1. 1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media product? (Powtoon)
When I finished my construction and the research and planning parts of my
media product, I think I can clear understand the convention and the publication of
the media product. I did my primary research on survey monkey, there were 20
people wrote my questionnaire although just some basic questions, it still impact
me. Billboard is one of the most influential magazines in America with a variety of
music genre. I found out in their country genre magazines, they not only chose
some typical colors of country music(such as light yellow and blue), but also some
relevant media texts to attract the target audience.
I want my magazine can have a really clear country style, so I try to show it from:
-My font: -I chose a very vintage and classical font to be my masthead, it seems a
little bit complicated, I tried to make it big enough in order to attract more the
reader.
For me, country music means happiness, natural and degage, so there are some
leaves and butterfly surround the cover line. I chose simple and decorated letter as
the four important singers in my magazine, it can stand out well.
-Media texts: -one of the puff on the top left corner with“ BIGGEST COUNTRY
MUSIC GUIDE” can let the readers know the genre of my magazine. I listed more
than four very popular country music singers in different areas of the cover page as
well.
-Small images: -I shoots some images outside with natural scene and the model
with a wooden guitar for implying the music genre.
In the other hand, I think it need to be international and popular in order to attract
my target audience from 14-25 as well, so I use the elements from billboard
magazine to incorporated in to my product. such as:
-Put some important (feature) singers on both side of the Cover Page
-Add the revision section that can help me attract more groups of customers, such
as people who likes collecting articles about LIVE concert.
-No.1 chart on the content page provide some popular country songs with singers
during the month.
-Exclusive—This part I have used the idea from Kerrang Magazine. I know Kerrang
is one of the most popular rock genre magazines in England, so it must have the
strength elements. After addding this element on my cover page, I think it is more
abundant than before.
Here are the elements include in my magazine:
-Cover Page: Skyline, Masthead, Features, Cover Line, Bar Code, Cover Image,
Puff, Date Line, Revision Section, Exclusive, Headline.
-Content Page: Cover Date, Volume Number, NO.1Chart, Page Numbers, Story
Headline with short description underneath, Tips, Title-Content, Images related to
stories, Feature Images, New Event& Activities Online.
-Double Page: Headline, Sub-headline, Drop Cap, PULL Quote, use different
colours to separate the article, Text in equal columns, Magazine Website, Feature

2. Images, Sound Effect, Background: text wrapped around images, The related
sentence from character, Tips: something make people looking forward
I have been unconventional in:
I tied to make my magazine unconventional in these ways
–The Chart Heat. It is a list of the rest of the singers (except the main four). The
reason why I created it is because I think customers want to know in this magazine
whether have the singer that they’re interested in. So role of the chart is help me
attract customers in order to buy it.
-The meaning of the colors on No.1Chart. I used yellow, blue and red to represent
unchanged, rise up and go down in No.1 Chart, so it is like a ranking table that can
help people knows the fashion cycle of country music.
Overall, you can see my flat plan and layout is quite similar to Billboard because
it’s really has been inspired me a lot and I think these kind of details and convention
can appeal my target audience as Billboard has done.
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
(Glogster)
The social groups I was chosen are the teenagers and young adults aged 14-25.
I’m in the target age range so it’s really helpful, as I know what can appeal my
audiences in a magazine. Typically people who like listening country music are
stereotyped as being facetious, active and optimistic; they like to wear a cowboy
hat, clothes with latticed and jeans. So regard to this, I tried to make my product
appeal these categories; based on the feedback of my primary research (a
questionnaire on Survey Monkey), my magazine focus on some young country
singers and bands, so this feature represent our audience are almost teenagers. I
tried to make my magazine unisex, so I won’t follow stereotype like men dominant
and women passive. I tried to keep balance of these two genders, so I did some
efforts in:
-Colours. In my media product I tried to use both warm (eg. pink,orange) and cool
colours (eg. blue,grey ) to represent men and women.
-Clothing Style. I chose two kinds of clothes for the main model of my
magazine,Sherry. One is very formal shirt with black laciness represent man or
young adults, the other is a black and white jumper with hollowed flowers represent
woman and teenagers.
In addition, CMB are added Exclusive Stories and Revision Section in order to
make my magazine more diversification and competitive, as my target audience
would like to something popular and special.
I tried to create my product looks like a real, professional and personality music
magazine, so I used fonts like light, bold, rough, graffiti in different parts, they
worked well together and can stood out important details. The vocabulary I was
chose often come up from feelings of listeners, some are obvious like teenagers
talk to each other at ordinary times, in order to match the standard stereotypes that
audience aged 14-25. For example, the language use of the headline on my Double
Page— “I MAY BE ICE COLL BUT MY ALBUM IS REALLY HOT ” with a subhead “
MY SECOND ALBUM SMASHED THE RECORD BOOKS”. From ethnicity, my
cover star is a Chinese at this time, but the main language we chose is English so I
think our target audience can be global.

