Evaluation question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back now I can see the tremendous amount of difference that has occurred when making my main task of a music magazine to when I did my preliminary task of my school magazine. Before when I made my school magazine I knew very little about the programmes I as using and didn't have a good idea about designing or laying out my work. Now, although my work is far from being perfect or to a professional level, I believe I have made a lot of progress and my work is now at a much higher standard than it was before.

Front page 

A you can see here my front page for my school magazine is very simple, plain and quite empty. There are no extra sections of text that tell you about the inside of the magazine, whereas my music magazine includes a lot of extra information to let the reader know what is inside this is how I attracted an audience to my music magazine.

Title

One of the main features that I think has made my preliminary task so different to my main task is the title.

My school magazine title is not very bold or eye catching and I wrongly put it on a dark coloured background and it fades in sections slightly and cannot be seen clearly. In my Music magazine I made sure that The title would be able to be seen clearly, being the priority of clear things on the page as the title is the first thing the reader is dawn to and can determine weather it is a success or not. I put it on a black box background so that the monochrome style made it easy for people to read it. Obviously when i was making my school magazine i was not aware of this. The 'Cherry tree lane' Part of the title in my school magazine is very Small in comparison to the page which is a result of bad layout and page planning. If I had made it bolder and bigger like the 'Weekly' part I would not have had this problem. This then shows how I have become more aware of bad design decisions and have used my knowledge to avoid this error occurring in my main task of my music magazine.

Image wise I think I was not that bad to begin with as my photos are clear. However i recall having difficulties with the lighting on the school magazine image as there was a harsh glare on their faces and one model looked considerably brighter in colour to the other. I avoided this in my Music magazine by taking my pictures in the correct environment so that I could be sure to not have this problem again, although I only did this in second photo-shoot for the front page. 

Contents page 

 For my contents page, in my school magazine there are very random and inconsistent choices of colour used and I didn't seem to be aware of anything that was going on in the page. In my music magazine I have chosen my colours, stuck to them and used them in the appropriate ares. As you can see in my school magazine there is a lot of white space and it looks a bit like a poster rather than a contents page. I have learnt from that mistake and in my music magazine I proved how I used up the space that I needed to and filled all of the empty spaces. The writing in my school magazine has no border or control and just looks like it is floating there and in my music magazine I made sure it had a border and looked separated to the images , making full use of my space.

As you can see here I have made huge progress in taking pictures for my contents page. There a really big problems with my school magazine image such as the lighting being way too harsh on the models faces. This happened because I was not in the right environment and had put the flash on my camera. I clearly avoided this problem with my music magazine as I chose to have proper lighting set up so  the model was lit well and there was no need for the flash of my camera. This made so much difference and you can see how different these pictures look in quality.

Planning

If there's one thing I have learnt from this experience it is that I must plan ahead more. In both tasks I found myself with limited l=time and deadlines got closer very quickly, even more so when I did my preliminary task. For my school magazine I was very late at taking my pictures therefore i had hardly any time to do the rest that needed to be done. For my music magazine I actually took all of my pictures very early on and that left me slightly more time to do other things.

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

There is so much that I have learnt from making my music magazine, that I was completely clueless about before-hand. Not only how to use programmes but the tools within it aswell and how to navigate my way around. When doing my evaluations I have learnt how to use a range of technologies and websites that I had never evn heard of before. I have made a powerpoint on side-share showing the different things I have learnt from constructing my media product.

What i have learnt about technologies from maisie1995

Evaluation question 4

Who Would Be The Audience of Your Media Product ?

As I have previously stated before, the audience of my music magazine varies in types of people and they do not necessarily come under one category of person or social groups. In evaluation question 2 I showed a video of how my magazine and the audience link together and how I have tried to attract them. It showed their hobbies and interests briefly which I will now elaborate one to show who my audience is. The audience as a whole is a female young adult which is from around about 16-24, however could be slightly younger or older. I believe that a good way to show the audience of my magazine would be to show this short clip of the life of a person who may read my magazine.

Evaluation question 2

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups ?

Evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Other institutions that may distribute my magazine could be fashion clothing stores like Topshop or Urban Outfitters, as my magazine features the styles found in their shop. They could do this my selling it at counters and tills or having an advertisement on their website which I could then use to get my branched out to as many people as possible.

Due to the ongoing and ever-growing development of technological convergence, Apple have something called 'Newstand" which I actually used for my research. It is basically a shelf in your mobile phone that allows you to download (some free, some cost) magazines and have them t read in the comfort of your mobile phone. This would be perfect for my magazine because I am aiming it at an age of the population who are increasingly dependant on the Internet and technology rather than going out and buying paper magazines. Therefore this would be a  great opportunity for my magazine.

Evaluation question 5

How Did It Attract / Address Your Audience ?

This video displays how my media product promotes and familiarises my target audience with hobbies, fashion, interests and more that they are interested in and are a part of.

This shows how different aspects that are shown on my music magazine will bring in my audience and attract them to read it.

My target audience's social groups are quite lose and do not narrow down to one specific type of person, otherwise that would not be a big enough audience to target. My target audience enjoy going to popular music festivals and dressing in the latest fashions from Topshop and Urban  Outfitters. They enjoy some music that is in the charts and other more alternative artists like Lana Del Rey and Paloma Faith. If I had to narrow it down to one name it would be 'indie pop'. By including a variety it means I am opening up my magazine to lots of people not just one specific type like Rock or Jazz does in that sense.

Evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Every aspect of my music magazine has stemmed from what I have found in my research. I used what I found as a foundation of making my own media product. In some ways I recreated many similar aspects of real media products, and at other times I challenged them and made something different. I used my research to help develop my own ideas, in order to successfully attract my target audience with my design, style, colours, celebrities and fonts.

Photo

 As you can see here my images for my media products have been inspired by my research. However they differ slightly as I have put in my own ideas and made them original. I have developed on what I have found and created something that will fit my particular target audience. I have based my images around style icons and celebrities that my target audience would enjoy and aspire to be like. I have chosen to have all female models as my target audience is girls aged around 14-25. In my contents page I used a female model, stemmed from an idea of a male model image, because I wanted all of my models to be girls. In order to put forward the edgy 'indie'/pop genre I had to make sure that the clothing used was to the style, having in mind what I found in my research but obviously slightly different.

Title

As shown in this diagram, you can see that my title is a product of all of my research combined together. I have taken parts of each of them and created my own title. Having a good title is very important as it's the first thing people will notice in my music magazine and can be the starting point for attracting a certain audience. I tried to make my title seem as professional as real media products which is why I specifically made it very similar, due to the fact these are successful magazines and are of a similar style, therefore by creating something very similar, mine should have the same effect and be popular to my target audience. At the same time I have challenged real media products and the original forms in which I discovered them as I have chosen to have a black box with my title inside which has not been found in any of my research. I decided to do this to give it extra volume and statement to the page instead of it looking randomly placed.

Contents page

My contents page is something that mostly challanges and develops real media products, as I created something very unique and different to seen before magazine contents pages.

 

I created this using a layout that I had found and liked in one of my reserach images.

There is a clear use of ideas from my research displayed in these images, however the images used snd the title challange what I found howver all of which has branched out from images I have looked at. As I presented previsously the corellation between my image that came from the blurred image I found in my research.

Front page
From all 3 of my media products this is most probably the one that is most similar to my reserach as most a lot of the ideas came from research, including the image, fonts and title.

As you can see from the above I have taken different parts from all of these magazines and made them into my own media product. I challanged things like the title, mentioned before, but with the text everything I made myself was designed based upon what I had seen and learnt in my research.