completed evaluation questions 1 -7

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

2. Breakdown of magazine
cover

3. The cover matches the conventions of
magazine covers as the masthead is sat
in the top left hand corner of the page
like most magazines. It is easy to see
and easily identifiable meaning the
name of the magazine is recognizable to
people and stands out. I used gold as my
color for the text because it gives it a
sense of class and also works well with
the black background. Also I used the
font ‘simple time’ to give it the effect of
roughness to match the genre I’m
representing. The masthead is also short
but also in a small font which means I
was able to add more detail to the cover
page but also, I was still able to make it
obvious that it is the masthead.
Masthead

4. Picture
The picture is to the right hand side of the
page and also has the text fitting in around
it, text coming over the shoulder up to the
side of the head for example. Also, the
artists eyes are staring directly at the
camera with little emotion shown on his
face and stood up straight which gives the
serious impression to the reader. This is
done to meet the conventions of an artists
picture on a magazine cover. The clothes are
also to match the genre of music that this
artist is from and is to show the type of
music which this artist is replicating. Also,
the effects used on the original picture is to
make the artist stand out of page and also
to give the effect of a glow to get the
readers attention. Also, I have edited out
any features of the artist that may be less
attractive, like spots etc.

5. Text
The text on the page fills up the empty
space around the picture which gives
the cover more detail. It also informs
the reader of the features inside the
magazine to get the readers attention
and interest them with bands they’re
interested and who they’re a fan of.
There is also the date of the issue
which meets the conventions.
Further more, I advertised two music
festivals at the bottom of the page with
the text ‘Ticket information inside’ to
invite the reader inside.
Also, there is a headline and sub
heading of the artist on the cover.

6. Breakdown of contents
page

7. Masthead
On the contents I decided to carry
through the main masthead in the
same place and kept it a similar font
and size, I did this to maintain the
genre, style and layout of the
magazine.

8. Pictures
The picture which is positioned in the right covering
most of the page, I’ve added sunglasses and denim
jacket with fully buttoned shirt underneath to the
member of the band whom is also in this picture
along side George, I dressed him look cool and up to
date. The facial expression of a sly smirk doesn’t
necessarily match the conventions of the artist
facing the camera with a serious pose but I made
sure to reinforce the uniqueness of the genre and
band. The member has his left hand on his glasses
and is seen to be looking at something in the
distance to the right of the camera where as the face
of George Humphris is staring at the camera
matching the conventions wearing the same clothes
as the cover picture. The picture gives a more
serious and concentrated impression.

9. Text
Firstly, the text is golden with the black
background with random page numbers. This
is to keep the genre format and replicate the
previous the page but also to not to make
them identical. There are also pages numbers
which have a persuading and varied short
previews of what is in that particular article.
Also, the page numbers are in no particular
order and range from page 2 to page 95 to
show the range of pages and different articles
within the magazine. This technique matches
other magazines contents pages which I’ve
researched and observed and also do this.

10. Breakdown of article page.

11. Picture
The picture I used for my article was the
artist in a grey hoodie with the hood up
staring past the camera. I did this
because I thought the hoodie and way
he’s dressed showed the diversity of this
compared to the contents and cover
pages but still was part of the this
particular genre. I chose to have the
artist looking as if he’s looking into the
distance because I felt it was important
to differ from the other pictures used.
The artist body is positioned in a very
relaxed way to make the page more of a
chilled vibe and the magazine.

12. Text
The text is the most important part of the article
page because it’s what makes the page what it
is, it is the whole point of an article. The heading
subheading is to catch the attention of the
audience in order to get them to read on, I
ensured to make mine snappy and easy on the
eye to get in readers. My text is based on George
Humphris and his rise to fame through music
and larger font there is quotes from him which I
used because it makes the text look more
professional and also is a way of attracting and
interesting the reader into reading this article
page.

13. 2) How does your
media product
represent
particular social
groups?
Media product = your music magazine
Represent = representation
Social groups = people who regularly
interact and share a sense of unity and
common identity

14. Contents Page
The way I have decided to represent my chosen
genre on the contents page by, like the cover,
ensuring both musicians are dressed in indie
styled clothing to ensure I get the chosen genre
clearly across to the reader. Also, I have
replicated the font style and color coordination
from the cover to maintain the indie style and
to try and capture people who like indie music
and people who also dress in an indie style. I
tried to make the artists look cool and look in a
way of doing what they want when they want
to the audience so to get this point across to
the reader that they do what they want and
dress how they like and are happy in the
industry which I portrayed through the facial
expression on the top right of the page. Also,
the sunglasses add to this point because of the
fact it looks as if he’s wearing them in a pitch
black room adding to wearing what they want
and not caring for other peoples opinions
about them.

