evaluation

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When creating my magazine I used and challenged the forms of conventions. I have used the magazines in similar genre for inspiration, in particular We Love Pop, and Top of the Pops. From these I looked at the magazines and looked at what they had in common and conventions that are used in more issues of the magazine. I have tried to include some of the conventions and then to challenge certain conventions. In this example I have used the title in the same position as Top of the Pops. I have done this as I tried having the title on a slight angle and it did not look right, so I made it all across the screen. I have used the convention, but at the same time I feel that I have challenged the convention by adding 2 colours and also I have made it bolder and I have made it so that the title stands out more than all of the other text and images on the screen. I have also added a spotted outline to the text, which makes it look cool and more aimed at my target audience. I have added two colours black and blue to add a dimension to the title and to make it more appealing and professional. I have made it so the title takes up an 7 th of the page to enforce the brand identity and to theoretically ‘shout’ the title. I have added a bevel to the title In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products. I have used a common convention of both of the competing magazines, We Love Pop and Top of the Pops, which is to write over the main covering image. I have done this so that then audience know who the person is on the front, and to make he image stand out more and the article that will obviously be the main seller of the magazine. Also I feel that I have slightly challenged the convention by using a bold text, whereas all of the others that I have looked at have used skinny texts. I thought that this would make the text stand out more and that it would add more urgency to the magazine and invite more people in to look at For the background of the magazine I have completely challenged the conventions as I have added a background to the magazine. I wanted to add a missing depth to the magazine and a warmth of colour that otherwise would not have existed. I wanted the magazine to shout colour, and feel that it looked more professional with the background as I wanted to minimise the white space and a clinical feel, which I feel that the magazine has achieved. I also think that it makes all of the elements in the magazine stronger.

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Page 1: Evaluation

When creating my magazine I used and challenged the forms of conventions. I have used the magazines in similar genre for inspiration, in particular We Love Pop, and Top of the Pops. From these I looked at the magazines and looked at what they had in common and conventions that are used in more issues of the magazine. I have tried to include some of the conventions and then to challenge certain conventions.

In this example I have used the title in the same position as Top of the Pops. I have done this as I tried having the title on a slight angle and it did not look right, so I made it all across the screen. I have used the convention, but at the same time I feel that I have challenged the convention by adding 2 colours and also I have made it bolder and I have made it so that the title stands out more than all of the other text and images on the screen. I have also added a spotted outline to the text, which makes it look cool and more aimed at my target audience. I have added two colours black and blue to add a dimension to the title and to make it more appealing and professional. I have made it so the title takes up an 7th of the page to enforce the brand identity and to theoretically ‘shout’ the title. I have added a bevel to the title to make it stand out, and to try and make it look like it is coming out of the page, so that the audience are attracted to the magazine, rather then all of the other flat titles in competing magazines.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products.

I have used a common convention of both of the competing magazines, We Love Pop and Top of the Pops, which is to write over the main covering image. I have done this so that then audience know who the person is on the front, and to make he image stand out more and the article that will obviously be the main seller of the magazine. Also I feel that I have slightly challenged the convention by using a bold text, whereas all of the others that I have looked at have used skinny texts. I thought that this would make the text stand out more and that it would add more urgency to the magazine and invite more people in to look at the magazine.

For the background of the magazine I have completely challenged the conventions as I have added a background to the magazine. I wanted to add a missing depth to the magazine and a warmth of colour that otherwise would not have existed. I wanted the magazine to shout colour, and feel that it looked more professional with the background as I wanted to minimise the white space and a clinical feel, which I feel that the magazine has achieved. I also think that it makes all of the elements in the magazine stronger.

Page 2: Evaluation

Continued…

I have used a yellow circle to be able to make a point more visible and stand out more to the audience. And make that part of the magazine look better. I have also looked at the other magazines that have used a similar convention, however they do not hold as much information as I have used. However, I still feel like the convention has worked and gives the same effect as it has done on the professional media products.

