My Magazine Evaluation

By Dannisa Anderson

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

My media product (magazine) follows the same conventions as a real magazine as I copied a lot of the layouts (see next slides) and based my product on the VIBE magazine.I kept to the same conventions as I wanted to create a product that was very similar to VIBE with a slightly different target audience.

Vibe

Masthead: big and bold, positioned behind the artist- layers

Ears

Full bleed image

Eyebrow

Ears

Cover line

Barcode

Having the artist tilt his head slyly draws more attention to the cover lines

Eye contact: engages with audience

Only three colour used for the cover

VIBE cover analysis

My Front cover analysis

Ear

Eye brow

Large masthead

Full bleed image

Barcode

Eye contact

VIBE contents page analysis

Numbers to indicate articles

Eye contact

Plain background

Full bleed image

Broken contents

Shows the number of contents pages

My contents analysis

Plain background

Full bleed image

Eye contact

Number to indicate articles

Shows the number of contents pages

Q double page spread

Full bleed image

Large header

Pull out quote

Introduction

Enlarged first letter

My double page spreadPull out quote

Full bleed image

Large header

Introduction

First letter enlarged

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social group represented in my magazine are people who are interested in the Hip Hop music genre.

My magazine is simple and the attire of my model is to attract more mature music lovers

The contents page keeps to the same idea as my model is dressed casually in a respectable pose

My double page spread somewhat represents the old image of Hip Hop lovers as the model is dressed in that typical attire. The silhouette image also portrays the rebellious impact Hip Hop had back in the days.

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

One publisher of magazines is Diamond Publishing - Metropolis Group, the actual magazine is a specialist magazine as this

company specialises in music and media production.The publishers of VIBE (the magazine that my magazine is based on) is Intermedia Vibe Holdings, LLC, however I would not ask them to publish my magazine as they already have their own similar product.

I would consider asking Diamond Publishing as they publish music magazines however of different music genres: a new type of genre could be appealing as this would target another audience and broaden their

My magazine would not be likely to be sold in a corner shops but music shops such as HMV

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience is heavily based on that of VIBEs.

The differences are that there is a higher female audience than male and as VIBE is an American magazine, the ‘Spanish/Hispanic/Latino’ option was replaced by ‘Arab’ as this is more representative of urban areas in the UK.

As my double page is about the history of Hip Hop, this would attract readers who

are either interested in history of music or want to recap their youth. This is targeted at those who like to expand their general

knowledge.

The images, unlike most of VIBEs, found in my magazine are not seductive or sexualized as this magazine is aimed at females who are generally not attracted to that sort of thing.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Famous names

I kept to the conventions of VIBE and used limited number colours and fonts: this should attract a more mature audience as opposed to ‘teen magz’ that use many colours to catch their audiences attention.

Recent stories and events

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

Slideshare

InDesign CS4

InDesign is what I used to construct my media product.This was program was new to me as I had never used it before, it took a while grasp how to use it however I got to grips with it whilst creating my masthead.

I was recommended to use Slideshare to upload my files onto this blog as it can be difficult to upload them straight from a computer. Creating an account was very userful.

Photoshop

Photoshop played a very big role in creating my media product as I had to edit photos. This was also new to me and I found it difficult to crop images: this can be seen in my front cover as this was the first piece I completed. In contrast to the magazine cover, the double page spread image was more successful as I had more experience using Photoshop by this time.

The internet was also important as I used this for my research and planning, going on the VIBE website, getting images to analyse and using this blog and Slideshare.

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

What I’ve learnt about manipulation of representations:

I have learnt that using images and language, such media like magazines can target audiences by creating representations of people. They do this by editing photos, using famous people to attract the population that will be interested in buying the product.

Skills I have learnt:• I’ve learnt to use such programs like Photoshop and InDesign which I didn't know before .• I’ve learnt to analyse magazines and the right terminologies for the conventions used.

Skills I have developed:• I can now edit photos and create layouts although I have more to learn, there is room for more development.

What I’ve learnt about planning:I’ve learnt that planning to create a magazine takes a lot of time as you have to research to understand the conventions of magazines.Once you’ve researched you can decide whether to follow these conventions or not, as long as they work well with the genre or topic you are doing.