emilymcdougallasmedia

My task was to produce 3 products which included a front page, double page spread and a contents page of a brand new music magazine thought up and created by me. All my ideas, images and style had to be my own although I could use inspiration from other current magazines. This is my evaluation which summarises everything I've done in order to create my products and why.

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

This is my front cover in which I created, I have annotated the conventional characteristics a music magazine usually consists of and displayed that by using another similar magazine. As you can see, I have used mostly all the same conventions as “Q” magazine, which was my aim. I’m now going to talk about the conventions I used in depth, why I’ve placed them there and why they are vital to make the magazine a successful one.

Firstly, I have placed my Masthead in the top left hand corner on the page; this is definitely a usual convention of a music magazine. The reason why I’ve placed it here is when a magazine is placed on a shelf, in a store etc. you can usually only see the top left hand so it is ideal that the masthead is placed here so the audience recognise it straight away amongst the other magazines. For the font of the masthead I’ve used Utsaah and used capital letters in white, this may look plain however I wanted it to look this way as I feel for my genre, it is quite simple. Around the text I have added an “Drop Shadow” in black which is quite soft, I think this makes the title just look more professional and looks more effective unlike if it was just the white text by itself. I also used the “History brush tool” which erasers the history on your work, I used this tool to rub out a part of the “E” on “Indie” to make it look like it’s behind Rachel’s head. I think this makes it look more effective as, it wouldn’t look as good if it was just overlapping on to the central image. Underneath the masthead, I’ve created a sell line directly below which is “For the soul” which carries on from the masthead. I just thought this sell line was really effective as soul is an essence of a person, living thing or object and music is usually really important to some people and can even effect who they are as in person, I just generally liked this sell line. Also directly under the sell line I’ve put the date and issue number, these are usually placed in this position, the date is not as important as people may buy it on different days etc. However the issue number is, for example buyers may collect this magazine or know if they missed one etc.

I have tried to re-create a similar splash to the “Q” magazine, with the blue circle. I really liked how this looked as it was eye catching, I wouldn’t usually chose blue as an eye catching colour but on this particular magazine and because I have only used very few colours I think it works well. This acts like a teaser towards the audience, I have only put “50 Greatest Artists” as then they will want to know more, and what exactly it’s about. I have placed it just above the main feature as this is where the audience are probably going to look towards first of all. My other features are at the opposite left hand side of the page, this is because I had space there and I made them smaller and they do not have priority over the page. I have used the bands/artists names to attract the audience; also I have put the names in similar writing to the actual bands logo which makes it even more recognisable. Underneath I have put “Leeds Festival” as another big feature as it’s important and exclusive! This was very suited to my magazine as people who buy and read this magazine are very likely to be interested in this and will want to buy my magazine. Also exclusive means that you won’t hear it anywhere else but here.

My name feature is about my model on the front image, I have placed this right-central next to her and this is audience the first place the audience will look obviously after reading the title. I’ve put “Rachel Escritt” In bold black text which makes it stand out against the neutral background and shows some importance. Underneath there is sub heading which is “New Girl” I’ve used this in a hot pink almost handwriting text to make it look like “school” to show that’s she young and new to industry, which usually people want to read about if there’s been a lot of talk about her. Under that is placed the bar code, I think this is the right place to put it as its out of the way but still clear as the price is alongside it and usually, if you’re looking for the price you automatically look at the barcode.

I am now going to talk about my main image which of course takes up the whole page on the front cover so it is fairly high in importance. I dressed my model in a pastel floral “bralet” which are very fashionable at the minute; also over the top I’ve put a thin neutral collar top. On the bottom she’s wearing also pastel coloured floral shorts which you can barely see. I have chosen quite neutral colours as I felt this fit into my genre correctly. Everything Rachel is wearing is from “Topshop” which is stereotypically an Indie sort of clothing shop which sells everything from the latest fashion. She is also wearing a brown bracelet, this doesn’t have any purpose except the fact that she was wearing it at the time however this put maybe add a personal touch to the magazine, if she was an artist. Manipulated the image slightly on Photoshop as I didn’t want it to look over the top airbrushing as my magazine is not a Pop magazine. However I did touch up a lot on the photo. I started by using the “Spot healing tool” to get rid of any unwanted spots or moles to make the skin look much clearer before airbrushing it. I then used the “Gaussian Blur” to airbrush the skin, there is different ways of doing this however I just airbrushed the full image then used the “History tool brush” to erase all the parts of the face and the image except for the skin to make it look really clear which also makes the magazine look more professional. I have added a few simple effects such as brightening the photograph a little to make sure it doesn’t look dull.

