Evaluation Essay

7 Questions

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience for my Music Magazine is rock fans, more specifically moody/dark rock, but a secondary audience could be indie fans since the contents of my Magazine don't specifically detail Rock content. Another demographic could include the working class since one part of my magazine features an interview with one of the artists featured, they state how they do their music because it is their passion and they are not interested in money or fame. This could gear towards the working class because the higher classes generally seem to be interested into money and fame while the working class generally believe in passions and dreams. My Magazine most likely attracts the younger generations since there aren't many people in their middle age listening to moody rock music. My magazine is mostly geared towards white people because the majority of people featured in the magazine are white and the genre is stereotypical geared towards whites. Another demographic which could isolate most of the world is the fact that my magazine is in English only, so the magazine is only for English speaking countries.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The images are dark, edgy and mainly consist of monochrome or Threshold images, this suits he dark/edgy theme of my Magazines Genre. the contents are Music and band based so the contents could attract both music fans and fans of celebrity gossip. The cover of the magazine has a banner that says 'Exclusive content' which would attract people who want to know things that most suppliers of similar information wont give.  My cover doesn't include music related images so people would be interested in the unique style compared to the other music magazines on the shelves.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My Magazine represents its audience as dark or edgy since the style of the images are dark and dreary, also the typography features fonts which also seem dark and Gothic. It also represents my audience as passionate about bands and music, this is because one of the bands featured explains how they would use their music to follow their passion instead of making money, the magazine also describes the backlash from the fans of a band who decided to change their style, this shows how passionate my audience is represented.

What have you learned about Technologies from the process of constructing this product and why?
In Photoshop I have learned how to use many tools and how to use them effectively, this includes the likes of many different brush pre-sets, the magic wand tool which I used to select certain parts of images and alter them without ruining the rest of the image or altar the rest of the image without ruining the selected part, I learned how to change the colour of an image, the brightness, the contrast, add fonts and create thresholds as well. Indesign is what I used to design and create my front cover, double page spread and contents page of both my magazine, I learned how to use the codes and conventions that are common in magazines effectively such as large mastheads and how to grab the readers attention. We used the internet to study and research many different types of music magazines as well as the codes and conventions present in most as well as those not present in certain magazines, we used this to see what suits certain genres, the use of the internet has allowed  me to develop my analysis skills. PowerPoint allowed us to create documents such as slide shows, but we also used it to store screenshots of our work progress which we would then turn into JPEGs on Photoshop then put on our blogs. I also used my phone to  take pictures which I would then alter on Photoshop, the phone has allowed me to develop my photography skills such as lighting, camera angles and focus. Finally I used email to share and pass on work to myself and my colleges, this has helped me to work around certain situations and made it easier for me to pass on my data.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?
My media product both follows and challenges the forms and conventions of traditional music magazines (that I studied) My front cover includes a large masthead which is designed to catch the readers eye, has cover lines that go down one side of the page, has a title that mentions the content of the magazine, All of these are traditional forms and conventions. The central image challenges the forms and conventions that were common in the magazines that I studied, my image has no mention of the fact that its music based, I did this so it would be different from the other magazines, so it would stand out, so people would buy it because of how different it is. My double page spread features a main image and two other images which are surrounded by text, this was common in the majority of double page spreads that I studied since they found a way to balance out the images and text, my images are also music related so it follows another traditional form/convention. My contents page mostly follows the traditional forms and conventions and it is similar to the layouts of the other contents pages I studied, my contents page has the contents labelled with large page numbers so they catch the readers eye, the typography follows the genre that is present through the rest of the magazine pages and there are eye catching images that make the reader want to keep on reading.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A media institution that might publish my media product is Bauer Media Group, which owns Kerrang. This is because Bauer publish many different types of music media products, such as magazines, all around Europe including the UK. When I was studying other magazines some of the Magazines was from Kerrang, so my product, which is based off of products by Bauer Media Group, should have a better chance of being published by them.

Looking back what have you learned in the progression from prelim to your full product?

In my prelim task I had not much experience in Photoshop or InDesign, I could barely place an image effectively into a document, I had no idea how to use the many tools in Photoshop, I wasn’t aware of the different uses for the codes and conventions since my analysis skills were weak and I didn’t even include cover lines in my front cover, any content in my double page spread, the only thing that was decent about my contents page was I placed a background and had a large title. I had a lot of practice and gained a lot of skills while creating my Main Product, the music magazine. While making this I had plenty of research and analysis from other music magazines as well as different genres of music magazines, this also allowed me to analyse the different uses of the codes and conventions as well as how to follow them or go against them. I learned how to use the tools in Photoshop more effectively, like the magic wand, lasso and marquee tools to select and crop out certain parts of images, I learned how to use different Brush Pre-sets to create my own unique patterns to go with my magazine in backgrounds etc. I also learned how to navigate the essentials better, for example I now know how to use the ‘select’ bar and 'Image' bar, I used these to select the likes of inverse if I needed to alter a certain part of an image and to edit an image entirely.