I have used a medium longshot of the artist that I have chosen to use. I have don’t this as most of the magazines I have looked at use this as a convention. Also it focuses the reader onto the artist and to look at the artist, so that it is emphasised that this is the artist and it is in this magazine. It needs to be big to make the reader respond, and buy the magazine, as it is the main focus of the magazine. I have not challenged any of the conventions here.

I have used a strip at the bottom of the magazine to promote the freebie that is in the magazine. Some of the magazines that I have looked at have just used the bottom to promote posters in the magazine and others have not used any as a solid convention. I think therefore that I have challenged the convention.

I have added a fashion section to make it look very realistic and to capture the audience. Most magazines had this section o the front so I thought it would be the best thing to also have the section.

Page 3: Evaluation

I feel that the institution that would distribute my magazine would be the supermarkets , and the publishers. To meet the demand of the institution I looked at and wrote about some magazines in my genre. I felt by doing this I would have a grater understanding of the genre that I was trying to replicate. It would also help0 me to look at all of the conventions the magazine would use, so that when I created my magazine it would look like my genre and appeal to the audience. I feel that supermarkets would be the best way to distribute the magazine as there is a variety of competitors to chose from, but it would also have a wider audience as lots of people got tot the supermarkets and is convenient form my target audience. I feel that the magazine looks quite professional, which would entice the target audience. With the publisher distributing the magazine I believe that the magazine would take off as they have quite a lot of contacts and they would be able to put the magazine to the public and they would be able to look at the magazines that they would be able to assess whether they would want to buy the magazine. However there would be a downside to this. The music magazine genre pop, that I have selected for teenagers may be quite cramped, and this would mean that the magazine publishers and the supermarket may not want to stock the product and the publishers may have to honour the existing customers. Also there would be an increased competition, but then I would think that my magazine looks better and more interesting than the ones on sale already without too much editing. But of course i9 have not perfected this yet.

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

Page 4: Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups.

To gain inspiration I have bought a selection of magazines so that I could deifier the age group that my media product and so that I could get a feel of the different social groups that the competing magazines represent, and what I can to add a new flavour to the magazine genre of teenage pop. After a lot of careful planning and dissecting magazines I have decided to aim my magazine in the pop genre for 12-18. generally the magazines that I have looked at were aged for people 10-14. I thought that I found a little niche that could compete with the other magazines in the same genre but make it look and seem for older users. I also thought that there was nothing out there particularly for the age group that I have selected and what is on the market is limited.

I have chosen to do pop. This was because I thought I knew more about the genre and that I could execute it better than the other genres on the market. I have also decided that there is not a lot of competition or choice for the people that like and read the genre. In reality, the pop industry is worth millions and I think that magazines, comparing to other magazines it is not very well represented in this format. I thought that it was a shame and that I had a good enough understanding to tackle a pop magazine, as expectations are quite high in the genre.

The main focus of the magazine will be girls. I think that the colour scheme that I have used shows that well. The pinks and the purples in the magazine suggests the target audience, but also it makes the magazine bright and airy so that it looks inviting and appealing. I feel that this is the secret into getting the target audience to buy the magazine. I also did this by featuring a female solo artist. This may attract the lads to buy the magazine and they would be classed as the secondary target audience, and was not intentionally my audience. I also wanted to use a lot of female artists instead of male artists, so that the audience can relate to some of the stories. This was a risky strategy, but I want for females to respect the female artists as much as they would the male artists.

I have not used the language of teenagers to engage with them., I have used proper English grammar in a simplified format, so any technical terms I have used I have explained what they mean, so the magazine is not to technical and a boring geeky read. I felt though that the magazine needed to instil proper grammar into teenagers and not to encourage text speak, as it is quite sloppy so to speak. I wanted to be quite formal in a casual way, but to be honest I feel that the teenagers may not notice that I have even done this.

