evaluation question 7

7.Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

above is my prelim task i feel i have definitely improved from doing this task. things that needed improving:

the pages were to bare and wasted a lot of space

on the cover the WIN section should be more defined

the font is to basic for a cover (not bold enough)

the cover picture is not looking directly at the reader which would help it attract readership.

below are the final images of my full magazine:

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

PUBLISHER - used to construct the double page spread

POWERPOINT - used to convert print screens into jpegs in order to out them otno the blog

BLOGSPOT - used to mkae the blog

PHOTOSHOP - used to consrtuct the front cover and contents page

SCREEN SHOT - showing the magic wand tool which i used the most in photoshop

PUBLISHER SCREEN SHOT - showing how i created a link between texts boxes so the whole story would be in boxes.

evaluation question 5

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

evaluation question 4

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

above is a picture of my target audience. as seen they have individual dress sense mainly in the category of 'indie.' my target audience will also be 14-17 years old with a price of £2.00 so it attracts the younger people as it isn't expensive.

music taste: overall they would listen to bands rather than solo artists as they enjoy listening to the instrumental influence like in bands such as Green Day.

shopping: as the target audience are teenagers they don't have a lot of money so they shop on the high street in shops such as Peacocks that supply a lot of indie clothing.

TV favourites: overall they don't watch a lot of TV as they view music as their main media source but are interested in programmes such as Vampire Diaries which have a slight supernatural twist to them. in terms of film they like comedies such as 'Shaun of the dead' which has a spoof quality.

i think they would buy my magazine as it specifically targets these people through the costumes used on the model to the type of music the artists play.

evaluation question 3

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

above are logos from distributors of magazines.
Emap distribute brands in different sectors: media (media festival magazine); fashion (Drapers magazine); Health (professional beauty magazine).
Conde Nast distribute: fashion (glamour); living (interior); health (easy living)
Nat mag distribute: beauty (cosmopolitan); women magazines (you and your wedding).

this is a print screen of the magazine publishers Bauer who publish the magazine Kerrang.

above is a screen shot from the website for publisher IPC media who publish the music magazine NME.
there are many ways in which magazines make profit:
circulation and subscription: circulation is when a person simply goes to the shops and buys a magazine. however this makes little profit for the magazine due to costs such as travel for the magazines to get to the shops. this is why they have subscriptions which make more profit as money is made every month and the magazine is distributed straight to the reader.

classified advertising: these are ads placed at the back of the magazine and take little space but are very expensive for the client meaning a lot of profit for magazines.

other advertising: this is the best way that magazines make revenue as ads placed throughout the magazine cost a lot. they also make the magazine look better as there are no spaces around the stories.

there is one new company called Realview which distributes magazines online which is said to increase the revenue for them. an example of one of their clients is Indonesian Cosmopolitan.

Evaluation question 2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

above is an image of my front page model (left) and an image of an issue of kerrangs front cover (right). the two poses are quite similar in the way that the upper body is twisted to the right. also the facial expressions similar as they both have eye contact with the reader and have a slight attitude. my image attracts the social group of indie through the costume i also thinks the kerrang image does as well as the costume is very individual.

evaluation

EVALUATION
Q.1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

THE TITLE : The option I went for with my title was FTV (feel the vibe) as the initials sound good when said and the word 'vibe' targets a younger audience. In terms of the conventions of magazines my title keeps with the convention as many magazines now use initials for titles e.g. 'NME'

MISE EN SCENE : above are the three main pictures used in the magazine. Overall they fit with typical music magazines through the poses and facial expressions as they convey strong attitudes. the middle picture was inspired by a pose in an actual magazine. the first image shows attitude as it shows an almost Godlike approach to the male.

COSTUMES AND PROPS : in both main pictures the boy is wearing the same costume which is: a 'hoodie' covered in skulls with black jeans and black converse, all of which are stereotypical to the social group of 'indie' which is the group i am targeting with this artist. The surrounding was used slightly such as in the first picture i chose to have him standing on a rock with this pose in order to create more of a confident and imposing pose. in the second picture he is using a climbing frame which is slightly seen in the picture which was used for him to balance on in order to get the desired twist of the body.

