EVALUATION QUESTIONS

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

My target audience for Ska’d For Life Magazine is people of both sexes aged between 40-60 who enjoy listening to ska music that originated from the 70’s and 80’s era of music.

I believe that this is a realistic target audience for my music magazine because the genre of music is very niche in its appearance in modern society, however was extremely large back in the past.

I chose this target audience because I think that my media product is suitable for this age range because it doesn’t contain explicit material and features everything that is relevant to the world of ska and their favourite bands that was very popular back in the past.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

I believe that my target audience is working class people and therefore I would choose the demographic as C1C2D because this refers to the lower end of the demographic scale and is aimed at the working classes which can reflect the type of music that working class ‘skin heads’ like.

From my research and planning I discovered that my media product was a very good example of getting people into ska music because it is made by younger people and from their perspective which can influence other younger people’s views on the subject and has many different categories in it including: fashion, concerts and interviews which will all influence their views to this genre of music.

Click on the link to view the video!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=025Y8_srQgM

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

This website helped me determine what my final target audience would be due to the niche music genre and how to clearly classify a ska band.

http://www.buzzmag.co.uk/uncategorized/rude-a-ska-musical-theatre-review/

I also think that my media product could be aimed at a younger audience as well because it could give them an experience of what older music is like in comparison to modern hip hop or rap music for example.

I also found a potential target audience from watching the film Quadrophenia. This is because the film talks about the MOD’s and the rockets riots on Brighton Beach in 1968 and I believe that the same target audience could be applied to my music magazine because ska music is rather similar to MOD music.

DIAGRAM OF MEDIA AUDIENCE:

Gender: Male and FemaleAge: 40 – 60 year olds but younger people may be included. Nationality: British Ethnicity: I believe that the ethnicity of my music magazine is purely White British because that is typically the ethnicity of people who tend to listen to this genre of music. Therefore, I have focused mainly on that ethnicity. Interests: Ska music takes over their life – they are prepare to change their entire lifestyle for ska music including fashion, hairstyles, trends and general music interests just for the love of ska music. Originally, my music magazine was not meant to be aimed a particularly high social class of people as I am trying to replicate the typical reader of the genre of music that I have chosen. Therefore, the social class is rather working rather than middle which reflects the demographic C1C2D because it is aiming at the lower classes who tend to enjoy music with a catchy beat to it. It would also reflect how they would want to aspire to be their idle. For example, the model in my music magazine dresses like a member from Bad Manners with the trilby hat, lumberjack shirt and braces.

The target audience for my music magazine, ‘Ska’d For Life’ is 40-60 year olds who enjoy listening to ska and reggae music. However, it is an aim in my publication, to get a younger audience to read this magazine because it can get them more interested in to a so called ‘feel-good’ music genre. The reason why I chose this target audience is because they would have been around when this genre of music peaked in the music charts and I want my magazine to help them re-live the past.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

I feel that my music magazine attracts my target audience fairly well with the simplicity of my design, fitting colour and font schemes and with a large, bold image which reflects that ska lifestyle fairly well.

However, I do believe that my magazine cover is a little to simple in its design: hardly any text boxes feature on the cover and the masthead at the moment is very subtle in its appearance at the top of the cover. Therefore, this also allowed me to attract my target demographic of C1C2D which reflects the types of people that my magazine is aimed at.

Furthermore, the strapline at the very bottom of the cover, I feel attracts my audience extremely well as it features all of their favourite bands and uses phrases such as ‘endless skanking’ which can please my audience and can attract my audience extremely well.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

In addition, I attracted my audience with my choice of features that I included in my magazine. I chose to do my double page spread on the top 3 ska bands of 2015 and named this ‘The Ska Awards 2015’. This allowed me to cover all areas of ska from Madness to Bad Manners which will attract my target audience because it tells them about these selected bands and teaches them new things that they may not have already known. I also tried to attract my target audience by using

media that they already consume and advertising my media product in them. For example, newspapers and billboards can advertise products very well, so I decided to utilise that idea and also the idea of music concerts because many music concert attract large crowds and getting my media product to a wider audience can be easily achieved through this way. (shown this and next slide).

Ska Awards 2014

HOW DID I ATTRACT MY AUDIENCE VIA THE MEANS OF MEDIA THAT THEY ALREADY CONSUME?

Ska’d For Life

Music concert that provides the name ‘Ska’d For Life’ magazine as they advertising. This can easily catch the attention of my target audience as they will want to know more about Ska’d For Life.