I asked people in the class what they thought of the colour scheme and I had to change it from my original ideas from the research. I am quite glad I did this as it is not what I liked that mattered, so the target audience chose what colours they wanted. This plays a big impact onto the types of people and the popularity of the magazine and the people that buy it. My original ideas was that I would used deeper colours like reds, oranges, browns and a blue. However people thought that this was a horrible combination and did not go with the genre so the target audience was happier when I changed it based on their recommendations.

The images that I decided to use was a big decision as I did not know what angle I should take. Eventually I came up with the idea that I would focus the magazine around women. I thought about this for a while and put it to a few colleagues in the class and they said that it was a good idea and a different approach to the male dominated magazines that we see ion the shelves today. I also thought that I should be able to express myself through the medium of pop.

Page 5: Evaluation

I have researched two magazine from the same genre. I researched We love pop and Top of the pops magazine. I noticed that the magazines had the same conventions that made them suitable for the target audience, like the magazine being busy. So I looked at all of my research in detail and thought that I would have to do the same to make the magazine suitable for the genre and similar target audience. I would have to copy the conventions but add my own twist on the magazine to make it different from all of the other magazines. Also I had to adapt the language as the magazine that I was doing was for teenagers. I had to be able to make the reader understand the language, but then not feel that they were being belittled. This was an important factor in getting the magazine to capture the audience. I added onto the front cover the names of the band that related to the genre and did an article on them. This makes the audience look at the magazine and makes it obvious that this is the target audience and the genre that I am trying to get. It will also brand the magazine as some customers may buy it becu8ase it is their favourite people on the cover. They will remember this and will then next time they see the magazine they may want to buy it. I think that my magazine would target 12-18 year olds in the pop genre. I feel that the audience would be young, due to the colour scheme and feel that this will attract them to read the magazine. I also think that the articles that are in the magazines wold suit the audience, which would be the main focus for them.

I feel that the product that I have created is a mass market product. I think this as I have a wide age group that the magazine is targeted at and I would say 95% of pop music magazine buyers are female. I have targeted the magazine at girls, but I feel that I have not fully focused it as the colours that I have used are unisex, so boys could read it as well as a secondary audience, and not feel too out of place. This makes my product open to the mass market and also the stories inside are generalised to the wide target audience.

Who would the audience of your media product

Page 6: Evaluation

To address the audience I did some research to see what the target audience wants out of the magazine. I had to make the magazine easy to understand and read, still making it look busy and interesting. I think that I addressed the audience well, incorporating all of the factor that it knew the target audience. I used quite a new and funky masthead on the front of the magazine as I thought that the audience would like to see this and I felt that it looked better than the mastheads on some of the previous magazines. I thought that it fitted the genre of the magazine and I also think that it addressed the issue of targeting the audience. This will make the audience think that the magazine will be made specifically for them. Colours were also important in the magazine. I felt like I had to make the colours bright but not to girly as the magazine would then not live up to its secondary audience, and also it would not fit the content of the magazine. I felt like I had a lot of examples of colour schemes that would aid me to make the right choice. In the end I went for reds and blues, with a mix of rainbow colours. I felt it worked well with rhea target audience and when I revealed it to the target audience they said that they liked it a lot, and they felt like it represented them as a social group. I had to address the audience when I came to the content of the magazine. They all like boys and gossip stories, but I decided that I would mainly focus on the girl groups as they did not get too much of the attention in the magazine. I also though that it may be more interesting for the audience to realise how any girl groups and solo artists there are out their, but to keep the interest I did add a few boys into the magazine.

How did you attract/address the audience

Page 7: Evaluation

What have you learnt about the technologies form the process of constructing this product?

