Evaluation Questions

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

I tried to make my media magazine look as much as possible like a professional music magazine. I used the same colour scheme as 2 out of the 3 magazines I looked at in the deconstructing process. Whilst deconstructed I found out that each music magazine has a certain style and that for each addition of the magazine there was something the same about them. For example the logo never changed and it stayed the same colour and in the same place throughout all of the issues. The magazines that I mainly focused on to help me construct my own magazine were Q and NME.

I also got some of my ideas from the fonts that they used in these two magazines. As much as I wanted mine to look like these magazines though I wanted mine to look different and symbolise music in my age group. I used the name LMM because of NME. I think that the name NME is catchy and short so people will easily remember it which I wanted in my magazine.

To keep the theme of music magazines I kept the name of the magazine in the same place, the colours from some of deconstructed magazines the same, the large texts and a large photo as the centre piece of my front cover. However to differentiate my music magazine from the rest I added more than one photo to the front cover and set my main photo to the right hand side of the front cover. For the contents page I only put two photos up instead of lots of small ones. I thought this would be more effective and invite the reader to the main headlines of the magazine. I also only wrote a few pages in the contents page so that it didn’t give too much away in the magazine. For my double page spread I decided to keep the text short. I kept the layout of the double page spread similar to the ones I deconstructed in order for it to look more professional and like a real media product.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When I planned my magazine I decided that I would create my music magazine for people the same age as me. (Teenagers) By doing this I thought that it would be easier for me to construct a magazine about what type of music teenagers are now into. Therefore I didn’t base my magazine of a particular type of music. The class that I was aiming at was middle class. That is why in my photos my model is just wearing casual clothing. Even though I didn’t use really bright colours I think the photos I used represented this class well and showed that a teenager was having fun whilst making music. The fonts that I used were quite modern and easy to read which would be the type of things that teenagers look for. The language used through my media products is informal to represent the social group. Teenagers tend to speak and write in a informal way so this would suit them well.

Question 3: What type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think that local shops, super markets, airports, train stations and places like this would distribute my media magazine. Place that already sell media magazine would be a good place to sell it too. Doing this would mean that my magazine would start to get recognised and start to sell to the right target audience. I think that my magazine would fit in well with other magazines as I took key points from the other magazines and that seems popular therefore mine could be too.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience would be teenagers / young adults aged between 15 and 25. I chose to do this target audience because I find that people of that age are the ones that buy most magazines. It also meant that I would know what to put on a magazine and could ask my friends what they would like to see. I wouldn’t want to aim my magazine to children any younger because I don’t think they would listen to and know as much about music as teenagers to. Which could mean the magazine wouldn’t be very popular. The magazine is aimed at both boys and girls. By using neutral colours it meant that both sexes could read it.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted by target audience by using a photo of a teenage girl on the front cover. By doing this it means that my target audience (teenagers / young adults) can relate to the magazine. As the front cover is the first thing my target audience will see I needed it to stand out from the rest therefore put a new/ well known made up artist on the front.

I also asked some of my friends and people in the sixth form what sort of things they would like to see on and in a magazine. I showed them the three magazines that I deconstructed and they told me that they liked the look of NME and Q magazine. They liked the colour scheme used on them the most so therefore I decided to use that as that’s what seemed to attract my target audience.

The contents page is attractive to my target audience because it carries on the colour scheme that teenagers said they like. It also has articles and pages that teenagers/young adults can again relate to. A photo from a James Morrison concert I went to also will attract young people because its current music so therefore they would want to know more. I used bold writing so that my target audience would read it.

For my double page spread I attracted my target audience by not writing too much and using quite a few photos. Most teenagers don’t like to read a lot so therefore by keeping the writing minimal they wouldn’t get bored and will carry on to read and look through the magazine.

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

Throughout making my media products I have learnt how to edit photos and make things look more professional. I learnt how to cut out photos easily using www.photobucket.com. I learnt that to help my photos look more professional I could use programs on my laptop and also effects on my camera that made it much easier when coming to edit. I think without programs such as “photobucket” and Nero 7 my magazine wouldn’t have looked so professional and be much more time consuming. The internet also helped me out with making my product because it allowed me to go on websites such as “Google” to get idea from more music magazines. However I found blogger hard to use and hard to organise my things on. It was also very time consuming and easily to make a silly mistake. Therefore I used power point to do things such as research and then uploading them onto blogger.

