2. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
Naturally my magazine would have to, in some way, resemble other professional media
products or else it would be difficult to get any audience what so ever. Bringing
something completely new to the table would probably backfire, because presently
magazines like this are used purely for leisure purposes, if it were too different from
something the audience was comfortable with it may throw them off. Metal music
magazines are very similar because they have a similar target market. They have similar
designs because they talk about the same kind of bands. It wouldn’t work in my
magazines favor to try and stand out, and I kept this in mind when I created my
magazine.
n
When you compare my cover to a professional
one you can immediately see that we used a
very similar colour scheme, red, white and
black. Mine doesn’t quite have the same loud
element the professional one does though, I
could have achieved this by using sharper
fonts and over exposing the cover image s
lightly to give it an extra edge.
3. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT REPRESENT
PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
I used ACORN to categorize my audience, which bases people off their
social class, income and what they do in their free time. The media
generalizes it’s audience a lot, but stereotyping isn’t meant to be an insult
(like different forms of media tell us is bad, for example: any film with
‘believe in yourself’ as the bottom line) it’s simply a way to cater to the
correct audience. My magazine caters more to the way people think and look
than how much money they have, the type of music it focuses on is not
exactly mainstream, and it’s very image based so as long as I keep
advertising alternative/gothic clothing and keep researching into the kind of
lifestyle these people are known for I should be safely catering towards the
correct audience. The main indicator as to what the intended social class
would be is the price; £2.50 is actually quite cheap for a magazine the comes
with a CD, others would be the companies that advertise in the magazine
and whether their products would be within the budget of my audience; the
companies I chose were high-quality music brands and high street
alternative fashion stores.
4. WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION
MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT AND WHY?
A media institution is a company that distributes and advertises and
publishes your magazine. It’s very important because it’s your main
connection between the you and the public, without proper distribution you
would not have any readers. Somewhere like ‘TeamRock’, ‘IPC Media’ or
‘Bauer Media’ may distribute my magazine as it is similar to others that they
distribute so they may be more willing to take it on. Having said that it’s
quite unusual for one media institution to house two of the same kind of
magazine, ‘Bauer Media’ may be more inclined to do so because the only
two music magazines they distribute are ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Q’, so they may be
interested in housing something with heavier music.
5. WHO WOULD BE THE
AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT?
Like I said before, it’s important that heads of media generalize and
stereotype so that they cater to the correct people. I got my target
audience from a lifestyle questionnaire, a boy in the 21 – 26 age
bracket was the only one out of the people I asked that listened to
metal music, and that had to be placed at higher priority than
anything else I asked. Although, both girls said that they liked hard
rock and liked the way the magazine was designed. When I looked
at similar magazines to mine I realized that they had the same kind
of target audience, so marketing towards young men in their
twenties would have been the best plan to follow, but I wanted to
keep the girls in mind so I made sure not to put any content that
was offensive to either gender.
6. HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS
YOUR AUDIENCE?
First I did the obvious, I designed it in a way that reflects the
music it is talking about. I kept a simple colour scheme,
mainly black and white with a little bit of red, to make
everything look quite cold. I did not have a variety of
photographs for the front cover like similar professional
magazines, which is a shame because I planned to have
more but every time I tried to add some they made everything
look messy and they were so out of place. The cover photo
doesn’t really address a particular gender; it’s not oversexualizing the model and it’s not explicitly promoting her as
a role model, the photo is meant to have an edge to it, and
the model is meant to represent the genre of music without
offending anyone.
7. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT
TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS
OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?
I mainly used the same program to create the main images (Serif Page Plus
X6), learning to use that program was quite easy but I ran into trouble when I
was trying to remove the background from some images, it took my more
time than I’d like to admit to figure it out. When I was at home and couldn’t
access that program I used Adobe Photoshop CC which is initially a lot more
difficult to use but I have used it before, being able to use Photoshop is a
very useful skill to have. I didn’t know about Prezi or Slideshare before I
started this project, it was easier to write things out on a PowerPoint and
then put them on to my blog, so I was grateful for those other options.
I ended up using Prezi the most as it was an
efficient way to arrange my magazine
analysis.
8. LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK,
WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN
PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?
I really did learn quite a lot. My school front cover for my preliminary task had garish
colours and mismatching fonts, I was taking everything I had learnt to the extreme. My
method of making sure that the text was able to be seen over the complex background
did not do the end product any good what so ever. The front cover for my music
magazine, while not without problems of it’s own, is a lot better. The colours work
together and the fonts are still easy to read (I learnt the importance of not having a
distracting background). I think the main thing I learnt was that a lot of time and energy
must be put into refining these publications professionally, maybe even more time then
it took to write the articles. A lot of
people work on different things and
it all has to come together in such a
short amount of time, I can barely
fathom that some of these
publications distribute issues each
and every week.
