Evaluation

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

Within my Media product (a rock magazine), my product uses forms of real media conventions firstly by using the Twitter and Facebook logos to interact with the active audiences, as the large majority of 16-24 use these forms of social media, so it’s a good way to interact with them, and gain more fans of the brand, which will increase readership.On the double page spread I also included the ITunes logo, which is an established media brand, and is another feature of other websites/media included in my magazine.

In this screen shot of my contents page you can see at the bottom where I have included the Facebook and Twitter logos, so they’re in a clear place to see, and on a page every reader will look at and therefore see the links my magazine has with social networks.

In the screenshot of my double page spread, in the bottom right hand corner is the Itunes logo, linking my magazine to an established media brand, and clearly stating to the audience that my magazine has links with established brands in the media. This helps publicise the band my article is focusing on, and provides the reader with something else to do in their spare time (go on Itunes and listen to in this case, Killer Times’ hit single.

Secondly, throughout my magazine it contains a house colour theme of Black, White, Red and Yellow, which I found out during my research that pretty much every Rock based genre music magazine uses this colour theme, such as Kerrang use the Yellow text on there fonts, and often have a black background, and NME regularly have a white background behind the same red text every issue. This is because these colours are all effective to visually attract my audience, in terms of standing out against each other due to the large contrast, but also show maturity, quite plain colours, compared to in a young children's magazine you would see a massive variety of bright/vibrant colours. The colour scheme is clear to see on the example below (my contents page) …

The next media convention I use in my magazine is that all of the fonts in my magazine are sharp, and some of them are eroding, which again I realised in my research is a common sight in Rock magazines, again, such as Kerrang use eroded fonts. These kind of fonts make imply to the reader that the context is explosive, as rock often is, and really make the Rock magazine unique, because Rock is seen to have fans that are crazy, and these fonts look pretty unique/crazy, therefore challenge forms of media conventions as these fonts aren’t mainstream, and again appeal to the specific audience of yes Rock fans. Old men more than likely won’t particularly appreciate the font, neither will young children, but teenagers to people middle aged (my target audience)will. Using similar fonts and colours throughout creates consistency in the magazine – which is vital.

Another form of real Media conventions my product uses is making key words of the text bold, to catch the audience’s eye. The words I make bold are always key words, whether this be the the title of the magazine, or the name of the band which are clear examples shown below. This is not only a selling point, but makes the text much more accessible to read, and more appealing, and differentiates articles from each other too.

Alike other music genre magazines, not just Rock, mastheads to give a title/name to the magazine (Total Rock Music) which creates a brand. This is always placed at the top of the magazine as a focal attraction for the audience. These are commonly abbreviated, such as in NME, Mojo, Spin I have followed this convention because it fits the page better. I abbreviated it to TRM to stand for Totally Rock Music, which informs readers of my genre and content. I followed the headline of calling my contents page Contents, and on the double page spread the article’s headline is Killer Times (the name of the band the article is based on). The titles are always in the largest text, and use bold, outstanding fonts and colours to catch the audience’s eye. The title/headline is a major introduction into the forthcoming pages/articles.

I also used pull quotes in the magazine from the people who the main article is going to be based on, so the reader can get a feel for the article before they begin, as it is an introduction/hint as to what the article is going to be based on. I specifically chose these are they are key bits of language/ information for the audience. These are used in fairly large, outstanding text/fonts, using an exclamation mark at the end to emphasise the excitement – as the pull quote is obviously a quote from one of the featured people talking about the main point of the article, which is often exciting!

It is important that the pull quote is regularly placed on the front cover of the magazine, as it is usually a huge selling point. On my front cover the pull quote was “we would love to headline at such a fest!” This quote includes an exclamation mark to emphasise the excitement within the band and revolving my magazine, and it is placed considerably centrally in large, bold, clear red text to make it stand out.

Again, like all magazines in the modern day, my front cover consists of a bar code, issue number, date and price. The barcode enables the purchaser to actually be able to purchase the magazine formally in a shop by being scanned, the price obviously informs the purchaser the price, and makes or breaks whether: 1) He can afford it or not 2) Whether he/she thinks it is worth the money. The issue number also informs the purchaser what issue the magazine is, as not every purchaser can remember what every issue of the magazine looks like, so they could accidentally buy the same one, however if they check the issue number, they won’t purchase the wrong one. Last of all the date lets the purchaser know when the issue was produced, and therefore lets him prepare for the next edition to come out.

Another form of media that you see regularly in magazines which I have used is a plug - a circle with some basic text in, informing the audience of something inside the magazine that they NEED to see. I made this circle considerably large and bright so it is noticeable. This is yet another thing which attracts people who may only glance at the magazine, and notice the plug (circle and text) stating something exciting is inside. Within my plug, I used the words ‘Exclusive interview’ which isshort and snappy – not giving anything away. ‘Exclusive’ is a buzz word, as it is exciting, which is another form of media used in every day magazines.