15. Genre
My genre is based on indie which I’ve
tried to portray through the picture of
color scheme of the background and
text. The artist is dressed accordingly to
the genre by the clothing and general
appearance and his facial expression.
Also the different and creative font style
of the text, it adds to the indie, unique
style of the magazine to engage the
reader and to stand out. The black
background with golden text gives the
original and special impression to the
cover which is needed to show the
genre and interest the reader and gage
the attention of people interested in this
genre.

16. Target Audience
The target audience are people known as
‘indie’ and people who enjoy that kind of
music. I’ve tried to meet the chosen
genre by having my artist dressed in an
indie style of clothing to have a special
effect on the reader and also on my cover
there are indie bands advertised which
should also stand out to people who are
interested in that style of music. I also
used unique and original fonts on the
text on the cover to also add to the
whole indie feel of the magazine and
make the genre of the magazine as clear
as possible without specifying the actual
genre.

17. 3) What kind of Media Institution might distribute
your media product and why?
The institute that may produce and
distribute my media product is
‘Independent magazine’ because my
type of magazine is similar to the
other products they have produced
and what they specialize in. The
publisher is likely to distribute my
magazine because my target audience
and the social group aimed at, are
similar to theirs because we’re both
targeting the young indie audience for
our media products so therefore it fits
in well.
Social groups = people who regularly
interact and share a sense of unity and
common identity.

18. This is Alex:
He is a 19 year old single man who is at UNI and
enjoys reading indie magazines . I think he would
be the type of person to read my magazine and he
is quite indie and fairly cool in the way he dresses.
Alex is also in a band whom play indie style music
which will make him interested in my magazine
because it’s a perfect fit for him.
His Favourite band of all time Coldplay because
they make some of the best music he has heard
and he believes that everyone would like this
band if they gave them a chance as he says that
people may have definitely listen to there music
even if they didn’t know who the band are. This is
because Coldplay have had many songs that have
hit the charts and released multiple successful
albums.
4) Who are your target audience and how did you attract and
address them?

19. His Hero is Chris Martin:
He likes Chris Martin because he’s a big
fan of Coldplay and he’s the lead singer.
He also thinks that Chris Martin performs
amazingly well at live gigs and he’s an all
round great musician and performer.
The last Album he bought was by Coldplay and it was there new
album called Ghost Stories. He goes to gigs about once a month
and enjoys going most with his friends from UNI. He also likes
going to see local gigs with unsigned bands at local pubs with
his friends.

20. He also likes:
Kings of Leon The Kooks
The Vaccines The Killers

21. 5) How have I looked at my magazine audience?
I think the way I have looked at my magazine
audience is that I have targeted the more
musical people. So I’ve looked at the people
that go to gigs quite often or might be in a
band or perform some type of indie music or
are just really into music.
The way I’m going to attract these kind of
people to buy my magazine by some
advertising techniques such as my indie
colour scheme that is on my
front cover with the vintage black, gold and
grey.
Also the vintage fonts give of a cool vibe to
my magazine which would hopefully intrigue
my indie audience.

22. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?

23. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Hardware:
The following pictures are all examples of hardware I have used throughout this
course:
• Apple iMac
• Camera
• (fuji finepix)
• SD card
• Strobe lights
• Key board
• Mouse

24. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Apple Mac
Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 1 GB 667 MHZ DDR2 SDRAM
START UP DISK: Mac HD
This is the main bit of hardware that
we have used in our course, it’s what
everything comes together on to make
the final draft. It’s very different from
the type of computer I’m used too, so
it took some time to get used too but
after a little while I was able to use it
more efficiently and found it’s much
easier and quicker to use than
windows computers. It’s simpler
because it’s easy to save things in
places you’ll be able to find it later
making it easily accessible.

25. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Key Board + Mouse
MOUSE: This is one of the most vital tools to control the computer helping me to click,
drag and scroll through information. Also enables me to copy and paste information
and pictures that I need.
KEY BOARD: The keyboard allows me to type and then use the mouse to select the
things that I have typed and re type or delete them. It has also allowed me to write
the text for my cover page, contents page and article page.
COMMANDS: These are shortcuts which help me to get work done easier and quicker.
Screenshot: ctrl + apple +4
Zoom in: Apple +
Zoom out: Apple -

26. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
SD Card
The SD card is the memory card for the camera.
It is placed inside the camera and made so that
when I take my photos then the pictures will
get saved to that instead of the camera so if
there’s any problems with the camera then the
pictures won’t be damaged. Once the pictures
have been taken then I get a memory stick
which I then transferred my pictures onto my
mac from. Then finally I can import the photo
onto my pages so I can start using them.

27. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Software
Software are the programs we use to create
our course work pages. There are various
different software programs used for different
reasons, like editing photos or creating
different kinds of pages and videos. The main
software we used was Photoshop, InDesign
and word to create my pages as well as
PowerPoint to do my evaluation on. All these
software's were quick and simple to use and
helped me to get the maximum amount of
marks throughout my coursework.

28. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Photoshop
• This is the main piece of software that we
use in making our magazines because its
got all the vital tools to edit and all the
individual parts of my magazine pages
• Once we have an A2 page up on the screen
we can import pictures to it by dragging the
jpeg of the desktop on the Photoshop page
and then we can edit the size by dragging
the corners and sides of the picture to
where we want it.
• Being careful you don’t stretch the picture
out of focus by holding down SHIFT whilst
using the mouse to stretch the picture so as
to make sure you keep the picture even on
all sides

29. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?

30. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Spot healing tool Photoshop
Also, I can use photoshop to edit someone’s facial features to clean up the little
imperfections such as spots or scars ect.
To do this we had to click the plaster tool and hover over the models face and
click on the sports or scars. Photoshop then blurs it so that it looks much cleaner
and makes the model look better.
Other things we can do on photoshop are the effects which we can put onto the
pictures to let them give off different vibes.

31. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
InDesign
InDesign is software which allows you to put text onto previous
things you may have created on other softwares or on to a standard
JPEG. I think this software is a bit more complicated to compared to
the other software programs that we used.
However this is the one I have used least so I’m not confident using it
but I was still able to do some of the simpler stuff which all we
needed to do was get our writing for our articles on to the JPEG so
we can then transfer it onto our blogs when completed.

32. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Inserting a picture
Once the document is open go to file then place and then pick the picture out of
your and it should be on your page then you can fit it to the box guide lines
around the outside of the A3 page so that it looks right when you export out of
InDesign as a JPEG.
Inserting writing
To insert writing the first thing to do is create a text box and make sure it stretches
over the whole space you want to place your writing to be. Then because we are
making an article we have to insert columns into the text box going up to the right
of the screen and then select how many columns you want which should change
to what you want and what looks right on your magazine. Once you have done
this you then copy and paste your articles writing from word into those columns
and then adjust the writing to fit into the columns.

33. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
Word
Word software is the programme that we use less frequently
during our coursework because it’s very limited to what you
can do on there so we don’t use it as much. The only thing we
are able to do is write up our article page text which is vital for
the page but doesn’t require anything that text like, pictures for
example.
Word is very simple and easy to use because it’s not as intricate
and we’ve used it plenty of times before.

34. My magazine cover page and prelim task cover
page are very different. Firstly, my cover page is
much more detailed than the prelim task because
the prelim has just got a masthead and headline on
it where as my cover page has multiple different
bands, date, price, caption on the picture and
other things which make the page look better and
more professional. The picture is also better, it has
been cut out properly using tools on Photoshop
which throughout the course I have been able to
develop where as the prelim task I had very little
knowledge of how Photoshop worked and
therefore the editing of the pictures isn’t very
good. Also, the styles are very different between
the pages and that shows how my knowledge and
skill on Photoshop have developed throughout the
course and my knowledge of the forms and
conventions of a magazine cover page.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

35. 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I had more knowledge also, of how to take good
pictures and how to fit them in around my genre and
how they’re used to target a specific audience. In my
prelim task I just took a picture of George, Conor and
Seb messing about and used it on my page as an
image of bullying. Where as, on my real cover I made
sure the picture was taken more carefully and that I
edited it better so it looked better and fit well on my
page and also, made the clothes he wore more
relevant and linked it to the genre and type of
magazine where as, the prelim task page the boys
were just in school uniform.