3. 3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and
why? (Powtoon)
Publishing house is a company that takes the written work for a writer or a
musician and makes it available to the general public. I have been a research 3
publishing house for my magazine; they are Bauer Media, IPC Media and Future
Media With Passion. I chose Bauer Media to distribution my media product is
because it has different groups of target audience that aim different genres of
magazine, it means they have a widely customers resource as teenagers, male and
female. They also have many ways to spread their brand such as on the Internet,
radio stations and TV. Bauer Media sales 300 magazines in 15 countries like
Germany and America, they have over 80 inflectional brands covering a diverse
range of interest, so it’s international institutions and these features bring them a
huge successful in world wide.
Bauer Media has two really well-known music magazines called Kerrang and Q
magazine. Let’s use Kerrang as example: Kerrang is a rock genre magazine.
During 2013, they sold out about 37,000 issues, each issue is £2.20, so the
revenue will be over £81,000, therefore, I think they have rich experience in how to
manage a music magazine. For Bauer Media, they don’t a popular country genre
magazine yet, and I tried to build my magazine become the “ UK’s BIGGEST
COUNTRY MUSIC GUIDE.” If my product can join Bauer Media, this decision will
help Bauer Media exand their market and increase their market share. Depending
the strength of them, I believe CMB will have a bright future
I have set a price of £1.50 for a monthly CMB and my target is to sell at least
9,000 issues in the first year of my product going onto the market, which would gain
a revenue £13,500. Besides, I found out some people would like to subscribe
magazine online. It’s can provide to people who can’t buy your magazine for some
reasons in a shop and save the space for their house, l decide to offer this service
to readers, hence you can subscribe CMB on your laptops, iPads and smart
phones.
4.Who would be the audience for your media product? (Emaze)
After I finish my market research (involved making a questionnaire on Survey
Monkey and discussing ideas with my friends), I’m sure my magazine would appeal
people aged 14-25. I have chose this age range is because it’s really hard for a
country music magazine to appeal target audience, which is a younger age group
as under 14 in the market. For example, the target audience of Billboard is aged
16-26. They try to appeal their target audience by using a range of different
languages, colour schemes, images and contents. For me, I focus on people aged
14-25. My confidence was came from an analysis of an America country music

4. singer called Taylor Swift, and it’s about how she chose her target audience and
market. It inspired me a lot because Taylor Swift has a very similar experience as
my cover star Sherry---They released their first album at the age of 16, become
more and more popular when they released their second album at 19. They write
their own experience in the song and share with people. They are very similar so I
tried to find out Taylor’s target audience and market. Her original market as sub-20
females who believe in romance, and the writer sees it as teenage angst songs
targeted to teenagers by someone in the demographic.
In my opinion, the overlap between teenagers and young adults is about 90%. It
can be Taylor’s target audience, Sherry’s target audience and CMB’s target
audience. So for CMB, we try to save the older particular singer in order to appeal
people who like listening classic, excavate new power in country music for those
younger audience because I feel almost teenagers like to see something new,
special which can catch their eyes.
I want my magazine can be unisex, so I was very carefully in choosing colour
scheme (use warm and cool colors to represent men and women) and the clothing
style (use pretty and formal clothing style to represent women and men). I’m in the
age range of the target audience, for myself, I won’t be interested in a magazine
with lots of text and less images, it’s too common and boring. So in my Double
Page, I did best effort in the snowy effect of the background. These features can
help me to attract my audience interested in reading what I am writing. In order to
appeal my target audience as well as keep their interest, I changed the original
round puff into a toothed gear shape, which represents the development in country
music, making the whole page more vernal. Again, young target audience like
something popular and new, so we created Exclusive stories and revision section,
you can only know it through CMB, hence it can be a reason for people buy your
magazine. Otherwise, I want to build CMB into the UK’s biggest country music
guide in order to attract my audience from reputation, in my opinion, we have
chance as long as we can make it good enough. We also offer free posters to
customers for people who would like to collect things; the Chart Heat on the cover
page can directly make customers consider whether these singers they are
interested in. However, I don’t think these reasons are enough because the market
is competitive so I want to do something like a promotion. I decided to make a 5
digits code with something cover over it at the back of the magazine. If you buy the
magazine and go to CMB website, there will have special column there and you
type in your code, it will tell you whether win the prize.
-1st prize– a ticket of a country music concert.
-2nd prize– a chance become VIP of CMB or you can individually talk with a
popular country music star.
-3rd prize– get an object with a country music star signature on it.

