Evaluation

By Madeleine Ward

Year 12

• My media product challenges the forms and conventions of other media products as I have included bright pink/red writing but I am still aiming at my original target audience of males and females. Other magazines I have researched such as Q magazine, NME and Rolling Stones, they don’t challenge their audiences and experiment with controversial colours, such as pink is stereotypically meant and like by girls. With my magazine I have challenged this.

• I have copied the monochrome scheme of Q magazine which three main colours are, Red, Black and White ,I liked this style as it was simple and didn’t distract the reader from the information on the magazine.

• I also liked the masthead of Q magazine as it dominates it against all the other text on the page.

• My media product represents particular social groups as the genre of music is indie-rock, this therefore appeals to a younger generation of people. The questionnaire I did for my magazine supports this as I asked 25 girls and 25 boys from the ages of 12-30 years, the age group I have identified that would most likely to read my magazine is 17-21 year olds.

• The social group my magazine could appeal to might be materialists as it involves fashion and photo shoots of Cheryl Cole. It might also appeal to a rebellious social group as it has and edgy style as the colours I have used connotates an edgy style, the bright colours against the black and white background.

• The image I have used as a background, with the girl having a blindfold around her eyes connotes a willingness to take risks, to trust in others, to have the power and inner strength to ‘let go.’ This is a powerful signifier that I wanted to make sure reached my core target audience.

• My core target audience is, in terms of lifestyle demographics, pleasure seekers, materialists and ‘rebels.’

• Other ways I have targeted my core target audience include the imagery used throughout the product, but in this case especially the double page spread. Here I have used both text and imagery to connote meaning.

• The dialogue she uses connotes that she is a individual, strong, independent and young girls might read this and are able to relate to this. ‘I am comfortable and happy with my body and I wouldn’t change it because someone doesn’t like it! I am passionate about being a good role model and if girls are looking up to me then I want them to be looking up to me for the right reasons.’

• The main image is of her in a attractive pose but without demeaning herself or flaunting her body for male attention.

• The media institutions that may distribute my magazine may be IPC, they are a large company and produce many media brands in the UK and America.

• IPC is involved in different magazines, such as fashion ones, music, gardening etc.

• ‘IPC Media produces over 85 iconic media brands, with our print brands alone reaching almost two thirds of UK women and 44% of UK men – almost 27 million UK adults – while our online brands collectively reach 20 million users every month., (IPC website).

• This will benefit my magazine as it will get my magazine know, ad IPC is a successful distributor and men and women read their magazines they distribute.

• My audience for my magazine would be young people as the genre of music I have based my magazine around is indie-rock,

the questionnaire I did for my magazine supports this as I asked 25 girls and 25 boys from the ages of 12-30 years, the age group I have identified that would most likely to read my magazine is 17-21 year olds.

It would also be readers who are interested in music and who like the artists featured in my magazine.

• I have learnt how to use photoshop and create my first ever blog, it took a while to grasp the editing of my images and the text, but I eventually learnt how to use it.

• The blog site has been down for a few weeks which made it difficult to edit and blog.

• I feel I have learnt a developed a different style to what I was aiming at in my preliminary task. In my preliminary task I wasn’t focusing on my audience, I based it around my taste. However I feel now, once doing the questionnaire and doing some research on the magazine and audience I have improved on it and I believe that this is evident in my new magazine.

• As the preliminary was aimed at school students it looks quite childish however I kept the title as I thought it was simple but ‘catchy’ enough to remember.