Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does my media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My magazine does go against some norms and conventions of usual
magazines. The colours of my front cover are based on my artist and the
object of my front cover (the guitar). The next magazine I would produce
would be a totally different colour unless the colour of the objects and artists
were resembled by the burgundy and beige colour I have used for my first
issue of FeedBack. Most of the big name magazines that are out there are
dedicated to the colours they have decided to use. For example NME have a
very noticeable logo because they always use red and white and most people
associate the colours with NME. So whereas NME have used the colour
scheme as a source of identity I have not, I have decided to go with a variety
of colours as I am not concerned on having a huge identity just because of my
colours, I don't want my magazine to be like NME or even Mojo where they
have built up a reputation and an identity to help sales, I want my magazine
to be used as a voice and a port of call for young adults to share their
opinions on music and all other things like fashion. This helps me create a
greater relationship with my audience just through the colour scheme of my
magazine where as I feel this isn’t a convention NME, Mojo or the Rolling
Stones do not do this and I believe that this is a convention that other
magazines should build on because I don’t think they connect with the
audience as much as my magazine will.

With my magazine it isn’t just the front cover that goes against usual magazine
conventions, moving onto my contents page I have began to also go against the
conventions in this feature of my magazine. Usually magazines are split into thirds
however I have decided to split my contents page into two and have one half of
my page as text and the other half of my page as images. The reason I have done
this as I wanted to have a substantial amount of text but not too much so I think if
I use only half of the page for text it will limit me using as much texts as one third.
You could say though that I could just put the text in one of the thirds but I didn’t
want my images to overtake my contents page. All magazines contain a contents
page which I have obviously included and had to make for my magazine FeedBack.
Also my magazine doesn’t fit to the casual conventions of a magazine as it does
not keep to the same colour as the cover page as most magazines try to keep each
page similar if they are related with the same artists for example, this is where
FeedBack differs. FeedBack has used a picture of the same artist for the contents
page and has used the colours of the denim jacket and the black on the guitar
instead of the beige and burgundy on the guitar. I was hoping to develop and
change some conventions. I want my magazine to differ throughout and always
have an alternate look on each page, each should be aesthetically pleasing as the
last. I think by me doing this other magazines would follow with changing up the
colour scheme and possibly having no theme at all.

My double page spread is different to the other two products I have produced for FeedBack magazine have gone
against music magazine and even normal magazine conventions or they helped develop onto creating new
conventions for magazines to follow and copy. Furthermore I have not varied from these conventions I have
learnt about. My double page spread has an image for the background, an article to go along side and finally
titles to match. I have kept to the colour scheme that has come from the colours my model is wearing and the
symbol from the drumkit. I have used a medium shot so you can have a close up of the expression of the models
face. Most magazines I have seen and read consider this and like to keep to these conventions, I would of liked to
develop and change my double page spread however with the double page spread many magazines do change
the double page up as they want it to resemble someone or fit the artist, so this is why I have decided to follow
the conventions for once as the conventions appeal to me and how I want Feedback to come across. I want the
double page spread to be creative and express the person on it. One thing that I have decided not to follow is the
huge paragraphs of content that may not have any relevance to what the article should be saying so I decided to
do a little amount of text compared to some magazines so I wouldn’t be one of these magazines that drones on
and waffles. I want my magazine to be upfront and straight from the start. Also with my double page spread I
decided to use a faded box as my text box so people could see the full image, I haven’t seen this before and I will
consider it to challenge some media conventions when looking at the page.

Q2: How does my media product represent particular
social groups?
There are multiple social groups that are out there and I want my magazine to represent
the correct ones. On this issue of FeedBack I have decided to dedicate my first magazine to
the people who are most likely to read it. The percentage of people who are 13-18 years
old who took my survey was at 100%. This is because my survey didn’t reach a vast amount
of people but because it was reaching a group of younger males and females then I
decided to make my magazine contain these characters. So my front cover and main model
was a 17 year old boy who goes to York college. This is one of the general social groups
within my magazine. The social group is young adults and what I know from being a young
adult is that wanting to have fun but also do well in all the school/ college work they are
doing. This means they spend a lot of their time doing school/ college work so that means
they don’t have much time for enjoyment. This is where FeedBack comes in, I have
designed FeedBack to have little amount of text so the students or young adults can read
small bursts of great information to benefit themselves and learn more about the artists
they like. The design of the magazine is all from these young adults and this is additionally
just as good for the students who don’t do as much work. The little amount of text is a
great representation of the students who are not doing much work and this is lazy of them
and it does make us sound lazy coping their style too by doing little work but as I have said
we try to make the content as educational and meaningful as possible.

