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

My music magazine incorporates the generic conventions of the puff and pug. Like for example, there is a pug on my magazine where it says “Free inside, guide to the lives of our favourite stars,

with a picture of Tom Davis on it.

My use of the pug above indicates an influence from a specific issue of the Q magazine with Madonna as the main image.

The two images below are of the specific Q magazine issue, and the specific pug that says “Free inside, 70-page special”. “Women in music”

My masthead in a way is different to other magazines as the main image doesn’t distort it in anyway so it sort of challenges the usual for big magazines. Like the Vibe magazine, with Beyoncé on the cover.

The main headline of my magazine is a pug as it is an “Exclusive” story on my brother Ken that says “Ken Iredia on new album Chronic, future plans and life with the family of media royalty.

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

• Represented in this are punk rockers with flamboyant hairstyles in Zack Cartmell. There is a stereotype that to be a punk rocker, you need a flamboyant hair style otherwise you wont be accepted as one almost.

• Gender is represented in a stereotypical way in my magazine with my sister. The pictures of her are very model like and in that way more stereotypical for a girl to have pictures like that, while my brother as the main image is more stereotypical for a boy to pose with not much more than just looking at the camera and smiling a little.

These are the two images. One is my magazine front cover main image, he barely shows much of a pose in the picture, like a stereotypical boy.

The second image is one of the images on the double page spread. It shows her in a stereotypical, model like pose. Which is how my magazine presents her, as a model.

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

• My magazine might be distributed by the Bauer media group, the are a German company based in Hamburg and operate in 15 different countries world-wide. The company’s UK history began in 1987 when the published and distributed the Bella magazine and as their publishing company H Bauer became the third largest publishing company in the UK, they then continued to operate in the UK, publishing and distributing such magazines as kerrang! and Take a break.

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The H Bauer publishing company has gone from successful magazine, to successful magazine. It is the sort of company that I want publishing and distributing my magazine.

My magazine is similar to the Q magazine, which is also distributed by the H Bauer publishing company as well. Both my magazine and the Q magazine are mixed genre magazines much like the Box television company that the Bauer media group have a 50% stake in with channel 4, which has such mixed genre music channels like 4music and the Box. On the whole, I think that my magazine fits in with the way the Bauer media group looks to stamp their image on all fronts of media in the way my magazine, looks to stamp its own image on as many genre of music as possible.Bauer Media Group has a 50%

stake in the British television company Box Television, the other half owned by Channel 4. Box Television acts as the content subsidiary that produces several popular music television channels

If my magazine was niche market, then perhaps it would be distributed by newspaper companies by post. To specific people who subscribe to my specific magazine in general, because if it was niche market, then I would focus more on one thing in general that my target audience will demand.

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

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

• Although my magazine is very mixed and focuses on as many genre of music as possible, the main target readers for this magazine is still more on younger people, aged between about 13 to 25. I believe that people of that age group are more likely to be interested in music magazine than any other age group.

My magazine is similar to the Rolling Stone magazine, although they tend to appeal to a bigger range of target readers, however what is similar between us is that we both believe we have the right notion on who are the best of the big musicians.

5. How did you attract/address your audience

• To attract my target readers to my magazine, I focused a lot on mainstream artists like Bruno Mars or Kanye West for example, as they are quite big around the world right now.

• I chose the colour of the masthead to be the same colour as the hood on Ken Iredia, who is my main image. The colour was a bold blue which made the masthead and the main image stand out.

• The exclusives are of the Iredia family on the front cover. They are supposed to be a “Family of media royalty” so this is clearly a good way to attract readers to the magazine.

• The big images on the contents and double page spread are all very photo shoot like and they make the people look like the superstars that they are portraying.

I wanted the language to stand out and be more exciting so I made the magazine headlines seem like news headlines in how sharp they were

The attitude of the magazine is that we know what the best is. This is an attitude that a lot of music fans share and with this attitude, I can show that the magazine is a fan of music

This is how I wish to address the readers, like we are all music fans discussing about mainstream acts, and underground upcoming talent, to create the delivery

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

• I used paint.net to crop the main image of the magazine on one half of it, while keeping the other half the same. The strengths of paint.net is that it gets rid of any unwanted parts of the image and does so in fine detail. However, it is often a very long process but if you are willing to do all the work, then it is very worth it.

• The problems I faced where in the print screening of the work, as I had to make it small so I could print screen all of it. This made it hard to see the writing.

• I made the photographic choices based on the ones that made them look like superstars, as I was essentially promoting the people on the images. I used the most model like photos of my sister who was supposed to be a model in the magazine.

• The blogger process was very simple. At first I didn’t fully understand how to upload things on there, but with a bit of explaining, it became very easy to operate.

The Three Elements• For the research and planning

bit of the course, I performed research into similar products of my magazine, in which I looked at mixed genre magazines like, Q, Vibe and the Rolling Stones magazine

These magazines are my inspiration for my own magazine, as they are big magazines, and they focus on artists of multiple genre.

I based my front cover on the issue of the Q magazine directly below.

The Three Elements

The Final Product

Contents page

Double page spread

These are the finished products of my Contents page and Double page spread. For these two, I produced them on Microsoft word. On the double page spread, I did the two different pages on two different word documents, and then I later on collated them together, while leaving a gap. I did this on the paint document. I saved these two on the paint document after print screening them into paint. I then uploaded these two into my blog.

This is the front cover of my magazine. I decided to use paint.net to brighten the main image more and make it stand out.I added text boxes and removed the fill and outline.The barcode is on the left and there is a pug at the very bottom of the magazine.The exclusive story on the main image is a puff.

I produced this on Microsoft word, and then print screened it into paint and saved it on the JPEG files. I then uploaded it onto my blog

Three ElementsThe final Product

Evaluation• I did all my evaluation on the blog as it was quicker than doing it on word and print screening

it into paint, and then saving it on the JPEG file and uploading it from there.• After every update on the blog of my magazine, I would write analysis and evaluation on

what I have done, what software and font I used, and other things like the steps that I took to upload the work into my blog.

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

• In my preliminary task, I used a photo of myself, cropped it and put a masthead on it and a few headlines. It wasn’t very detailed but it was only supposed to be a first attempt at what a front cover would look like. During the progress from this to the final product I have learnt:

• How to remove the fill and outline of a text box on word.

• How to feather and crop an image on paint.net.• Different magazines that are similar to my final product.• The different distribution and publication companies.• To effectively theme the colour scheme of a magazine on the masthead etc.

How successful do you feel your end product is in fulfilling the task? How well does it fit the brief?

• I feel that my end product is successful is fulfilling the task. I feel that I have used different codes and conventions, as well as using different fonts on the magazine.

• I used influences from other magazines such as Q, Rolling Stone and Vibe magazine from the research into similar products that I conducted.

• I cropped photos and made them fit into the magazine more by basing the text around them.• I edited photos on paint.net by feathering them and reducing the colour in some of the photos.