Evaluation

EvaluationBy Anna Malpas

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Front cover

Masthead

One example where I have followed conventions of a music magazine is by including a masthead at the top of the front page, this is to establish the name of the magazine and to make it recognizable to the audience. A masthead is what you would find in any magazine and it is the largest and boldest piece of text on the page so it grabs the audience’s attention and stands out the most.

The style of my masthead was influenced by NME and Kerrang!’s. I made mine using a bold font that stands out and made it black. I followed the common convention of sticking the main cover image over the masthead to show how the audience seeing the main image is more important than them seeing the name of the magazine.

Main image

The main image front cover is the most important because its what the reader usually sees first and it shows what it will

feature and tells the audience the genre of the magazine. I used a medium shot of my model for my front cover

looking straight at the camera making eye contact with the reader, as the two other artists are as well, as I think this

engages the reader and draws them in.

I used a female on the front cover of my magazine which breaks the conventions of a stereotypical rock or alternative

magazine. When you see a female on a front cover of a magazine, they are normally trying to inspire female readers to

be like them and be appealing to the Male Gaze, by exposing cleavage or using provocative body language or smiling

and trying to entice the reader to buy the magazine. The girl on my front cover challenges this stereotype by not

revealing anything but she still shows some femininity with her volumised hair. She is fully clothed and wearing a

leather jacket which makes her appear edgy and fierce. Her body language is solid and straight in front of the camera

and instead of enticing the reader, she seems almost threatening and challenges the audience to read the magazine.

Colour scheme

For the colour scheme I have chosen to use 3 main colours: black, red and yellow. I

have taken inspiration from magazines like Kerrang! and NME. These magazines

show the conventional rock magazine colours and I wanted my magazine to follow

the same conventions to represent the genre of my magazine. I also did not use just a

plain white background, I kept my background colour grey as this was the lighting I

took the main image photo in because I wanted some clashing colours, which is a

convention in rock magazines. The colour scheme also reveals to the audience what

type of music genre the magazine is about.

Coverlines

I followed the magazine convention of using coverlines on my front cover that will help to sell

my product. Coverlines give the reader hints about what is featured inside and state the essential

articles so that they will know if it appeals to them or not. I also used different colours, and

made the information that will grab the audience’s attention big, and placed the information

below in smaller text. This gave some dimension to my magazine and was again influenced by

NME and Kerrang.

My mag NME Kerrang!

Banners

I added a banner at the bottom of my front cover as this is a convention I have seen used in a lot of magazines. I have advertised posters and included images of which posters are inside because this might appeal to the reader and convince them to buy it. It is clearly advertised, just like the examples from NME and Kerrang. The banner can be placed at the very top, but I wanted mine at the bottom because the reader would have read everything on the page so the banner would be the last thing they see, so this can be used to sell my magazine if the reader hasn’t decided to buy it already. In my magazine survey, the majority of people said that they would subscribe to a magazine, so in my banner I advertised that you can subscribe to get it monthly, and I included the price.

Barcode

I followed the convention of placing my bar code in the bottom right corner, as it is not the most

important thing for the reader to see because it normally goes unnoticed when a reader is

skimming over the front cover. I added this to give my magazine a professional touch because it is

scanned when being sold by the retailer.

Contents

Masthead & title

I followed the popular convention of putting my magazine masthead in the contents page so the audience

is always aware of the brand of the magazine. I placed it in the top left corner as this is the first thing the

reader sees. I chose to write “This Week” underneath it instead of “Contents” because I wanted to

challenge this convention as I’ve seen it in many magazines. This is also used in NME and also Kerrang,

but it is not used as the title. I chose to take inspiration from this because it emphasizes to the reader that

there is something new featured in my magazine every week, and will encourage them to buy it if they see

something they want to read about so they don’t miss out.

I used a font for the title that is easy to read and in black so its clear to see against the white background.

Images

My contents page is mainly taken up by pictures rather than text because the audience might think they are more interesting to look at. I have followed the convention of making the biggest image on the page related to the main article featured in the magazine, as this is what usually what the reader looks at first, so this will help to attract the audience. I have taken photos of artists in different angles and took them in different locations to make the page more appealing and exciting because there is variety, and this will show there are a mixture of people that are featured, not just the same kind of artist doing a photoshoot in the studio. Each image shows a certain mood, such as happy, joyful, powerful, and there is also an aspect of freedom in the outdoors photo with the nature and leaves, which ties in with music representing being free. Instruments such as guitars and drums are included in some images to emphasize that it is a music magazine, which is also used in NME magazine. This also suggests the genre of music the magazine is based on.