SKA MUSIC REBORN

Newspaper advertising is very popular and placing this into a newspaper column can also help the magazine catch my target audience and other people who are interested in the product as well.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE? In my opinion I feel that I addressed my target audience rather well with the design of

the masthead however, it could be slightly bolder and broader so it can be seen easily when placed on a shelf in a shop.

In the double page spread, I used language to engage the audience so that they felt that they were at an actual awards ceremony.

Quotes such as ‘Your votes meant that in third place is The Specials for example suggests that the audience was actually in the room at the ceremony when the awards were handed out.

In addition, the information tells the audience more of a timeline of events rather of each band in question rather than a generic story that can be found in other publications.

This is an extra little unique selling point (USP) that my publication features telling a timeline rather than generic facts about each band.

I feel that this can address the audience more because making them feel like they were actually there can help them relate to the magazine.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

The use of the young model on the front cover of the magazine can reflect one of the aims that I am trying to achieve with this magazine in that I want to attract a younger audience into the ska music genre. However, this doesn’t truly reflect the target audience of my magazine which is 40-60 year olds. In addition, the colour scheme is rather neutral which I did design therefore, this would appeal to both genders (male and female) which to conclude, would also easily reflect my target age range of 40-60 year olds.

Although from my research that I conducted, I found that hardly any ska music magazines exist at this moment in time and therefore I found it incredibly hard to try to replicate an existing publication and help represent to lower class social group which this music genre is aimed at. The font and the colour schemes that I have used were designed to be simplistic so that I can reach out to a broader range of people within my target audience and my target demographic.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

I have represented gender easily by using images of men and women in the double page spread however, my music magazine is rather patriarchal because the male gender is heavily featured within my publication. Age is represented in my publication however, a younger audience is used a lot more in this publication because I wanted the magazine to appeal to a younger audience however, I know for another time to feature an older audience as this is my target audience so it would help easily identify my target audience in question.

Ethnicity is easily identifiable as White British because this is the typical ethnic group that listens to ska music . To reinforce this, I decided to use a White British model to help the audience relate to the specific ethnicity for the publications. In the background of the front cover, the Union Jack flag is used to indicate the ethnicity presence and the nationality of people who listen to ska music, in particular, White British people who are labelled to be ‘skin heads’.

Therefore with this presence of the national flag, the audience get a clear indication of the particular social group and ethnicity that this publications is targeted at. Class and status is easily visible with a working class feel and cheap price tag to this music magazine, the working classes are the main target class that I am aiming for with this magazine. This is shown with my target demographic of C1C2D.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

For Ska’d For Life magazine I chose to base my magazine on SKA 80 which was a publication from the 1980’s. This isn’t the same publication that I used in my research and planning because it is extremely rare to find a ska music magazine and I found this publication on the internet and based my magazine on this design, genre and theme.

Conventions that I used in my publication were: the border around the outside of the magazine because I feel this would be a nice feature that could occur in all publications of Ska’d For Life magazine and fits in with the ska, checkerboard designs.

I also used the masthead font style and positioning because I liked how the masthead was spread right across the top of the cover which made it very bold and easily visible from a long distance away.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

I also used the tagline that is situated underneath the masthead on both Ska 80 magazine and Ska’d For Life magazine. I thought that the upbeat and easily visible beat of ska music meant that this tag sums up this music genre in one phrase and therefore, I used this tagline in my publication.

The final convention that I used was using the same bands in my music magazine because ska music is very niche and there are very few bands that create ska music which therefore, needed to be included however, in my publication is didn’t use the actual logos of the bands but just their names.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT DEVELOP FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Conventions that I developed in my publication were: the stories that were included in Ska 80 and Ska’d For Life Magazine. This is because I liked the ideas that Ska 80 magazine included however, I felt that I could develop their stories with the same bands in them however, I developed them by changing it into an awards ceremony and the top 3 bands of ska music.

I developed the idea of using a mid-shot for the cover image. I thought this would be a good idea because it can show all expressions of the ska band members and the shot I used also shows other relevance's including the Union Jack flags and the famous slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Conventions that I directly challenged in my music magazine was using the white rectangles behind the masthead letters. I chose not to use this because the background of my cover image has relevance to my magazine and by using the white rectangles some of the background will be lost and so would the relevance too. However, apart from that conventions, no other conventions were directly challenged because I like the majority of features on this music magazine of which many conventions I developed and used.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

In my opinion, I believe that Shellshock Distribution would distribute my music magazine. I chose this company because they distribute a variety of different music genre magazines throughout the country. They also reach out to a broad market and audience in the company.

