The document provides an evaluation of a media product created by Elizabeth Brady. It summarizes how the product uses conventions from real magazines in its design, such as a consistent color palette and direct address of the audience in images. It also discusses how the product represents indie/alternative music fans through the artists and design featured. The target audience is identified as fans of this genre aged 13-29. Overall, the evaluation demonstrates how the product applies real-world magazine conventions while appealing to its intended readership.

1. Elizabeth Brady
Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
The first thing I did in my front cover research was look at a variety of
already established music magazines. I did this to gain an idea of the
different methods used such as balance, symmetry, the Guttenberg design
principle and the rule of thirds, I also looked at various styles used to
construct front covers. My house style consists of whites, greys and royal
blues. This is one of the ways my media product follows the conventions of
real magazines as they follow a particular house style, which is generally
made up of 3 or 4 different colours and can be seen throughout the entire
product. This makes the magazine appear more professional by being
consistent. I think the colours and design of my masthead link into my
magazines “look” well. The word distortion is bold, clear and easy to read,
however it also has an eroded effect that makes it stand out, and gives it a
different feel to it, which relates to my target audience and the music the
magazine contains. The magazines main music focus is the Indie/Rock
genre, this is known to be a different style of music compared to that of
which is heard in the mainstream charts. It could be said that it is a distorted
version of mainstream music, which ties in to the magazines title
“Distortion”. Distortion also refers to the creation of "warm", "dirty" and
"fuzzy" sounds by compressing the peaks of a musical instrument's sound
wave and adding overtones, keeping in with the music genre of the product.
The fashion sense that is usually associated with the Indie/Rock genre is
more laidback, with males and females dressing in different ways to express
them selves. The imagery I have used on the front cover of my magazine is a
close up facial shot. The model would be making eye contact/direct address
with the audience which is a very important convention that is almost always
used with the imagery on a front cover as the audience feel an immediate
attachment to the model and therefore are attracted to the magazine;
however my model is wearing sunglasses. An uncommon but not alien
concept used sometimes on covers. This could attract the reader for different
reasons, not being see into the models eyes could leave a sense of mystery
with the audience, causing them to want to buy the magazine and read it to
find out more. An example of a model wearing sunglasses can be seen on
various covers of Q magazine. I have used a black and white effect on my

2. cover image. I think this helps the cover lines stand out against the
background more. Also not a lot of other magazines normally use black and
white on the cover; this will help my product stand out against others when
on the stands. The headings and subheadings on the front cover don’t
intrude with the models face. This is another convention followed within
professional magazines. The contents page I designed sticks to general
media conventions the most. I have taken a very formal yet standard
approach to the contents page inspired by Q magazines contents page style.
The layout is very simple, a column on the left third for all the content in the
magazine, a simple easy to read masthead font, a large main image on the
right hand signed followed with another smaller picture in the right corner.
The date and magazines website is located at the top right hand side. This
page still sticks to my house style of grey, burgundy and white. The
masthead for the contents is clear and bold like most magazines. The images
used on the contents page relate to articles within the magazine. I have tried
to have a variation of images on this page, with different composition and
shot distances. I have sectioned my contents into three sectors, reviews,
features and a “special”. This is very commonly used on contents pages and
therefore makes my magazine look all the more realistic as it ties in directly
with real media conventions.
DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD PARAGRAPH.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The social group that my magazine “Distortion” targets are fans of the Indie/
alternative genre, between the ages of thirteen through to the late twenties.
To target this audience I have used various artists on the front cover and the
contents page that belong to the Indie/ alt rock genre. This will attract fans
from this social group. Another way my magazine represents this particular
genre is through the design of the masthead. Distortions masthead has an
eroded design yet it stands out and is still easy to read. It is similar to the
masthead of magazine “Metal Hammer”, the design looks smashed up and
broken in places, this style connotes to the style of heavy rock music the
magazine portrays. I think the masthead represents the type of music my
magazine contains appropriately as most of the artists have a main focus on
heavy guitar and vocals, such as The Vaccines or The Macabees, therefore a
bold, neat masthead wouldn’t be appropriate. Also I feel the masthead
represents this social group as they follow a more laidback cool style and
sense of fashion which is reflected in my magazines masthead. Another thing
that relates to the target audience group is the title of the magazine

