Evaluation Part 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? At the start of my AS coursework, my first preliminary task was to produce a basic ‘Harris’ magazine. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to do this, therefore it was not as advanced, although it was easier to place and rearrange images and text wherever needed. For my main images, I used an iPhone 5 to capture my photos. This meant the picture quality and resolution was quite low and so my magazine did not look professional as it could have been. I did however conform to a variety of magazine conventions such as offering convergence, using twitter to attract my audience and an accessible website. My preliminary magazine conformed to having a bold masthead as I used the font ‘Gills Sans Ultra Bold’, presenting it as bold and eye catching, however that I used the same font for every text. This made my magazine look very basic. I conformed to the convention of offering a freebie to attract my audience, and as it was a school-based magazine I offered a newsletter for that term. This was relevant to the content of magazine therefore was the best option. My preliminary magazine was also priced and barcoded, costing only £1.49 which is relatively cheap and targets my specific target market audience, bearing in mind their budget. Once my preliminary task was complete, I moved on to research and planning, and finding out what my target audience expected in a teenage music magazine. There were many steps to this process, and consumed a lot of time. My first step was deciding on who my target audience was. I aimed my magazine at teenage girls between the ages
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Evaluation Part 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?At the start of my AS coursework, my first preliminary task was to produce a basic ‘Harris’ magazine. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to do this, therefore it was not as advanced, although it was easier to place and rearrange images and text wherever needed. For my main images, I used an iPhone 5 to capture my photos. This meant the picture quality and resolution was quite low and so my magazine did not look professional as it could have been. I did however conform to a variety of magazine conventions such as offering convergence, using twitter to attract my audience and an accessible website. My preliminary magazine conformed to having a bold masthead as I used the font ‘Gills Sans Ultra Bold’, presenting it as bold and eye catching, however that I used the same font for every text. This made my magazine look very basic. I conformed to the convention of offering a freebie to attract my audience, and as it was a school-based magazine I offered a newsletter for that term. This was relevant to the content of
magazine therefore was the best option. My preliminary magazine was also priced and barcoded, costing only £1.49 which is relatively cheap and targets my specific target market audience, bearing in mind their budget.Once my preliminary task was complete, I moved on to research and planning, and finding out what my target audience expected in a teenage music magazine. There were many steps to this process, and consumed a lot of time. My first step was deciding on who my target audience was. I aimed my magazine at teenage girls between the ages of 13/14 to 19 year olds, as I could relate more to that age range and partly knew what they would want. I also chose my genre, which was HipHop and RNB, as well as researched other similar products that I could compare mine to, also using them as guidelines. Secondly, I created questionnaires/surveys asking the potential customers their gender to see which gender would read my magazine more and whether they read/buy music magazines. I also asked what they would like to see in a magazine, which gave me the most feedback as I was able to build my magazine content by this. I then asked how much they would usually spend on a magazine, to find out which price was most appropriate for my age range, and which type of black music
they would like to be featured giving limited options ‘HipHop’, ‘Unsigned’, ‘RNB’ and ‘Grime’. I only used these options as I felt more comfortable in writing about these specific genres. The most crucial question asked was whether they would buy a copy, which gave me impressive feedback and assured me my magazine would be distributed successfully. My next step was creating a target audience profile, which I used an existing friend as a representative of my target audience. I used my friend’s personal demographics and psychographics to generalise the backgrounds and interests of the audience I was targeting. I used the areas in which she is from, to generalise the areas my magazine would probably be most popular and used her feedback on which social networks she used the most, to generalise which social networks I would use as convergence in my final product to attract my target audience. From this profile, I was also able to look at what music genres she most preferred and use that in my final product. This task was quite effective as it allowed me to look at a real life example and generalise my typical reader.The next step was looking at the conventions of a stereotypical HipHop and RNB magazine and using them to plan my magazine to conform to them. Conventions included the mise-en-scene, such as the stereotypical dress code, model postures and the look of the model, for example body image and ensuring my model had curves, in particular a small waist and big thighs. Other conventions such as the typography, typical colour scheme and content were all similar for various existing products, therefore was not as hard for my magazine to conform to. This task was effective as I could compare my final product, and include as many conventions I found appropriate for my target audience. I then typed up my proposal/treatment which was everything I planned for my final product. I included my target audience, my colour scheme, the content and the style of the actual magazine. These were my initial ideas, however I made a lot of changes in my final product. In my treatment, I explained why I had chosen this particular age range, and why I have chosen the genre. My initial idea was to aim my magazine at particularly young black females and focus my content on the