The image of the Kerrang magazine front cover shows their use of a plug, as it is a common convention in all magazines, especially Rock magazines, which is a key reason as to why I included a plug.

My text on the double page spread is in 2 columns, which a lot of magazines use, sometimes even 3 or 4. This just makes the text look more accessible, compared to one huge block of text which looks boring and looks like there is a lot more there to read than there actually is. At the beginning of the text on the double page spread, I used a drop cap as another media feature to stand out and break the text up a little more, and it clearly indicates the audience immediately where the article begins. Another thing to break the text up is another pull quote which is just after the beginning section of the article.

Splash images are used on the front cover and double page spread, taking up either all of, or a large part of the page. These have plain backgrounds (a shade of white), and contain the featured people of this issue of the magazine. The people featured in the image are also wearing appropriate clothing. Looking fairly smart/casual, not dressed immaturely, and are wearing the main colours of the theme, black and red most noticeably, along with one of the band members wearing a leather jacket – which is an extremely frequent sight in Rock star's every day clothing.Another form of media used is the competition I have put on the contents page, which attracts people to buy the magazine, and enter the competition due to the appropriate prizes – tickets to festivals. I put an example of this by using an image of someone who has won a competition, and as a prize, collected tickets to Leeds Festival, to persuade people to enter, and subscribe to the magazine.

This form of media follows on from my last point. Subscriptions are advertised in clear places in magazines, and companies want people to commit and purchase the magazine every time it comes out. So I included it in my magazine saying: ‘Subscribe to Total Rock Magazine for £2.50 a month – it won’t disappoint!’ and placed it in a large yellow box so it stands out. Here I am advertising the magazine is considerably cheap yet again, and confirming the magazine will not disappoint, which will make the audience think they will certainly get their money’s worth.

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

First of all, after my research I realised immediately that the main target audience for a rock music magazine is 16-24 year olds, therefore I had to include specific content to appeal to them, otherwise the magazine wouldn’t sell.One of the ways I have represented a particular social group is by including photos of band members and prize winners who fit into the 16-24 age category, so the main target audience can relate to the image and article. I represented teenagers by them in the photos wearing dark clothing, such as a leather jacket which has connotations of rebellion, and also the photo is from a high angle, looking down on the 2 teenage boys on the front cover, which shows how society looks down on teenagers.

Supporting that point, in the image there is 2 boys and 1 girl, and the main gender purchaser of rock music magazines were predominantly boys, so I included more boys in the main image, and in the magazine as a whole, but I did include a girl in the main image, because some girls do buy rock magazines, and I need to appeal to mainly my largest purchaser audience (males 16-24), but also include some content for other audiences.

In the image I used with the 2 boys and a girl, the boys are dressed traditionally with most of their body covered up, in comparison to the girl acting as a femme fatale revealing slightly more of her body, which not only represents females, but attracts the male gaze. The boys are dressed in the same way in all of the photos throughout too, to show that it’s a consistent style of how they dress.

Obviously this being a Rock magazine, all the articles within are based on Rock artists – no other genres, otherwise Rock fans wouldn’t purchase it, and it wouldn’t be a rock magazine!My magazine also represents the social category of ABC1 as firstly it costs only £2.50 which it states on the front cover, but also the characters aren’t dressed in suits, they’re dressed typically like people of the ABC1 category, such as wearing a hoodie, trainers etc. This is seen in the screenshots of my images used on the last few slides.

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

The media institution I would choose to distribute my media product would be IPC Media, because out of the institutions I researched, IPC produced the most magazines out of them all, and also a lot of the magazines they produce were of a Rock based genre – this shows they have experience/know how of producing magazines of this type, but that the owners/creators of other magazines trust IPC to distribute it. The institution I compared IPC Media to was Bauer. Examples of magazines that IPC produce for example are: NME

most noticeably, along with magazines from other categories which are extremely well known, such as Country Life (from the category of country pursuits). The fact IPC produce plenty of high profile magazines is a large advantage of going with a larger company. The benefit of possibly going with a smaller company such as Development Hell is that I wouldn’t become just one magazine caught up around lots of others, with them not producing many other magazines, especially not of the Rock genre, I would be put first, which is unlikely in an institution such as Bauer..

My magazine is aimed at quite a Niche market, as it is categorised as a Rock magazine, but within the Rock genre, there are different genres of music still, and my magazine is mainly Indie Rock, it isn’t aimed across a vast audience of Rock fans/bands

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

Early on before I started constructing my magazine I carried out some research by looking on the internet to look into who buys Rock magazines, as that is the genre of magazine I produced, and by creating a questionnaire on Survey Monkey asking questions such as: age, gender, etc so I could put together a reader profile, which is on the next slide.

