The document describes the design choices made for a student-created music magazine media product. Key design elements included a masthead in the top left corner for branding, sans-serif fonts for readability, white space around photos on the cover, and standard features like a barcode and price. The target audience was described as male and female music fans interested in genres like trance music who enjoy unique designs. Feedback is provided on skills learned from creating the magazine, including using software like Serif PagePlus and SurveyMonkey.

1. Media Evaluation AS Megan Roberts

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

3. My mast head is placed in the top left hand corner like the majority of magazines such Q and Kerrang. The reason why this is done is as we read left to right, it is the first thing you see. The big text and bold font also make it stand out and creates brand identity. I’ve made sure this design runs throughout the magazine to create brand identity. The peculiar design represents the genre of music my magazine is revolved around as the music is busy and is associated with bright colours which is obviously represented in the design. I’ve used sans-serif typeface through out my magazine. San-serif typeface help the text to stand out which is what I mainly wanted on the front cover. It makes the text and front cover in general more eye catching and makes a statement. The mise-en-scene of my front cover comes across quite bland as I don’t have a coloured background. The reason why I didn’t use a background and left a lot of white space because I wanted the features on my front cover such as the design in the top right hand corner stands out against the white. I used an original idea to frame my photos in because I didn’t want to put a plain border around them. I think these Polaroid were a good idea because it isn’t a usual feature seen on a magazine and it looks interesting. I added features such as a barcode, price and a website as it is a standard feature on a magazine and it made mine look more realistic. The mode of address I decided to use isn’t formal language. The audience my music magazine is aimed at aren’t necessarily formal and don’t want to be taking ages reading what is on the front cover. The content is straight to the point so it is able to be read quickly. The photograph I took myself which I used on the front cover include direct address which grabs the audiences attention and persuades them to buy the magazine.

4. I inverted the colours back of the brand identity design but still keeping it running through the magazine. Majority of headings of a page are up the top but I put mine in the middle because it is the first thing you see when you look at it. The bold text I used to write ‘contents’ helps it to be eye catching as well. I didn’t want to overcrowd my contents pages with pictures as I find the brand identity design its busy in itself. I wanted to include the 3 most important and outstanding pictures which looked good and were relevant to the contents page. I’ve added captions so the reader knows what picture is relevant to what page/article in the magazine. The pictures give them a better idea of what the text will be about and encourage them to read it. Page references are obviously used to show what article is on what page. This strip with text in it breaks up the pages well and includes small information about the magazine.

5. I made the title of my features page big and bold so it stands out. The wob (white on black) also achieves in making the title stand out. I used this design on my front cover but inverted in the colours and rotated it to make it different. The photos I used on my features page are a medium close up shot. These pictures also include direct address which lures the reader into the article. I’ve extracted parts of the article and make it into a pull quote. The pull quote helps to break up the text and emphasises on the most exciting parts of the article, in this case interview. It will encourage the reader to read the interview as they would want to know where the pull quote was extracted from to find out what its all about. I include a mini profile about who the article is about. This will give the reader background on who they’re reading about. I also combined the two letters L and B to make it look interesting and different. I included a subhead underneath the heading. This gives a brief introduction to the interview they’re about to read. I chose a black background for my features page as my other pages both have a white background so it is different. Also the wob (white on black) text is easy to see and read. I didn’t want to lay the questions and answers of the article out in columns because that is common in most magazines so I positioned them around the page to make it more interesting and different to look at.

6. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

7. My picture and a picture of someone famous from another magazine are similar because they have the same appearance and are music dj’s. Both pictures use direct address which help attract the audience. The picture comes across as striking because they both haven’t got an immediate expression on their face and are both positioned in a way where they look on edge and uncomfortable but if you look at the picture in further depth, they both have the sophisticated look which is appealing. I feel both pictures appeal to the same class of people which is sophisticated middle class. My picture differs to the other magazine’s picture as mine is slightly cut off on the left hand side to make if different whereas the other imagine in a medium close-up with her in the centre. They way my model in my picture is dressed is informal and can relate to her young audience and her general appearance achieves this too. I’ve edited my picture so it is dark in one corner and getting lights further up the picture whereas the other magazine picture has added contrast but that’s about it.