Layout

For the layout of my contents page I decided to use a greater ratio of images to text because my audience will prefer to look atimages rather than text because they will be more attracted to pictures of artists that will be featured instead of reading about them, and since my magazine is aimed at 16-25 year olds they may not want to do a lot of reading. Therefore I have followed the conventions used by NME and Kerrang of using more images than text. I stuck with the convention of using my bold masthead and the title at the top so the reader knows what the page is about. The contents page of NME uses one column on the right hand side and headers so the reader knows where to look when they want to find something specific. Kerrang! displays its contents in 4 columns on the bottom half of the page. For my magazine, I chose to use one column because it is easier to readbecause it goes straight down, making it easier to follow. All the contents are listed in red boxes because it immediately drawsyour eye to it. The text on top of it is white, making it easy to read and there are page numbers next to them so the reader canquickly skip to a page if something interests them.

The main image on the page is from the exclusive interview in the magazine so this tells the audience that it is the main feature, which will attract them to read it. There are several images underneath to show the audience what else is included.

Above the column of contents, I added a box with social media icons, which are very recognizable to the audience, telling them that they can follow Fuse magazine on these platforms, and I also included the magazine website where they can go for more information.

Page numbers

I have used page numbers on my contents page, just as magazines like NME and Kerrang. They are

placed in the corners of my images and in the contents column so they are easy to see. This is a useful

convention because the reader can easily look at a number and quickly flick to a page if they want to

read about something that interested them.

Double page spread

Headline

My headline is at the top of the page is this is the first thing the audience is drawn to. My

Headline is ‘Who’s That Girl?’ because the interview is with a breakthrough artist who isn’t

too well known. This challenges the headline used in NME as it says the name of the band

the article is focused on because they are well known, therefore it is used to attract people

who are fans of The Vaccines. This also challenges Kerrang! which uses a quote from the

article as their headline, as I placed my quotes in different places on the page.

Colour scheme

With the colour scheme for my double page spread, I decided to keep it simple by using

green as a staple colour and also black and white. I used black, white, yellow and red for my

front cover and contents page, but I decided to switch to green for the double page to make

my magazine appear more interesting. I didn’t want to use too many colours because i thought this would

fit better with my target audience. I kept my background white, just like the example from NME, and I

chose green and black for my text colours as they are the easiest to read. The NME magazine also keeps

it simple by using minimal colour and only using blue as a staple colour to show that it is aimed at a

sophisticated target audience.

Images

The photos of my model for my double page were shot outdoors, which creates a free

and relaxed mood with the natural surroundings. The main prop in the images is the

guitar, which shows the type of music the artist creates. I used different shots and

angles taking these photos, such as close ups, medium shots and long shots. My target

audience is teenagers so I made sure I had a range of photos I could add to my

double page to keep them interested, as they might prefer looking at images than

reading the text.

Layout

In a lot of magazines, I noticed that there is a bigger ratio of images to text so I used this

convention while making my double page spread. I used one big main image on one half of

the double page to show the musician the article is centred around. This is also done in the

examples above from NME and Kerrang. On top of my main image I used a pull quote from

the interview to attract the audience to read the text on the first page, as they will look at the

images before reading the text. I added more pictures to the page with the text on because

younger audiences would find looking at photos more appealing.

The interview text is in 3 small columns as I thought this would be the neatest way to display

it, and I coloured the interviewer’s questions in green, and the musicians answers in black to

clearly distinguish who was saying what. I added another pull quote to the middle of the page

so the interview didn’t look like one block of boring text.

How does your media product

represent particular social groups?

AgeThe people I have photographed for my magazine are

teens aged 16-17. The media has a huge effect on society

and it influences peoples opinions and views on youths

today. Media represents teenagers in a very conventional

way as they are stereotyped by their personality, sex, and

appearance, and a lot of the time they are portrayed in a

negative way, for example, being lazy, rebellious and

having low morals. However, I have challenged these

stereotypes in my magazine.

The girl with the guitar is a musician which shows us that

she is very ambitious, which challenges the stereotype that

teenagers are reckless and don’t care about setting goals

for their life. She is in an outdoor setting with leaves and

nature surrounding her, and the camera angle is at the

side to show her looking out in front of her, which

suggests a peaceful state of mind. The girl in the 2nd

photo is smiling, and also has relaxed and casual body

language, she is facing the camera but she is leaning to

one side to show an aspect of youthfulness. This works

against the stereotype of teenagers being crazy, out of

control ,and rebellious characters.

GenderImages of both males and females have been used in

my magazine.

