The deadline for which our coursework has to be handed in for the final time is approaching next Tuesday (4th March). With recently receiving feedback from my teacher, I have been notified of the parts I need to improve or make adjustments to such as making sure the page numbers are included on every page and small, menial tasks such as adding the website, costings of the magazine and the magazine logo to the bottom corner of every page which can easily be done on InDesign using the master pages which allows you to put something on the master page which will be present consistently throughout the magazine.
Once I have completed the coursework and that has been sent off, no improvements can be made meaning we will use the rest of the time to concentrate on the examination.
Tuesday, 25 February 2014
Monday, 3 February 2014
Question Seven
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at the preliminary task that I created back in
September, I feel that I have come a long way in the creation of my magazine,
and have made some improvements in my knowledge of the software. For both the
preliminary task and my final product I used the software InDesign, when
comparing the two products I can see a vast improvement of my ability to use
the software and my knowledge of the various tools that were possible for me to
use.
I feel that the photos play a massive part in the quality
and effectiveness of the magazine. When looking at the preliminary task that I
created prior to the music magazine, the images lacked the professionalism
which the images used in my music magazine did. The images for the preliminary
task were taken using a basic camera on my iPhone compared to the high quality
images that were used on my music magazine which were taken using a canon SLR
camera – the images that this camera took were much better than those used in
the preliminary task and made the magazine look a lot more realistic.
When comparing both the front covers of the preliminary task
and the final product I can definitely see a vast improvement in the quality of
the products. The preliminary task lacks the realism of a magazine as it looks
a lot less realistic than the music magazine I created for my final piece of
coursework. When creating the preliminary task, there were not any examples of
magazines similar to its type in which I could use for ideas of what is and is
not successful. However when creating the real task, there are many music
magazine on the market which are extremely successful such as Q and NME which I
could look at the successful codes and conventions which I could imitate so
that they fitted my house style and genre of magazine.
The most important factor that I felt affected the
difference in quality between my preliminary magazine and final task and that was
the process of planning the creation of my magazine. I planned the photoshoot,
the layout of the magazine and much more which you are able to see under the
‘planning’ tab on my blog (g321zoeramsdaleclark.blogspot.co.uk).
I took a lot of time planning the process of the magazine; looking up
various music magazines, contents page ideas, sell line ideas, colour scheme
ideas and other various aspects that make up a successful magazine. It was very
important that I followed the other key conventions which would allow me to
create a successful magazine which would effectively attract my target
audience. One key factor in which I planned was the involvement of social media
as I felt that this would play a massive part in how successful my magazine was
due to having quite a young target audience. I researched what forms of social
media were frequently used at the moment and utilised my knowledge to make sure
all of the key areas were covered.
Overall I believe that I have progressed successfully since
the start of the year and I believe that this is noticeable in the quality
difference seen between my preliminary task and the full product. My knowledge
of the used software has grown massively and I feel that my understanding of
the various technologies has heightened massively. With all the practice and
application of the skills I have acquired over the past months I feel that I
have made a good, strong piece of coursework.
Question Six
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Since I began creating my magazine, I have reused programmes
and software’s that I was familiar with through the course of my Media GCSE,
but I also have been introduced to new software and programmes that I can use
and that will hopefully help me improve my media product.
When creating my coursework, I have used a variety of the
CS6 software’s such as Photoshop, InDesign and Adobe Premier. I was familiar
with the use of Photoshop when I took Media at GCSE and I used this software to
create my magazine and for editing the photos. However, I am now using InDesign
to create my magazine as I feel that this software is a lot easier to use when
putting the magazine together. For example when using the text wrap tool on
Photoshop, you would have to manually choose the path in which the article text
would wrap around. Whereas on InDesign, the task is much shorter and simpler,
as all you have to do is place the text in a text box and press the text wrap
tool at the top of the page and it will wrap it around any images or objects
you wish automatically and if you need to resize the textbox then the text will
automatically fill the other spaces below whereas on Photoshop you would have
to redraw the path. However I am still using Photoshop to edit the photos which
I took against a white background on a booked photoshoot using all of the
equipment such as lighting and backdrops at school.
