2. When designing my magazine I used a great deal of inspiration from
other magazine as I had to do research on magazine from the genre I
chose to help and give me ideas on how I was going to design my own
magazine. With my magazine I did develop the conventions/forms of
a ‘POP’ magazine as I tried to used different elements together such as;
my front cover their is lot of colour used on their, were as on many other
‘POP’ magazines they may used 2 colours max on the front cover so it
doesn’t dazzle or make it to in your face to the reader. Whereas with
my front cover there are about 4 different colours presented to the
reader which shows that I have developed certain elements compared
to a real magazine. With my magazine also I did challenge real ‘POP’
magazines as I did take some ideas/inspiration from real magazines and
incorporated them into my magazine, but most of the elements within
my magazine I decided were things would go and this shows that most
my magazine design was my own idea.
3. With my magazine the particular social groups that my magazine is
trying to attract are:
Gender – The most likely person would buy or even look at my
magazine would be a young teenage. My magazine attracts young
teenagers to it as it shows latest up-coming and the latest gossip on
celebrities and famous singers groups which teenage girls love to
know about.
Age – My magazine shows the age of my magazine by the
elements used. Like I said in the previous social group with gossip of
celebrities on information on the new artists, young teenager love to
read about.
Subject specific - When looking at the front cover of my magazine
you can see the bold title ‘POP TIME!’ this clearly shows the
reader/audience looking at the magazine, what the magazine is
about.
4. When researching on what genre to do my magazine on, I decided about elements I could
use to attract different customers and look at the age groups my magazine would appeal
to. After a lot of consideration, I decided that I was going to do the genre ‘POP’ as it is
would appeal to greater audience as it is most young teenagers that love to read the latest
pop magazines. After I had designed my magazine front cover I got some of my peers to
evaluate it, saying good points and bad points about it. Here are some comments that my
peers gave me:-
Beth AJ Kenroy
I really like the image you have chosen as your main,
•Colours mix good together
however you can tell that she was leaning up •Effective Front Cover that
something. Maybe cut the girl on the right and move •I like how you have used the
resembles pop. pictures to show other groups
her to the left a little, so she is leaning up the other
girl. •Clever use of image placement •Use of font
The title of the band could stand out a little more, •Professional looking barcode •good picture
maybe put that in the peach colour instead of purple. •Nice choices of font •where the picture as been placed
I really like the choices of colours, the peach and
•included issue number, date,
purple they go together really well.
I really like the idea that you have a website by the price, site and barcode
barcode, really good idea- don’t think anyone else •how the info of whats in the
has done this yet! magazine goes across the bottom.
Make the title of the magazine slightly bigger or the
title of the band smaller.
5. With my magazine, on the front cover there was a range of elements I
used on the front cover to attract the reader/ audience to the
magazine, they were:-
A range of pictures – I used one main picture which I placed in a
large size to attract the reader to it and to also show that this was
the main story within the magazine
A range of colourful texts – I used a range of different colours with
the different text/sub-heading to attract the reader/audience to
different parts of the front cover
With using these different elements on my front cover, made the front
cover look more presentable to the reader/audience which attracted
the reader/audience to look at the magazine. By doing this I achieved
my aim of attracting customers to my magazine and this may result in
reader/ audience buying the magazine, which is what I want them to
do.
6. For this task there were a range of technologies I had to use in the
process of constructing my magazine, the programs I used were:-
Fireworks
Photoshop
Quark
Camera – taking my own photos for the magazine
With these different technologies they enabled me to construct and
design my magazine in for different elements on my magazine, for
example:-
Fireworks – I used this program for my magazine title ‘POP TIME’ as it enabled
me to put the outline of the title in orange. With fireworks also it allows you do
a lot of effects to the text, drop shadow and blur.
Photoshop – I used for the background of my magazine front cover, with this
program it enabled me to use the gradient so that the background had to
colours to it.
Quark – I used this program to construct my magazine as it was the program
that was the best and the easiest to do different elements to the magazine.
