine published by Bauer Media as opposed to IPC Media.
4. Who would be the audience for your
media product? Audience Profile for UMD Magazine
Richard is an eighteen year old student studying in his second year of
sixth form. He lives in the South East of England with his parents and
owns his own black Renault Clio. Due to his studies, he doesn’t get a
Why would they buy your product? large amount of free time, but when he does, he normally goes out
Richard would buy UMD music magazine with friends or to parties at weekends, and stays in and watches
because at £2.99 every month, it is affordable some comedy TV, like Family Guy or 8 out of 10 Cats in the evenings
as opposed to NME which costs £2.20 every of weekdays. When he can, he likes to go to music festivals or see his
favourite bands on tour, which he pays for with the money he gets
week. UMD also features artists and bands from his part-time job at Waitrose. His favourite bands are The
which all fit into either the indie/indie-rock Kooks, Imagine Dragons and Snow Patrol but he also enjoys hearing
genre or alternative/alternative-rock genre, music from less well-known indie bands, as he believes that
which is Richard’s favourite genre of music, and indie/alternative music offers a lot more variety than the mainstream
there isn’t really another magazine out there music which is largely dominated by R&B music, which to Richard
which features artists just belonging to that sounds all pretty much the same. Richard puts aside some of the
money he earns from his part-time job to help towards the
genre. Another unique selling point for UMD ridiculously expensive University fees, which doesn’t leave him with
magazine which appeals to Richard is that as a lot of money to spend on himself. When he isn’t saving up his
well as featuring well-known and popular earnings for music festivals, he usually saves up his money to buy
artists such as Snow Patrol, Imagine Dragons, some expensive clothes from shops like Superdry or River Island and
Foster the People and The Kooks (and more) a few other popular shops. He currently purchases NME magazine,
UMD balances this list of artists and bands with but cannot afford to buy it every week, as £2.20 every week would
be too expensive. Currently, he only buys one or two magazines a
newcomers to the indie/alternative genre and month, and only when they feature his favourite artists or
not-so-well-known bands and artists. indie/alternative newcomers. Richard is looking for a music magazine
which features both popular bands/artists but also less well-known
bands/artists solely belonging to the indie/indie-rock/alternative
genre. He also needs a magazine which comes out monthly for an
affordable price.
5. How did you attract/address your
audience?
• My audience consists of mainly males aged 16-late 20s/early 30s which
is also roughly the average age of music festival/band tour goers, and I
have addressed this by listing several competitions on the cover where
readers can read about and even win tickets to some of the best
festivals around.
• The bands and artists featured also attract my target
audience of indie-rock/alternative fans, as the unique selling point of
UMD is that there is an even mix (a ‘balance’) of both popular and well-
known indie-rock/alternative artists; and not so well-known artists and
some newcomers. This attracts my audience and fans of this genre, as
they are always looking for good artists and bands that few people
have heard of, so that when they finally do become more popular, they
can say “I listened to them before they were popular”. To a fan of this
genre, it makes you cool to listen to small bands and artists, as it shows
that you like them for their music not just simply because everyone
else likes them.
• The colour scheme I have chosen may also attract my audience, as
these colours are usually associated with the indie-rock/alternative
genre. They are also colours stereotypically associated with the male
gender, which is the main gender for my target audience.
• The title of the magazine – ‘Unique Music Development’ also addresses
my audience, as it suggests that few artists featured will sound alike
and that there is a large variety within the music belonging to the
genre. It also suggests that few of the artists featured are mainstream
and that the main focus is on artists and bands which are developing
their popularity within the music world, which attracts fans of the
indie-rock/alternative genre, as these smaller bands are what they are
looking for, not mainstream music which is ‘over-played’ on the radio.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from
the process of constructing this product?
• There were a number of different programs and websites I used to construct this project.
The main ones were Adobe Photoshop, Prezi, WordPress, SlideShare, and Adobe InDesign.
• We used Photoshop to create our front covers, contents pages and double page spreads. I
already knew a fair amount about Photoshop, so it was fairly easy to use this to create each
of the project pieces.
• We used Prezi to present some of our research tasks, and this was certainly a lot more
complicated than PowerPoint. Once I had gotten to grips with the basics however, it was
fairly easy to use. I did find however, that it was a bit of a time-consumer, and I would’ve
much preferred to use a more simple program like PowerPoint, as this would’ve saved me a
lot of time and allowed me to spend more time on other parts of the project.
• WordPress was the blog we used to present all the pieces of our project. I found this was
very complicated to use and it was very unclear how to upload and embed different files
from different websites etc. This wouldn’t have been so complicated if we had only used
PowerPoint and programs on the computer to present certain parts of the project, as
uploading files saved on your computer was fairly easy – embedding things from websites
however was not.
• We were told to use InDesign to create our double page spreads, however InDesign only
saves files in an ‘InDesign’ format, and WordPress could not detect this type of file. So in the
end, I had to copy and convert each piece of the double page spread over to Photoshop,
which was another time-consumer. InDesign was also a lot more limited than Photoshop in
terms of designing and layout and Photoshop was much easier to use.
• Lastly, SlideShare was what we used to present parts of the evaluation and some planning
tasks, and this was pretty easy and straight-forward, as all you had to do was make an
account, and then browse files for PowerPoint files and upload. The only problem was that
the embed code given by SlideShare wouldn’t work on Wordpress, so there was another
complicated way of adding to the embed code and changing some Wordpress settings.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to full product ?
The progression of the front cover from the preliminary task to the project cover is instantly visible, as the space on the final
project cover has been used a lot more wisely, and everything is a lot more consistent on the project cover – the text size and font
is very consistent and a lot neater, whilst the preliminary task’s cover has quite a few empty spaces, and the text font and size is not
very consistent. Whilst the colour scheme is quite consistent on the preliminary task, it is a lot more consistent and obvious on the
project cover, as even the masthead ‘UMD’ contains all three of the main colours. The graphical features and white boxes around
the anchorage text on the preliminary task is very distracting from the rest of the cover, and it causes the cover to be too weighted
to the left of the page making the right side seem rather empty. I’ve learnt from this on my main project cover, as it isn’t too
weighted on one side than the other, only as much as other magazines like NME or Kerrang! etc.
The preliminary contents page was actually very good in my opinion, so I decided to make the project contents page quite similar in
some areas with a couple of improvements. The preliminary contents page did not use the masthead from the front cover, so I
made sure to use the masthead from the cover to the contents page of the final project so that readers would sub-consciously be
remembering the name of the magazine. I also decided to use a convention which many other music magazines’ contents pages
use, which is that the images take up most of the contents page. I decided to keep the idea of having several headings in the
contents page, but I made sure the headings were a lot clearer in my final project contents page, and that there wasn’t as much
writing – music magazine contents pages tend to save most of the writing to the articles within the magazine with only a couple of
sentences to tempt the readers into finding the specific article.
Overall, I believe it is very clear that I have learnt a lot in the progression from the preliminary task to the full product.
