Luke Berry-Dagnall evaluated his media product of a heavy metal magazine. He focused on establishing a consistent house style through color palette and font choices to represent the genre. Researching conventions, he designed pages with continuity across covers, spreads, and contents through a unified visual identity. Primary research at concerts helped him understand the target audience and represent them authentically through imagery, content, and advertisements. Comparing early work to final designs showed his growth in skills like photography, layout, and understanding magazine conventions.

1. MEDIA STUDIES AS
EVALUATION
Evaluation of my media product
By Luke Berry-Dagnall

2. When I started drawing out my first drafts for my front cover I was thinking about what conventions should I use and which ones wouldn’t be necessary
and also about how I was going to create the house style of my magazine. The house style was a very important factor of the design and is effectively
the biggest part in how my magazine would look as it determines what colours and fonts I used which might not sound much but if you take these
magazine pages and turn the house colours I have chosen into say for example purple and orange then people are not going to think at first glance that
this Is a heavy metal magazine because those two colours do not represent or even associate with heavy metal whereas the colours I have chosen
(which are white, red and black) all represent the heavy metal music genre. The style of font that I have used throughout my magazine especially on the
front cover is all designed to represent heavy metal by using such features on the typeface as dripping blood, bloody hand marks. This all creates
continuity throughout my magazine and allows it to have a much more professional look to it. You can what I am talking about on the images shown on
this page, these are my final designs for all three pages and as you can see I have kept a consistent colour theme throughout, even on the pictures that I
have used, for example on the double page spread shown to the left the colour balance has been edited to make the use of red lighting seem even more
vibrant and effective. I have also achieved continuity by using photographs of the same band throughout my magazine designs.

3. CONVENTIONS ANALYSIS
OF MY PRODUCTS
Showing why I did and didn’t use conventions in
my three final designs

4. Contents
page analysis
of conventions

5. FRONT PAGE
ANALYSIS OF
CONVENTIONS

6. DOUBLE PAGE
ANALYSIS OF
CONVENTIONS

7. CLICK THE LINKS ABOVE TO GO TO MY
PREZIS’
 Double page spread journey
 Contents page journey
 Front page journey

8. My media product represents particular social groups in a number of ways, one of them being how I have used models in my
photographs in the magazine. The age of these models are young, my target audience is also young people, so by including this age
range in my magazine I am establishing a link between the audience and the band featured in my media product which means they will
in turn feel more connected with the magazine and want to purchase it to know what this band is doing at their age. I know that people
that mainly by rock magazines such as Kerrang! Are around 25 years old, this is from the research I have obtained from their reader
profile.
Another way I have represented social groups in my media product is how I have chosen the content that I have included in my
magazine, such as advertisements and what the articles are actually about. On my front page I have chosen to include an
advertisement for free tickets, my target audience has a demographic grade of C2 which means they are mainly skilled manual workers
who cannot always afford luxury items such as concert/festival tickets, so by including advertisements for such things in my magazine I
am representing my target audience and by doing this they will be more inclined to by the magazine. Another way have represented
this particular social group of people who enjoy listening to rock music is by including articles that relate to their age. I have done this by
basing my double page spread around a young drummer who has a tough decision to make and has chosen to leave his friends band
and go professional. Many young people today that enjoy this genre of music are in bands or at least play an instrument, so their social
lives often revolve around changes in their band or their friends band and so by including an article in my magazine about this change in
a young band I am not only representing my audience I am also establishing a strong and even emotional link between the article and
the reader of it because it talks about problems that this young drummer is having which are the same sort of problems that this social
group are often faced with.
All of the photographs used in my media product were taken by myself at one of my friends local gigs at a venue called ringside. I
chose to do this as I was told by my teacher to use mise-en-scene in my photographs to represent the heavy metal genre. This meant I
would have to use clothing that represented this social group of people and I would have to bring in loads of clothes that I didn’t even
have to get people to wear and pose and all at the same time make it look realistic, well I soon figured out that the results I would of got
from going along with that method would be awful and instead chose to go down a more imaginative route and go and photograph
real people at a real heavy metal gig. The results from this idea turned out brilliantly as all of the people there could not have represented
the heavy metal social group/genre any better as they themselves were it. Also from the photographs I have managed to capture
atmosphere as well as emotion in them which I would never have been able to do in a studio setting.
How does your media product represent particular social
groups?

9. WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION
MIGHT WANT TO DISTRIBUTE MY
MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

10. WHAT IS A MEDIA INSTITUTION?
 A media institution is a business such as Bauer who distribute and
market a media product such as Kerrang!
 Their job is to make sure that the magazines reach enough retail
outlets to make as much profit as possible
 They are also have some control of marketing the media product
 Media institutions such as Bauer distribute magazines such as
Kerrang! All the way to bird watching magazines to make sure
that they have expanded their target market enough to make as
much profit as possible, because a larger target market means a
larger number of people are more likely to buy your media
products

11. EXAMPLES OF MEDIA INSTITUTIONS

12. WHO DISTRIBUTES KERRANG?
 The editor of Kerrang is called James McMahon
 Bauer media distribute Kerrang magazines
 The readership of Kerrang from July 2012 until December of the
same year was recorded at 345’000
 The magazine is released weekly
 It is dedicated to rock music, being mainly heavy and modern
rock
 Its first issue was published on the 6th of June 1981as a one off in
the sounds newspaper

13. WHAT COMPANY WOULD I LIKE TO
DISTRIBUTE MY MAGAZINE AND WHY?
I would like IPC Media to distribute my magazines for the reasons
listed below:
 Currently they only have NME that focuses on rock music and even at
that NME is not totally focused heavy metal, much more about more
classic older rock, this means that there is a gap in the market for a
magazine such as mine which in turn means a greater chance of my
media product being successful as they will want to distribute a large
amount of them, where as if I had chosen Bauer Media to distribute my
media product then they would not order as many from me because
they already have Kerrang who focus on heavy metal and rock
 Also IPC Media ensures that all of there brands have their own websites
and even radio shows

14. WHO WOULD BE THE
AUDIENCE FOR YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT?

15. I chose to target a young audience of an age between 16 and 25. This is because the heavy metal music genre is something relatively
new on the scene and is only really associated with young people in relation to age as the older generation prefer what is now called
classic rock such as The Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath. Another reason that I chose this to be my target audience is that
because I am good friends with a few people my age that are in heavy metal bands or are at the very least been to a few heavy
metal concerts I thought this would make it more accessible for audience feedback to improve reliability of the answers as they know
what they are talking about.
To find out about what my audience want I wrote down a few questions and asked them these questions whilst videoing them. I asked
such questions as:
Do you prefer more text than images in a magazine or the other way around
Do you prefer weekly or monthly magazines
How much are you prepared to pay for a weekly and a monthly magazine
Do you prefer the adverts to relate to the magazines music genre or not
This audience research helped me a great deal whilst I was drafting out my designs for my magazine and I kept referring back to the
answers I obtained from that video to remind myself of what the audience wanted. In the video I chose to video one of my friends
who was 16 at the time and was and still is in a heavy metal band and very frequently bought magazines such as Kerrang, the other
person I chose to interview was my neighbour who was 25 at the time and only interested in heavy metal music (he only listened to it
and occasionally bought the odd magazine). I chose to interview these two people as they are both at the ends of the target
audience age mark, and they also offered a great contrast of person, what I mean is that these two people were both interested in
heavy metal but one much more than the other which meant I was able to understand both persons needs which meant I was then
able to cater for my whole target audience instead of just one area.
The other form of audience research I acquired was by going to a few heavy metal gigs in the local area with local people to see
what they dressed up in, what colours were dominant in the mise-en-scene and how they were representing themselves. This helped
me to understand who my magazine was actually targeting and I felt I knew a lot more information about my audience than I would
of done just by sitting behind a computer screen researching what they were like, the primary research proved to be much more
useful throughout my drafting.

16. HOW DID YOU
ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR
AUDIENCE?

17. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT
ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM
THE PROCESS OF
CONSTRUCTING THIS
PRODUCT?
Refer to the video included in this post

18. At the beginning of the media studies course I knew very little about
Photoshop and had only a small amount of experience with it in the past.
The technology of this program came in very handy once I had learnt how
to use it effectively with ease. I found it useful how I could correct simple and
major mistakes that I had made or found in my photographs from the initial
photograph such as over exposure or too much shadow in the image. It also
helped to know about how to use the camera that I was handling when I
was out taking photographs such as the ability to capture images in a RAW
format which provides the advantages of being able to manipulate the
photographs attributes much more, I didn’t even know that you could
change the cameras format for taking photographs in before I started this
course. Photoshop also held technology that allowed me to insert and
manipulate text to achieve astounding exciting results and really make the
text come alive and provide its own atmosphere to the design it was within.

19. LOOKING BACK AT
YOUR PRELIMINARY
TASK

20. Spot the difference
Preliminary task Final product of front cover
I named this slide ‘spot the
difference’ because the two
images to the left that are
compared against each
other show just how far I have
come from when I first started
this course and what
techniques I have learnt
alongside with how I have
understood conventions of
magazines to how to get a
great front cover photograph

21. Looking back at the preliminary task now I have realised how the
simple conventions such as the sell lines are at some parts in bad
places such as here (follow the arrow) because it covers up part
of the models face which is unconventional. The photograph its
self is also not a medium close up as it should be to follow
conventions, and it was meant to be as well.
If you take my final front cover and compare it with this one then
you can see how I have learnt new skills and developed them to
achieve a final and effective outcome.
The preliminary task helped me to develop my skills:
• On photoshop
• In taking good photographs(in the studio and on a live set)
• In understanding how placing the conventions in specific
places helps to create an effective design
• On how to know when to and not to place particular
conventions on designs