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

When I first started making my media product and preliminary task I thought that this coursework wouldn’t take that long. However when I found out how much there was to do I realised that it would be very time consuming. Over all I didn’t realise how long it would take to create and finish and sometime found it very stressful to meet deadlines. I realised that every part of the magazine has to be considered to make it look professional because if one thing doesn’t work it could ruin the whole of the final product. I needed to take into consideration each little thing that I was going to place on my final task whereas I didn’t do this in my preliminary. I also realised that it was easier to use publisher instead of Microsoft word which I used to do my preliminary task.

As you can see here that my preliminary task has lots of bold photos and colours that didnt blend in together well. Therefore with my media products I tried my hardest to make the photos blend in together. This is why I used an old photo effect.

When I first made my preliminary task I was quite pleased with it. However since completing my real media products I realised that it wasn’t very good and I didn’t put much skills into it now that I realise how much more I could have done to it. Through my research I learnt what looked good on a magazine and what didn’t.

Double Page Spread

The first page of my double page spread only consist of text. At the top it has large writting to attract the reader and I thought it was the quote that stood out the most throughtout the whole article. Underneath i used bold text of the same font and the same colour. I made Grace Mills into a red colour so that the reader knew who the article was about. On the second page I used 4 photos. The main photo that I used was kept in colour so that it stood out from the rest. I also added 3 more photos to the page. By using black and white they didnt stand out as much but connected with the colour theme I have been using throughout the whole magazine. It also looks more proffesional and makes sure that the coloured photo stand out from the rest. For the text I wrote about how Grace had grown up and what had happened to her. I thought this would be suitable for my target audience as people my age enjoy reading gossip magazines but also music magazines. Therefore this conbinded with both of them. I picked out 2 quotes from the article I wrote to grip the reader and make them want to read it. Once they have read those two quotes it will make them decide if they want to read on or not. Her story is laid back and casual which again goes with the target audience I am aiming for. To make this I used Microsoft publisher. However I found tha there wasnt enough room to put the amount of text I wanted to use so had to shorten it.

Contents Page

On my content page I decided to keep all the writting on one side (left) and all the photos on another (right). By doing this is makes it easier for the reader to understand what is on each page. I used the colours black and red for the font colours to keep the theme running throughout all of my products. I made the background grey and white so that it wouldnt attract thre reader away from anything. By using a banner of red and black writting it makes it stand out and make sure the reader knows where the contents page is. I used the same font throughout the page numbers to make it look more professional and expensive. I used a different font for the banners to add more affects to the page. I made one photo into black and white and kept one photo in colour so that the page had a variation. I used a programme called Nero 7 Ultra to edit my photos and I used microsoft publisher to make my magazine. I found using these programmes easy and learnt that they both have many different effects to help the magazine look more professional. I got the idea of copying a smaller version of the front cover from NME so decided to do it myself. The photos I used also tye in with the pages I have written about on the contents page which have been labelled with page numbers to help the reader find them easily. I wrote at the bottom the page number, website and magazine issue so that people could find out extra information about the magazine elsewhere.

Front Cover

For my magazine I decided to use a girl of the same age as me as I thought this would be a good target audience to use. By using this target audience it ment that I could ask people what kind of music they were into. Some of my friends told me that they enjoyed listening to peacefull music when relaxing and therefore I decided to use my friend as a model and make her a singer and pianist. I decided to call my magazine LMM. This was because I thought it was catch and easy to remember. I used the colour scheme black red and white because I realised that 2 out of the 3 magazines that I researched into had this colour scheme. Going ahead with this idea I found it alot easier that using lots of colours because everything matched and there wasnt any hassle about combining colours together. I used a grey and white background for the front cover so that a reader wouldnt get distracted by a bright coloured background. The main story for my magazine was about a girl called Grace Mills. This tyed in with my front cover photo as it is her that my double page spread is about. The other story that I have done on the front cover is the LMM christmas party. I did this to tye in with the season and month it was sold in. It also ment that I had something else to carry on to the content page with. I used a smaller font for this though so that it doesnt attract the reader away from the main headlines. I used black and red stars on the cover too just to add a bit of fun into it.

Over all I am happy with the front cover I have produced and NME and Q magazine influenced my decisions on this alot.

Planning

To help out with my final front cover I planned out what sort of things I wanted. I came up with 4 different names to give me a variety of choice when I came to my final decision.