Reader ProfileStatus: Full-time students.Gender: Male – 79% Female – 21%Age: 16-24.Most people are of the social grading ABC1.Price willing to pay: £2.10-£3.Colours they want to see: Red.Magazines per month: 0-2.Images on the magazine: On location.Subscription: Most don’t subscribe, or haven’t.Genre: Most prefer the plain Rock genre.Social network: Nearly all use Facebook, closely followed by Twitter.

Andrew is a male 17, and lives in York, and fits into the social grading category of ABC1. He stated that he didn’t want to spend more than £3 on a magazine, and would like to see the colour red involved mainly in the magazine, as it is a consistent feature throughout most Rock magazines, and is a mature colour. Andrew doesn’t subscribe to a magazine, or read more than 2 per month, yet he said that if it attracted him that much with interesting articles, and iconography, then he would seriously consider it. Something that would tempt Andrew to purchase the magazine would be a competition with prizes such as festival tickets, or simply money so that he could go to a festival with friends, and listen to live music, and bands that he has a real interest in, because Rock is real music! Andrew regularly uses social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter along with his mates, this allows him to find out more information on magazines etc. as then he can’t miss the information been distributed, and means he doesn’t have to research the details himself.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my specific audience by using the colour scheme which on the whole, all Rock magazines use as a representation of themselves, as all Rock fans recognise most Rock magazines will have colours like: black, white, red and yellow on them. These colours were used within fonts which are bold and eroding, again, symbolising a Rock magazine, as the text is unique and large, similarly to the genre itself. The colours and font are all seen in the image below, which is the front cover, therefore it is the first part of the magazine a purchaser would notice, so it is vital that the front cover uses these selling points to attract the audience. Rock magazines like mine use these types of fonts and colour schemes firstly because the colours are mature and don’t appeal to children that are young like colours such as orange, green and blue etc would, and secondly the fonts are unique like Rock music itself, and yet again, the eroded fonts attract teenagers mainly as they’re seen as been cool and rare – young children won’t necessarily care about the fonts.

Another way in which I attracted my audience was by including a competition which was a popular question in the interview, as the person who answered the question in the interview really liked the prospect of firstly having a competition, but secondly having prizes relating to the topic, so instead of winning a car for example, you could win tickets to a festival. This attracts fans to buy the magazine simply because there is a chance they could win tickets to their favourite festival. I have included this in the screenshot of my contents page below. The competition is advertised in the plug, and directly beneath there is a quote from a previous winner of the magazine’s competition, which persuades others to enter the competition, and the photo of the person who won is someone who is a typical purchaser of my magazine (male, between 16-24, and in the social category of ABC1).

A major thing which determines whether people purchase a magazine or not is the price, so I gave a list of prices in my questionnaire asking people what they think is a reasonable price, and I came to the conclusion thanks to my research that £2.50 is suitable because it isn’t too much money for my social grading category of ABC1, and most of my audience are teenagers too who can’t work often due to education, so £2.50 is affordable for them too. Following on from this obviously the price is positioned above the barcode on the front cover. As it is a cheap/reasonable price for my target audience, I placed the price in an obvious place so that the audience can easily find out how much it is, and in most cases purchase it. Because it isn’t expensive, I’m not afraid to hide the price and/or make the text really small.

This graph from my questionnaire proves that my main target audience were mainly willing to pay between £2.10 and £3 for a magazine, so £2.50 (in the middle) was the price I decided on.

Another method I used to attract my audience on the front cover was to list the bands the magazine contains articles and/or interviews with so they know they can buy the magazine and get their money’s worth, instead of hoping it will include their favourite bands, by this people will see it includes bands that they like. Also, I have included interviews with individuals, and bands which are all slightly different, to provide that bit more of a variety so the magazine appeals to a slightly wider target audience. This is at the bottom left of the front cover in a noticeable position.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?Whilst going through the process of constructing my product, I have learnt about many technologies. First of all I am now much, much better at Adobe Photoshop. When I first started I didn’t understand how to do basically anything, now I’d say I have rather extensive knowledge of the programme. For example, I can edit parts of the background of photos away by using the magic wand tool – instead of using a rubber which is extremely inaccurate, which is the method I would have used when I first started. One of the most basic but massively effective tools I used on Photoshop was creating a stroke around text to make it stand out more on the background. I did this by selecting the layer of text that I wanted to add a stroke to, and either sliding the size bar up and down to see the effect it had on the text below (Dave Grohl in this instance) or by typing the size I wanted into the little box where it says 3. A major technique I learnt on Photoshop when I was resizing images

was to always hold control (Ctrl) when resizing so it holds the pixels together, and doesn’t distort the image. One last simple method I learnt about Photoshop was how to quickly select (Ctrl T) and deselect (Ctrl D).

