Media StudiesMedia StudiesCoursework: Coursework:

The EvaluationThe Evaluation

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

Although the overall designs on my front cover, contents and double page spread are conventional, there are aspects of each one that are unconventional. For example the title on the front cover is vertical and down the side rather than horizontal at the very top of the page. Furthermore, stereotypical titles are partly behind the image that’s used which is not what I chose to do; the size of the writing is not particularly large like in most magazines either, so it would have to be the images and articles that capture the attention of the potential customer.

In both my double page spread and contents page, there are no titles, which isn’t that common so could also be classed as unconventional because of those aspects. There are, however, some stereotypical features to my designs; a perfect example would be the layout of the interview as that is what is expected of that type of article as there are quotes from the duo, and there is also a title that then has another type of title under, using the affect of ellipses. I did try to create a little difference in my work though as the answers from both participants I placed in different colours which aren’t all that common in magazines and normally on any interview of any kind the very beginning of the article is an introduction. They also tend to have the very first letter bigger than the others and a different colour or use bold/italic to attract more attention to specific parts, whereas mine has no title or any introduction of sorts.

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

On the majority of the products for the magazines, because of the age of the duo on the front cover and double page spread, and the age of the celebrities on the contents page, it relates to particular social groups of that age. The images can also relate to certain social groups because of their clothing and the colours used. There isn’t a lot of piercings on any of the ‘stars’ used and straight away you can tell it isn’t a ‘rock’ magazine as the types of font, images and colours are not to that genre and so would not suit those particular social groups. There are also no tattoos shown on any of the stars, well not that you can see, and so it represents these people, and those who can relate to them as more likely to be ‘innocent’ and represent the social groups as people who are fairly easy to get along with and cause no trouble.

Moreover, as the magazine is of three genres it could be for certain social groups such as non-labelled teenagers and ‘chavs’ but definitely not for ‘emos’ or ‘goths’.However, this does not mean it is grudging other types of social groups and saying they are trouble makers, it just means the images are trying to get across a more laid back feeling and relate to those of a similar age or similar clothing and music.

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

I would personally expect the magazine to be advertised in a newsagents along with other music magazine, television guides, gossip/’girly’ magazines as there is nothing obscene about the images or the articles that would be covered in the magazine. It is also of a very reasonable price (£1.00) and as I said before it would not be for a target audience of highly stressed or powerful people, nor an older generation and therefore would be found on a shelf with other younger magazines for similar people even if other magazines they were interested in were ‘gossip’.

Like many companies, ‘Down The Wire’ would be it’s own and therefore be published in their own company and printed out, then distributed out to the newsagents, or a supermarket or a general shop such as ‘WHSmith’, as they sell a range of magazines and even though they are not a media institution they would still be distributing the magazines. Additionally I can not imagine a specialist music/film shop distributing the magazines as they tend to sell albums/singles, sometimes books, and films. If there was enough money though, it may have been possible to place an advert on television to raise the profile of the magazine, which would interest potential buyers who had not seen the magazine yet, however adverts can only raise the knowledge of the product and not distribute it.

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

My products are very much made for teenagers/adolescents with the colours, articles and images used, however people of most ages who like that type of music could also be interested in, though the majority of people who enjoy listening to ‘indie’, ‘pop’ and ‘R&B’ music tend to be of a younger generation. The magazine would probably attract more female than male buyers as well as it doesn’t seem as ‘masculine’ and the information could be classed as more ‘girly’ than equal. An advantage of working on three types of music genres is the fact that it can fit more social groups than just one genre could, though a disadvantage would be finding enough for each genre each week and maybe a different celebrity for each genre so would cost more.

There are of course other reasons why these genres are more likely to be for teenagers and adolescents than the older generations, and that is because of the settings in which the images are taken and the clothes the artists are wearing. Also because the magazine has some gossip articles mentioned in the contents, it is not really the type of magazine a male, the older generation or a highly successful person would read if they are overly stressed.

In my opinion, the magazine isn’t very masculine because of the layout and colours used, moreover the stereotypical thoughts of a music magazine for a guy would be dark colours, messy layout, and mainly a ‘rock’ magazine or more ‘heavy’ music located inside the magazine. I also believe girls tend to read music magazines more so than guys, as guys like magazines on cars or other topics.

