Evaluation

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

My media product, a music magazine, develops conventions of other magazines in many ways. After deciding the genre of my magazine, I was able to study more into these similar types. I decided to focus my attention on Q and NME magazine. Their layout, font styles and editing techniques were my main priorities to copy, but also to place my own original stamp upon. In my masthead, or title of my magazine I experimented with different types of fonts, as you can see in my production, but the one I found was most effective was the one that looked incredibly similar to that of NME magazine. I challenged the style by making a 3D effect to it rather than a specific outline which is on the NME logo. I wanted to make my front cover very much alike to most magazines, by this I mean Fashion magazines as well. I did this by making my singular image very large on the page, which would slightly cover the masthead. Not only is this a general style to magazines but I personally like the effect due to the look of different layers on the cover. I also wanted to make sure my coverlines were not placed in any old order and they were precisely placed around the image, with the main coverline slightly overlapping the image to indicate the relationship between the two. This is one feature of magazines which is very significant. For my genre of magazine, I have found similar products with band names down one side of their front cover to show that they are included. I have put my own spin on this by using the logos of these bands and editing them to match the colours of my house style. I have also noticed, In order to make my magazine look professional I also had to add small details which we probably would not notice otherwise. These are things such as a barcode and page numbers. Finally on my front cover I have copied other products by using a serif font to indicate ‘spoken’ words. The attributes that are most similar to other magazines on my contents page are the layout and use of boxes. On one example of Q magazine there is one large image in the top right hand side of the page which is something I have replicated myself as I believe it works very well by linking this to the main coverline. Separate boxes are also used indicate different sections. Even though this is something similar, my style of boxes has been wider rather than the more vertical, slim line style to others. I believe my images on my double page spread reflect the general styles of product incredibly. The images tend to be a lot larger than the text or article itself and concentrate on detail much more than the front cover or contents page. For this reason I have carefully selected my images. My whole page is inspired by a double page spread that I have analysed. I have used the same ‘outline’ effect on my image but with grey and not white and I have also placed my text in specific white boxes which overlaps the images. Along with other conventional music magazines, I have included a large article title and small blurb introducing it as well as a quotation right in the middle. Although it seems I have directly copied a magazine article that I have seen there is one part which I have not seen on any other spreads. This is the Q&A format of the article, most use one long article yet I have decided to break this up a little. This is after my target audience stated that this is the type of article they would like to see. Something that I wanted to make original to my style is the unique colour scheme and also my laid back style of interview. This interview style is something I have noticed from personal experience of gossip and fashion magazines, but it was an element I wanted to bring into this product. There are ways in which I have developed and style yet also confronted them, but all in all I think this may have been a good formula to create something of my own.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My music magazine represents the six different social groups both positively and negatively in their own way. Age has been represented not by variety but accordingly to my target audience. In the images one of my models is 17 and the other (the main images) is 13. Although 13 is just on the cusp of my target audience I have represented him as 17 as you can see in my interview. I also may have unintentionally written my interview which would represent someone who is 17/18 this is because I am myself this age so this will be reflected across the whole magazine. Age has also been represented through costume. This is because I allowed the models to wear their own clothing which of course reflects their own age. The poses used in the images represent age because I have asked them to act in a fashion which they would perceive as ‘cool’. On the flip side all of this may be seen as negative as I have not used different ages, yet this is irrelevant due to my target audience. My magazine is aimed at both male and female audiences however in reflection, gender has been badly recognised. This is because the models in my images are both males, I have no images of females so this could be viewed as sexist. The ways in which gender could be fairly represented are first of all the inclusion of both male and female artists and bands within the magazine. As well as the fact I am a female writing the article so it is written on a female’s perspective. For my article I drew a lot of inspiration from fashion magazines which might also be seen as sexist towards females. One of my interview questions asks ‘are you in a relationship’ this is the type of gossip that females are stereotypically going to want to know about and not males. Within this social group, I have failed to aim towards my whole target audience.  Social class is a difficult social group to represent fairly when my product mainly involves ‘celebrity’. However instead of looking at the music stars themselves; social class can be represented by my use of fonts, layout, colour and language style. I decided to aim my magazine at middle class, every day people so I needed to design this to suit. I did this by gathering my inspiration from the magazines that do aim at this group which is why I have successfully represented them. You could also say on a negative point that I have not catered for the whole UK population. But my product is required to aim specifically at my market and there is no way I could appeal to everyone. Ethnicity has not been represented as a broad aspect in my magazine; this is due to my use of only one ethnic background in my images, white British. This might be seen as racist. There is no specific regional identity that I have aimed my magazine at as I would like to see the magazine distributed to the whole of the UK, which would reach each region accordingly. Slang words such as ‘papped’ and ‘fashionista’ have been included in my interview which may not be familiar to some areas of the UK but this is the only thing that may be a problem towards my magazine. Throughout my magazine images I have represented physical ability purely because this is similar to real life magazines, however this may be seen as offensive for people who are buying the magazine who do have a physical disability and their social group has not been represented. Then again you could also see this as a positive aspect because I have not been involved with tokenism, which is including a physically disabled person because I have to.