Secondly, I realised when I first started that I couldn’t upload Microsoft documents onto Google Blogger, so I came across SlideShare which is a magnificent site, which allows Microsoft documents to be transferrable onto my blogger account.

Another crucial technique I used on photoshop was how to colour correct/change, by selecting the colour tool on the left hand side of the page, and applying it to the layer/object I wanted to change. Once I clicked on the colour I wanted, I could choose the EXACT colour I wanted from the colour pad to ensure my magazine looked the best it could, with the best colours.

One other essential skill I learnt on photoshop whilst constructing my magazine was how to use the polygonal lasso tool in order to place part of the splash image (the head of one of the band members) above the masthead/title. Before I started constructing my product, I didn’t actually have a blogger account, therefore that in itself is another technology I have learnt about whilst constructing my product. It’s brilliant because you can post things on there forever, and they’re safe, unlike on a memory stick where it could become corrupt or it could get lost, and also it allows my tutors to check/mark my work for me online.One other technology I used throughout my coursework is Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, of which I already knew how to work simply, but I did learn a few more things about both of the programmes due to more and more practice/use. All of these different technologies (Photoshop, slideshare, blogger, word and powerpoint) work together, therefore are convergent, as without all of these pieces of software, I couldn’t have done everything that I have. For example, without Word I would’ve struggled to write my article as well, without Photoshop I couldn’t construct the magazine whatsoever, as it allowed me to piece it all together, and perfectly edit text and images, and without blogger no-one could look at or mark my work, and without powerpoint I wouldn’t have been able to save images from the internet to my documents as simply.Whilst constructing my magazine, I realised increasingly throughout the importance of my research –especially my questionnaire/digital survey which I sent to my friends, and posted on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Every time that I needed to know what the main target audience wanted my magazine to include, I just had to check my survey results, and make sure I included what the majority of people wanted. Without this specific research in particular, my magazine wouldn’t have been as accurate at attracting the target audience.

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

From when I began the preliminary task of the college magazine, to finishing my main project of the Rock magazine, I have learnt a lot about the technologies used to make magazines, but also what is required to make a successful magazine. I didn’t realise as much thought went into them as it does.Continuing from the previous question/slide, I learnt a lot on Adobe Photoshop in terms of editing text, and photos to optimise everything fully, along with learning how to simply post Microsoft documents on a blogging account, but mainly I learnt about methods used in magazines to attract an audience - a target audience.Before magazines start out, they really have to do their research to find out who will read their magazine, and why, and match their needs. Their requirements for a specific magazine will be things such as a colour scheme, large titles in sharp text, cover lines relating to interviews and articles within, live images relating to the main audience, competitions with prizes relating to the genre to persuade more people to purchase the magazine, plugs for decoration and also within them short, snappy buzz words to excite the reader and inform them immediately one of the main features within to massively persuade them to purchase the magazine.

The screenshot of the magazine front cover on the left hand side is my finished product, in comparison to the screenshot on the right hand side which was my practice magazine front cover. Immediately it is clear that my practice front cover has no clear colour scheme, and is placed on a rather busy/distracting background in comparison the my finished product which is placed on a slight hint of grey background which isn’t off putting, and it has a clear colour scheme relating to the context of Rock (Black, White, Red, and Yellow).Next of all the fonts on my finished product on the left are far more edited, technical and professional. The fonts again relate to the context of Rock, where as the fonts on the practice college magazine on the right hand side are just plain fonts with no links to anything, and the contract isn’t as good. The Red on the finished product stands out more not just because of the strong contrast, but because of the stroke effect surrounding it.

The splash images are completely different on the two front covers too. On the Rock magazine front cover I used a long shot (full body), where as on the college magazine I used a medium close up (shoulders and above).The main article within the Rock magazine is advertised in the middle of the page so it is accessible to the potential buyers in a shop for example, where as in the college magazine the main article isn’t clear, as it is pushed away to the side, and surrounded by other articles – therefore you can’t tell which is the main article, where as on the Rock magazine, there is no competition in terms of which is the main article, it is that obvious, which helps potential buyers immediately know what the main article is, as they don’t want to spend a long time finding out. This is where research proved vital, I learnt lots about the conventions of media in/on magazines, and how they’re precisely organised to maximum perfection!The finished product (Rock magazine) looks much more professional and organised, as I spent a lot more time on it, and contains more features such as a plug, referencing content within.I have come to the conclusion that the Rock magazine (my main product) is far better than the college magazine (the practice cover) because for the Rock magazine I did extensive amounts of research as to how other successful Rock magazines go about attracting their target audience, and I had by the time I produced the Rock magazine, gained vital experience on photoshop which vastly improved my editing skills.