2. In what way does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Masthead Main Image Cover Lines Main Cover line Images, varied shots Layout Text and language used Rule of thirds, balance, Guttenberg Diagram?
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4. Even more... After even more extensive research, I came across more covers in which I used some similar methods as previously mentioned. Some images:
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7. Images To sell a product, a good front cover image always helps. The one thing that catches your attention is always an image on the front cover and therefore, I needed a good front cover image to make my magazine sell.
8. Creating my own magazine Creating my own magazine was difficult, and possibly the most difficult part being just starting off. I had to take everything I had learnt from before into account and then try to take a house style from a professional magazine that I liked and I thought that it would suit my audience, and develop on that.
13. Social Groups There are many different social groups that the media has to target, so they have to base their work around their specific social group.
14. Social groups for my product My product sells itself to more of an audience who is into a rock background. Mostly anything in this area of music is welcome, and I am also trying to draw more people in to liking this from other genres of music.
15. Age Age isn’t a big problem for the major majority of the music industry, as people aren’t really judged on their taste for music with age. Although, some music magazines try to stretch to a certain age group with imagery or colours.
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17. Gender Gender can be singled out in media, as most magazine producers base their research and final products around either gender. A lot of the time, you will see magazines with models on the front who represent a certain gender.
18. Gender for my product My product doesn’t single out any genders due to the fact that I have learnt that the area of music I am working with tends to not revolve around a certain gender, and anyone is able to enjoy it.
19. Certain taste in music/more experience with certain music Obviously, most magazines stretch to an audience who like a certain type of music; otherwise, it would actually be quite strange to have lots of different genres all wrapped up into one magazine as it wouldn’t really make too much sense.
20. Certain taste in music/more experience with certain music with my product My magazine would be based on one genre of music, due to the fact that it makes for a better magazine and a better business plan.
21. Who would be the audience for my media product? My audience (personally) could be anyone who actually wants to purchase my media product.
22. But... But, my main target audience would have to be anyone who likes rock music or any related genres. For my magazine, it would have to be people around their teen years who are into rock music, or something similar.
23. Specific audience So the audience my magazine targets is very specific, but again, anyone is able to pick up the magazine if they choose to.
24. How did I attract/address my audience? Focus group findings came in quite handy when finding out how to attract an audience. Not only that, but the questionnaire helped a lot too as both provided a good enough overview to my target audience.
25. Focus group In the focus group, I got together with a few more people in a similar peer group, and gathered information on specific areas in which I could base my product house style.
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27. Questionnaire continued The questionnaire helped me develop into much more depth with my key audience. I then knew what attracted them to a music magazine and how I could put this into my own product.
29. What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project? There were several different technologies I used in this project to help me make my product better than I initially thought I could. The prime examples were: ‘Adobe Photoshop’ (Editing) ‘dafont.com’ (Fancy font styles) ‘www.blogger.com’ (Blogging)
30. Adobe™ Photoshop CS3 I used this program for my editing my creating my product, as it is possibly the greatest program for image editing. I was able to create my product for scratch by using this program and I have got the hang of using it really well.
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32. DaFont™ ‘DaFont’ is a website that was used by me to obtain fonts for my headlines and header of my magazine. It helped extremely well when creating my product. All made by using ‘DaFont’
33. Blogging For blogging, I used a website that is called ‘Blogger™’. ‘Blogger’ helped me post my product on a personal blog that let the exam board and anyone else on the internet, and they could view and give feedback on how they feel about it.
34. Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from I to the full product? At first, my skills in media weren’t all that great, as I was given an ancillary project to do where I had to create a magazine for college to inform students about what is going on in and around college. It was only a front cover and a contents page only, and the contents page was only half done, as all characters on the page were replaced with ‘X’s.
36. Overall improvement From all that I have learnt along the way in media, I feel as though I have learnt upon past mistakes and I am able to create an adequate product which people may read/view. I am personally impressed with my own progress, as I thought I’d never get this far at first. And what do you know? I actually did.
38. Thanks for listening! I hope you enjoyed the PowerPoint and I hope you do well in your presentations too.
Editor's Notes
This is about my first notes in Media; where I research some professional magazines and try to adopt what they use into my own ideas. Guttenberg diagram, the left third, etc., etc. I took a look at some more professional magazines to try and seewhat tactics they possessed which they used to attract people’s attention.
I am dwelling on themain factors of the magazine, including the picture, the band and anything else that sells the magazine. I think that this front cover screams at the reader because of all the language used being of extremely loud words.
There are a lot of different methods in which the covers show what stood out, which I used in my product overall.
