Evaluation Question 7

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

Looking back over at the work i have done to create and design my magazine, i know that i understand conventions of a magazine alot more than i did before. I know this as from doing various analysis's on front pages of magazines etc, i never knew or thought of all the different aspects which come together and make a great magazine cover and draw the target audience in to buy your magazine,
I discovered what the usual and most commonly used conventions there were and how some of them were set out similarly. One obvious convention is the masthead which i realised was almost always stuck at the top of the page in big writing and this is to attract the readers attention to the name. By learning and understanding more about the conventions, i think it reflects on my work that i did have knowledge on this and knew what kind of features would attract my target audience.

One thing that i know i have learnt from is my skills and thought processes on the software Serif Page Plus. When i was first trying it out and making my school music magazine front cover, i had no idea how to use the software and everything just looked rather messy. After practises and researching the best ways to use the software, i have basically mastered the use of page plus and i can do anything i would like in terms of designing a page. I have improved the editing of images and colours on the page from my preliminary task as when i look back on what i have previously done, i am able to clearly see the poor quality of my work and photo editing. My standard of magazine designing had improve alot as i understand lots more about the different aspects.

Another thing which i am happy about and know that i have improved on is my photo shoot. For the photo shoot for my preliminary task, i didnt put much thought into it and i used quite sure what the poses and postures had to be for the models, Overall the photo shoot could be alot better for this task, which if i re did would improve it alot.
Since then, i started to look at the poses and expressions on models faces for magazines and tried to project this onto my magazine, In my photo shoot for a celebrity staring my magazine i told them to look happy, big smiles doing what she loves. From this i wanted the audience to feel involved in the fun Hannah wants is having and this could be persuasive to buy the magazine.
I realised when i was shooting pictures for my music magazine that the mise en scene is very important for the atmosphere of the magazine, also props for the pictures which can make a big difference for the story line of the images and draw more attention.

When i was doing my preliminary task, i was picking the colour scheme due to what i liked and thought looked good. From research i realised this was completely wrong and the incorrect way of colour scheming a magazine. I discovered that colours on a magazine have a meaning which i why i chose pink as the main colour for my magazine, as that is a girly colour which is most commonly found on magazines for women. I also learnt that green was a colour for youth, so i made sure i had abit of green on my magazine as my target audience is young people, When i look back on the preliminary task i see that my ideas were poor and it wouldnt of been a good selling magazine.

Evaluation Question 6

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

 One of the main technologies which i have learnt most about and used the most is Google blogs. It is an online publishing service which has allowed me to record and post every step that was needed to show how my magazine was designed and the thought process. Google blogs is a great internet app as it allowed me to embed my prezis which were from a different website onto my blog. This meant my information could be shown in various different ways, while being shown on the same website .
Another type of technology which i commonly used and thought was very useful, was Prezi, Prezi is a online presentation software with a slight twist. Instead of any old standard slides like powerpoint, Prezi allows you to have different effects and different designs on the page which makes it interesting and fun to go through and find out new information. Prezi is a unique presentation software which i think the readers will find creative and much more exciting for them to read.

For my magazine, i needed to collect some research and find out about my target audience, also what would be the most popular genre etc, To do this is used survey monkey which is an online survey development site which was used for my primary research. I put this on the website and also told some people at school who were my target audience to fill out this survey with their honest opinions so i could get accurate feedback and make my music magazine the best that it could be. Once 10 of my target audience had filled in the survey, i was able to choose how my results were set out and i chose a bar chart as i thought this was like easiest to understand
.
Google is one of the most common one that i used for my magazine. Its an online search engine which shows whatever information you need and is very specific. I used this for my music magazine when i was trying to find similar magazines to get ideas from to design mine, and also old contents pages/double page spreads and analyse the conventions. By doing this it was improving my chance to have a great music magazine.

The software which i chose to design my music magazine front cover, contents page and DPS was called Serif Page Plus. This is a desktop publishing program which you can design and create whatever you desire. This was a great program to use as i could basically do whatever i wanted to to improve and change my magazine to make it even better. It allows you to have a huge range of different fonts, sizes and colours which is essential for a magazine because you need a variety to attract the audience. You crop images intensely to whatever shape you should like and also change the colour of the background which i was using alot.

Another software which i used a fair amount for my Blog is Microsoft publisher, Microsoft publisher is entry level publishing application which you can do alot with, Publisher gives you the ability to make leaflets and poster efficiently, However, for my blog i didnt use it for this, I used publisher to analyse magazine pages and make annotations very clear. I used publisher for this as its very easy to use and allows you to put images/textboxes wherever you want to which is exactly what i needed.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?  

To attract my audience, I tried to use a range of different features including language, font, images and masthead.

Language: as my target audience for my magazine is young, I have tried to use the up to date slang words and write informally on the front cover, By doing this, my target audience will think that my magazine is cool and worthy for them to read. It will not come across as a magazine which is above there time but instead, one that is modern and up to date, The contents of the magazine are all things that i thought would interest young females and i expressed them in exiting ways on the front page. 