3. “Distortion” as it has musical references that are most commonly seen
throughout the rock genre.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A large influence and a magazine that I did my research on was Q magazine.
Q’s distributers are the Bauer Media Group. Bauer Media is a division of the
Bauer Media Group; Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The
Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15
countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations. The sales and profit
figures from the company emphasizes its colossal size. According to the
Financial Times website the recorded pre-tax profits of £51.9 m on sales of
£252m in 2009. Examples of other music magazines published by the
company are Kerrang! And MOJO. I believe my magazine would benefit being
distributed by them as my magazines influences and audiences are incredibly
similar to Q and would therefore compliment the impressive collection of
music magazines that Bauer Media Group has within its company.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
My magazines target audience is that of indie/alt rock fans aged 13 – 29.
The gender my magazine targets is mixed like Q and NME as the colour
schemes and house styles match both genders although this magazine would
not be targeted towards very feminine women. I conducted a questionnaire
during my target audience research and found that the most common price
someone would like to pay for a music magazine is between £1 and £2;
these results reflected how I should price my magazine. I also carried out a
focus group on my finished product and asked ten people some questions
about it. One of these questions was what the audience would most like to
see on a contents page. The dominant outcome for this was a mixture of text
and images. This caters to those who prefer the reading side to the magazine
and also those who are more attracted to the aesthetic side of it, which is
likely to be the case for my wide age range and mixed gender audience.
Another question I asked was what type of article my audience would most
want to read. Out of all the options Gossip was the most popular answer. In
my double page spread I have catered to this well with an interesting, and
personal story about the “artist” the article is about. In my double page
spread article I have used suitable language to connect to my audience. For
instance “Rehab blows” and “I was like f@!# love, I’d rather have a drink”. This
targets the younger teenage audience as the language is of a laidback

4. informal lexis. This is the language my audience can relate to the most and
therefore find the most interesting and appealing.
How did you attract/ address your audience?
I used many different techniques throughout my media product to try and
attract my audience into reading my magazine. One of these is the bands I
chose to present on my front cover and also on the contents page. I picked
bands that I knew were famous in the Indie/alt rock genre knowing that they
would have a large fan base, resulting in these fans being interested in
buying my magazine wanting to find out about their favorite artist. Example
of these artists are “The Vaccines”, “Spoon”, “All time low” and “Lana del Rey”.
Another way I tried to address my audience was with a direct mode of
address through the images I have taken. Even though my front cover lacks
direct eye contact from the cover model, inside on the contents page I used
pictures with a direct mode of address to attempt to invite the audience to
read on, to find out more about the artist in the article.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product?
While constructing my media product I used many different technologies to
attempt to make my magazine appear as professional as a real one. A lot of
the technologies I had never used before. I used a top range digital camera
to gather all the pictures I needed for my magazine. One of the settings the
camera had was to get a grid up so that you could get the rule of thirds in
the picture more easily. This helped me to get the main focus of the image
into the primal optical area. Working with the camera I used the flash and the
natural lighting to get a clear shot so my picture could appear as
professional as possible. Once I had all my pictures Photoshop was the
program that I used to edit them and then put together my front cover,
contents page, and double page spread. Without some of Photoshop’s tools I
would never have been able to finish my product. I could change the
saturation and brightness of the pictures to make them look better than the
original; I could also change the effects all together by making some of my
pictures black and white. One of the tools that was the greatest help to me
when editing pictures was the polygonal lasso tool. This cuts round the edge
of the picture to get rid of the background. It makes the cut precise as
opposed to accidentally cutting off pieces of the original picture; this can
look very unprofessional and untidy. To record my process of making my
product I uploaded different stages of my work to a blog. To be able to put

5. some of my work on the blog I had to use Slideshare to gain the embed code.
I had never used a blog or Slideshare before so these things were completely
new to me.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in
the progression from it to the full product?
When I first stared to do my preliminary task I realised that constructing a
magazine was a lot harder than I originally thought. Trying to make the
masthead, main image and all the cover lines on the cover balance together
was a difficult task as some of these things can over power each other. It was
helpful to have professional magazines such as the NME as a guideline for
my preliminary task as looking at how they used their cover lines to frame
the main image was an inspiration for my own work. My use of Photoshop
has improved vastly and I am now more familiar with a lot of the tools and
effects that can be used to make a magazine better. Finishing the preliminary
task gave me a chance to practice doing layouts and editing pictures which
came in handy when designing my final product. I think this added to the
quality of my final product as I had already got used to the design around a
front cover and contents page.
In conclusion I am pleased with the outcome of my finished media product. I
think some of my main successes were my masthead which represented my
house style well, my main image which also fits in to the Indie/alt rock genre
my magazine is based on and my consistent house style throughout the
entire product. Some improvements I could make to my product are I could
of gained a larger variety of images to use throughout my magazine, and the
font sizes and alignments could be better on all of my product.