This document summarizes a student's media studies coursework evaluation of their own media product, a music magazine targeted at teenage girls. The student discusses how their cover, contents page, and double page spread follow conventions of real music magazines in their use of colors, layout, fonts, and photos. They represent teenage girls as happy and carefree through pink colors and smiling photos. The student suggests their magazine would be published by Hachette Filipacchi, who publishes magazines for a similar target audience.

1. AS Media Studies Coursework Evaluation Amy Towers

8. 3. What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why? My magazine would be published by Hachette Filipacchi, they publish a large number of magazines of a similar genre to my magazine and a similar target market. My magazine will not be published digitally as my target market of teenage girls would find it much easier to buy my magazine in a shop; only 17% of magazines are published digitally. My magazine will not be given away for free as I think that it is of a higher quality than a free magazine, also the genre of my magazine does not match the genre of magazines that are usually given away for free in clothes shops, music shops, ect. My magazine will not be available through social networks as some of my target market would be unable to access social networks via the internet as they are too young.

10. 4. Who would be the audience for your media product? The audience for my magazine is teenage girls from all social classes, my magazine is suitable for all social classes because is not too expensive for some people to purchase, but it remains a high quality. I have attracted my target market through my use of colours, fonts and articles. I researched popular singers/bands before creating my magazine in order to attract the audience that I am hoping to attract .

11. 5. How did you attract/address your audience? How would you get the attention of your audience? I attracted my target audience through the articles, colours and photographs used in my media product. I researched popular singers/bands before creating my magazine and included these in my media product in order to attract my target audience. I used colours in my media product that I knew were popular with my target audience in order to attract them. I included photographs that followed the conventions of popular music magazines of the same genre and with the same target audience as my media product as I knew that these would be successful in attracting my target audience. I would market my magazine through advertisements placed in other popular magazines of the same genre and with the same target audience as my media product as this method is used by a lot of successful/popular magazines and had proven successful. It is also a relatively cheap method of marketing for a successful magazine.

14. 6. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product? During the process of constructing my media product, I have used Blogger, Slideshare, Fireworks and digital cameras in order to construct and display my media product. I had never used Blogger or Slideshare before making my media product but I had used Fireworks and digital cameras. Even though I had never used blogger or Slideshare before constructing my media product, I found them easy to use, I also found fireworks simple to use as I had used it a lot before constructing my media product. I have learnt that blogger can be used for writing only or to display images such as my magazine products as well as writing or on their own. Slideshare is used for displaying power point presentations, I used Slideshare a lot during the research and planning stage of my coursework to display presentations of evaluating existing music magazines and also school magazines for my preliminary task. Through the process of constructing my media product, I have learned a lot about Fireworks because, even though I have used it before I had not used a lot of the tools. I found Fireworks extremely useful for editing photographs taken from digital cameras, I also used the shape tool a lot for drawing the different shapes on my magazine: circles, boxes, star.

15. 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Looking back at my preliminary task, I can see how much my knowledge of media has helped me significantly in making my final media product. For example, I now know how to successfully use programs like Fireworks to edit and create a media product. I also know how to make a magazine that is conventional thanks to the research and planning stage of my coursework. From looking at successful existing music magazines, I was able to make my own magazine look authentic. From analysing existing music magazines in correspondence to their target audience, I was able to understand who my target audience were and how to attract them with the use of picture, text, colours and fonts. I also researched the way that magazines write to their specific target audience, from this research I was able to write in the style that my target audience would understand and relate to. Looking at my preliminary task of creating a school magazine front cover and contents page, I can now see the effectiveness of not using a block colour background as my final music magazine backgrounds look far more authentic. My music magazine photographs also look like they are of better quality than my school magazine photographs as I chose the clothing in order for it to fit in with the colour scheme of my music magazine.