The document summarizes an evaluation of a student's media magazine project. The student learned about magazine conventions like featuring the main story's subject on the cover. Audience testing found the magazine appealed to its target of teens and young adults. The student gained skills using image editing software and incorporating more design elements like varied fonts and colors. Comparing the preliminary and final magazines showed improvements in making images more engaging and following typical magazine formats.
2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Ways in which my magazine follows conventions of other magazines is that on the front page there is some text that tells the audience what stories are inside the magazine. The reason why I did this is that if people see some stories or captions with words that stand out to them, such “Break Up!” they may want the magazine to see who it is about. Other reasons for having these is that they would not know what was inside otherwise and would probably go for a different magazine that they knew what was inside it. Another way that it follows conventions is that the main image of the person on the front page is part of the main storey in the magazine. Magazines tend to make so that their magazine shows off the person in the way they want, more than likely, the more popular or shocking stories will have the person whom it is related to on the main page.
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? The way in which my magazine represents people who are ages from around 14 to early twenties is by having the person on the front cover to be a young person. By doing this it makes so that the person can be relatable to the audience to age, the person is dressed independently, such as she is wearing what she wants, and not just following the tends. As the music magazine is about independent music, by having someone who is dressed differently or is doing something different from other people, could lead to that person making a new trend, and getting people to want to act or be like the person they are following.
4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? Many magazines are sold in many superstores, the reason for this is that they tend to be put near the entrance so that people will see them when they first come in. Magazines are normally bought as a treat for people, having them near the entrance means that people can pick them up when they first see them. Another way to go to sell a magazine is by having online issues. As more and more people use the internet this would be an effective way to sell it. By selling the magazine online, it would be cheaper than using resources to make the magazine. All of the transactions could be done online instantly at any time, this means that the money can be put right into the magazines business and for the person that is purchasing it they to can get it instantly rather than having to travel to the shop to buy it.
5. A institution that would be good for the type of magazine that mine is, independent music, would be Emap. This institution already
6. Who would be the audience for your media project?How did you attract/address your audience? The target audience for my magazine was for people in their teens to early twenties. The main way to suggest this to people was by having a younger person on the main page, rather than an older person. A way to get the audience to want to buy the magazine is by having something to offer them on the front page. On my magazine I advertised the chance to win a free guitar lesson and a guitar. By having this on the front cover it could make people want to buy the magazine as they have a chance to get more for they would have paid for and to know they might have the opportunity to do something different to them. As Indy music tends to be fairly slow tempo and played on a guitar, this could be effective to advertise the guitar as people who may want to imitate the way the artist is described and what the artist does, such as learning to play the guitar.
7. Audience Evaluation My magazine was shown to 12 people, they were asked questions about the magazine so I could get feedback on it. Questions such as , did it attract the right audience that I had aimed for. The majority of the class agreed that the magazine would be able to reach that audience. Was the header noticeable ? The overall percentage said that the header did stand out from the background colour. Would you buy the magazine? The bulk of the class said that they would purchase the magazine, this helps to support that I reached my target audience. When they were asked if there was anything I could improve on a few people said that I could change or remove the image that is just floating in the middle of the page.
8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Since making the magazine I have learnt about how magazines all follow similar conventions such as the use of images, having the main image of the artist covering part of the title, the reason for doing this is that people that already buy the magazine will know what the magazine is and would be more interested by the artist. For editing photos I was using the program Macromedia Fireworks from using this I can now edit photos to how I want them, changing the brightness, getting rid of background and other things. By using this, it helped me to be able to edit the images so that they would look more professional rather than normal unedited ones. An example of the editing are these images.
9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Since making the preliminary magazine I know more about the conventions of magazines, not just to have a few images of the same thing and to make photos more lively. Unlike the preliminary task, I edited the images more thoroughly as I learnt more about how to use the editing tools. By using colours that link in with the style of the magazine can help to set the scene for the stories or show what more about it, such as a duller background could mean something such as sadness where as a brighter background could show the story as being more lively. I now know more about what needs to go into a magazine so that people would want to purchase it, things like a good images that are not boring. Where the picture is taken is also something that I learnt, such as having the a image of the person to be taken on a clear day with blue sky to show how that person it feeling or how it portrays that person. By having interesting or bold names of the stories or having part of the stories putting bold to make them sound more important to make you want to read them.
10. The Magazine on the left was my preliminary task, it does not have much colour to it to try to attract the audience to it. The pictures I used may not of been as interesting to look at compared to others. All of the text is the same showing that there is no variety in the magazine. The front cover on the right is from the music magazine, compared to the preliminary one it has a lot more variety of colour used. The font cover also follows some of the conventions of other magazines such as having a image of an artist covering a lot of the page.
