1. Planning to use Wix, Weebly, popplet pinterest and thinglink to make my evaluation.
1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
- Discuss the ways in which your magazine incorporates generic conventions expected
in this type of product. Identify specific examples from your work and compare with
real media texts. Use key terminology when describing the features of your
magazine.
- Have you developed any conventions of this genre magazine?
- Have you challenged any expectations/conventions of this kind of product?
- Does your use of conventions indicate what genre of music your magazine is about?
- Which media texts influenced your work?
My pop Magazine, Enterprise, intended for teenagers of both genders, uses examples of
conventions in real media texts such as a Masthead, Puff, anchorage text, main
image and a sell line. My cover features several different media conventions other
than these that you can find a lot of magazines such as page adverts along the
bottom of the page showing the reader what they can find inside. This sort of
convention can be seen on popular magazines such as V and Billboard on
occasion. On my front cover and contents page to Enterprise logo can be seen
giving my magazine a brand identity. This idea was inspired through seeing NME do
the same thing with their logo placement. The Puff was an idea borrowed from
Kerrang and the sell line was inspired by Billboard.
I have developed other conventions such as colour/layout/style. The basic house style of
the magazine has been extended throughout the pages to give the magazine a
Strong brand identity. and look about it. Usually a magazine such as Kerrang for
example will feature a particular graphic and place it on every page in some way, be
it in the text or surrounding the page numbers. In my magazine, I have picked three
colours and one style (red, blue and yellow to fit a pop style) to put them with, this
continues to recur on every page, Developing on the usual convention by expanding
on continuity. Where some magazines will change the style of one page completely
for something they have featured, I have kept it the same to stress continuity.
I have challenged media conventions such as fonts. I took this one feature and meddled
with it and tried some new ideas with it in such a way most magazines somehow
manage to miss. When looking at magazines for inspiration I noticed one thing they
constantly do is use one same font for their text in long articles. Some magazines
even featured as little as two fonts, one for titles and subtitles and one for text
elsewhere, two magazines I sampled in my research that were guilty of doing this on
their cover and contents were NME and even Kerrang. I decided to challenge this
convention and chose several different fonts albeit they were all similar (Eg arial,
Halvetica and Open Sans) but the fact is that they are all different and that adds a
surprising amount of variety and attractiveness to a magazine when you simply look
at a page of text. This also diverts from the norm of magazines. Going against the
expectations for music magazines. Something I discovered in my survey results is
that the more variety there is in the minor details can make all the difference in the
world.
My magazine can be identified as a pop magazine by it’s fun and colourful appearance.
When comparing my magazine to Kerrang during the making and research stages I
could instantly separate them, Kerrang has dark colours for the background and the
artists are generally dressed in black with typically dark/emo/gothic looks such as
long black hair and dark denim jackets whereas my magazine has various bright
colours and the artists are neatly dressed and the font is very fun and rounded.
2. Some magazines I looked at for inspiration included NME, Billboard magazine and NME.
These all helped me design my magazine as they give me layout ideas, font ideas,
colour ideas and more.
I developed my conventions from a wide variety of magazines and took a little something
from everything. I challenged these by adapting them myself to fit my own magazine
and give them a different feel to other magazines. Presentation was something that
came into play with the convention placement, colour, shape and size and in the end
it came out looking very attractive to me and it’s down to playing with the ideas and
making them my own as well as I could.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
- Which social groups are represented in your magazine? Discuss in terms of age,
race, class, gender etc?
- Are these social groups represented in a stereotypical way? For example men
dominant and women passive?
- How does this link to your intended target audience? (Explore further in Q.4)
My magazine features only white British artists However they are of different genders as to
appeal to everyone. This is not intentional nor the result of any bias nor does it represent the
magazine in anyway. The magazine features an equal amount of male and female artists on
the cover. Class cannot be fully defined from the images on the magazine, however upon
closer inspection the characters are both young and could be student and from looking
between the lines the reader may be able to identify where in the ladder they started and
through reading the article may even be able to determine where they may be now.
I have not avoided gender stereotypes in my magazine. The interviews in the exclusives
and the posing of the artists can be found to be typical. The male standing arms crossed,
legs spread in a dominant stance and the female bent down, blowing the camera a kiss,
stereotyping the two artists on the cover image.
My magazine was originally made to target teenagers from an age range of about 12-19.
When the magazine was finished the colours seemed fun and attractive enough to attract
younger audiences. The magazine could possibly reach to children and adults alike with the
way it turned out in the end the fun colouring and imagery and effects blended with the in
depth yet simplistic text makes for a suitable magazine for a wide range of ages in the target
audience. In terms of Target audience, the defining lines blurred and categories began to
blur as it could fit a lot of people and no specific criteria.
SP: Make sure you work on developing this response and be more specific about how
you have represented social groups.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Which publishing house would publish your magazine and why? Consider incentive
for their brand, how it sits with their other products, is this a global organization etc.
Don’t forget to discuss the revenue per year as well.
-How much will you charge per issue? What revenue would you expect to make in
the first year?
- Will your product be available on different platforms?
Link your conclusions to a discussion of features included and audience appeal.
The publishing house for my magazine will be Prometheus as they have a massive
reputation and a net that covers a wide variety of platforms. A publishing house is a
company that distributes, advertises and runs magazines, Television programmes
and radio stations. The bigger the Publishing house the better your magazine will
look. This publishing house would be able to boost the ratings of my magazine and
3. give it a strong foundation to stand on. As this publisher already hosts magazines as
a platform For example Billboard magazine is one of their own publications and this
is very popular.
