Question 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE

FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

A large amount of media products which specialise in the rock genre (such as Kerrang and Rocksound) are very male dominated. Every picture shown in Queens of Noise is of a woman, flipping the stereotype and convention completely.

When it comes to representation, Queens of Noise completely challenges conventions, when it comes to layout it conforms to them. Queens of Noise magazine has elements of its layout which are similar to that of a variety of music magazines (eg. NME, Rocksound, etc).

The design of all of the pages is minimalistic as if the pages were too cluttered and too colourful they could appear childish which would not appeal to a young adult/teen audience.

Question 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

The main aim of the magazine is to present a positive representation of women and to challenge the misogyny in the patriarchal industry. The magazine repeatedly shows women being successful and doing things traditionally perceived as masculine hobbies/careers (playing instruments, being in a band, etc). Alongside this, the magazine also aims to provide positive representations of other minority and marginalised groups. (for example featuring a mixed race woman playing the drums.

The entire magazine sets out to provide positive representations of women and I believe it has achieved this. Women are seen challenging gender roles and stereotypes as well as being feminine. Femininity is not presented as something which should be shunned and shied away from, it is embraced and celebrated. The women are shown doing things which are not seen as traditionally feminine but they do not have to forfeit their femininity in order to be respected and taken seriously. The positive representation of the women should challenge preconceived ideas on what is and is not acceptable for women as well as inspiring and empowering other women .

Question 3

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND

WHY?

FREEWAY PRESS INC.Freeway Press Inc are the publishers of Rock Sound magazine. Much like my magazine (‘Queens of Noise’), Rock Sound caters to a rock audience. Rock Sound aims at being more “underground” and less commercial. Rock Sound pride themselves on aiming at a “non-conformist” audience. I believe that this would be very appropriate for my magazine and it’s audience as one of the main aims of the magazine is to challenge stereotypes and norms. Also like my magazine Rock Sound is published monthly unlike other rock magazines (such as Kerrang which is produced by Bauer Media Group) which is published once a week. Having a new issue once a month means that the magazine can also include more in-depth and intellectual features about serious issues rather than being dominated by interviews.

Question 4

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

The target audience of my media product ‘Queens of Noise’ magazine, is primarily teenage and young adult women. I decided upon this target demographic as I believed there was a gap in the market. Women are often overlooked in the rock industry. No rock magazine appeared to welcome or cater to young women. Women could easily believe that there was no place for them in the rock industry. It has become a vicious cycle of inequality within the industry- women can not see themselves in the rock industry, they do not get involved in rock music, there are few women in rock for women to aspire to and women then still don’t see themselves in the industry. Something has to break the cycle and the print media has the opportunity to do so.

Question 5

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

I did not wish toy attempt to address and attract my audience in a way which would appear condescending or stereotypical as I was attempting to challenge and break stereotypes. If the entire magazine were pink or laced with hearts and flowers it would go against the purpose of the magazine- the magazine aims to bring women in to the industry rather than create a watered down, stereotypical industry. If an audience feels condescended to they will actively reject what you present them with. This applies to both the gender and age group of the audience.

Many media companies headed by adults will attempt to relate and attract young people in the complete wrong way. Young people do not want to be talked down to. Already in many aspects of their lives young people are expected to act like adults whilst being treated like children. In order to engage a younger audience you must not appear condescending but provide information in a way which engages them.

Young people have the ability to access an infinite number of sources of information in order to check and cross reference what they are told and will not just passively accept the information given to them. They are also living in a technological age where information is instant and reduced to its bare bones. The information given to a younger audience must be to the point. In order to encourage a younger audience to pick up and buy your magazine you must give them something which they have not seen before (for example having features on the history of women in the industry and other intellectual content). Whilst there is nothing wrong with having pieces of music gossip and news in the magazine, the audience are likely to be able to access this information from a huge range of other sources so you must provide them with something completely new.

The magazine does feature pink on the double page spread (pink is a colour stereotypically associated with girls).However, its use is symbolic of a breaking down of stereotypes and overall destroying of gender roles- an aim of the magazine. A gradient between pink (connoting femininity) and blue (connoting masculinity) signifies a blurring of the lines of the traditional ideas on gender. Also having pink featured shows women that they do not need to sacrifice and forfeit things which are traditionally feminine in order to be respected.

The main colours used throughout the magazine are black and white which are gender neutral and do not appear childish. The colours used follow conventions used in magazines such as NME whilst challenging their male dominated content.

My audience research showed that 87.5% of those surveyed positively identified the gender of my target audience and 93.8% positively identified the age of my target audience. This shows that despite not adhering to stereotypes it was still clear who the magazine was targeted at.

Question 6

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF

CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

This project has meant that I have had to use a variety of technologies some of them I was familiar with, many of them were new. I had previously used Photoshop but not to the level which I did for this project. In the past I had only used Photoshop for editing images rather than using it as a layout tool for manipulating text etc like on my front cover and contents. The programme which I spent the most time using in this product is InDesign. I used InDesign to create my double page spread. InDesign is significantly harder to use than Photoshop but is a much better platform to use when creating things with large chunks of text. After much practice I have found that despite being harder to initially grasp, when it comes to having an image with a large amount of copy such as a double page spread, InDesign is far easier to use and to manage as well as producing a better result. Alongside the production, I also learnt about various presentation programmes such as Powtoon and Slideshare.

Question 7

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE

LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

In my sixth form magazine (preliminary task) I had far too much blank space with nothing to fill it and that has been some thing I have consciously tried to avoid. Whilst it is effective to have some space and not overload the page with text and images, my sixth form magazine seemed unfinished due to the amount of space left.

Another thing which I learnt from the preliminary task is the need to take an abundance of photos, far more than you would expect to need. When it came to the production of my sixth form magazine I was left with an image which I liked but I knew could have been much better as I did not have enough images to choose from. I believe I took enough images for my music magazine as well as taking images on different days in difference settings which gave me more flexibility when it came to the production stage.