This is my contents page that I created which I have again annotated with a contents page from “Q” magazine pointing out the conventions. I felt like my contents went well, and was 10x better than my first draft I created. I started off by putting the title of the magazine, along with the sell line which I think is part of the title in the same place, just like “Q” magazine have, I like this as it just carries on a theme and looks part of the same magazine. I did this all on a white background which I liked as it’s just plain and doesn’t look messy and carried on with the house style which was basically yellow and pink. I put contents at the top, acting like a masthead to obviously inform the audience that this is the contents page I did this in capital, black writing as I felt it looked really bold and tidy. Underneath that I put the website of the magazine as this acts like an information page and I felt like it was vital and would encourage the audience to visit the website, I probably would have added some writing or arrow to draw more attention to the website just to make it more fun. Carrying on with the house style I wrote “This week” in yellow scribble writing which I loved, this adds a casual look to the contents along with the neat blackness of it too. I have made my titles such as “Features” and “Regulars” slightly bigger than the actual content just to make it clearer. I’ve also made the page numbers slightly bigger also, as I know from the past when I’ve been looking at contents page and the numbers are quite small. On the right hand of the page, I’ve put in a photograph of Rachel which is my main feature which the audience have likely to have bought the magazine to read about, I manipulated this in Photoshop. I’ve made the page number really clear and writing “page” before it just makes it that little bit different from the other contents on the page. On my front cover I’ve wrote “Rachel Escritt” in the same writing I’ve wrote “New girl” on the front page which keeps with the theme. Also added the photograph at the bottom, just too add more photos to the contents as I felt it looked too empty. And put in a yellow circle that you can win a holiday to a festival which may interest them. The letter from the editor I’ve placed at the bottom left of the page, this isn’t that important however its friendly towards the audience.

2.) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My product represents obviously the people which would perhaps buy my magazine. As my magazine is Indie genre the people who buy it are likely to fit into that stereotypical indie. The genre Indie is associated with mainly independent labels, which isn’t usually mainstream music which you hear in the charts but different type of music. An ”Indie” type of person is usually stereotypically in their teens to mid-twenties, they can be classed as a niche audience as they like a particular type of music however Indie has become extremely popular in the past years as it’s become a big part of society. The whole idea of being “Indie” is to do with dressing how you want, listening to the music you want and being who are you as a person which I think is a really good message to give to teenagers which can be quite secure. The only way my magazine could perhaps represent social groups, is through my model (which is an artist). This needs to be a good representation as usually artists can have a big influence on most people with their music and they are also likely to act like role models.

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

2.) Who would be the audience for your media product?

As my music genre is Indie, also including (Indie Pop and Indie Rock) which have quite niche audiences I am going to target my audience around the ages of 15-19. The music itself is usually targetted at young people as its usually very independent music which isn't usually mainstream as pop music for example. The gender is going to be targeted at both female and male, as there is going to be different artists included in the magazine that will appeal to both genders instead of just one, making it equal. As my age group goes as young as fifteen years old they are probably going to fit in with the E section in S.E.G as they are most likely to be unemployed. Perhaps even D or C2 to include nineteen year olds, as they may be in full time employment or semi-skilled manual workers by that age.

3.) How did you attract/address your audience?

There are certain things in my magazine that are going to appeal to my audience specifically. My SEG is is E as my target audience is most teenagers; therefore at this age they are more likely to be unemployed and studying. Also D and C2 are features as they could be employed if they are older or maybe even semi-skilled manual workers as you can see from the above. Therefore I think my magazine is affordable at £2.00 a fortnight, I think this is a good price as I’ve found some magazines can be quite expensive although they do offer a lot of content I don’t think, personally as a teenager myself I could pay over the odds for a music magazine so it had to be cheap for the content as money is precious at this age. This is going to be really important to my SEG. Obviously, if they are employed and in section D or C2 they are going to perhaps feel more comfortable buying the magazine and are going to buy it more often then maybe SEG C. However, to tackle this I could of maybe put special offers on the magazine so only some fortnights you save a £1.00 or 50p to make it seem more appealing to buy as they will think they are getting a deal. (Audience feedback and video posted on Blogger)

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

I used Photoshop to manipulate all my images on my product, this programme I used first of all. For each product I started by uploading my chosen image into Photoshop and then starting to work on it. I’ve only recently started using Photoshop, so I didn’t have good product knowledge of the programme however I learnt as going through the task how to use it and sometimes doing some research. I used the spot fix on all of my pictures which my model was in; this just gets rid of spots and moles/freckles really easily instead of just airbrushing them out. I found this a really quick tool to use and was really effective as you wouldn’t have ever known that they were there. Also, I used “Gaussian Blur” to airbrush the skin, I’ve always wanted to have known how to airbrush skin and this was the simplest way. After doing this I just used the history brush tool on the entire image except the skin as the skin is the only part that should be airbrushed. As I have said already in my evaluation, I didn’t want it to look over the top as this can look really obvious and is usually associated with Pop magazines and not my genre, Indie. At first, I felt that the different layers on Photoshop was really confusing however, as I got used to the programme I found this easier and basically made a new layer whenever I was doing a new thing and renamed them so I could go back and change things, I found this really useful as I was always changing my mind to what looked good and what didn’t. I didn’t use the red eye removal as my camera already had a detector on it, which stopped red-eye so that saved me time doing that.

I found using Photoshop quite difficult and frustrating in using text as you couldn’t move it around as well as Publisher. However I did do most of my text in Photoshop as I liked the effects and knew that they wouldn’t look professional in Publisher. However, I did simple things like the price and the date in Publisher to save to time and also was a lot easier than doing that in Photoshop.

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

I have made progression in the whole thing I think. I’ve learnt much more about Photoshop and how to use all the tools in detail. I work much faster on the programme and know exactly what I’m doing on it, instead of just playing around with it. I also feel like I’ve progressed in much more creativity, as I’ve looked at million more magazines and felt like that helped me along as well. Also with the prelimary task being a college magazine, it was hard to create as you don’t get many professional ones however with the music magazine there was much more choice in what you’d like to do, such as what genre.