It is for a younger generation where money isn’t that much of an issue as they don’t particularly save for anything in particular so their ‘pocket money’ or wages from part-time jobs can buy little things such as a magazine weekly. Additionally at that age they should not be as stressed about things (even though GCSEs and A-levels are stressful) because they do not have to support a family or pay the bills, neither will they have had that much experience in the real world. The magazine is supposed to soothe away any stresses that could be associated with nearby examinations they may have, or worries in general with friends/family so the magazine could help to occupy their mind from those subjects, or could interest them if they did not have much to do.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Throughout the magazine there is a sense of gossip as the articles are on interviews and it says about a ‘new celeb couple’, which would attract some female teenagers as a lot of them enjoy reading that kind of magazine. However the other articles should interest the rest of the target audience, as there are 3 types of genres; pop, indie and R&B so there is something there that should cater for the majority of people who listen to that kind of music. There are also quite a few opportunities to meet the main stars featured in this one issue, for example, ‘chance to meet and spend the day with The Pigeon Detectives’ and there are two other opportunities to meet stars of the other two genres so it is not just giving one genre the chance to meet someone of the genre almost discriminating against the other two.

The colours are another way I attracted the audience, along with the clothes and the expressions the ‘celebrities’ use, especially the new duo as on the front cover there expressions would appeal to teenagers more so than a 30 year old say, because they’re using really cheesy expressions in the main image. However there are some more mature photographs underneath and the ‘editor’s note’ on the contents page is very conventional n fairly formal so addresses all of the target audiences one way or another. The clothes are relatively average and common for the target audience to wear.

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

At the start of this project I knew only the basics such as adding a background to something, using certain fading techniques, however when I created my preliminaries I came across the red-eye tool on fireworks which was an enormous help, though I didn’t actually need to use it for my mock-ups or final products for a music magazine.

Throughout these last few months I have been discovering new techniques and how to improve designs, before I started this course I never new how to download fonts or how to copy them into the font file mainly because I didn’t know where that was. Additionally I found out how to add colour to images so instead of having the colours on the images that were there at the time I could change them to certain colours like on my contents, which added a little more interest as you would have to focus on the image a while to figure what it was enticing you more so into buying the magazine. Whilst using fireworks for some details, the majority of the work came from the use of Serif PagePlus. This allowed me to set the size of the paper perfectly, being able to crop, change the colours and in general try to create a good product at the end of it.

On the bottom left image on my front cover, as I wanted my title of the magazine down the side, the wall in the image wasn’t thick enough and so didn’t look right, however with the help of Serif PagePlus and the layering tab (whether you want the image moving to the front or back) I manage to place the same image behind it and stretching the wall.

Moreover I learnt about www.blogger.com, I have never used a program on the internet like that before, neither www.slideshare.net and was very interesting and helpful to have learnt about both of these.

The main thing I learnt about that was really useful was mega pixels and how many you need on a camera to get a good image out of it at the end without it being blurry, because my camera was 5 mega pixels, my way around this was to use 3 images on the front rather than one big image, taking up the majority of the page and fitting the stereotypical label.

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

As I stated in the last slide, before I created my preliminary ideas, I had hardly any idea on how to make a magazine front cover, obviously I knew the basics but before I actually tried I had no idea how hard it was to get it spot on. Below are my two products from my preliminary and they look rubbish, however, they helped me tremendously with my final products, the change in how I thought about them to how they appear at the end of it is amazing. I learnt about removing red-eye when I created my preliminaries which was helpful, however I didn’t actually need to use the tool from fireworks on my final products on any of my images. My preliminaries also helped to show that the use of one strong colour is not a good idea and that the images would have to be a lot bigger and in better locations for my final designs.

Additionally I learned that the use of the star shapes on my preliminary made it appear more amateur like, as does the radial fade used on the main image. It makes it appear more tacky and does not attract attention to the cover, so even though I was trying to make it more aesthetically pleasing with carrying a theme throughout the magazine, however it has the opposite effect and made it appear worse. I still wanted to do this so the borders around all the images are the same and does not appear over the top but links them all in relatively well.

On the next slide are my preliminaries and then my new and improved final designs for my music magazine underneath so it is easier to compare how they have improved as in my eyes it definitely looks more professional, whereas my preliminaries didn’t. Although I think the research I did before my preliminaries also helped me to get to this final stage.

Before.. & AfterBefore.. & After

Before…Before…

After… After…