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.