social groups?
Now we can move onto how my magazine represents social groups within music. My
model is someone who listens to the genre I have decided to represent for this magazine
and article. The genre is rock and my friend loves it, he lives and breathes it. I should know
I remember him showing me the first rock song he listened with me and every time I walk
into work all I can hear is classic rock songs or what is new so this is the reason I have asked
him to be my model. The social group for people who listen to rock is slightly messy with
their appearance, a rugged look, crazy hair and a rock star wardrobe. Tick, tick, tick and tick
I think with my model he represents the genre perfectly. I made my mind up by choosing
the correct model to represent the social group of someone who wants to be a Rockstar. I
got my model to represent his social group by being himself. When organising the shoot I
told him to wear his casual clothes which consisted of double denim which included a
denim jacket. However he did tell me he wore a white top which he usually wears black but
he announced “The black may be very Rockstar but it was more appropriate to wear white
with being near the drum kit and white background.” So even though my model wanted to
represent his social group he has implied it is more practical and also that you don’t have
to appear as a Rockstar everyday and that its okay to go against conventions which I want
my media product to represent the Rockstar group.

social groups?
The final social group I would like to talk about is gender. Majority of my audience is male (66.67%
to be exact). This is the reason why I have used my model as he is male despite the long hair. My
model is a male so he can represent many masculine traits such as being aggressive or reckless and
having to be as macho and manly as possible. I have my model representing these traits by
smashing a guitar and pulling a slightly aggressive face on my double page spread. This helps him
look masculine and this can relate with my audience as they are most likely wanting to appear
macho like him. But I have also gone against these traits of a male as in the twenty first century men
can also be seen to have emotions now which is changing the hole dynamic of the social group, this
is why I have him smiling on the front cover as it can help draw my female audience in just as well as
my male audience as the males can finally be themselves and the female group can see that males
have an emotional side to them. So now you know I have both sides of a male in my magazine I can
really share that men may have been known to be filled with testosterone and crazy which they are
but I'm hopefully showing kind hearted side of my model and the male group.

Q3: Which kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
I looked at three publishers in the past which I thought at the time
would help me think about who would publish FeedBack. Most
magazine publishers don’t just publish one magazine they publish
multiple different ones or even some of the same. For example Bauer
media publishes Kerrang and Q which are very well established
magazines that thousands to one hundreds of thousands of people
read, this would be a huge stepping point because it has a huge fan
base for these magazines. To go for Bauer media as my main
publisher would be good as they publish a rock magazine (Kerrang)
which would be good for me as my magazine is slightly focused
around rock and this will allow me to know that Bauer media know
how to publish this genre of magazine as Kerrang is so successful.
Additionally Q magazine is distributed by Bauer media which is one
of the magazines I analysed and is one of the magazines I took
inspiration for so if I wanted my magazine to be just a long the lines
of Q but slightly different than maybe using this publisher would not
be as good as I first thought as I don't think it would be beneficial for
Bauer media to have two magazines so similar.

Moving onto Wenner media are another great distributor of
magazines within the UK. They as an institute publish Rolling
Stone magazine which is a huge rock magazine many people
enjoy reading. Just like Bauer media they know how to publish a
rock magazine and could help me make my magazine as good as
Rolling Stone magazine. Using Wenner media will allow me to
learn the rock conventions of the industry too which would be a
really good thing for FeedBack to become the magazine I want it
to become. However even though this next magazine isn’t a
music magazine it can still help me develop and make my
magazine as brilliant it can be, “Men's Journal is a monthly men's
lifestyle magazine focused on outdoor recreation and comprising
editorials on the outdoors, environmental issues, health and
fitness, style and fashion, and gear”. The description I have got
from a website talking about Men’s Journal is perfect for my
magazine as its main audience is boys and I can use this
magazine like Rolling Stone to develop my magazine as much as
possible. When previously talking about social groups we came
across the group of gender and this magazine is based on a
gender and can help me build on conventions to do with males.

The final publishing institute I want to speak about is Time Inc. They
produce my favourite magazine of all time which is NME. I want my
magazine to be free just like NME as I think it is a unique selling
point that still allows my magazine to make money but also makes
my media product a lot easier to access. Time Inc have experience
shipping out free music magazines with the goal of still making a
profit and I hope that if I decided to team up with Time Inc that I
could achieve the same success with a free magazine. As well NME
is a mixture of multiple genres of music which is something I
wanted to include in my magazine personally but when I had the
survey majority of the votes were for rock music and I decided to
follow that path but with Time Inc I could continue with rock being
my magazines main obsession but then use Time Inc to help
FeedBack to branch out into other genres of music and keep up to
date with as many musicians and genres as possible.