Females are usually portrayed stereotypically in music

magazines by having to deliver society’s expectations

of femininity to fit in with the theory of the Male

Gaze and to want female readers to aspire to be like

them. They are presented by having long styled hair,

exposing skin, such as cleavage, and using provocative

body language. I challenged this stereotype with one

of my female models who is also on my front cover.

Instead of revealing anything, she is fully clothed and

wearing a leather jacket to make her appear “edgy”

instead of “sexy”. Her body language is simple, she

doesn’t look like she’s trying to show anything off, yet

she still looks powerful. Instead of smiling, she looks

quite threatening which challenges the reader to read

the magazine.

The male photographed is wearing casual but indie

type of clothing, suggesting that he isn’t mainstream,

and the type of music he is playing is indie/alternative.

He is playing a guitar which shows that young males

today are able to write their own songs and be

successful, making them people to look up to.

What kind of media institution might

distribute your product and why?

IPC Media is the UK’s leading consumer magazine and digital publisher with a large

portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year and has more than 60 iconic media brands.

They publish many magazines to fit a wide range of audiences, such as home and lifestyle,

sporting, and beauty. It also publishes music magazines similar to mine, such as NME.

NME serves an engaged audience of 16-24 year olds, and it is the longest published and

most respected music weekly in the world.

I think that IPC Media would be the best to distribute my magazine. Since it already

distributes well know brands such as NME, so they will have already have experience and

dependable consumers who may be interested in Fuse magazine.

www.ipcmedia.com

Who would be the audience for

your media product?

The target audience for my magazine would be similar to audiences

who read:

I researched the readership of these magazines to find out

information about the type of people they are, for example, what

hobbies they have, their average age and social class. This gave me

ideas for who will be my target audience.

Target AudienceGender:My magazine would appeal to both male and female audience. Girls may be drawn to the

magazine more because of the powerful female figure on the front cover, but I think it

will attract anyone who wants to read about the indie/rock genre. This is reinforced by

statistics shown from my research that the percentage of Kerrang! readers are 45.3%

female and 54.7% are male. This tells me that both genders will enjoy Fuse magazine.

Age:

The age for my target audience is 16-24 year olds as my magazine uses some colour to

attract the teenage audience, but isn’t overdone for the young adult audience. The model

on the front cover image appears to look more mature than she is, so this will appeal to an

adult audience as well as teenagers. Fuse magazine includes things a young audience would

be interested in, such as news and gossip about well known bands, interviews with artists

and posters because a lot of teenagers like to put posters on their walls. It also advertises

social media, which is used by most people of this age.

Class: My magazine is priced at £3.20 and it is released monthly so it is affordable for

working class and middle class people.

Hobbies/interests:

My audience enjoys listening to music on iPods/phones or through medias such as

Youtube and Spotify. They enjoy bands like Two Door Cinema Club, You Me at Six,

Mumford & Sons, and Paramore. They like spending time with friends and going to the

cinema, doing sports, and shopping. A lot of their time is spent watching films and TV

shows, and finding out about new artists/bands to listen to and new shows to watch.

How did you attract/address your

audience?

Images

One of the ways I attracted my audience was by the

use of images. The front cover image is of a teenage

girl but she looks more mature due to the dark

lighting used in the studio, so this appeals to an older

audience. The clothes she is wearing, e.g the leather

jacket has an edgy and rebellious feel to it so this

would be appealing and relatable to the teenage

audience.

In my contents page I included pictures of people

with instruments. One of the photos was from a

concert, and I thought this would be appropriate for

a music magazine because gigs and festivals are most

popular among teenagers so this will appeal to the

young audience. Since my audience are influenced by

music I included an image of a teenage girl with a

guitar, which suggests she writes and performs her

own songs, and could inspire the reader to want to

be like her.

Fonts

Throughout my magazine I used fonts that are easy to read as the audience would

prefer to read something if it is in a clear font. For my masthead I used a bold and

clear font in black as the reader’s eye would be immediately drawn to this.

The list of contents on my contents page are clearly readable against the colour of the

background, I used a mix of colours because this will attract the teenage audience. The

page numbers listed are clear to see so the reader can easily flick to any page if they see

something they want to read about. With the interview for my double page spread, I

made sure it was easy to read because there is a lot of text on that page, I also used

dark colours which stands out the most against the white background.

Freebies

A convention I have seen used on many magazines is a banner across the magazine

advertisting free things included inside, such as posters, so I used the same idea for

my magazine, and I also advertised that there are posters included on my contents

page. I showed a preview of what posters are inside, so this will appeal to people

that are fans of these artists. Posters would appeal most to the teenage audience

because they are most likely to stick posters of bands and musicians they like on

their walls.

