The document describes the design process and conventions used in creating a magazine called Ciretone. It took inspiration from popular music magazines like NME, Q, and Mixmag. Elements like a masthead, cover image overlapping the masthead, slanted headlines, and multiple interior images were adopted. The color scheme and use of images and pull quotes to highlight articles were also conventional magazine techniques. However, the interior article contained more written content than other contemporary magazines. The magazine's design aimed to positively represent teenagers by presenting a role model in an interview, challenging negative stereotypes commonly found in media.

1. Media Magazine
EvaluationLennon Riley

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

3. I based the design of my magazine (Ciretone) on 3 magazines that
my survey results showed are popular amongst my target
audience; NME, Q and Mixmag. These three magazines cover
almost every genre in music, which makes them suitable to use as
inspiration. I took most of the inspiration for my magazine design
from NME as I think it looks more aesthetically pleasing than the
other magazines. NME, however, has a design that is much more
unconventional in comparison to most other music magazines,
which is why I added a [] to my magazine cover in order to make
my magazine look more professional, and because it looks better. I
originally had a sidebar on my cover too, but I decided to remove it
due to it not working with the design of my magazine cover. I also
took inspiration from NME by using slanted headlines and cover
lines. Mixmag and Q also helped inspire my magazine cover, with
the idea of having the image of the cover star overlap the masthead,
which NME doesn’t do. My magazine cover has a large masthead
which is commonplace in pretty much every magazine in
distribution and one photo that takes up the majority of the page.
The size and placement of my masthead is more similar to Mixmag
than to Q and NME, as it takes the full width of the page and is in
the centre column of the cover. The main image of my cover star is
a transparent image placed over a background, which is similar to
Q’s cover.

4. The colour scheme of my contents page stays
consistent throughout the rest of the magazine, with
the same shades of pink and blue being used
throughout. I used images of artists who will be
featured throughout the magazine on the contents
page in order the audience of the magazine familiar
with some of them, which is commonplace in
virtually every magazine. My double page spread
uses pull quotes to emphasize certain things said in
the article like other magazines do. Multiple images
have been used in the double page spread to
familiarize the reader with the artist being featured,
which is guaranteed in almost any article in any
music magazine. The writing style in the interview
portion of the article is much more casual than the
rest of it as it shows a conversation between two
people, which breaks the convention of magazine
articles being written formally. The rest of the article,
however, is written formally, so the article is still
conventional to an extent. The article has a lot more
writing in it in comparison to other contemporary
magazines, wo it breaks the convention with the
amount of writing shown.

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

6. In the media, a lot of the time teenagers are presented in a negative
light which causes negative stereotypes the be developed around
them being lazy or disruptive and having no future plans. The
double page spread in my magazine presents teenagers in a much
more positive light, with the person of interest in the article having
their teen years reflected upon in a much more fair and positive
way. The subject of the article is shown to be very optimistic and
ready to take on challenges ahead of them. My magazine challenges
the stereotypes of teenagers seen throughout the media by making
them much more relatable in this magazine which could make
people start to disbelieve the negative stereotypes abut teenagers.

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

8. Perhaps the biggest media institution to distribute magazines would be Bauer
Media Group, a multi-platform media company that specializes in TV, radio,
digital and print media. Bauer Media Group publishes some of the most well
known magazines in circulation today, including:
• Mojo
• Kerrang!
• Q
• Empire
• Heat
My magazine would be suitable for Bauer Media Group as the company isn’t
defined by what genre of magazines they distribute. They distribute all sort of
magazines about music, TV, movies, cars or even fishing. My magazine would
also be suitable for this company due to how high profile the other music
magazines they distribute are, which would help boost Ciretone’s popularity as
it would be associated with higher profile magazines and most likely sold the
same places that they are. My magazine is also different enough from the
magazines Bauer already distributes, so having Ciretone in with the other
magazines won’t make it get lost in the shuffle.

9. Who would be the audience for
your media product?

10. The audience for my magazine would mostly be teenagers to young
adults aged between 15-30, with the median reader age being 20.
The magazine is read by people of both genders. They like almost all
genres of music, most notably rock, pop, hip-hop and electronic
music. The audience doesn’t buy music very often, but listens to
music every day, so they instead prefer to listen to music digitally
through streaming services.

11. How did you attract/address
your audience?

12. The cover of the magazine shows someone wearing
very common and casual clothing associated with a
young adult. This would attract young adults to the
magazine as they would be familiar with the look of
the person on the magazine cover and relate to it.
The contents page features a list of artists from a
wide range of genres of music, which coincides with
audience of the magazine liking almost every genre
of music. The survey that was carried out on the
audience of the magazine reflected this, so the
choice of artists in the magazine was catered to the
audience’s love of all genres, with artists like Carly
Rae Jepsen for pop music, Swans for rock music,
and Action Bronson for hip-hop music. The writing
style of my magazine is very casual, especially in
the interview portion of the article in my double
page spread. The casual way of speaking shows
relatability to the teenage/young adult audience
the magazine is aiming for. The article also focuses
on the artist’s life as a teenager prior to fame, which
will attract the teenage audience of the magazine.

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

14. I was inexperienced in using Photoshop prior to this task,
and only knew how to perform basic picture edits. Through
my magazine task, however, I became more familiar with
the software, although I still have a lot to learn about it. The
most important tool I was able to learn and use was Layer
Style, which allowed me to add border strokes, gradient
overlays and bevelling to my layers. These features were
used throughout my magazine production, especially on
the magazine cover, with strokes being used on almost
every asset of the cover, gradients being used in the
backgrounds of the contents page and double page spread,
and bevelling being used on the text on display in the
magazine cover.

15. SurveyMonkey is another example of unfamiliar
technology that was also used in this task. I had
previously had experience creating surveys in
Google Docs, which uses similar tools and assets in
comparison to SurveyMonkey. The only truly
unfamiliar thing about SurveyMonkey when I used
it was the 10 question limit for unpaid users, which
I used to base my survey’s questions on. This
handicap on my survey made me use the most
important questions that I could think of for my
survey. I was familiar with the tools used in
SurveyMonkey to make the actual questions, so the
website was easy to get used to.

16. Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?

17. The quality of my most recent magazine cover has
greatly improved in comparison to the magazine
cover from my preliminary task. The biggest
improvement I was able to make was the layout of
my cover. By using the rule of thirds, I was able to
keep the contents of m magazine cover organised. In
my preliminary cover, the layout of the contents is
very awkward, with text taking up too much space
and being laid out very unappealingly. The text is
floating about without any direction which leave the
preliminary magazine looking very unprofessional.
The new magazine cover is much more visually
appealing, as everything is laid out much more
coherently. The quality of the photographs has also
improved. The photograph taken for the preliminary
cover was taken off the cuff without any planning,
which leaves it looking very amateurish. The
photograph for my new magazine cover had
planning behind it, in order to get the perfect shot to
be used for the magazine cover. The colour grading
has also been improved on the new cover, as the
saturation and contrast have all been boosted to
make an eye-catching picture. The preliminary cover
lacks any high saturation or contrast, which leaves
everything looking very grey and draws too much
attention to the bright red price tag on the cover.