Each issue of my magazine is £2 as to assure my target audience can afford the
magazine. This should cover any charges that come my way and in the first year I
would expect to make at least £2400. This would be a total made if 100 magazines
were sold for every new edition.
With Prometheus as our publisher our magazine will be advertised and featured on a
few different platforms including TV, Radio and online. Other publishers such as Tie
Inc do not reach as many platforms and only cover one area. However the full
magazine will not be accessible online unless readers sign up to the Prometheus
web page otherwise Enterprise can only be read in full through buying the real thing
as there is no app available from this publishing house. The cover and contents of
each new magazine may be featured online or on TV and a small paragraph may be
read on the radio but for the full thing customers must buy the magazine. This is a
technique that usually bigger magazines like to use however it is not unknown for
smaller publishers to do this. NME receives regular radio notice.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
- Consider the age and gender of your target audience. Link this to your choice of
features and presentational style of magazine..
- What other magazines are similar to yours and who do they appeal to?
- How do you plan to maintain audience interest in your product? Think about
features, free gift, incentives, exclusives etc.
The age of my audience (Approx 12-19) was not thought to be any specific gender.
The magazine cover was made to be unisex. A magazine anyone in the target age
can read. None of the colours used for my magazine are particularly girly nor
particularly boyish. The main colour theme red, blue and yellow/gold is thought to be
gender neutral.
A magazine similar to mine is NME. NME Is similar as with each issue the colour
scheme continues throughout the pages and is also fit for both male and female
audiences in the same age range. This best selling magazine always features
exclusives and sometimes fun games and competitions just the same as mine.
To maintain a strong interest in my magazine, new editions will always feature similar
attractive covers and include different competitions and posters. This will keep the
people reading my magazine involved and happy with the product. There will always
be something interesting to read such as an exclusive, something interesting to do
such as a crossword or quiz and something interesting to have such as a free
dropout.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
- Link this to your audience profile (i.e what age, gender they are)
- Are there particular features in your magazine that would appeal to your audience?
-Discuss your choice of cover images and double page spread images. How did
these appeal to your chosen target audience?
- Consider the use of colour and font choice. How would this appeal to the target
audience? What impact does that have and how does it reflect the genre of the
magazine?
- Link examples back to generic conventions of real media texts.
- Include some audience feedback. Particularly focus on your intended target
audience. What have you learned from this feedback?
To attract my audience I will use appropriate language and in some cases slang to
help readers relate to the texts they are reading. Putting so much as an exclamation
point or structuring a sentence in a particular way such as writing it as some people
4. will talk to their friends. Another form of attraction seen in my magazine is the type of
music. Most teenagers in my Target audience age range listen to fun pop music and
love the internet hence why the main article in my magazine is of two pop/electronic
artists who started on the internet where my audience will have seen them.
The colour of the font, while mostly black, in some places has been made brighter
and funner colours as it appeals more and makes the magazine seem much more
fun and bubbly.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the
product?
- Strengths and weaknesses of the camera equipment. Canon DSLR.
- Talk about the photography process, were there any problems you faced, how did
you resolve these issues?
-Desk top publishing software – what have you learnt about editing images and page
design? Were there particular effects that you found useful for creating your product?
Use specific examples of tools used.
- InDesign – How useful was this programme when constructing your media text?
Was there anything you found difficult about this programme? Any limitations?
- Photoshop – how did you find this programme? Which tools did you use to help
construct your magazine successfully?
The camera we used gave us high quality results that were great for my magazine.
However, there was a bit of a problem. We took lots of pictures and there were plenty
that we could have potentially used however quite a lot of pictures we had taken
came out blurry. We had to retake the main cover image and a few others. The
images we had used props for were too blurry to use or fix and we had no other
opportunity to capture them. Instead we just took different pictures and used these.
Editing the images was a different process altogether. Using photoshop I had to crop
around the models as to avoid the white background showing up on the background
of the magazine. In Photoshop I used precision to get the finest quality from my
cover. I used the eraser tool and cut around the edges to all my images as to avoid
white lines around the figures.
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
- Discuss the planning stage, the research into the genre, flat plans, call sheets, etc
and explain how this detailed planning helped you produce your magazine.
- Discuss the skills shown in your prelim compared to your skills shown in the full
task. Use specific examples.
- How have you developed your usage of Photoshop and InDesign?
- Do you feel more confident with the equipment such as your use of DSLR cameras
and DTP?
- How successful do you feel your end product is at fulfilling the given brief?
Since the prelim task, I’ve learnt the true powers of photoshop and how to harness them. I
have been able to make shapes and patterns for backgrounds and how to make effects. I
also found the full extent of the adjustments tool that can change the full image to improve
the quality.
The flat plans were the main foundation for my magazine which I followed closely. These did
help me keep my cover neat and prevented it from getting too messy and unorganised. The
call sheets I developed helped me keep track of what was happening and when, however
one problem I ran into was only planning one photo shoot. After uploading the images I
5. found more than half of them to be blurry and had to retake. The second photos were much
better and clearer.
For the pictures I used my own DSLR camera which I was very comfortable with. I was able
to edit the pictures much easier after the definition went up on the retake. In editing with
Photoshop the photos were much nicer looking after they were sharpened and cropped and
they stood out against the background making the cover look so much nicer.
My final product really filled all the checkboxes I aimed for and the brief has been closely
followed. Everything was used to its full extent and many different factors were used with
range.
