2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media project? My product used the convections of real media project in many ways such as: the bold writing: ‘Listen In’ grabs the readers attention. The colour scheme used is: black, red, yellow and orange the reason why I chose these colours were simply because they were eye-catching and made the picture stand out. Yellow and orange. Yellow is attention-grabbing and is very strong and vibrant. As well as overpowering. Orange represent the affordability of the magazine as well as being eye catching The way the picture is placed is very important as it is mostly the main focus of the front cover so I decided to place it in the centre of the page at a mid shoot angle with the artist facing the camera as it would engage costumers to buy it and also makes it more approachable and appealing for the audience to pick up the magazine and seeing the artist facing you and keeping eye contact it. This picture sorts off gives an idea that it associated with hip hop as he is wearing a hoddie like he is trying to conceal his identity and has his hands in his pockets which gives the idea the he is some sort of a ‘bad man’ who has very little care and responsibility. This picture as well as his posture contradicts what and who he really is. As a picture can make a person look like something or someone that wasn’t initially the purpose. The picture is iconic as it looks like what it is which is a artist. There is also a symbolic code as you would associate the name ‘Robbie J’ with the picture. The headlines also gives the readers/costumers some idea of what would be inside.
3. Contents page Double page spread Denotative: Black background, blue glittery stars on the left corner of the page, Bold red title saying ‘contents’ placed on the centre of the page, Writing in a column on the left, writing on the right side of the page placed on top of the group picture which is placed on the bottom right of the page. Connotative: The glitter starts might stand for glamour. The colour red gains the readers attentions as it is used in a traffic light which says stop and look. The writing gives an insight of what would be in the magazine. The reasons why I chose this: I chose a black background because I want the writing, title and the picture to stand out so I didn’t spend a lot of time choosing the colour of the background as it doesn’t determine whether the reader/costumer would buy it based on the colour of the background. Language: It is quite formal. Font: I chose Myriad Pro, semi bold, 18pt and style: crisp as it suites my magazine and all the writing looked good together. Denotative: White background, bold green title, picture of a boy on the left side of the double page under the title with writing next to it and there’s also a picture on the right bottom side of the double page. The reasons why I chose this: I chose a white background because I didn’t want it to over use the colour black as I have used it for the background of the front cover and the contents page. I carefully choose where to position the two pictures as I needed to fit in the interview. Language: It was a mix of both formal and informal. The questions asked were formal for example: “what type of music do you listen to?” whereas most of the answers were informal for instance: “..receiving not gonna lie but crap presents”. Font: Times. Bold and italic, size: 14-profile info,16-introduction (subheading), 53-title and 12- interview
4. This is the title of my music magazine with the slogan saying ‘DONT TALK JUST LISTEN!’ which gives a strong meaning. I had a very hard time finding a suitable name for this particular music magazine genre (hip hop) especially one that has a meaning behind which isn't obvious. The meaning behind ‘Listen In’ is that instead of saying Look inside I chose to name it listen in as it is related to music. I chose red for the font colour because it stands out as the background is black which is mainly used in the hip hop culture as well as hip hop music magazine such as Q, Billboard, Vibe.. I wanted the title to be big so I chose roughly 80pt which is quite big as you can see and I placed this title at the top centre on the front cover with the slogan placed on the left under it.
5. How does your media project represent particular social group. My music magazine mainly focuses on attracting the C1 and C2 social class as the magazine uses some informal and formal language. The language used creates a positive representation of the artist as well as the hip hop culture. Pictures tend to dominate the pages; this means that the readers could read the contents through the pictures as these social groups might not be as highly skilled and educated as the other higher social groups. My magazine also represent these particular social groups by using predominantly primary colours such as: orange, green, blue and yellow and a few mutual colours such as Black , white and red. I chose these colours to attract a younger audience and also gives a house style as I have used the same colours all the way through the magazine.
6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? I chose Bauer production to distribute my product/magazine as they specialise in a variety of different media/entertainment such as: magazine, TV and radio. They have cross media ownership that allows them to do cross media promotion through the three different media which help to attract more readers. Cross media also help to create a brand identity. This will allow my magazine to be recognised by a wide range of different people. Some of the magazine Bauer distribute are: Q, Uncut and NME. Q magazine is quite similar to mine as we both specialise in hip hop which is why some of my ideas are relatively similar .
7. Who would be the audience for your media product? Niche audience Young people from 16-20 Neutral colour represents a younger audience so I've used complementary colours to even it out to suite the different age groups. Image: dominants the front cover which means the less skilled readers would not be interested in reading but would read through pictures and try to find out what the magazine would be about. The way I have attracted my audience was first through the front cover which was dominated by one picture and had writing around it. The reason why I allowed this is because the social group I want to appeal are, less skilled readers who wouldn't be interested in reading, however, would read through pictures and try to fin what the magazine is about. Another way is the type of colours I used which is neutral colours which represents a younger audience so I used complementary colours as well to appeal to a wider range of audience.
8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product ? First of all I have learnt how to manipulate pictures in adobe photo shop as it was quite difficult for me as I did not have any experience or knowledge on how to use this particular software. Nevertheless, I gradually learnt how to use this software and steadily got confident. I started off by manipulating and changing the pictures that I have taken from the photo shoot and played around with the font styles and background colours until I was satisfied with everything. Adobe photo shop allowed me to change the picture’s contrast, rotation, edges, colour; to summarise it all, it allowed me to change the original pictures to something completely else which other software's wouldn’t let me do for instance Microsoft word would only let me rotate, change the contrast and brightness and move the picture around which was no help for me at all as I wanted my pictures to stand out and neat few edges, balance out the contrast and brightness and also remove the background and replace it with something else. However, Indesign in my opinion was much more easier than photo shop to create my magazine which was one of the reason I chose to use this software to create my double page spread as I didn't want to spend too much time on it, as I did on photo shop seeing that it was quite time consuming and did require a lot of patience where as Indesign was fairly straight forward and relatively similar to Microsoft word as everything was where they were supposed to be for instance the button for saving the document, font, the help button, copy and paste where in the same place as they were on Microsoft word which was extremely helpful as well as the tutorial for beginners on study space and the few lessons I had using the software.
9. Looking back at your preliminary task , what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I have learnt various of skills associated with making a music magazine. Firstly that it isn’t easy and uses up a lot of your time and sometimes stresses you out. But if you are a calm person and very organised like myself and try your hardest it wouldn’t take as long, as it would if you left it to the last minute so I have learnt to be very organised and plan out what I would do according to an order which for me was to start of by doing the Front cover first the contents page and lastly the double page spread. Secondly, that the magazine I used to analyse was a rock magazine that was distributed by Kerrang. Some of my ideas were inspired from this particular magazine mainly on the front cover such as the background colour, having the main picture over lapping some of the title and also having big bold red title to grab the readers attention. Thirdly, I have gotten quite confident in analysing a music magazine than I did couple of month ago as I have gained a lot more experienced in using different types of software as well as taking my own photos using a professional camera which at first I had no confident in because the first few pictures I took were to a certain extent blurry or either the brightness or contrast changed. How I over came that obstacle was by learning from my mistakes by playing around with the picture on photo shop and the camera by using the flash and changing the contrast.