There are many different tools that I could use when
creating my magazine on InDesign which I felt made the concept of creating the
magazine a lot easier. For example I can create colour swatches so that it is
easier to keep the house style of the magazine consistent throughout the whole
product. Another extremely useful tool that I used constantly was the Paragraph
Styling which is a tool in which you can set in place the font, font size, font
colour, and you can also adapt the paragraph ruling which I used to separate
the sell lines on the front cover and to highlight the pull quotes on the double
page spread. Overall, there are a lot of useful tools that have helped benefit
me when creating the product.
I have taken all of the images used in my magazine on a
cannon SLR and have used this piece of equipment in previous tasks so was
familiar with the settings and the process of using it. I took a variety of
portrait and landscape images which I took for the use on my front cover,
contents page and both pages of the double page spread. I also used a similar
camera when taking pictures in London of the model for my contents page. To
help enhance my images, I used various studio lighting which allows me to take
high quality images which will be easier to edit and use in my coursework.
Question Five
How did you attract/address your audience?
The main way in which I will attract my target audience is
through having an eye catching, attractive magazine with a bold choice of
colours. The front cover is the first thing that possible buyers will see, and
I believe that what will be most effective is a striking photo positioned on
the front cover with the model having direct eye contact with the person who is
looking at it. Another convention which I think is key in effectively
attracting the audience is having quite a minimalistic yet prominent house
style because if the front cover is too crowded with too many colours, pictures
and sell lines, the audience will easily get confused and feel a bit
overwhelmed with the colours and information that is being provided to them.
A possible buyer who is looking for a good magazine will
always want to know what the content of the magazine is like. A way of finding
out this sort of information is by looking at the contents page of the magazine
which means that it is important that you feature the most interesting and eye
catching news, reviews and stories which will make the magazine look more
inviting. On my contents page I have placed an artist index column which runs
narrowly down the right hand side of the page which features all the different
bands and artists which feature in the magazine that month. By highlighting the
variety of those that are featured inside will help heighten the amount of
people who would want to read it, therefore this broadens the spectrum of your
target audience which is very important when you are constantly in an ongoing
competition with other music magazines.
As I have chosen an audience between the ages of 16 and 22,
they are quite young compared to some of the age brackets that you could
possibly choose. This means that they are most likely going to be up to date
with all the latest forms of technology and forms of social media. Since the
heightening in medial convergence, many people are able to connect these social
media’s to their tablets and android phone meaning they are constantly on the
go looking for something to entertain them whilst they are on their journey to
work or school. I have decided that the best way to address the audience is
through social mediums such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as these are the
most commonly used by teenagers and young adults today. When communicating with
your audience on these social mediums I believe that it is extremely important
to keep the messages that you transfer across brief and concise, keeping it to
the point. Twitter, especially, helps you do this with its 140 character limit.
Overall I think I will be able to successfully address and
attract my audience as I myself am within the social group and age bracket that
I am targeting so know what the gap in the market is and what will be able to
fill this.
Question Four
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience that I am hoping to appeal to is those in the
age bracket 16-24 years of age and of both genders as I feel that my magazine
can be accepted by a wider target audience because of the neutral blue colour
scheme, the chosen model who can easily be related to and also the genre of
music that it fits in with. I believe that this is a suitable target audience
for my media product because the genre of music chosen for this magazine is
something that is currently in the charts and listened to by a mass amount of
older teenagers both male and female. I do not believe that this magazine would
be suitable for a young audience because of the maturity of the content and
also the music is not something that younger teenagers are likely to listen to.
At the start of the project I had to create an audience
profile which was where I created my ideal magazine reader where it featured
what sort of hobbies they have and the music that they listen to. I decided
that my readers would be someone who keeps up to date with social media and has
a large interest in music – possibly even playing an instrument because that
way they would have a good connection with the music.
When starting to create my magazine, I did some audience
research by creating a survey on survey monkey, asking a variety of questions
of what teenagers who are interested in music would want to read. I asked
questions such as ‘what genre of music do you like’ and ‘what sort of
competitions and freebees would you like to see featuring in a magazine,’ and I
feel it is important to get an input from the possible readership because they
are the ones who will have read and buy the magazine once it has been created
so it is important to make sure that what I am creating is something that will
be bought and read.