Page 8: Evaluation

In the preliminary task, I felt that I did not use the research as much as I should have. I only looked at the existing magazines once or twice to gain an idea of the type of product that I should be producing. However, then when I started the real project I noticed that I had started to look more in depth at the examples of the genre that I have been looking at. I then realised that there was a lot more to the magazines than I had looked at in the preliminary task. By looking at the magazines more frequently I had more of an idea a bout the conventions that magazines use and the colour schemes and types of stories in the magazine. I think this really shows in the product that I have created and I feel that it looks more professional than the preliminary one. I also for the main task took more photographs. This then enabled me to look in more depth at the photographs that I needed for each of the situations, to make the magazine look professional. It gave me the scope to have a choice of which of the best photos I wanted to use instead of saying, that will do like I did in the preliminary task. I wanted to keep the ain task more interactive for my target audience and felt like the preliminary task would have bored the target audience, so in the main task I strived to do the opposite. I tried to keep each of the pages very busy and look really good, with minimal white space. This would then allow me to make the magazine more than the competitors on the market, but also to provide entertainment, without them getting very bored and just flicking though the pages of writing, or for it to be like a picture book. So I thin that in the main task I have managed to balance that out somewhat, I found this quite difficult to do in the double page spread, but noticed it would be a lot easier if I had like a page of pictures to balance out the text. I felt like it was important to balance out the magazine so that it would be better for the target audience, whereas in the preliminary task I did not really look at the target audience in too much detail, and shows in the product that I had produced.By doing this media project I have not only learnt about skills needed to make the product but also about interpersonal skills like time management. I have learnt that I need to be more organised and meet the deadlines as in the preliminary task I did not record all of the deadlines, which meant that most of the project was rushed to get it to completion. This was very bad for the project as it meant that I would have bits that were good and bits that were bad, and especially for the target audience, the product would not have worked in this way. So when it came to the main product I decided that I would keep a log of all of the tasks that I needed to do and I spent more time on sections of the project, that weren’t as strong as they should be. I spent a lot of time with other people and getting opinions as I felt that it would be vital in making the product work and making sure that the audience liked it as much as I did. So I dedicated more time to the product and in the end it paid off as I was happy with the final product and found that I was not rushing it to get it finished. It also meant that I enjoyed making the magazine more and I think that it reflects in the quality of the finish to the magazine. Also when I first started to use the technologies like Photoshop and fireworks, I had the basic understanding of how to use them, but I did not know the programmes well enough to be able to use them to their full potentials and to make the images that I have used better. This made the magazine not ,looks as good as it could have dine. It also meant that I had no skills in the magazine and I had nothing to show that I had used and advanced skills on the programme. So for the main task I took maybe a couple of hours to play with the programme to look at all of the effects and things that I could add to the main product. Eventually I got a better understanding of the programme and was more confident in its use. I think that this has helped a lot and has taught me to always be confident in yourself before trying to make a product like this, as it makes you enjoy it more and get the right results.

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

Page 9: Evaluation

I also had to learn to communicate with teenagers my age, without using the slang words that they use and to keep them interested. This was quite hard and I had to spend some time with a sort of focus group and they told me that it would be better not to use the slang but to keep the words relatively small. This would make the magazine easy to read and understand, but would also make the magazine, more grown up an the audience felt like this was a good place to go to. They also said that there wasn’t a magazine on the market that did this and it was a demand. In the prelim task I did not do this and I just used stereotypes to communicate to the audience. This was wrong I feel as most of the people may not conform to stereotypes and therefore that the magazine would be barking u the wrong tree, so to speak. I think that this change in tactics to making the magazine has made the final product, so much better than the preliminary task.

I think that all of the changes that I have made in the step up from the preliminary task to the main one has made the magazine look more authentic an to make the magazine seem more like the rivals in the shops. I think that I have focused more on the objectives of the product and that I have really look more in depth at the needs and demands of the target audience. I think that has aided me to be able to make an authentic magazine. I have also begun to look at the magazine industry and to see all of the things that I have needed to do to meet expectations and I feel that I have gone above and beyond to make the magazine the best that it can be. I have researched and scrutinised the existing magazines and have begun to fully understand all of the conventions that are used in the magazines and the effects that they create. This has allowed me to make my own effects and know what they will mean to the target audience.

Continued…

Page 10: Evaluation

Prelim project and the Main project