Q4: Who would the audience be for my product?
The audience of my media product would be aged
between 13 to 18 years of age, I found this out by
doing my survey. Teenagers are the most confusing
part of the human species and are in the stage of
their life where they are constantly changing and
are starting to become the people they are going to
be in the future. So my audience is a constantly
changing one, this is why when talking about my
conventions I wanted my magazine to constantly
be changing and looking different and going
through different themes etc… My audience is the
beginning of teenage life all the way through to the
near end of it which is 18 years of age. The
magazine is aimed towards young adults that are
maturing and blossoming into themselves which is
a new audience in my opinions as I have ever seen
a music magazine aiming towards these young
adults.

Q4: Who would the audience be for my product?
Hear to the right of the page is some reasons to
why people are listening to music and this helped
me grasp an idea of what my audience are like. I
understand that my audience are teenagers as I've
said and with that comes a lot of procrastinating
and they need to relax and this is the audience I
want to please as they want to do as little as
possible. My audience is also majority male and
these males are filled with testosterone and want
to be looking for outlets and I have faith my
magazine could achieve being an outlet for my
audience of males. Finally my audience are people
who have begun to ask questions about life and
who they are and who they are going to be.
Questions will be asked and I hope FeedBack can
answer these questions for my audience.

Q5: How did I attract/address my audience?
With my magazine I have used many key words and phrases to get my
audience to look at my magazine and take a major interest within in it
too. It all starts with the name of my magazine. I cant say I was thinking
of calling my magazine FeedBack from the start but when it came to
thinking about my audience and the best way to interact with them
and the internet and as many ways of communication as possible and I
thought when it comes to communication you always reply and have
FeedBack and also a guitar has FeedBack so the name just seemed to
click. And then I realised my audience are teenagers who want to
answer back all the time as they are teenagers, so using the name
FeedBack allows me to address my audience in a way some other
magazines do not.

To then attract my audience I did one of several different things. Instead of
going off on my own and doing what I wanted to do with my magazine
listened to my audience through the survey I did and found out the reasons
why people listened to music and since my magazine is a music magazine I
thought that asking the question about music would be useful. People said
that music helps them relax and feel peaceful. I have made my magazine
have easy text and a little amount of text so my audience know that they
don’t have to read much and that they will be getting concise and important
information and not lots of useless text that just helps fill a page. This is why
in my article I didn’t have much text. I had an introduction and what the
artist had to say. The artists words took up most of the article so that means
that I wasn’t putting useless information or using connectives to connect the
artists speech, it was just straight to the pint and didn’t include any stupid
content that had no meaning for no one.

To attract my audience as well they wanted to see articles
and advertisements for festivals. I did not put festival
information into my magazine contents as I did not feel
there was any appropriate place to put the
advertisement's on the screen. So I decided to talk include
a good article. My article is about an artist called Leon
Boyce and his journey to becoming an artist and getting
signed to a record label. I noticed that people wanted
truthful articles with integrity as I think as teenagers they
want the truth and to stop being hidden behind a filter to
make life seem genuine and nice. This is achieved with my
artist telling the truth and telling his story, this is what my
audience want to hear as they are the same age as leon
and want to know that even at their age they can be just
like him and relate to him. Doing this for my first initial
magazine will attract a younger audience as they will be
wanting to read something about someone their age as
they can relate.

Q6: What have I learnt about the technologies from
the process of contrasting this product?
I have used multiple pieces of technology throughout my coursework and have come across new and old
software which has excited me. The software I have used most before is definitely PowerPoint 2016, I used
it at school everyday and I use it now as it is the most easy to access PowerPoint software out there. In fact
the writing you are reading is on a PowerPoint. With PowerPoint I can add images and text to my slide to
show information. I can style PowerPoint to the way I like and make it unique to the PowerPoint I create. I
have not learned much about PowerPoint as I have used it for a long time and have learned lots about it in
the past.
A new piece of software I have never come across when doing my coursework was slide share. Slide share
has allowed me to put my PowerPoint onto my blogspot and it is fairly easy to use. Slide share allows
people on the internet to see your PowerPoint which is very useful. I learnt all about uploading my
PowerPoint into Slide Share into my blog.
In addition with my coursework I have to upload all of my PowerPoints, word documents and other pieces
of coursework up to a blog and that is where blogspot comes in. Blogspot is a free to use website that is
connected to my Google email so it is easy to access and allows me to write pages upon pages of content
and share my coursework with everyone. With blogspot I was not sure on how it worked firstly but I asked
my tutor for help and they helped me upload all of my content onto the blog.
For other pieces of software I used for my interview for example was Adobe Premier Pro which allowed me
to upload a an interview I had recorded on a mp3 recorder (which also was a new experience with
technology as I had to learn how to upload my to Premier Pro.) The software allowed me to add slides
along side the questions I asked the interviewee. Also I learnt how to edit sound clips to take out and insert
sound clips to enhance and change my interview.

