The document discusses the student's magazine project. They used conventions like mastheads, cover lines and image placement typical of magazines like Kerrang. The layout and style was intentionally very conventional to make the magazine seem realistic. The language, fonts and colors used were also conventional to attract a general male audience aged 18-25. During the project, the student learned to use software like Paint.net, Word, Blogspot and 1001fonts to design the magazine covers, layouts and track their progress. Overall, the software was relatively easy to use and helped the student produce their magazine.

1. Evaluation

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

3. Codes and ConventionsFor my magazine, I used the codes and conventions, like any other magazine, to force upon the reader the selling point of the product. I used them in a very conventional style, typical of any magazine, because I found it easier to work like this and also I found it comforting that my magazine had similarities to such popular magazines as Kerrang and others. Below is a link to a kerrang front cover of which I drew up some similarities.C:\Documents and Settings\Jerome1\My Documents\My Pictures\ol media\kerrang evaluation.jpgThe style and the way I used my codes and conventions was very generically. Use of the basic codes such as cover-lines and mastheads makes my magazine fit in and makes it more realistic I feel and also the placement of such codes as the masthead and cover-lines are very conventionally spread across my cover. My magazine- very conventional looking in style and layout helping it to achieve realism.

4. Masthead top left. Most magazines follow this as it catches the eye of the reader being big, bold and on the left.( The reader will usually read from left to right). This emphasises the generic style of my magazinePug in top right as it’s top of the page and helps sell the magazine like other magazines doCover lines surrounding the main image. Cover lines are usually placed round the image like this as it’s neat and good to look at for the reader.Main image centered in the middle to emphasize its importance. Very generic as many magazines do this.Top and bottom cover lines placed at the top and bottom of the cover, hence the name.Main cover line placed below main image in a big font emphasizing its importance. Generic convention used by most magazines. Barcode out the way in the bottom right corners showing its insignificance.

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

6. The style I feel is also quite diverse as we have the normally clothed “Joe Collocini” and the contrasting bold, almost emo look of “Ian Willis” . This helps with the variety of readers who’d be pulled in to read. My magazine is and looks very much like it’s for a male audience and it is. Maybe for sellingreasons I should have made it a bit more varied in terms of gender but I feel that the maleaudience will understand the design more than women as the colour and fonts very much reflect that of masculinity with the white, red, black and grey all seen as masculine colours.I could have added some femininity to my magazine to avoid the stereotype tag but that wouldhave meant an overhaul in colour and design. As my magazine is quite generic, I’d hope that different races and classes would be drawn to it because it’s simplicity and normal outlook means that it’s not condensed to a specific group. The price of the magazine is reasonable for all classes as its relatively cheap for a monthly magazine.STYLE- These pictures out of my magazine shows different people whohavedeveloped a style different to others showing independence and confidence, a feat young adults behold.

7. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

8. DistributionBeing a monthly magazine I’d hope the contents and variety would be wide enough to have it distributed by a large magazine company. I did some research and found a production company called http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands. This company produces magazines such as:EmpireMOJOKerrangQThese are the sort of major magazines I would like to presume my magazine would be incorporated with because they are big popular, monthly magazine of which I’d like my magazine to bare similarities to.I think my magazine could fit into the niche market with the title riff proposing a very specific subject, but my idea that my magazine holds a months worth of information on bands and singers would make it ideal that it didn’t belong to this market.

9. Who would be the audience of your media magazine product?

10. My magazine appeals to the younger audience. As I stated in my publication plan my magazine is for the kind of young adult so late teens and early to mid twenties, specifically 18-25. The magazine should appeal to a young audience as the people photographed show they have their own style so it shows an ere of independence.As I mentioned in the social group slide I think that my magazine slightly leans towards the masculine side with masculine colours and males in the photographs. But I prefer to think its for everyone. Also the features such as colour, font and layout are keptto an older audience to show that the magazine isn’t for a younger Audience, as in 16 and below, and if it were for a younger audience there would be a lot less text and much more pictures and colour involved.Colour- The black, white and red works very well together and is a renowned combination of colour. The generic use of colour combination shows that it’s not supposed to be a spectacle for a young audience but an informative interesting piece.Font- The font is quite bold and very compact showing that its for a reader of a younger adult audience as they’d be in higher education and they’d possibly have more of an interest into the backgrounds of their favoured musicians.Layout- The layout is very formal and presentable showing that the text is for reading and for a person who wants informing to quench their interest. The picture and title are both placed above the text to create cohesion and again to show a sense of neatness.

11. How did you attract/address your audience

12. With my magazine I used a lot of cohesion with colour and fonts. I found that these two were key especially in catching the eye of the reader. Red, Black and grey were used and ran throughout my magazine. From the front cover to the double page spread, the colours stay the same and keep consistent. I think this is a good technique in attracting the reader.Superlatives I used like ‘biggest, best and exclusive’ really emphasize to the reader that this is the magazine for them. Making my magazine appear big and exclusive is important in persuading readers to read my magazine rather than any other magazine and I think I used the superlatives well in attracting readers.I only used a few pictures as I was limited with the amount of time with the camera. The picturesI got I felt were acceptable enough to go in my magazine and I think they do a good job inattracting the readers attention. Although they lack colour I think their simplicity is enough todraw the readers attention. I also think I implied a bit of an anarchic attitude with the picture of “Ian Willis”. What I'm doing here is creating attraction through the contrasting feel of this picture to the other ones. With this picture standing out it creates attraction and catches the readers eye.As you can see in all three the colour runs throughout and keeps cohesion.