In today’s society, social media plays a massive part in the
promotion and production of media products as many are heavily influenced by
what we see on social networking programmes such as twitter, Facebook and
Instagram. I believe that one of the key factors that will help make a magazine
successful is by interacting with their readership through these social
networking programmes to help them develop their personal identity and
relationships; two of the key factors in the uses and gratifications theory. Also, on the contents page you will be able
to see that I have included a QR code which will take those who scan it
directly the magazine’s website where the readership will be able to interact
in even more ways than the print version.
When thinking about the type of artist and model that I
would want featuring in my magazine, I felt that I had to make sure that they
were someone who was quite current and young fitting in with the genre of the
magazine well and able to connect with the readership well. I felt that by
using a young female model would be the most successful way of doing so because
both the males and females would be able to connect with her. Girls would be
able to do so because they would feel like they are able to connect with them on
a personal level over typical ‘girls’ problems’ finding her inspiring, and
also, boys would feel like they could connect with her because she might be a
good singer and is attractive. I decided to choose a close friend of mine to
feature in my magazine as I felt that it would be easier to work with them and
get better pictures, but also because I felt that she had quite a unique sense
of style and was not someone who was to ‘camera shy’ making it easier for her
to connect with the magazine, therefore I hope it would make the audience feel
more at ease with the model.
The psychographic group that I hope my magazine will appeal
to is the reformers, these are people who put their quality of life over
materialistic items which I believe is important because not everyone believes
that materialistic items and money are important; especially at a young age as
they are most likely going to be in further or higher education studying for
A-levels or a degree at University so will not have a lot of disposable income to
them.
Question Three
What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?
The institution that I wish to distribute my media product
is IPC media. IPC media was first created in the 1950’s and is a subsidiary of
Times Inc. With a variety of lifestyle and music magazines being published and
distributed by IPC media on a daily basis, it openly tells me that this
distributor is an extremely successful one. They do distribute one well known
music magazine; NME, however this does not faze me as there are many opposing
factors that make the two magazines completely different.
NME (standing for New Musical Express), was initially
started in 1952 when the first issue was released. This is a magazine that is
circulated weekly, compared to the monthly circulation of my magazine which I
have chosen because I feel the quality of the magazine will be at a much higher
standard. With a circulation of nearly
24,000, I hope that I am able to meet or even exceed this amount of readers for
my magazine as I feel that the audience profile that I have set up is one which
is quite open and allows a variety of people to feel as though they’d be able
to read the magazine. Even though both the age bracket that the two magazines
have are fairly similar I still feel as though that there are enough other
points that the magazine could still be as or even more successful as NME.
I believe that the company would like to play a part in the
process of this magazine because of the difference between the styles they are
used to producing; lifestyle and the one that I have developed. From looking at the products they do produce,
I could only see one major music magazine, and by adding Sound to the mix the
distributor would be able to expand on their distributors’ style from just
lifestyle to a broader spectrum of genres.
Question Two
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My media product represents the particular social group that
I am targeting through typical conventions such as colour, costume, props and
the content of my magazine. The magazine is targeted at young adults between
the ages 16 and 22. Even though the majority of my audience are probably
students, the magazine is of the cost £3.90. Even though this is quite a high
price, this is because it is circulated monthly and is of a higher quality and
packed with even more information.
The model that features in this magazine, Delilah Rose, is
of a similar age to the target audience that I have chosen. I believe that it
will be easier to appeal to my target audience because of there not being a
large age gap between the audience and music artist. She is a down to earth,
young teenage girl with a lot of ambitions like a lot of young adults at the
moment so it makes it easier for the audience to relate to the artist.
The chosen colour scheme plays a big part in representing
the social group that I am targeting as it helps reach the chosen target
audience. The colour scheme: blue, white and black uses typical monochromic
colours. Even though blue is quite a generic colour, the tone that I have
chosen – teal – is quite modern and contemporary, standing out quite nicely against
the black and white colours that I am already using.