An example of this is on the front page where Brixton was written about. Instead of writing house will now be at brixton, i thought i would try make it more down with the young generation by writing  'House takes over', I think this sounds more exciting to read and more direct to the person, It is informal which means the audience can read it clearly and understand the words on which are written. It will also make them feel like they are related to the magazine more and will like the content inside.

Images: For my front cover I put on a couple of images. I will firstly start with the main image, To attract the audience, i made sure that the cover model was going to be famous and someone who the readers could look up to and relate to. I chose hannah wants to be the cover model who is very popular and famous with the younger generation, When people see Hannah on the front of my magazine they will want to buy it and read so they can find information out about the celebrity. I think this image definitely attracts the correct target audience

The other images i used were for a purpose. I purposely chose these small images as i wanted them to look like my intended target audience. These images are of girls that all have the same kind of fashion sense. They are supposed to be inspirational women for the audience.

Font: I used a wide range of fonts on the different features of my magazine. For the important bits of information or the bits that i thought would be interesting, i used bigger and bolder fonts. This is because i want my audience to be attracted to the right bits of information that will be persuasive and make them want to buy the magazine.

For example, for the masthead of the magazine, i used a huge black font. I did this because the brand name of the magazine is one of the most important things as thats what they are recognised for. This way, when the magazines are all together in columns in a shop, they audience will be attracted to my magazine as it will have a huge font. I would say my font isnt the usual choice for my audience but i decided it would be a good idea to challenge the conventions of a magazine, which i think worked out well.

Looking at the overall attraction of my magazine,  I would say all the different aspects make my magazine worth buying and the audience will me impressed with what they will buy. I have tried to minimise any limitations that would stop the audience from buying my magazine, which is stuff like lots of advertisements.

Evaluation Question 4

   Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience is one of the main things to think about when creating and designing any media product, in my case a magazine. I decided who my target audience were before i designed the magazine as i had to take into account the cover images, colours, and font. I also had to think about which audience would make the most profit.

The target audience I chose to use was young adults aged from 16-24. I felt it was very suitable for the magazine i wanted to promote. The price i picked for the magazine also links to the target audience. The price i chose was specifically cheap as i wanted it to be affordable for my audience, some of the young people will not have full time jobs to afford an expensive magazine, so i improvised.

In my magazine i considerd making my gender target audience both male and female as i didnt want to be seen as stereotypical. After giving it alot of thought however i decided the main gender target audience for my magazine would be female. This is because being a girl myself, i know how to relate to females and what kind of subjects they would find interesting and like to read about. I do not think it will reflect badly to have a magazine which is aimed for one gender as alot of other media products have done this and is rather common to do so, Although some minorities of males will enjoy the content within my magazine which is great.

The music genre 'house' is becoming very popular in modern day music according to my research statistics, which is why i thought it would be a great idea to choose that for my genre, which is what i did. In my questionnaires i discovered that alot of my the age group which like house are 16-24 which is great for me as this means lots of people will want to buy my magazine.

The main message that i would like my magazine to get across is that house music isnt just all sounds and beats, it takes time to create and is a skill to do which i want my target audience to see. Hopefully some of the women who read the magazine may decide they would like to do a courier in DJing or music related.

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 2

   How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Evaluation Question 1

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

In my Music magazine, I generally used the conventions of a magazine most of the time, which I thought was the safest option as I knew they were correct.
My colour scheme of my magazine is Pink which suites the target audience of my magazine which is teenage girls. This is because Pink is the commonly used colour for girls and attracts girls attention, which is what I want for the magazine. I also used bits of Green on the front cover of the magazine which is a colour of youth, which also relates to my audience.
The images that I took for my magazine were all related to the genre of my magazine and again suited my target audience, young adults/ teenage girls. The images were all of girls, a Female DJ and examples of girls having fun on a festival. The main image of my double page spread is a female DJ who is featured in my magazine. She looks like she's having a good time doing what she is doing which i wanted, as the readers would feel like they are in the scene and more involved.
On the front cover of my magazine, for the masthead i used a thick, black, bulky font which challenges the usual conventions for a teenage girls magazine. The reason i did this was because by having a big masthead that stands out, it is able to catch peoples attention when on a magazine rack in a shop, black also represents power which i though would suite the magazine., The pink backgroud means that even though the black font may look boyish, it is still clear the target audience would be girls.
   For my contents page, i feel like i challenged the conventions of a magazine as i put the brand name on the page. I also decided I wanted to put the the title of the page 'Contents' down the side of the page. This was because I didn't want the layout of my page to be boring to my target audience, i wanted it to be fun and interesting to look at, which i feel like this brings.
   In terms of the price of my magazine, i feel like the price was following the conventions of a real life magazine. This is the average price that a magazine is sold at. The reason ive set it fairly low is because my target audience in young, which means many of them will not have full time jobs. By setting the price low it allows by audience to purchase my product at a price that is affordable for the age range.