PEOPLE : i used a boy and a girl as separate solo artists which changed from the first idea of a group made of two girls and one boy. i used these two particular people as they are at the age of my target audience which are teenagers (14-17 (primarily)).

TITLE FONT AND STYLE : These are the main three texts I used for my magazine. The Infected font was used as the main title of the magazine (FTV). I chose this font as it has a high impact look from the cracks and design around the lettering. The other fonts were also used on the front cover and inside the magazine because they have slight distortion to them.

WRITTEN CONTENT: inside the magazine i decided to do an interview for my double page spread. the writing was placed into columns to resemble a real magazine. the writing is set out into question (yellow)... answer (white) to make it easy to follow by the readers. the second picture above is the writing within the contents page. since it was just the contents page and not the actual story i only used a sentence to sum up the idea of the story in order to entice readers.
MUSIC GENRE AND HOW IT'S PRESENTED: the genre of music the magazine focuses on is 'indie' music. this is shown i think through mainly the overall 'look' of the models as they look like stereotypical 'indie' people through the reasons described earlier under the subheading of 'COSTUME AND PROPS'

LAYOUT - FRONT COVER: my front cover is very typical of any music magazine in terms of it's layout. the title is in the same position of any any magazine (NME) as it's in the top left handed corner. all the text is down one side which again is typical to most magazines. the banner at the bottom is the same as any published music magazine in the way it advertises the featured bands.

LAYOUT - CONTENTS PAGE: in many ways my contents page is typical to many magazines as it has pictures of the main acts and features such as an editors letter. however it goes against some magazines as the stories within the magazine aren't sectioned into boxes with an accompanying picture.

LAYOUT - DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD: my double page spread is in a typical layout of columns for the text and columns for measuring the dimensions of the picture. the split down the middle signaling the two separate areas are clear and have no writing over the centre fold in order to stop any dis - figuration to the writing. i put extra writing over the picture as it had a lot of space around the main focus (the model.)

overall my magazine is very conventional for the music genre because of the reasons discussed above.

Double page steps

For my double page spread I tried to create one that was inspired by a double page by Kerrang. However when creating the inside pages some problems occurred and the best that would come of this inspiration was the following picture:

I didn’t feel this was at the same standard as my front cover and contents page so I changed the idea by deleting some pictures and making one the main focus by making it fill a whole half of the double page. I also decided to change the colour theme from red to yellow and change the circle in the top right hand corner to a text box on the top left hand corner. The final product is the screen shot below.

contents steps

For the contents page the first thing I did was add the background which was simple as it is the same as the front cover. Secondly I decided which font to use; I quickly thought to use the same as the cover as it keeps a constant theme throughout. Pictures were then added of the two main artists in the magazine. These pictures are different to the cover in order to add a bit of variety.

The next step was to add the names and some of the stories related to the artists. I then added the headings of features and reviews to separate the different stories within the magazine.

Stories were then added of various artists with their page numbers at the side in circles.

The 'reviews' section was then sectioned further into different types of reviews available e.g concerts, albums.

An editor’s letter and competition circle was then added to fill the space on the right hand side as the listing of stories took up the space on the left hand side.

cover steps

The first thing I did once the photo was cut down to size was choose the font for the title: FTV. I went onto WWW.DAFONT.com and viewed many different fonts. I immediately liked the font IMPACT which I used in the photo above. I liked this as the cracks around it make it look the writing has made an impact upon the page. I then liked the idea of a strip across the top advertising a different band inside the magazine. Paramore are one of my personal favourites so I chose them.

The text for the name of the artist within the picture was a combination of twodifferent ones. The text shown first is TRASHCO which I really like because of the design around the writing but unfortunately it is not legible.

I wanted to keep the design of TRASHCO but I needed the readers to be able to read it. To have both I wrote the name again in BIRTH OF A HERO font which is a simple block font. I then layered this over the first text. This makes it legible with the design still around the text which is shown above.

I then combined this to the other components. Once I was happy with the position I added a little statement about the artist: 'The Hot New Solo Artist' in order to entice the reader. I then found there to be a big space at the side of the picture so I filled this with a circle containing a competition. This was inspired by the Kerrang magazine shown on the post of ‘Research.’