When doing the photoshoot for my magazine, I decided that I
did not want to use too many props as I felt that this would overcrowd the
front cover, contents page and double page spread so I picked two props: an
acoustic guitar and a simple black hat. The choice of having an acoustic guitar
signifies the simplicity of the artist, her music and the magazine itself which
also links back to the genre of my media product – music. The black hat
highlights that she is someone who is quite fashionable which also links to the
choice of costume. I decided that I would go with a dark colour theme for the
clothing as I felt that this fitted in well with the music genres indie and
alternative. However the difference is I have added in a pop of colour –
yellow, which is quite bold and different to what you would typically see an
artist of indie and alternative artist wearing.
The content of the magazine plays a massive part in how you
represent the social group because this is how the message we are trying to
communicate is put across. The style of how the article is written plays a
massive part in how you target your audience because it determines the style of
the article, such as will it be a question and answer based article or in a
formal, written format. Also the vocabulary that you use can be determined by
the chosen social grade of the audience as it can be written formally, with an
extensive choice of vocabulary or one with quite a basic use of language.
Overall, I believe that I have represented my choice of
audience and social group effectively through the different conventions of the
magazine and it would sell the magazine successfully.
Question One
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When creating my magazine, I was told, to make the process
of designing the music magazine easier, to design a scaffolding of the layout
of which I would like my magazine to follow. I wanted to make sure that I
covered the general codes and conventions of a magazine of the music genre as
the ones that are on the market currently are extremely successful so I decided
that I would like to imitate some of the conventions that they have included.
I decided that I would start with designing
the layout of the double page spread – this was the easiest to create as the
majority of the page consists of the feature article text and this was not to
be added until later on. The main feature article consists of two double page
spreads with the first page being taken up mostly by a large picture of the
main artist and the next page consisting of two smaller images, the majority of
the article and two box outs which feature a small review from the artist the
article is based on and tour dates. I based the idea of my double page spread
off of an NME magazine article about The Vaccines as I felt that this was a
simplistic yet effective design.
The next page that I worked on was the contents page and I
had decided prior to making the scaffolding that this was going to have quite a
simple layout as this page is more to inform the readers than to entice them.
Even though the task was quite time consuming as I wanted everything to be in
line with one and other and also the positioning of the sell lines took quite a
long time to do – however once it was completed the scaffolding looked very
professional and followed the key conventions of other music magazine’s
contents pages.
I chose to complete the scaffolding of the magazine’s front
cover last as I felt that this would be the hardest to perfect and have it
follow the general conventions of a typical magazine of this genre. I did a lot
of independent research into other front cover styles from a range of music
magazines such as Q and Kerrang and found a front cover made by Q. I
particularly liked the style of the image and particularly the positioning of
the subject on the front cover. The image that I have chosen to use is of a
similar positioning; however I have enlarged the image so it takes up more of
the page. Another typical convention that I have followed on the front cover is
by having the sell lines down the left hand side of the page. This is something
that is commonly seen on many magazines – not just music. This is due to the
middle of the left had side of the page being typically known as the ‘sweet
spot,’ and another point for this is that the majority of the population read
from left to write and this is the point that they will initially look at.
Overall, I believe that by following the key codes and
conventions of your typical music magazine allows me to increase the standard
of the magazine and makes it look more professional and high end which is the
audience that I am targeting. I believe that it is important to follow the
codes and conventions of magazines and imitating the concepts other magazines
have used because these ideas and layouts have already been tried and tested on
the general public and are obviously successful which is what you would want
your magazine to be.
Behind the Scenes
Here are some pictures of behind the scenes of my photoshoot for my magazine. You can see the model in different costumes, all the necessary equipment to get high quality images and the props that were used.
Chosen Images
When choosing what images I would include in my magazine, I had to consider what type of photo would effectively capture the audience on each page.
When choosing what image I would feature on the front cover, I decided that I wanted to have the model having direct eye contact with the person who was holding the magazine as I felt that this would help the audience connect with the magazine.
When choosing the images for my contents page, I thought that images that were more natural and not taken in a photoshoot against a white background would fit this page well as it was advertising the articles from within the magazine and some of these were about concerts and festivals so these images fitted what I was trying to sell successfully.
When deciding what images I wanted to feature on my double page spread, I wanted a mixture of natural looking shots from a setting outside of a photoshoot and images from a photoshoot because I thought that the audience should be able to see the different sides to the artist who is featuring in that double page spread article.
Sunday, 2 February 2014
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