8. Who would be the audience for your media product?

9. This is the type of person my music magazine is aimed for. I want my audience to hear my the type of music my magazine is about in a club. The type of shops I would expect them to shop in are places like Topshop and Miss Selfridge. The would have quite a unique sense of fashion but also quite sophisticated, not messy looking. They wouldn’t watch soaps in TV but more documentaries about young life and they’re into new things. They would listen to Trance, liquid dub/drum and bass and dance music. They would need to know a lot about these genres of music, especially Trance to understand my magazine and be able to relate to it. They would need to know different DJ’s and different famous clubs, what’s the best club and artist etc. My readership profile has a higher percentage of male readers then female but I would expect the same from the males and females. Sophisticated, love Trance music and knows knowledge about the genre!

10. How did you attract/address your audience?

11. I feel the unique selling point of my magazine is the specific and unseen genre of music. People should buy this magazine because its not the everyday magazine you see on the shelves of supermarkets. My magazine achieves to appeal to the audience it is suppose to because it appeals to both genders as I get both male and female readers on my reader profile. The bold black text and brightly coloured design straight away becomes appealing to the audience and it is eye catching. The picture uses direct address which helps to lure in the readers into buying it as the feel connected to the magazine straight away. The general look about the magazine looks fun and different. It doesn’t look like a boring magazine and this will make people want to buy it, who like this genre of music. My magazine will appeal to my readership profile as both genders read the magazine so the content will relate to both of them. The design isn’t too feminine or too masculine so it appeals to both of them.

12. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

13. I used Serif Page Plus 11 to create my whole product and put it together. I edited my pictures on this program and added any effects I wanted from here too. Serif helped me so much because it had everything I wanted on it to achieve my goals in my product. It was easy to use and was easy to get use to when we first started. S lideshare was mainly used to upload powerpoints into our blog. This helped us for when we had to put all the pictures we had taken for our magazine into a powerpoint and upload it onto our blogs. S urvey Monkey was used to create a questionnaire on to gather research into our target audience and what they would like to see in our magazine. I hadn’t ever used this before so it was all new to me but it turned out to be really easy to use and helped me get the information I needed. T he social networking site Facebook came handing during the process of my product because it allowed me to post my questionnaire straight off of survey monkey onto my Facebook for people to fill in. I decided to use facebook because no one my age uses emails anymore and this seemed the easiest and mot reliable way to get the information I needed. And it worked. B logger is a big part of this who process of the product as we needed to post all our planning, research and final pieces on here. This was the first time I’ve properly used blogger before and it was easy to post posts onto my blogger and it was easy when it came to being compatible with the links off slideshare to post powerpoints. I didn’t use paint for much more than cutting pictures out of screen shots I had taken of something. I used it very slightly to erase things I didn’t want on pictures and I used it to invert the colours of my brand identity design.

14. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

15. When I started my preliminary task, I wanted the mast head to stand out but as you can see it wasn’t as eye catching as I wanted it to be. There is also a lot of white space on my front cover which doesn’t look appealing to my target audience. I didn’t use many conventions of magazines which contributed to the unrealistic look of my preliminary task. We were asked to take a medium close up in this task and this is the picture I used. It is clear that it isn’t a medium close up shot but I made sure I used different shots such as a medium close up in my real magazine to show I have learnt how to do it properly. My contents page isn’t appealing in the slightest. It doesn’t include much text and very limited pictures were included. Nothing on this page will invite people to read it and it looks boring. For my real magazine I made sure I edited it to make it look different and appealing to t he readers. I made more of an effort to make it look realistic by using conventions of magazine such as pull out quotes, captions on the pictures and more text. I did my real music magazine completely different to this. I made more of an effort to take relevant pictures to the magazine and made it all specific to my genre of music. I ranged my angle shots and edited my pictures to show the ability I can. Doing the preliminary task taught me a lot and taught me how to do things differently. I kept the came sophisticated look but I elaborated on it and made more of an effort. I twisted pictures and laid things out differently to this task to prove I have learnt improvements and I have learnt what looks like a real magazine and what doesn’t. I don’t feel my preliminary task looks at all like a school magazine and I wanted to make sure my music magazine did. I used the same font throughout this preliminary and I did with my music magazine but I made sure my font style stood out more and made more of a statement with it. I made some text bold, some italic and some standard.