However, I believe that my music magazine would be different publication to what they normally do and that they would display my magazine towards a very specific and niche audience because ska music itself is incredibly niche in its appearance and tone.

In addition, Shellshock has no ska music magazines during this time, however, they do have a website and a few pages to ska and reggae music in particular and therefore, I believe that they would be an ideal distribution company to use for my music magazine.

This is page from Shellshock Distribution that is dedicated to ska music.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

I believe Ska’d For Life Magazine would be a monthly magazine because I believe the audience will like a high quality magazine with emphasis on quality and stories so they don’t mind paying a higher price for a high quality magazine.

This means that the number of people reading publications from Shellshock distributors will increase even know my publication is very niche. However, this could still be a good feature because it may intrigue people into the magazine and also boost the number of people reading Ska’d For Life Magazine.

This media institution therefore, could be a great starting point for Ska’d For Life Magazine growing in popularity and would also mean that the magazine can be distributed much quicker and a larger scale to a larger audience throughout the country.

Click on the logo to go to the Shellshock website:

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

From the outset, the construction process of my media product, I had to learn how to use particular software and learn the vital skills needed to use this particular software to the best of my ability. In order for the construction process to be successful, I have to use three different pieces of software, all from Adobe – Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.

In Photoshop, I had to learn how to edit, adapt and manipulate images to completely change the look, detail and the colour complexity of my images. For my magazine, I decided to use Photoshop for my cover image and my contents page image. In both images, I learnt how to apply a Gaussian blur around the outside of the models which can identify the model much more easily than without the blur.

In addition, I also used Photoshop to cut out the trilby from the model’s head and then pace it on the top of the image, to give the image depth, layers and the hat will then overlap the checkerboard border. This looks very good on the finished publication and is a little feature that could feature on all of the editions of Ska’d For Life Magazine.

I used this tutorial to help me for image manipulation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcwLAXf1074

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

In Design, is a desktop publishing piece of software which I used for the construction part of the magazine, assembling every element (images, masthead, text, page numbers etc.) onto the page and creating a visually impressive and high quality music magazine. I had to use InDesign for all parts of my music magazine and when creating my school magazine, I had little skills and knowledge with the software, however, when I began the construction of my music magazine and understood a suitable house style, I enjoyed using my knowledge and putting it into practice to the best of my ability and as a result, I am pretty pleased with the finished publication.

In Design was initially difficult to work with due to the fact that I had never worked with it before. In addition, working with two pages at the same time was extremely difficult too. This was because of the article having to be formatted in to columns – which was very obscure to find and do - and having to separate each individual paragraphs so it would fit into the size that was available. It was very time consuming but I feel – with the additional pull quotes – that my double page spread looks very good and using In Design helped a lot.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

Finally, I used the software, Illustrator, to design and create my checkerboard border and my iconic logo called Suggs who is the logo and the icon of Ska’d For Life Magazine. Illustrator was a great decision for the designing and creation of my border because each individual black and white squares is identical and fit the A4 page perfectly. However, designing the logo was much more difficult due to the angular design of the logo that would be used in the top left hand corner of the cover. I had to learn new skills and develop my knowledge with this software and the creation took a very long time, however, was finally created and I was pleased with the finished logo.

Illustrator was only used for one element – albeit a very vital element of my music magazine because I had to create the checkerboard border and learn new skills on how to use Illustrator before I could start creating it. I had to learn how to use the interface and some certain skills like the eraser, shapes and arrange tools to create my border – it was a simplistic design that took a long time to create.

I decided to create the border in Illustrator because Illustrator is a graphics software that can create high quality graphics that are use in professional magazines and I feel that it has all the functions that I needed and more to create a high quality border that would be use in all parts of my magazine.

SKILLS THAT I LEARNT FOR THE FRONT COVER

Ska’d For Life

FRONT COVER IMAGE ADAPTATIONS

Firstly, I took my picture which is my cover picture for my magazine.

This is the polygonal lasso tool which I used in order to cut out the background in this image which could then be blurred to make the model stand out more on the cover.

I then applied a Gaussian blur to the selected background which could fade and blur the background to a radius of 34.7 pixels which helps the model stand out incredibly well on the page.