13. The language I used in my double page spread was very sensible and converse. Here is how my DPS starts. Its immediately shows that it’s an informative piece with the date of birth and parents of the featured artist.The masthead is really key in explaining the genre of the magazine and attracting the readers. The distorted and fuzzy look of the masthead reflects the distorted style of guitar and emphasises its title riff to the reader immediately indicating that it’s about music and rock. It also looks good as well as just relating to the genre.

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

15. During the project I have used a few different pieces of software. These below, are the main ones I used and the weaknesses and strengths of them:I came across a few problems using these pieces of software. For instance I began my project using paint. The quality of work of which I produced using paint wasn’t good enough so I was recommended to use paint.net as it gave me more detailed tools and better equipment than paint. What was most useful about paint.net was its cropping system. You could crop it in squares and even crop free hand. I found this very useful.The websites like Picnic and 1001 fonts were good for getting ideas and experimenting with different effects. Although I didn’t use picnic it was good that I got to experience and have a go on a different website. 1001 fonts was also good for the ideas and experience. As I’ve said I got my final font from this website and it allowed me to get a font no one else would have used so It allowed for me to add some originality into my piece.

16. BlogSpotI found BlogSpot useful as it allowed me to keep track of my work meaning I could look back at work I’d done months ago for information just by clicking on the date it was on and clicking on the link to the piece of information. I think I coped quite well with it. At first I found uploading my work onto it hard as the work I posted onto it was coming up as poor quality or not as I hoped. After having got help though to solve this problem everything pretty much ran smoothly from then onwards. The months and dates down the side of the blog website was also very helpful in tracking work and allowed me to handle my timing. Creating my workAll in all, all the software I used was all quite simple. One or two problems disturbed me from working but the problems weren’t so difficult to solve meaning most of my work was done smoothly.For my front cover all of paint.net, Microsoft word and 1001fonts came in handy. These 3 systems provoked the creation of my magazine and allowed me to do the best possible job quite simply.Word and pain.net were again used for creating my contents and double page spread. The easy effects and inserts of Microsoft word and the cropping tool and again effects of paint.net were considerably easy to use and in the end these helped me to produce some good pieces of work.

17. PhotographyThere were many choices I had to make with the photos chosen for the front cover of my magazine. I had to see whether they fit in with the ethos of the magazine and I had to make sure that pictures looked neat and realistic. I did recycle a few photos from previous projects like the one of “Samantha Strong” as the camera time was limited. But I did have a couple of shoots of which were done at separate times. The first one I did was to get the double page spread picture. After going home and looking over my photos I realised they weren’t good enough. So I did my second shoot of which the photos I approved of and stuck with. Having got the photos I got them on the computer and messed with them. Many effects were tried and tested until I got to the correct one. These are the pictures of which I settled for:I settled for this on the front cover because the eye contact was quite conventional and generic and that was a theme of which runs through my magazine.I settled for this as my exclusive because it was glamorous and would help in attracting the reader.

18. Seeing as this was just the editors picture I decided that it should be small, neat and simple.I chose this picture as it contrasts against some of my other pictures making a bit interesting. Also it shows the varied style and diversity within the magazine.I chose this picture because it again shows the diverse style but it also reflects the artists reputation as cool, calm and relaxed.

19. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you’ve learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

20. What have I learnt from my preliminaryLooking back at my preliminary task I think my work has come a long way. Here’s a link to my preliminary task –http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ib96bVXUZ6c/TPkAga3TlmI/AAAAAAAAADk/BlOSF8zyvfg/s1600/tarikk.jpg -preliminary task front coverhttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ib96bVXUZ6c/TLcjz-yHeHI/AAAAAAAAAAc/iX0TtNfhHss/s1600/painty+contents+2.bmp-preliminary contentsHere are some links to my finished music magazine –http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ib96bVXUZ6c/TUr4KxxcMuI/AAAAAAAAAGI/RIX8Z4ycyM0/s1600/joseph+shaw+front+cover+pic.jpg- front cover riffhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ib96bVXUZ6c/TUvsN-_LpoI/AAAAAAAAAGM/OJ1anPuqrLE/s1600/finalised+contents.jpg- contents riffI'm not going to put my double page spread up as I want to compare them both in contents and front cover. I think my use and understanding of technology has enabled me to come this far with my magazine creation. My preliminary was done in paint rather than paint.net and you can tell the difference, the quality is much poorer and there are some graphical errors like round the picture of the pot of pencils, some of the pixels have not been filled in.Besides learning about what technology made my cover better I think that I have taken a step forward with colour and cohesion. With my preliminary, my front cover goes straight from blue to yellow and that’s a bit unconventional and disturbs the reader in a way.Overall I think I've come away more understanding of what’s there to use in terms of making such pieces of work and also I've gained a considerable understanding on how magazine work with things like codes, conventions, audiences all becoming a lot clearer to me.

21. How successful do you feel your end product is in fulfilling the task? How well does it fit the brief?

22. Overall I think that my magazine has been a success but I do feel some things could have been done differently and that my magazine could have stretched to different audiences. I should have taken into account a bit better the gender of which the magazine looks like it aims at and I should have made it a bit more diverse.However I fee my product is successful in representing it’s target audience and looking like a real music magazine. I tried really hard to make my magazine look believable as I though a more realistic magazine is a better piece of work all round. The realism is really important as if you get it correct, it can make your magazine look really good. The target audience is also really important as if you achieve reaching and relating to your target audience then it means that they understand your product meaning it’s a success.