7. Above you can see my magazine that I had design for ‘POP’ genre and ‘Q’ magazine, you can see that they look very
different compared to one another. With magazine you can see that I have used certain elements from ‘Q’ magazine to
help my magazine look more professional and attract the customer to buy it. The one element I used from the ‘Q’
magazine was the use of using the colour of text more than once, as you can see I have used white and orange for the
text more than once as this will add to the effectiveness of the magazine on the customer. Another element I used on
my magazine to attract the customer to my magazine was the use of an shape/symbol, with this it would stand out on the
magazine and attract the customer to look at the magazine. The last element I used off ‘Q’ magazine for inspiration was
the use of a strip of information across the magazine with ‘Q’ magazine you can see it is across the top whereas with my
magazine I have placed it at the bottom. With this strip of information it will knowledge the customer to what is inside the
magazine without them having to flick through the magazine.
With all these good elements I used from ‘Q’ magazine, you can see that it helped me with certain elements on my
magazine to look more professional and help to make my magazine look more presentable and sellable to the customer.
8. When doing research on the media institution I found that Bauer Media are the largest
privately own publishing group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300
magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations. I would chose this group to
publish my magazine because they are:-
a multi-platform UK-based media Group
Their strategy is to connect audiences with excellent content through our broad multi-touch
point brand platforms, wherever and whenever and however they want
My last reason to why I have picked Bauer media to publish my magazine with as they are a very
large group, which are already publishing many of the leading and well known magazines such as
Closer, GRAZIA and Heat magazine so you can tell that this is a well established business who know
what they are doing and would be the best choice to pick for my magazine.
The category my magazine would fall into in the women’s category, I think this because I have
research on the different brands and looking at the different magazine’s within this brand and they
are kind of the same as mine and would appeal to the same people. I think that this media
institution would distribute my products as it is a good magazine which follows the conventions of
previous ‘POP’ Magazines they already distribute. Although, with my magazine it is a little bit
different to a normal ‘POP’ magazine with the range of different colours used for the text, with
previous ‘POP’ magazine they may used 2 colours for the text max, whereas with my magazine I
have used about 3 or 4 different colour but this is what makes my magazine new and exciting and
stand out to the reader/audience.
9. For this project, there were many software's that we could chose from, but there was one were chose as we thought it
was the best one for this project was Photoshop. With this software it allowed me to do a range of things to my
magazine to make it look professional like the ones I had research. With this software it allowed me to do a range of
different things such as:-
Adding text over an image
With this print screen that I have provided
You can see that I have used Photoshop
To place text over an image that I may
Have used within my magazine.
Adding shapes
From this you can see that I have added
A rectangle shape to the top of this
Picture.
10. Cropping
With this you can clearly see the are on the image
That I want to keep and the area outside the box will
Be cropped off the image itself.
Magnetic lasso tool (cropping out the background keeping image)
With this print screen you can see that I have used the magnetic lasso tool
To selected around the edge of this girl and so that I could get rid of the
Background without getting rid of the girl as well
With these different icons (tools) that were available to me, when creating my magazine I think that this software
allowed me to make my magazine look like a professional magazine as I was able to duplicate elements such as
shapes/objects with information inside them to make them stand out to the target audience. With Photoshop I think
that this is a good software as it enables you to produce professional document or images which enables my work to
look professional and enable me to get credit I should get for my work.
11. Throughout this task I feel that I have learnt to use of range of
technologies which has helped me gain skills about different media
aspects. I think I have progress a great deal throughout this task as I
learnt to use a range of technologies which enabled me to progress
really well in my work. From the start of the task I have enjoyed it
extremely, as I was able to learn to use different programs to edit
pictures which I found really interesting. With this task the things that are
thought went well they were:-
Editing pictures
Layout of magazine
The things that I didn't think went so well were:-
Taking photos - use of scenery and different angles
Overall with this task I really enjoyed learning new skills like editing my
pictures with different programs, help me gain a lot of knowledge on
how to construct a magazine and which programs I would use.
