EvaluationSARAH EDWARDS

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? When I first started doing my research and analysis on different music magazines and how they were structured I noticed that a lot of the magazines such as Kerrang! And NME had very similar layouts on the front cover; having a main image in the centre and the masthead, anchorage text and sell lines orbiting it. I took inspiration from this and used this idea for my own music magazine front cover. Another thing I noticed were the colours and font types that were used on other music magazines which were really bright and bold to attract the reader. But because of the style of my magazine and the audience I wanted to attract, I didn’t use the bright and bold colours for my magazines. In the contents pages I liked the style and layout of the NME magazines so I adopted that to my own contents page and added a ‘Note From The Editor’ section at the bottom to add my own individuality to it. For the double page spread I didn’t take any inspiration from other magazines as the majority of double page spreads I saw during my research were laid out with one picture on one page and all the text on the other. Whereas I used a picture on each page and an even amount of text on each page too so it looked more symmetrical and structured. The only thing I adopted from other double page spreads was the drop-cap used at the beginning of my interview. I used this to make it look more professional.

How does your media product represent social groups?

I didn’t specifically make my magazine in mind of attracting a specific social group. I tried to make it as broad as I could while keeping to my theme of grunge/indie/rock. I did this so that I would have a more varied audience of readers. Although, I did have an age range for the media product in mind; a group of people ranging from teenage years to young adult years. I made sure of this by using a more colloquial language that will be more in tone of younger people. Also, within my magazine I only really mention indie, rock and alternative bands/music artists, so groups of people with that music taste will be more likely to read my magazine as opposed to people who listen to a different type of music. Plus, the style of my music magazine is quite specific to a rock kind of genre. I did this by using quite dull, dark colours and when I took my pictures I made sure that the costume of my models was dark and rock-like and that the setting was quite bleak.

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

As my media product is a magazine, the institution distributing my product would be the printing industry. I feel as though that within the printing industry the company Bauer Media would own my media product, the reason for this because they also own Kerrang!, Empire and Q which are all magazines that are similar to my own. As for selling my magazines I think places such as news agents and major supermarkets would sell it as they also sell magazines.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I feel that the audience for my media magazine would mostly be teenagers to young adults, but anybody who likes the type of music I present within my magazines would also read it too. I haven’t designed my magazine to a specific gender and I used colours, tones that weren’t specific gender colours.

How did you attract/address your audience? To attract my audience I made sure that my visual

features on the front cover of my magazine were specifically designed to attract readers to buy it. By doing this, one of the features I used was making my masthead, sell lines and anchorage text stand out by using boxes around the outside of the font. I used this mostly for the masthead to stand out. I also made sure that the models in the front cover picture were making eye contact with the camera, this is so that it attracts the reader because it is like they are looking at them. Lastly I used specific fonts that are clear, easy to read and bold so that they stand out. I also used a feature used by most magazines where I made the masthead go behind the model’s head. I did this because it makes my magazine look more professional and that will draw the audience into buying it if it looks more professional.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? During making my music magazine I have used a lot more technology

and learnt a lot more about programs such as PhotoShop in order for my magazine to look as realistic as possible. To do this I used my Canon DSLR camera as opposed to my phone camera as it makes the quality of the picture look a lot more professional and clearer. I also used PhotoShop to edit my photos and to design all of my front cover, contents page and double page spread. I had never used PhotoShop before so I learnt about how to edit photos, manage different layers and use different tools. Using PhotoShop is much better than using Microsoft Publisher as it has much more tools you can use in order for the magazine to look neater. I also learnt how to download different fonts from Dafont.com, I used this to make the names for my magazine and main band look sophisticated. I also learnt about using Mac computers as that is something else that I haven’t used before. Lastly, I have learnt about using and posting the process of making both my college and music magazine on my blog on Wordpress. I think that using a blog is a much more efficient way of posting your work as it is a lot quicker and easier than writing things down and printing it out into a book, it also means I can access it anywhere as it is always on the internet.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? From looking at my college magazine I made

I can see that I have made a lot of progression by the end of making my music magazine. When I made my college magazine I used Microsoft Publisher so I progressed into using PhotoShop for my music magazine. I also did things to make my music magazine look more unique and individual like downloading different fonts instead of using the default fonts on the program. I also upgraded to using my DSLR camera to take my photos with. I updated my blog a lot more too, meaning that I did more research into different types of magazines and how to attract the audience.

Audience Feedback During the process of designing my

college and music magazines I made sure that a coupe of the features I used within my magazines were due to audience feedback. One way I did this was using Survey Monkey to see what a wide range of people thought would be good articles and features to find in a college magazine. I then incorporated the most popular answers into my magazine. Also, I asked audience feedback for my front cover of my music magazine; I was unsure if I should use boxes behind the font to make them stand out more or if it made the product look too cluttered and messy. But my classmates said that it looked better with the boxes so I did a before and after shot on my blog of the product.