5. I believe it can have a great influence to audience, leading the consumption
enthusiasm of customers. I made an advertising poster as well, I offer customers if
they subscribe CMB for a year just for £15 and they will get
-Digital Download
-50% off of rock records.
-Get £20 I-TUNES voucher
I also decide provide small presents during daily packaging and when some special
days come up such as Christmas and New Year’s Day we will also give customers
a special gift.
5.How did you attract/address your audience? (Popplet)
My target audience is teenagers and young adults aged from14-25, they are
facetious, active and optimistic, some of them are keeping on the rails as well. I
tried to make my product follow the stereotypes in appropriate manner in these
ways:
- Small images on cover page (a girl posed with a red wooden guitar) can clear
and definite show the genre to readers with a natural background. This group of
photos is very implicitly as our target audiences aged 14-25; I tried to make
resonance between these two in order to attract readers to read more.
- Colour Scheme: Used cool colour like blue to represent man and used warm
colours like pink to represent women.
- Small Images: I put some small images on Cover Page like other music
magazines did. It helped me fill in the blank space as well as provide more
information to the readers. It can clear and definite show the music genre to
readers with a natural background. This group of photos is very implicitly
indicated our target audiences aged 14-25 from the clothing style and the
method of image-capturing.
- Clothing Style: My model Sherry wore a quite formal white shirt on the Cover
Page, it would more closely to the male gender, looks terse style; The picture
which is on the right is on the Double page. It's a normal jumper with a snowy
effect in order to make the whole page looks soft, so female might prefer it.
- Particular Features: I added Exclusive and Revision Section into my
magazine. Especially the Exclusive Section, the articles and details inside
you can just find in CMB, so if readers want to know it, they must buy my
magazine. I think these two Sections can help CMB attract people who like to
know the latest interest news about country singers/bands and who like to
revision LIVE concert and know the stories behind the concert.
I tried to challenge in these ways:
- Language: I tried to make there is no grammar or spell mistakes and make
my language more locally. I think the language use is quite informal in my
magazine. I made the headline of my Double Page quite obvious like teens
talk to each other in normal times. I want when people read my magazine
can be really relax and follow my texts, not felt the grammar is wired and
boring.
- We chose different poses for model Sherry. These poses we chose represent
characters of people who likes country music- active, facetious and

6. optimistic. The pose that is on Cover Page with a very cool facial expression
acts as a message for readers-country music can be cool, it can be
international!
- I’m agreeing with color and font choice is very important. All kinds of font I
was chose is I think it can relate to my music genre and appeal my target
audience. I went for “KellyAnnGothic” to be my masthead. This font is really
crooked that effect like a retro stamp. I felt this font is the best choice for me
because if I choose a kind of scrawl font, people will be confused about your
music genre. “Black leafs” is the font of my cover line. This font is special
because these are leaves around each letter, make the whole page lively and
reiterate the genre of magazine in order to appeal target audience aged 14-
25. I know it’s maybe a little bit dull to use black, but if I use colorful font, it
can’t stand out well because of the color of background. So I deiced to use
colorful font in other details to make it up. Back to Billboard, I felt we both use
one rough the other regular font to performance our masthead and headline.
My audience feedback came back from people aged 14-25 as wanted CMB
released once a month. I also took their advice in the feedback—become VIP of
CMB or have an individually talk with a popular country music star if you won the
2nd prize. For teenagers, it’s a great experience undoubted. This advice can make
my magazine become competitive.
We had a briefly evaluation in class as well, the feedback from my classmates are
make the masthead bigger and add some small images in order to provide more
details for readers. Their advices gave me more opportunities to appeal my target
audience.
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
the product? (Padlet)
Slide Share is a programme which you can create Power Point online and put
the related links on blogs for people to see it. I uploaded my power points and
coursework on Slide Share first then put the links on my blog for my exam. I felt it’s
very easy to set up and nothing complicated here. I’m very pleased to use it show
my progress to teacher and examiner but I don’t think it’s good to upload something
with a specific font because sometimes it will be changed.
For me, Blogger is a programme that can upload my course work on for teachers
and examiners to mark it. It’s very easy to use, you can upload lots of things—
texts, images, Power Points, you can also linked a website with an underneath. You
can put whatever you want to show what skills you are learnt. I create “Pages” and I
found out it can make you blogs have a clear method, make teachers mark you
work easily. I’m quite happy to use that and it can also bring me fun and interest
when I do my media work.
Photoshop is a useful editing software. When I use it at the first time, I found it’s
so hard—not the software, it’s language problem. I consulted my teacher and
classmates, they are very patient, taught me how to use it step by step. I
downloaded a Photoshop on my McBook for practicing in my free time as well. I
think the order of the layer is really important when you use it, or you will be

