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Bethany Fox Magazine coursework

Evaluation

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

• My magazine follows the conventions of real media products because I have used many of the same features that other magazines of a similar kind have used e.g. layouts- I have analysed other layouts of magazines contents pages, front covers and double page spreads to help me come to a decision on the overall look that I wanted to go for.

• Other conventions that I have used have come from researching the magazines of today to look at why certain magazines display in the way that they do, one of these ways is using online magazines to advertise to the younger audience because nowadays nearly every young person owns or has access to a computer therefore are more likely to read something that is easy accessible and possibly has more conventions resulting in an online magazine. Although I did not have the time or money to create one, if I was to publish my magazine and it was a success I would think about it because it extends the audience and helps advertise the product.

• Another convention that I did use is a house style that made my product flow and have continuity, and although we did not create a full magazine if we did the same colours and fonts would have been used.

• My magazine stayed as close to my colour scheme as it could but due to my images it isn’t quite as strong on my double page spread.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• I have used pictures of Alesha Dixon this is not only due to my double page spread article but also I think it is what my audience want to hear and read about. She is young and talented and widely liked by the public so i think including her in my magazine will benefit my product as well as attract my target audience.

• I have chosen a mixed genre theme to my magazine however I am going to choose a Pop genre for my main article, I think it is important to include well known celebs in my magazine because the younger generation very much rely on what they see in magazines and what celebs do to form their thoughts and feelings about life.

• With so much technology about the children of this day and age take to heart everything they read, so although I do not want to give them false hopes and stories, I do need to try and advertise as best as I can to my target audience. Hopefully I will be able to attract a wide audience which means I will have to cater for all genres of music but hopefully my contents page will reflect this decision.

• I have tried to incorporate young and recent bands in my contents page line up so that my audience can straight away see what they will be reading about and hopefully will see a band or artist that they will want to read about.

• I have kept the layout simple but similar to magazines already out there so that I know my audience will be attracted to it and more likely to read and buy it.

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

• The media institution that I would have chosen to distribute my magazine is: Bauer Media Group, they also distribute Kerrang and Q magazine.

• They are a large German publishing company and operate in 15 different countries. The worldwide circulation of Bauer Media Group's magazine title amounts to 38 million magazines a week.

• I have decide to choose this institution group because I think that because they publish other well known music magazines that they would be a perfect company to take on my magazine and give it a good start in the magazine industry. Also we all know how successful and well known Kerrang magazine is, and if I was to publish my magazine I would want it to follow in the same footsteps and hopefully achieve goals like they are.

• I think using this media institution would put my magazine on good form and help it make a good name before it has begun selling, overall I think magazine would benefit a major amount to this institution.

• Also if Listen magazine made a good fan base then they would see more and overall this would benefit Bauer media group.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• My magazine was aimed at a mixed genre audience because I tried to involve a wide selection of artists and bands to appeal to a wider audience, however because i haven’t created a whole magazine they have only been mentioned on the contents page so if you just looked at the magazine you would think that it was aimed at more of a mainstream style or R&B this might then put some customers off. However I will aim to meet everybody's style because I myself like a range of music genres so I would like that to come off into my magazine.

• I am aiming my magazine at an age range of about 16 – 24 hopefully attracting the appropriate selection of people for the type of magazine and artists that I have covered in my magazine. I believe that not only will this age range suit the music, but also these are the generation that are most likely to buy music magazines. Also I have based my layout around previous magazines so the style and look of my magazine may be familiar to some buyers making it more natural for them to buy it.

• I think I would probably aim my magazine at both genders because none of either my colour scheme, layout or house style particularly favours either males or females. Therefore appealing to both genders and a wider audience hopefully leading to a successful sale for my magazine. I have picked the main colours of blue and red so that they are unisex and appeal to both genders.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• I attracted my audience by using the appropriate colour schemes and layouts that I think that my audience will like to see in one of their magazines. I hope that my magazine would be successful if I was to publish it so I would do as much as I could to relate it to my target audience which is both genders and an age range of 16-24.

• My masthead is very bold and in your face I think this will catch the attention of the audience and draw them to my magazine. Because my front cover image is dark I have made my masthead white so that again it is eye catching, also to try and create a flow through each of my issues (if I was to have my magazine published) I would try and always use a darker image so that I could keep my masthead the same colour all of the time so that I do not confuse my audience and so that they recognise it all of the time.

• Content plays a major part in the sale of a magazine, as a producer i would need to make sure that every issue had suitable content and artists in to appeal to my audience. Also I will need to make sure that my product flows and uses a similar colour scheme and layout designs through every issue produced so that everybody recognises that it is .

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

product?• To get to the stage where we could create our magazine we did

research on other magazines in order to know what the public want to read about and what type of layouts they like to view. We did this by creating reviews on two front covers, two contents pages and two double page spreads; this helped us to look into why other magazines have chosen the layouts that they have, and why this benefits them.

• We mainly used Microsoft Publisher to produce our magazines, so we used different techniques to produce our work and try and make it the best quality that we can using the resources that we have. To edit my images I used two main programmes, Fireworks and Photoscape, I have used these previously so I knew my way around them and it made it easier for me to create the look of the image that I was going for.

• We created a Preliminary magazine that consisted of a front cover and a contents page, this helped a lot because it gave us a basic outline of what is needed to fill out each one of these pages. So this also helped us to figure out what order I would need to produce things e.g. photos, then layout because your photos are very much the focus for the front page.

• For our preliminary work we produced a front cover and a contents page for a made up College magazine. My magazine was called “INSIDE” I called it this because if it was to be published it would hold information and gossip from around the College and Sixth form.

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

• I think that this magazine isn’t very good but if we were to have longer on it then it could be a good magazine and the school could benefit from it.

• From producing this preliminary front cover I have learnt that a lot more research needed to be done about the layout of a magazine. This is because when I was creating this page I struggled to decide where I was going to put my information and overlaid images. This is why I put a lot of time into researching layouts of other magazines before I created the layout for my actually magazine.

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

• Again, looking back at my preliminary contents page I could have done a lot more to improve such things as the layout and general organisation of my page, but all of this helped me to improve the look of my actual magazine.

• I learnt from this a realised that not only is my front cover important to grab the

• Overall I think that creating this preliminary magazine really helped in the process of my magazine because I learnt a lot about the planning and organisation side and I hope that i have come on a long way since creating this college magazine.

readers attention but also the contents page is, because most people before buying a magazine will look in the contents page to see what bands and artists are covered in this edition. Also the layout plays a big part because if it is really busy they might not be so intrigued to read more, whereas on the other hand if it is to plain it would be interesting enough to grab their attention.