Evaluation

Evaluation

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

The pose of Eminem attracts the audience to look to each side of his arms and read the headlines.

The masthead is large to attract attention to it, however, it lays behind the image, to attract more attention to the image.

The coverlines are in different colours which match the masthead and design of the cover. This shows a House Style.

Pull quotes intrigue the audience to read the article.

A variety of font sizes are used to differentiate between the main article and other minor articles.

Direct eye contact is used.

A plain background of a block colour is used. This may be done to avoid any distraction from the main image and headlines.

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

Like on the cover for Vibe magazine, I have used a variety of font sizes and colours.

Direct eye contact

The pose of the person on my cover attracts the readers to look at the coverlines , like on the front cover of Vibe magazine.

A pull quote is used.

Unlike the cover for Vibe magazine, I have decided not to use a plain background of block colour. I have used a brick wall as I feel that it is appropriate to the style of the magazine.

I have also decided not to make the masthead too large in comparison to the image.

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

Main image

Magazine logo

Articles laid out with page numbers and information about them

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

Magazine logo

Images annotated with article names and page numbers

I have kept my contents page fairly plain and simple in comparison to other contents pages in magazines such as Vibe magazine. I have done this because my cover is also fairly simple, so the contents page should be similar in that respect. I have used a colour scheme of black and red, which are the colours on my masthead logo design.

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

Main image

Pull quote- this brings attention to the article.

Text

This is a double page spread from Vibe magazine. It is an interview with Usher.

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

Pull box

Main image

Title

Text

Magazine logo

Unlike the double page spread, my article is a biographical article. I have used a pull box to include a section of the text which would not fit on the other page of the spread, due to the way I have laid it out.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• My magazine is targeted at both males and females, aged between 16-25. I think this is a suitable age range, as it ranges between teenagers to adults. It is aimed at a multicultural audience of a social occupational class between C1-E.

• Things such as clothes, music, art and dance will be featured in the magazine. Music will include stereotypical hip hop/ RnB music alongside rap, beatboxing and turntables. Art will include graffiti, and dance will include breakdancing. These are all conventional to the style of magazine I am making.

• The magazine will be published and sold monthly in the UK and America. It will be distributed in the main cities such as London, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, and similar cities in the USA.

• The language used in my article was carefully considered before I finished writing it. Using a variety of courses (which have been credited in my Wordpress blog), I gathered information needed to write my article for the double page spread. It was important that the language I used was neither too informal nor too formal, as the age range and social class I have aimed my magazine for is quite broad.

Before taking my images, I made sure that the clothing worn by the person(s) was appropriate to the audience and representation. This is important as the magazine must comply with its genre, and any confusion with clothing, posing and location would ruin the magazine. Some images I took were subsequently not used in the magazine, as they were inappropriate in some way, be it the posing of the person, or the background.

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This is an example of an image I decided not to use in my magazine. In this case, the lighting was incorrect, as was the background. While it is possible for the background to be edited using Photoshop, I decided not to use a coloured background, but a brick background instead, which I did not want to edit.

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

• Who distributes magazines? Who produced your case-study magazine? How important is content? How important is profit?

• Magazines are distributed by their publishers. Vibe magazine is published by Time Inc, whose parent publisher is Time Warner. The magazine which I am making would be published by IPC Media.

• Content is important in a magazine as it is content which is part of the representation of the magazine Images and the language used are all essential in the magazine as genre, and as I am making a Hip Hop/RnB magazine, it was important that all the content and images in my magazine were of a Hip Hop and/or RnB theme.

• My magazine is likely to be sold in newsagents, supermarkets, music shops such as HMV, and existing stationary and bookshops such as W H Smith.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• The audience for my magazine would be people who are interested in Hip Hop/RnB music, or aspire to be like the cover stars, and stars in my magazine. As mentioned in the eighth slide, my magazine is aimed at both males and females aged between 16-25. It is also aimed for those of a social working class between C1-E, which means working, to those who are not working. They may aspire to become a rapper/singer. My magazine will include articles which may relate to them, such as features of new stars who started rapping at home or on the streets, who later became stars.

• An example of an up and coming artist is features in the magazine, and is about a street artist called Sketchasaurus, which was a double page spread written by a member of my group.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• To select content, I looked at existing magazines of the same genre as mine such as Vibe magazine and Hip Hop magazine. I looked through their covers, contents pages and double page spreads in order to determine how to lay mine out, and what contents and images to include. Once I had decided what I wanted to do, I put together my article, took my images, and constructed it. I also asked for opinions from others, and used criticism and their ideas to improve on my magazine.

• As mentioned in previous slides, the imagery concept of constructing my magazine was very important. I had to make sure that everything complied with the selected genre, or the magazine would not appeal to its target audience, and therefore wouldn’t be successful.

• In constructing the magazine I decided to keep the representations of the genre similar to how they would normally be, in order to avoid confusion or over complicating the magazine.

These are some examples of the magazine covers I looked at to determine the representation which would be used in my own magazine.

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

• To make my magazine, I used InDesign and Photoshop. I had not used these programmes before, and initially, I found them rather difficult to use, however, I soon became familiar with InDesign. I used InDesign to make my contents page and double page spread, while I used Photoshop to make my cover. I also used other forms of technology such as cameras to take my images, computers to use the software and internet, google to search for images and information, and wordpress to blog my work. Social networking sites were also used.

• I had to book out the cameras before I used them, which sometimes became as problem as they were not always available. There was also a problem with the availability of the Photoshop and InDesign software, which is only available to me in college as I do not have it at home, which meant that all the construction work I did had to be completed in lesson/college time.

• Struggling to use Photoshop at times meant that my images and cover page did not come out as I would have liked them to, and the complexity of the software meant that not everyone I asked for help knew how to use it, so out of lesson, it was harder for me to complete my contruction.

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

• When constructing my preliminary exercise, I learnt how to use InDesign, and earn technical things such as how to take a good cover photo, the conventions of magazines in general, and measurements which were required to be used.

• The preliminary exercise was to make a college magazine, so the construction and design was fairly different to making a music magazine, but it was good practice.

• I also learnt how to use a professional camera effectively, and learn how to use the blogging website Wordpress to upload and talk about my work.

• I feel that my preliminary exercise was plain and not constructed very well, something which I took into account while making the music magazine. The task itself was also much less complicated as I did not have to use other softwares while making it.

• I also feel that my music magazine is not as good as it could be due to my lack of understanding with the different softwares, something which I will improve for my next task.

• However, I have learnt a lot, including the manipulation of photos, and I learnt how important imagery, font sizes and colours are in the representation of a genre are in a magazine.

My preliminary exercise