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

There are three different institutions in which I could distribute my music magazine through. The first is IPC Media who distribute such magazines as ‘What’s on TV’ ‘TV Times’, ‘Look Magazine’ and ‘Now’. It is stated on the company website their target audiences are, men, mass market women and up market women. This isn’t really the audience that I am attempting to aim for. However, I have also found that IPC Media also distributes NME who was one of my main inspirations for the creation of my magazine, so this might mean that each magazine will be too similar and will not help IPC open up to a new market. However, it seems NME appeals to men which is a very different audience to which I believed my magazine was a part of. This could be a good and a bad point, I may have predicted my audience wrong due to my inspiration or I could distribute to another company to help compete against NME. On reflection, even though I have inspired my magazine upon this, there are certain elements that help it appeal to adolescent females and generally the younger audience. This is probably because of the colour scheme, font style and use of language. The second distribution company to consider is Conde Nast, this company distributes magazines such as Glamour, Vogue, GQ and House & Garden. From my research, I have been able to distinguish that this company distributes magazines that appeal to a higher social class audience, in comparison to my own product; it probably would not work in the same group together. However I have also found that they have a particular focus in ‘interests’, these include Fashion, Home, Travel, Food and Culture. So what I have noticed is Music is not part of these interests, Conde Nast could then use this opportunity to invest in this new section of their company which is most likely to do great success. Finally there is Bauer Media, a company who distributes the likes of Heat, Grazia,  FHM, MATCH, Kerrang! and Q magazine. This magazine aims towards both men and women of a lower to middle class audience, so in general, a large population of the UK. It caters for Music, Sport and Fashion genres, which are all very popular in today’s society. One reason why I may not want to pitch my magazine to this company is that they already have magazines of a similar kind (Q and Kerrang) which I used to inspire the designs of my own product. Then again, due to my target audience it seems my magazine would work very well with the current success of Bauer Media. In conclusion I think my magazine would work best with Bauer Media because of the attributes that are similar to the company as well as the new audience that it could attract.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My audience for my media product will be young people between the ages of 13-20. The reason for the large age gap is due to the nature of the product. This magazine is music based which is a form of entertainment which is universally enjoyed by everyone; there aren’t any issues that will be raised in the magazine which would vary for different ages so this gives me a large canvas of ideas to build upon.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I had the ability to attract my audience by conducting some research.  I constructed a questionnaire by studying attributes of music magazines and placing them into multi-choice and written questions. I then handed the questionnaire out to my classmates and friends, who are a similar age to my target audience. Once a number of responses were collected, I was able to analyse the genres of music, styles and images that these people would like to see on a magazine. During the production of the magazine, I referred back to the questionnaire results to fit in exactly what they wanted. I also decided to use a style of language that was suitable for this age group as well as not making everything ‘too serious’ which would attract an older audience. Something that I might have changed in hindsight would be to hand my questionnaire to more people and of a wider age bracket, this would increase the validity and reliability of the questionnaire results and therefore gave me a better picture of how I should have produced the magazine.

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

During the process of constructing this product I have learned a fair amount about technologies, especially during the process of taking my photos. During my photo shoot I had to think very carefully about angles and lighting in order to make it professional looking. These had to be precise details in order to find the correct shot for the correct element of the music magazine. After these photos had been taken I had to use a programme called Fireworks in order to edit them to my specific requirements. I hadn’t used this programme much in the past but during the production I was able to experiment and test different facilities on the program.

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

There is a lot that I have learned from this whole process of creating my own product. Mainly, it has been professionalism and attention to detail. At each stage I have had to analyse and depict elements that are most important and relevant. In hindsight of my preliminary task, it looks very simple and something that may have been created in 5 minutes on a Word document. This meant that my research of previous front covers, contents and double page spread were most important. The software that they use is of the upmost quality and design so I had to find a way to use these techniques but in a lower standard of technology. This is turned taught me to include as much detail especially in my editing as possible. This is something I hope I have conveyed very well. As mentioned earlier, things like barcodes and page numbers were small details that I had to include. If I hadn’t had done as much research I wouldn’t have learned about how and where I could include these. One main thing I have learned from the processes is the fine line between tacky and professional, tiny little details such as a background colour can transform the whole look, so I knew I had to experiment these details to find the correct match.