1. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The key conventions of a music magazine are the
masthead, brand identity, splash, barcode and price, house style, coverlines,
central image, streamline, mode of address, articles trailed, pug, puff and a
headline. The front cover of a magazine has to include a central image, a
masthead, a headline and splash is common, coverlines are too. A typical
contents page has a masthead, a list-like format of the contents (the most
important things the magazine is featuring or what the writers think the public
will enjoy most), a few images relating to the contents on the contents page,
page numbers of the most important things the magazine is featuring. A typical
double page spread in a music magazine contains an article or interview of an
artist of band. A main image, large amounts of text, the masthead, a title and
secondary images are commonly featured on a double page spread.
2. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
The social group I have represented is mainly
teenagers to young adults who are interested in the indie/pop music. I have
represented them by including photos and images in my magazine of that
particular social group. I feel as though I’ve tried to represent them in an
alternative way which reflects a more emergent ideology. I have used more
pictures than text I think, except for the Double Page Spread - my research stated
that the DPS pages contain more text than images.
3. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product?
Referring back to my Student Pitch I can see
that some indie/pop magazines are run by the magazine themselves. For example,
The Wire’s publisher is The Wire Magazine LTD (a private limited company) which
has been run independently since December 2000. I would not be able to do this
with my magazine as it’s newly available in the market - I wouldn’t have the
right resources or skills to provide advertisement for the magazine in order
for it to sell well. Dazed and Confused is another indie magazine, but is
published by Waddell Limited. It’s a niche publishing company. I think they
would like to distribute and publish my magazine as, although it’s fairly
similar to to Dazed and Confused, it has certain aspects about it which Dazed
and Confused doesn’t have. For example, my magazine offers reviews of old and
upcoming new artists, how the readers can get involved.
4. Who would be the audience for your
magazine?
I feel as though the gender would be mainly
female and the age range can vary from 16-30 but more specifically 18-24 year
olds. My audience would be quite alternative and appeal to a nice market. Their
education could vary from college/sixth form to early work - this means that
their annual income could be quite low or average, meaning that their
disposable income would be low, so the price of my music magazine would have to
be fairly cheap so my audience would be able to afford it. They would enjoy
fairly cheap magazines full of content appealing to them. My alternative
audience’s interests would be photography, fashion and creative arts. The music
my audience would listen to would be indie/alternative artists and bands like
The Pretty Reckless, The 1975, Lana Del Rey, The xx, The Neighbourhood, Mayday
Parade, Two Door Cinema Club and Royal Blood.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my target audience by producing an
eye-catching front cover to draw them in, 70% of people buy magazines on the
spur of the moment so the front cover is a very important aspect. In my
planning and research I came up with a list of possible names for my magazine,
after a while I finally decided upon EXPLORE. I chose this firstly because of
it’s
nature, when you see this name you instantly think of something adventurous and
inspiring and it can be interpreted in many ways. The distance between the
letters of EXPLORE is called tracking and the use of a single command word
creates a sense of simplicity. The use of the capital letters for EXPLORE
creates emphasis and excitement as the letters are bolder and larger than
lowercase letters - they stand out to the viewer more and they can easily find
the title they’re looking for in a magazine stand if the masthead is bold and
easily readable.
The
colour scheme on my front cover is quite dark but it contains elements of
greenery which connotes the adventurous side of the magazine. The word explore,
to me, connotes the colour green, this symbolism is continued throughout the
magazine as my masthead is of that colour. The colour green is quite striking
and would stand out to the viewers.
I
used a variety of fonts suitable to my magazine to appeal to the mark scheme
for the main task. The fonts I used were candara, MoolBoran, Ebrina, Sakkal
Majalla, Hobo Std and Plantagenet Cherokee. The fonts I used were mainly
sans-serif (characters without handles) as my research stated that many indie
music magazines didn’t have these ‘handles’ on the end of characters as it felt
to formal for their magazine. In my planning I noticed that the magazines I
researched had a large amount of space between the letters in a word or
sentence; this is called tracking. I wanted to continue the use of tracking in
my magazine so I used it on my magazine pages.
Throughout
my magazine I kept all my images relatively the same, they were all edited in
Photoshop using levels, saturation, curves, balance and many more techniques.
They were all in colour and some were taken outside, and some in a studio with
a blank background. This creates a contrast and allows the readers to see both
sides of the magazine.
The
mode address, the way in which the magazine speaks to the reader, is fairly
informal which can be linked to the genre of the music magazine. Spoken in a
relaxed and chilled way allows the reader to feel more connected to the person
speaking (especially if it’s on the double page spread - the reader can create
a connection with the article).
6. What have you learnt about technologies
from the process of constructing this product?
The technologies I have used are Blogger (to
post my blog posts), InDesign (to create and produce my music magazine),
Photoshop (to edit the photos featured in my magazine), SlideShare (to create
presentations of my music magazine) and a digital camera (to take the photos for
my magazine). I already had many strengths in using all of these technologies
as I used them in creating my preliminary task, but I now have a greater
understanding of how to use InDesign as I have been introduced to many new
features such as tracking, kerning, drop cap, the bleed line, baseline and many
other features of the InDesign software.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full
product?
When I started the preliminary task I had no
skills or knowledge of using InDesign or any of the other programs listed in
Question 6. Having little understanding of how to use the softwares in the
preliminary task created a student magazine of which I was not proud of - I
feel ad though I didn’t put my full potential and ability into the task and I
produced a poor quality piece of work. When it came to start producing the main
task I felt increasingly more confident as I had been taught many new features
and I had watched many videos on YouTube explaining how to do certain things on
InDesign. I have learnt how to make my practical work look more professional by
asking my target audience what they think and doing my own research into what
indie/pop magazines look like and what content they feature.
