Draft of Main Task Evaluation

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.