Two more stories were then added to the bottom left hand side of the screen, one containing a picture of the artist spoke about.

Banners at the bottom of the magazine are very common to tell the reader who are featured inside so I added one very easily just using the rectangle tool on photoshop and adding text. A simple barcode and cost was added to give the affect of a real magazine.
Finally a banner at the top was added in the same way the bottom one was. I did this in order to fill the gap as space is very rarely spared on magazines.

font options

These are the main three texts I used for my magazine. The Infected font was used as the main title of the magazine (FTV). I chose this font as it has a high impact look from the cracks and design around the lettering. The other fonts were also used on the front cover and inside the magazine because they have slight distortion to them.

photoshoot

Photos
My initial idea was to create a band containing two girls and one boy. I didn’t want the band to look too much like the genre of ‘pop’ so I decided to use costumes such as the jacket that the boy is wearing which has skulls on it which gives him a more grunge look. However after looking at the pictures the girls looked too ‘girly’ for the image I wanted to create. Although they looked beautiful I decided to cut them out of the pictures leaving me with a male solo artist. The two pictures below were my final two for the front cover as Jason is positioned well. The first one had the angle and pose I wanted whereas the second one had a great expression.
When I cropped out the girls and cut out Jason I was left with the image on the right.


When I had cropped the image below the result was the image bottom right. With this image I would have had to leave the background as when I tried to cut out the person it didn’t look right. Taking this into consideration the image above is what I chose to use on my front cover.

magazine title options

The spider diagram shows the four names I had to choose from for my magazine. I liked all of them as they all appealed to young people and had an energetic sounds to them. However some had minor flaws such as the initials FTB didn't look right, neither did MOS. NMS sounded too much like NME so the option I went for was FTV (Feel The Vibe) as the initials sounded good and the word vibe sounds young and fresh which is the image I want to portray.

Audience and Cost

The target audience for Kerrang magazine used to be 16-25 years old. However in order to attract a more younger audience of 14-17 they now feature bands which have a less rock focused genre of music such as 30 Seconds to Mars. The cost of the magazine is £2.20 which is relatively cheap which reflects their young audience as young people don't have a lot of money through being students and rarely have jobs. Nearly 5.5 million music magazines are sold. Altogether almost £17.2 million of revenue is made with £7.4 million of it coming from the two popular rock magazines NME and Kerrang. This shows that the genre of rock that Kerrang use is very popular.
The price for NME magazine is also £2.20 which again appeals to the younger side of their target audience as they target 17-30 years old males. The readership of the magazine is 411,000 with an average age of 25 which shows that their style is working to attract their target audience. As I want to attract more of a younger audience I will base mine on Kerrang magazine as NME also looks for the older person were as I just want to attract teenagers. Therefore my target audience will also be 14-17 years old with a price of £2.00 so it attracts the younger people as it isn't expensive.

Prelim Magazine

This is the magazine cover I managed to create on photoshop for the prelim exercise. It is far from perfect in many ways but as I am new to photoshop it could have gone a lot worse. The font is a major problem for this as it is to young for the desired audience, of college students. The picture is okay but could be made more dynamic through being at a different angle or with the model looking straight at the camera.

The contents page could again be improved because of the font. The picture on the other hand is very suitable for a college magazine as it shows a care free student. The layout is good with the pictures on one side and the writing on the other and it doesn't look to ordered as the pictures overlap.

Research

I really like this front cover, especially the angle of the pose of the leading lady. The colour scheme is also unusual and eye catching as not many magazines like Kerrang use the colour pink as it is seen as 'girly.' The fact that it's busy is also appealling to me as it doesn't look like space has been wasted.





This cover made me consider the idea of a title with three letters meaning something. I like this style as it fits neatly in the corner and allows room for more features on the cover. It is also more intriguing for the reader as they have to read more of the magazine to find out what the letters stand for. This image is dynamic as it is head on, looking straight at the reader. the banner at the top is also something I may use as it gives a more professional look.

Even though this cover with Muse on the front doesn't contain many bold colours or varied text it is still effective in interesting the reader through the image. The background makes it look more busy as it isn't a simple studio shot with a white/black background. Also again the image is a mid shot from a high angle which creates a different prospective on the band.