This when then applied and the final finished cover image was blurred and the model in the image stands out more and also gives the image depth to it as it looks like the background of the image is much further away than what it actually is.

CONTENTS PAGE ADAPTATIONS

This is my original image that I decided to use for my contents page. It is the same model as in the contents page which I particularly liked to do. However, in this image, the model is in a different position leaning over pretending to take his hat off to ska music.

This is the rectangular marquee tool that I had to use to feather my image at both ends to fade to the white background of the page which easily identifies the masthead at the top of the page.

This image had to be feathered, blurred and cropped in order to fit my contents page and all features were done in Photoshop. I blurred the image in the same way as the front cover and then cropped the image by simply cutting off the model’s body as much as possible to make the image fully fit on to the contents page without hiding underneath the border around the outside of the page.

I then feathered my image by using the sliders in the image above, to feather and smooth the edges around the outside of my image. The image was then placed on to the contents page. The smoothness of the edges had to be a 100 pixels and the feathered edges had to be at 107.9 pixels in order to fully notice the feathering to the best of its ability.

I then placed on the text on my contents page including, features, regulars and fashion articles. This meant that the contents pages was then finished along with the border that had to be altered (see Double Page Spread adaptations) and the page number.

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ADAPTATIONS

In addition, I learnt how to place the border on to the page which was much more difficult to do with this border than anything else on the double page spread. After much trial and error, the border worked by importing the image and removing the white part in the middle (see arrow) of the border, the checkerboard border could then be placed onto another layer which finished off the double page spread.

Finally, I also inserted the images to create a mood board type look underneath some of the bands that are featured in my main article. I decided to do this on InDesign because it enabled me to layers the images over the top of each other and show each and every model in the images. I believe that InDesign was the correct software to do this on rather than Photoshop because InDesign enabled me to layer the images, resize the images and arrange the images how I want them to look on the page with the text formatted to look like an actual professional article in a mainstream magazine.

I created the double page spread in InDesign and learnt to format the text in to column to make it looks like a professional magazine. However, I feel that this affected some of the words in the article as they then had to be hyphenated which then spilt the words onto the next line underneath. Furthermore, I decided to change the font for the pull quotes in my article because it makes these quotes stand out much more on the page and therefore means it is easily identifiable to the reader.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

In the creation of Ska’d For Life Magazine, I feel that I have learned a significant amount of useful functions that can help me in using both Adobe’s Photoshop and InDesign software which I can now transport over into other subjects such as ICT and removing the background on images and feathering images for effectiveness for example.

I feel that my music magazine and school magazine publication are totally different because the school magazine was created with hardly any technical skills with new software and the finished publication looked very poor as it lacked one basic element that needed to be run throughout the entire magazine: a house style.

Therefore, I have learnt these new skills from the initial designs and I feel that I have created a very good music magazine with the progress in different software packages like Photoshop which I used on the two main images – the cover and the contents page. In addition to this, I have changed the models in this publication and the way that they dress which can help determine the contrasting looks between ska music and school life.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

They contrast because ska music is very informal with coloured shirts untucked and comfortable clothes which can help you enjoy yourself when the music is blaring through your body. However, school uniform is very formal with a smart uniform to help represent the school meant that the school magazine could be easily identifiable by just looking at the model and the masthead.

In both publications (school and music) I have decided to use the idea of a coloured text box which features on the front cover of both publications because I liked the idea of using a coloured box which can stand out on the page and give extra information about features and articles that may feature inside the magazine.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

In addition, I decided to use a mid-shot on both publications for the front cover. This was because it can contain a lot of detail about the lifestyle of the topics of both publications and it is easy to see and understand the emotions that feature is both magazines. With my research I found that hardly any ska music magazines already existed and therefore I thought this would be a good genre of music to use because I found a gap in the market that needed to be plugged. When I was planning my images I chose to use a variety of different camera shots because this could show all the different emotions and expressions that the ska lifestyle contains – including pleasure, excitement, enjoyment and the chilled out vibe that it uses. Therefore, I feel that my music magazine easily fits my target audience and the representation of ska music in general. I believe that the progression from my school magazine (on the left) and my music magazine (on the right) was extremely large. I feel this because in my music magazine contains a consistent house style which was used throughout the entire magazine and I believe that I put a lot more of my effort in to my music magazine rather than my school magazine.