Take into effect what I had to realise what real magazines already have, and explain what I did to develop upon those values in the magazines I found that’d already been done.
Talk about images in this slide. Describe how I took the simplicity of the magazine, and used that to develop my own ideas.
Speak about what I worried about, such as my audiences viewpoints on the overall verdict, if the image was right, and the fact that I had to start all over at one point because my images weren’t good at first.
Explain what is meant by bigger is better. Develop on top of older products and products that achieved greatly.
Speak about what the general term of competition means and what I hope to achieve by the end of this product
Link back to previous points, such as using and developing on other magazines, but don’t dwell too much on this point. “Walk into a shop, and what would you pick up first?” On the next slide.
Q: Time, effort, professional studio and an extremely famous and well known band in quite a nice image to link in with the catchphrase about them, plus more features explained inside, so people would definitely buy it.Rolling Music: Not too much time put into the picture as it looks like it was done in his/her bedroom, name and font style stolen from ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, text overlaps, not very interesting main title, sentence structure and case of text is awful, the date also too large and gets cut off at the end. Talk about pricing too; hard to see but is extremely pricey at £10.50, nobody would buy it.Rolling Stone: Made at the time when Barack Obama just became president of the United States of America, no text describing anything on the inside, but it’s the fact that Obama is on the cover at the time the magazine was released that the cover doesn’t need text, as people would just be completely interested and hooked regardless. Mysterious too; a kind of ‘buy to find out more’ moments.FADER magazine: Similar to ‘Rolling Stone’, but isn’t as well drawn out. If you are to introduce some new talent into the market, you need to at least have some text from already known artists to grab people’s attention, as nobody would pick up the magazine otherwise.This is a little question of which one someone would pick if they were to walk into a shop.
I need to explain each of the above points in not much detail, but enough so people know what is going on.
‘NME’ is quite a strange choice when it comes to social groups. ‘NME’ doesn’t target specific audiences, just generally music lover and anyone who is into the world of music specifically. Although, you could argue that it target almost everyone due to the fact that the magazine doesn’t revolve around specifically music, but the lives of bands and musicians as well. Not everyone will buy the magazine, but it stretches out to a wider variety of social groups than other magazine producers such as ‘Kerrang’ and ‘VIBE’
My product bases itself around an audience who are more into rock than any other type/genre of music. In this area, there are types of music like Metal, Heavy, Aerosmith, Epic, etc. But, my product is also on the lookout to attempt to sell itself to more of a wide range audience, as I am always trying to convert people to change to this genre of music and to see it differently than what they may currently view it as.
Age doesn’t really apply to this part of the media as, let’s say, maybe the film industry. But, some people may feel targeted by a certain range of music due to social effects that may occur in their lives such as peer pressure and intimidation from other people. This could end up, ultimately, swaying their opinion and maybe narrowing my available audience.
My product hasn’t got a particular targeted age group, and so any aged person can feel free to pick this up. From a more personal experience, I know that most younger people don’t develop a proper taste for music until they hit their teen years, and then they end up finding a music style that they personally like. But, this can be changed by peer pressure and most things that were mentioned earlier.
I have noticed, especially with the newer end of music, that most magazines based themselves around one particular gender, and that the way to selling the product to the correct key audience depends all on character models and text used, which includes style and font of text, colour and how aggressive the language used may be.
Focus group findings helped me here, as when I discussed this area of music with the rest of the focus group, both males and females came out and said what they were into and what they were going to base their magazines on. Altogether, there isn’t a particular preferred gender that I am looking for with my product.
If you found a magazine with several different kinds of music inside of it, it wouldn’t be the greatest reading material ever, as the majority of people would only read one section of the magazine; if they were to even buy the magazine in the first place, because most people would buy a magazine based purely on the genre of music they prefer.
You have to take into consideration that many different kinds of music are classified by different values. One of these values is colour. Colour can be the difference between attracting the correct audience, and not selling a thing. You wouldn’t really represent a rock magazine with pink and pretty ‘rainbow’ colours, or a pop magazine with a bloody and dark colour.
I’ve found out that the people in my focus group revolve around a more of an experienced fanbase, which means I can use more a language/text that communicates with the audience.
I have mentioned age before, but age can also matter when targeting a specific audience, as the majority of old people wouldn’t be into rock music, and the younger generation would probably be all about the new ‘techno’ style music. But if anyone would want to come and pick up the magazine, they are able to do so as there isn’t a law against it or anything of a similar sort.
The more people I could ask, the more accurate my research would be.