What have you learnt about

technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

Google Chrome is the browser I have used throughout

this project. Without being able to use search engines

like Google, I wouldn’t be able to complete research

that I had to do when I needed to find out about

magazine publishers and magazine readership.

One of the websites that was an important part of

this project was Slideshare. I used this to upload

my PowerPoint presentations to my blog, since

Blogger doesn’t support these files. It was my first

time using it so I learnt how to set up an account,

upload my files and embed them onto my blog

using the HTML code.

Using Blogger was essential to the whole project as this is what I created

my blog with to upload my magazine analysis, research, planning, final

product and evalution. With everything uploaded to my blog, all my work

could be viewed online to anyone. I had never created a blog, but I found

Blogger easily to use as it was clear to see how to make a new post, change

the titles and layout of my blog, and publish my work.

Photoshop was the most important programme in this project as I

wouldn’t have been able to create my magazine without it. There

are similar programmes I could’ve used, such as inDesign but I

thought Photoshop was the best because i’ve had a bit of previous

experience with it and it gave me all the tools needed to create my

magazine. I had never edited a picture on Photoshop or created

such a thing like a magazine before so I learnt how to change the

brightness/contrast, use the lasso tool to change the colour of

something specific, the stamp tool if I wanted something to blend

in, the colour picker tool to select a certain colour for something I

had used elsewhere, and the text tool. I also learnt how to create a

clipping mask, which was useful for resizing some of my images.

Taking photos & hardware

A main part of this task was taking my own photos for my magazine, and to do this I

used a DSLR camera because this allowed me to take high quality photos which are

essential for my magazine to look professional. I learnt more about taking photos, and

how to zoom and focus the camera, and also I learnt how to work with studio lighting.

There wasn’t enough memory in my user area on the college computers to save all my

large files so I had to use a memory stick to store all my work. This was much easier than

emailing my work to myself, and it was handy because it meant I could transfer all my

work to my home computer just by plugging it in.

I used a desktop PC to do all my work at college as they included software I needed for

production, like Photoshop. I used my laptop at home to catch up on work that wasn’t

production.

Looking back at your preliminary task,

what do you feel you have learnt in

the progression from it to the full

product?

PlanningI learnt that planning is essential in a project like this and

it is important for producing a good quality final

product. I planned each stage up to creating my

magazine so I knew which direction to take everything

in.

I created layout and flat plans of my magazine so I knew

where I wanted to place everything in production. I

changed a few of things from these plans because when

I was putting everything together I could see what

looked good and what didn’t.

My photography planning helped me decide what kind

of shots I wanted to take, e.g. Close ups, medium shots,

and it let me organise things like what I wanted my

models to wear, the locations, and the props. This was

useful because I could get down to taking the photos

straight away instead of wasting a lot of time deciding

what I wanted to shoot.

I did not do any planning for my College magazine so I

had no idea how I wanted to structure it or what to

include.

I created a Style Sheet to help me with the design of my magazine, and I planned my

colour scheme and the type of fonts I wanted to use. The colour scheme planning

became very helpful as I could just look at this when deciding which tones of colour

worked with others. I looked at fonts online and chose the ones I thought would suit my

magazine, and I got to experiment with which fonts worked well and which didn’t.

Research

For the preliminary task, I already knew the audience for

my college magazine would be college students which are

aged 16-19 but I did no research into similar magazines or

asked what things the target audience want to read about.

For my project I conducted a lot of research: publisher

research, reader profiles, an interview and a survey.

The publisher research helped me to learn about other

companies portfolios of products, and what type of

markets they reach out to.

I I looked at magazines similar to mine, such as NME and

Kerrang! to see which conventions I should follow and

what to include that would appeal to my target audience.

I I created a survey using Survey Monkey and sent it out

to get feedback that told me more about my audience

and what I should put in my magazine to appeal to them.

ProductionSince my preliminary task I have improved with my

skills with the photo editing software I used,

Photoshop. While creating my college magazine I had

little knowledge of how to use tools on Photoshop, but

during the process of making magazine I have learnt

how to do things such as: how to put the masthead

behind the person on the front cover using the lasso

tool, creating clipping masks, adding text, adding shape

boxes, and being able to adjust brightness/contrast and

saturation on images.

Overall I believe I have progressed from the use of this

software as at the beginning I wasn’t experienced with

it but now I am much more confident with it, and I

have been able to create a professional looking

magazine using it.