Q6: What have I learnt about the technologies from
the process of contrasting this product?
Also I didn’t just use PowerPoint to display my work, I also used Word to display a lot of my
information. It is just like PowerPoint however it does not transition into the next sheet of
paper and it has a A4 set up instead of the size of sheet that the PowerPoint. I have not
learnt much about Word as I know majority of what it consists of from using it from a young
age.
Another piece of technology I had never used much was Photoshop. Photoshop was a
whole new learning curve and helped me make my final pictures. I learnt how to edit
photos to a degree that the original photo is totally different to the final product as I was
taught how to upload new text downloaded from the internet to Photoshop. I also learnt
how to edit my text to look how I wanted it to look. I got it to look totally different and in
my opinion like a real magazine front covers version of text and I would say my front cover ,
contents page could be on par with some magazines that are published out there.
I learnt how to use In Design too as I needed to develop a double page spread and this
piece of software was the most useful for this as it allowed me to use A3 pages and put in
columns and pages onto the page for my double page spread. I also learnt how to how to
make an article look professional and just like a real magazines article.

Q7: Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I
feel I have learnt in the progression from it to the
full product?
At the beginning of the course we were asked to go out and
take a medium shot of someone and develop a magazine
dedicated to the institution I am being taught at. I made a
front page for a magazine called #College. I barely knew any
information about photoshop or In Design so I was constantly
asking friends and my tutors or teachers how to do the
simplest things like even putting an image into the Photoshop.
And where as for In Design I didn’t put any pictures in as I had
no idea on how to put images into this software. My first front
cover consisted of little text and banners to fill up my page.
However compared to my front cover now I have used
imported text from online websites which was something new
for me. I discovered how to temper with the brightness of my
image to allow my artist to have a brighter front cover and be
more highlighted. Also with the front cover I discovered how
to edit my text in lots of different ways. I effected the colour of
the text and dictated the gradient and texture of some text. I
also learnt not just how to change the size of my text by
moving the corner tabs of the text but now I can change the
boldness and how italic a piece of text is to the nearest
percentage which is something I have never done before.

full product?
With the double page spread I had to use In Design which was
very different to photoshop. I had only done a preliminary
contents page and front cover so it was a totally new experience
using In design as it was only the second time I had used In
Design. I originally used In Design for my contents page. Firstly, I
learnt how to make my page A3 instead of A4 which I had never
done before but during this I also learnt how to add margins and
split my page in half which is what I then added. I then got more
technical as I learnt how to download fonts and apply them to
the text for my titles. Also on my titles I added drop shadows to
make my magazine look more realistic and as if I had actual text
popping out of the magazine page. I learned how to do all these
amazing effects made my double page spread seem more
realistic and more aesthetically pleasing to my audience. I also
learnt how to initially add a boarder for my article to go on and I
also taught myself how to change the opacity of the boarder for
my text to go onto. However there was some things that I could
of guessed like how to put the text onto my magazine for
example.

full product?
The final things I have learnt about using Photoshop and In
Design was when I was creating my contents page. I had
initially done my contents page preliminary task with In Design.
However I decided to change my software that I was using as I
thought I would get a greater product out of using Photoshop.
For my Photoshopped image I wanted my contents page to
have everything evenly spread out with even spaces in
between them so I asked my tutor how to d this and he
showed me something called guide lines. They let me keep
everything an equidistant away from each other making my
magazine look very professional. I wanted a bold title too so I
used the shape tool which I had used in my preliminary task so
I knew how to apply it to my magazine through out. However
one thing I had not done in my final task but I had done in my
preliminary task was adding borders to the shapes that I had
made which I could've included in my final design for the
contents page however I knew my background would be black
and the only other colour that stands out from black is white
and that did not go with the design of the page so well when
creating my final design because my title was on a blue shape
and the blue did not look good with a white outline with
already white text on the inside.

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