female black HipHop and RNB celebrities, to motivate the black females in London. That idea proved to be less successful than if I created a generalised HipHop and RNB, including content about male artists and if I aimed my magazine at girls of all races, to widen my target audience. I found it unfair, as it isn’t just the black community that listen to and enjoy my chosen music genres. I then created a mood board based on this, and included everything I planned to include in my final product. This was a creative task which I completed using Microsoft PowerPoint making it easy for me to copy and paste images onto. This task was helpful as it allowed me to build my magazine upon this.I also completed and analysis of 2 existing products to help me understand the conventions of HipHop and RNB magazines further. I chose 2 very popular magazine brands, ‘VIBE’ and ‘Billboard’ that are both based in America and focus on American HipHop and RNB. I found this helpful as I was able to understand why they had used certain conventions, for example the colour schemes and how they both had their main image positioned. I found that one magazine was sexualized more than the other, due to the main cover story differences. On the Billboard magazine, Ciara was positioned quite sexually, showing a lot of skin and in a very suggestive posture, which was because of the type of music she
produces and the ways in which fans see her. Whereas on the VIBE magazine, the main image was a close up Jhene Aiko, which came across not as sexualized and more based upon her beauty as she engaged in a direct gaze. I decided I wouldn’t make my main image as sexualized due to my target audience as that is not the message I want to put out to my young readers. The next step was typing up all the feedback I got and listening to what my target audience thought of my ideas so far. This was quite positive and a lot of females said they would be very interested in reading it, as there aren’t many current existing products that feature what they want to read. However, there were criticisms from males who found it bias that it was only for girls. I also found that from my survey results, a lot of potential customers expected gossip, therefore I based my magazine around gossip within the music genres industries. This was effective, as I then worked upon the feedback I got and made changes to satisfy my target audience.
The next step was planning which fonts to use for my magazine. I found a few nice ones that I found would attract my audience, which were quite girly and not as harsh and bold as other fonts. I found that using the italic effect would make my magazine appeal to my female audience more. Whilst researching into fonts online I found a great fonts website in which I chose an appropriate font from which I really like, however, I lost the URL of the website and sadly couldn’t find it again. Consequently I had to use my initiative and use a more simpler and italic font. Luckily it looked good on my magazine and quite appropriate for my target audience. From all my ideas collected, I then created a flat plan of how I would lay out my magazine. This allowed me to plan a great start to production, and I used this flat plan to then create mock up versions of my magazine. My mock ups were based on how I wanted my final product to look, however, I made a few changes towards the end of my production. I changed the colour scheme
and the layout of the contents page as I didn’t find them as attractive. This task was fun to start and quite useful as it gave me a clearer mind set of how I was going to plan my magazine out.My production began after this, and I began organising a photoshoot and outfits for this. I conformed to the dress code of my music genres. I chose a student from my school to model for my magazine as I found that her image was a great representative of the look my target audience tend to go for. My model had clear skin, natural beautiful hair, and had a decent body image. For my magazine she was perfect. I used a professional camera borrowed from a media designer that
works in our school, and he gave me tips on how to use the camera to get the best photos from it. After this, I then had to choose my potential photographs out of roughly 300 images, based on the quality, the poses, and clarity. Once my pictures were taken, I uploaded a few to my blog and began creating my production. I used Adobe InDesign to complete this, making use of creating layers in order to organise my images and text efficiently. I then input all necessary conventions based on my target audience and what was appropriate. I created a girly, pink theme for my magazine, to target my audience well, using the fonts ‘Imprint MT Shadow’, ‘Bernard MT Condensed’ and ‘Minion Pro’ giving the effect of variety. I created a bold, and outlined in pink, masthead with a given title “Flawless” for my magazine. I also input my main image, and placed the text and cover lines around my model. In terms of pricing, I settled with the price of £1.50, keeping in mind the budget of my target audience, also including a chance to win “Flawless” iPhone case, as many of my target audience would probably have iPhones and be satisfied with this. I used catchy buzzwords such as ‘Exclusive’ and ‘win’ to attract my audience’s attention. I used appropriate cover lines which appealed to my targeted audience, using celebrity endorsement such as Nicki Minaj and J Cole to engage the readers. I believe my magazine targeted my audience quite well as I used conventions appropriately to conform to the expectations of a teenage music magazine. I used convergence which is popular for my targeted age range such as Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook and Tumblr, to keep them updated on the latest HipHop and RNB gossip. Overall I believe my production was successful and I learnt a lot during this process. I also gained new skills on InDesign and Photoshop, also using the help of a media developer in school, as well as feedback from my media teacher. Consequently, I now feel confident using programs that I used throughout my coursework as well such as Prezi and new found sites such as Infogram and Scribd. I also, feel more confident about my knowledge of magazines and have expanded my knowledge on conventions and genres.
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