Names

Decision

Colours

Logos

Now that I had decided what colour scheme I was going to use I came up with these ideas for my logo. I decided to use the colour red because the magazines names in both Q and NME were red therefore it follows the trend on other music magazines.

This was the first idea that I came up with for the logo. I used the red to go with the red theme of the rest magazines. By using the star I thought that it tied in well with my target audience as this is teenagers and young adults. It ties in well because teenagers/ young adults like to wear such patterns as stars.

The second logo that I used again fits in with the colour scheme and the colours that the other magazines use. I used the music notes to signify what the magazine is about. By not using to much colour or making it too bold it gets the readers attention but doesn't attract the reader away from the other issues on the front cover.


The final idea that I used when planning out my magazine was this one below. I adapted the one from above to see which one would look better and help me make my final decision. By adding the bold black around the logo of the magazine I thought it would make it stand out more and therefore get the readers attention. However after I created it I thought that it may be to much and drag the readers attention away from other issues on the front. Again I used the red and black colours to tie in with the rest of the themes and tie in the colours from other music magazines.



Decision

I decided to use this logo for my front cover as it was both my favorite and my friends favorites.
I asked them which one they would look for on a music magazine and this seemed to be the most popular. This showed me that as their age group is the target audience of the magazine then this is what will attract them to it. I also chose it because it shows the reader what the magazine is about and signifys music well. By using this one it sticks to the colour scheme well and will tie in well with the rest of the magazine.






Photos

Media Print Coursework- Research Task

Double Page Spreads

Kerrang- The words"Gold Rush" are the largest fonts of the two pages and you can see that the word "Gold" is the theme throught the whole spread. For example the flowers they are holding and there hands are gold. The colour gold represents rich and money which could catch the readers eye and people may want to read the article. The article only contains one image which is of the band "AFI". This could have been done so that it doesnt attract the reader away from the actual article itself. The photo has the lead singer at the front and the rest of the band at the back. This may have been done to show the importance of the lead singer. The clothes that they are wearing in the photo are quite layed back which shows the reader that the article is informal. The photo takes up one side of the page and laps over to the other half. The expressions on there face are very laid back which tyes in well with the article itself. The photo is in colour to show that it is modern and bright.The text in the article is very small however some quotes are large which shows the reader the importance of them. By using small writting it means that they can fit more in but also means that people may get bored of reading it. The first set of writting is done in its own box in a medium sized font. The text is done in this way to make the reader want to read on but not give to much away straight away. Overall there isn't to much text but just enough to tell you about the band. Between the writting there is "AFI SHUFFLE". By putting it here it will attract the reader as they read the article and dont miss it out. The fonts on this are also much larger than the article to show the importance and so that nobody misses it.

Overall I think that the article is good and colourful. However the writting is a bit to small to read and some people may have difficultys doing so. Therefore when I am making my double page spread I will take this into concideration about the size of the font I choose.

Q magazine- The spread has a medium size heading on the left hand size which tells the reader exactually what the article is about. There have been 5 smaller photos down the bottom which are layed out in a kind of story board way. Then a large photo in the middle of the pages. There are also page numbers at the bottom to tell the reader an easy way of finding the article that they want. All of the photos used in the article are in black and white. These show the reader that it is trying to get an old view across and cold also show the reader that the band is also for an older generation. The black and white colours make the magazine look more expensive and also fits in with the theme of red, white and black on the front cover and contents page. There is not much text in this article so the reader would mostly focus on the photos. The text that is in the article gives the brief summery of take that and there experiences at Abbey Road. The texts is quite small (like Kerrang magazine) therefore shows me that this could be a popular choice for music magazines. Another thing I should think abotu when coming to making my magazine. The text "exclusive" is one of the only parts of text that is written in red which could show the importance of it and make it stand out so that people want to read it. At the top of the spread it also advertises other things in the article which coul attract the reader away from what they are actually meant to be looking at.

Overall I liked this double page spread better because when looking at magazines I prefer to look at photos instead of reading loads. Therefore I think it has the perfect amount of writting and photos. The colour scheme also fits in well with the rest of the magazine which I think works well.

NME magazine

Media print coursework- Preliminary Task

To help me understand the making of a front cover and content page of a magazine I was asked to do a preliminary task. This consisted of my own front cover and content page. I realised that even though these magazine covers look simple to make alot of effort needed to be put into them.