7. struggled. “Magnetic Lasso Tool”, “Rectangle Tool” and “Line Tool” helped me a lot
when I created my product. I used “Magnetic Lasso Tool” to cut the image out and
use refine edge to make the edge of my image more natural. “Rectangle Tool” and
“Line Tool” you can see the great progress on No.1 Chart, which is on the content
page.
InDesign is a desktop publishing software which can be used to create works
such as magazines, posters, newspapers and so on. It’s very tricky for me but I
have to admit it can make you layout more accurate. The tools are similar between
InDesign and Photoshop, but in InDesign you can create columns and drop your
texts in, it can improve your layout. Another helpful tool is called “text warp”, it can
make your texts warp around your image automatically and make your product
more professional. The problem I met is about the layer, the layer won’t create
automatically and I’m careless sometimes; I put several things in one layer and I
found out if you want to move one of them to the top layer, it’s really troublesome.
I also used a Canon camera for shooting my image. It’s a single lens reflex
camera. To be honest, I’m confused in how to use it when I've got it. I knew the
basic usage of the camera after watched the tutorial on YouTube and I’m quite
surprised with the high quality of the image when I upload photos onto the
computer via a USB lead. During the shooting, lighting could be a big problem. I
don’t know how to control the time of exposure at that time, so the images we shot
are always dark, hence I asked my host for help, who can be the expert in using
camera. We changed the focusing ring and zoom ring but it didn't work. Luckily, we
found the answer on the Internet at last.
7.Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt
in the progression from it to the full product?
I can clear remember when I started my media course on September. I can’t
manage well with the Apple Mac as well as the Photoshop with my poor English.
I’m really nervous and not confident at that time.But now, I’m proud of myself on the
technology and creativity that can be showed on my media product.
The planning stage for my magazine is very important. I can’t imagine if I didn’t
do the research before how my magazine will be looked like. I created several flat
plans about the layout and color choices by comparing with a real magazine, it’s the
key point of my planning. It helped me draw the best conclusion. Before the
planning stages, we did some conducting research as well:
-Publishing Houses; this research make me feel that I will put my magazine on a
real market and you need to consider and make a decision which publishing house
is the best choice for your magazine, understand how the business work.
-Audience Research; I make a questionnaire of my magazine with very basic
questions such as the price they would like to pay for a music magazine and the
frequency of the publication.

8. -Generic Conventions of a Magazine; I’m not sure what it is before. If I didn’t do the
research, I won’t be focus on this part and put it into my magazine.
-Mind Map; this is a research about the artists you want to introduce in your
magazine, it helped me consider the component of my magazine.
- Evaluation; we have a briefly evaluation during class and it helped me know the
weakness of my product, gave me ideas on how to improve that can make it attract
my target audience for me.
The Call Sheet and Risk Assessment are very necessary during my construction.
Call Sheet make me have a clear goal (the place of shooting; shooting types, what I
want to achieve and the date) or I don’t know what can I do next. Risk Assessment
helped me think a lot about what troubles we might meet during the shooting, so I
will be more careful to avoid the risks which I mentioned in the Risk Assessment as
well.
Comparing my prelim task to my final product, you can clear see the
development of my skills in using Photoshop and InDesign.
In my prelim task, I didn’t edited my image and I just use the type tool typed
some words in with the same font even the masthead. Some words on the
background were folded the introduction as well as a big bar code in the corner; it’s
very basic. But in my final product, I have learnt that the connection between
audience, magazine and the publishing house, so I used various font styles with
different size and colors to attract my target audience aged 14-25.I have learnt
about camera techniques and the effects they have as well, so I followed the shot
types in Billboard, pay attention in the generic conventions and used Photoshop to
edited my images, such as improved the lighting and refine the edge, then drop
them into InDesign.
Thanks to Sally, online tutorial and people who helped me, I have enjoyed the
process of creating and working with this topic. I hopefully have produced a good
product that is worth a good grade. I think my product can suit the brief as well as
my target audience. I will continue read magazines and look at the same elements
that I have produced in my work, I’m quite enjoy the work I uploaded on my blog
like what I am writing here. And Finally, these websites helped me a lot and I have
become familiar with them:
-Blogger
-Slide share
-Prezi
-Padlet
-Emaze