Original images

Evaluation Question 7 - Skills Development

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

For my preliminary task i had to create a college magazine which would help me to get used to the programs and websites which would help me to create my music magazine.

From these pictures you can see an obvious difference between my knowledge of photoshop and its use over time, the pictures on the right are pages from my preliminary task, i didnt have alot of  experience with photoshop and i wasnt familiar with all the tools that you could use. However for my final product (pictures on the right) i had plenty of experience from practising at home, and in other courses at college, this allowed me to create a more proffesional magazine cover and contents using different layer format and properties. I used a range of different tools and techniques to create my final product, some of these are:

• I used a textured background on my cover, contents page, and double page spread which made the page look old and rough, this allowed me to attract my target audience through their stereotypical point of "not taking their time". I crinkled an a4 sheet of paper and scanned it into a computer, then i pulled it into photoshop and colour burned it onto the pages twice to make the pages darker.
• I used the outer glow tool to distintively seperate the photos of the band from the background, the problem was that the photos i took were when the band was wearing dark clothing to keep to the conventions of my target audience, however this made them blend into the dark background. I used the outer glow tool to fix this problem, this tool created a bold line around the pictures.
• I used the smudge tool to create the flames which helped to enhance the look of the block colour. This was very usefull because the plain block colour did not belong on the page because of the differences between the look of the block colour and the rock-style background, it needed an extra add to make it fit on the page and to make sure it will fit to the stereotype of rock fans.
• I used the drop shadow option to make my pictures look like they have been pinned onto the page, this was very usefull for making them stand out, and making them look alot more interesting compared to normal, flat images.

On my old, college magazine i aimed it at an audience of modern, drum and bass music fans, i used a clean, modern layout with graffiti-style font which was assosiated with the audience, however i used a rugged, crinkled look and layout to assosiate with my audience.

Evaluation Question 4 - Target Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For my magazine i have chosen an audience of rock fans because rock is a type of music which i am very familiar with, this would help me to create a very effective and eye-catching magazine to attract my target audience.

This is a picture i took off of my freinds facebook account to represent my target audience, im sure there are better images which i could annotate, however this one had three people in it which makes it easier to annotatefacial emotions and what they are doing (more people, more things to annotate).
      Facial emotions - Their facial emotions indicate that the guy down the bottom is crazy, this facial emotion is often used by rock artists as an angry gesture which is mostly used in punk and heavy rock.
      Clothing - These people are wearing generally average clothing which is casual, not particularly dark and normal for everyday casual wear.
      Guitar - These people are holding electric guitars which obviously shows that they are rock fans and players.

My audience (rock fans) are known to be crazy and strange, depending on their taste in what type of rock music, heavy metal, gothic, acoustic and there are more types. Each of these seperate rock types have a seperate audience, the picture above shows heavy metal / gothic rock fans, they like to dress up in leather and metal gear, however acoustic rock fans like to adjust their clothing to what is in fashion. Rock fans are not known to have shopping addictions or interests in shopping, or greatly anyway, they are known not to be scared of horror films or to throw up over gory films, they are pretty much okay with almost everything when it comes to films, although they probably dont watch very romantic movies which is pretty obvious because of their aggresive and crazy behaviour.

This audience would want to purchase my magazine because my magazine is very well fitted for their benefits, it includes information about rock bands(old and new), gigs, freebies, and advertisements for music products including amplifiers, guitars and more music equipment.

Im not planning on making my magazine have truck loads of advertisements, the types of advertisments which would be presented to my audience would be adverts of rock products such as clothing (jeans), guitars, perhaps music teaching opportunities, drums, instruments in general and other musical products. Honestly not many people are interested in advertisments at all, they just flick through them, but if the right advertisment is applied they might take a moment to look and possibly buy the magazine for the purpose of looking at the advertisements, especially if their thinking of buying a cheap guitar or set of drums in this case.





Evaluation Question 5 - Attracting the Audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience by using their type of language, i made my language more informal and i used a small amount of swearing to make sure that my readers felt like they are similar to my magazine and that they can assosiate themselves with it. Rock fans (my audience) are very well known for their attitudes of anger and their foul language, so i tried to encorporate this stereotypical value of my audience into my text, this could possibly attract more of my type of audience. I think that a member of my target audience would want to buy my magazine because my magazine has alot to offer them, gig times, information on their favourite bands, interviews with rock artists and free goods.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54288300@N05/5445628931/

I have constantly been asking for feedback from my target audience through the production process of my magazine, i did this so that the finished product would be as attracting towards my target audience as possible and i think this method of production has worked effectively.

Evaluation Question 6 - Technologies

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

In the construction of this finished product i have used multiple programs and websites which i had to learn to use effectively in order to produce a proffessional, attractive and realistic set of magazine pages which would attract my target audience.

    In the construction of my magazine pages i used:

• Adobe Photoshop cs4/5
• Blogger.com
• Flickr.com

All of these applications were extremely helpfull towards the creation of my final product but above all photoshop was the most useful.

     Photoshop supplied me with a large range of tools which helped me to create textures, to blend images and to aesthetically enhance my products, tools such as the outer glow tool, which allows the user to create a glow around an image to make it stand out from the background. This was one of the tools i used very often because the band was wearing dark clothing to fit the demographic of my audience, however this caused them to blend into the background of the magazine, making them harder to see, this tool allowed me to fix this tool quickly and smoothly. There are hundreds of different tools which help you to carry out these small editing features which may take you longer if you do it the simple way, an experienced user of Adobe Photoshop would take alot less time to create the same product as a novice of Photoshop. However some of the computers at college had cs5 and some had cs4, this was a disadvantage because the layout of some keys are different, so some keys that you have previously familiarised yourself with last lesson might not be available to you the next lesson which was a setback.

    Blogger.com is a useful website which allows users to add small amounts of imformation to a large data bank which they can customise themselves, this helps alot with the production of essays and evaluations because then wherever you have internet access you can add to your work part by part. This helps alot with gaining marks with the use of images and embedding videos into work, it also allows the user to edit saved information if they have new ideas or if they need to correct mistakes. The only problem i have found with this website is that if you dont track your progress and file your work properly it can become a big mess which can take a long time to sort out, and it will cause you to get lost in your own work, especially if you dont label your work properly.

     Flickr is a very similar website to blogger except this website is focused on the uploading and sorting of images, this website allows you to upload JPEG images onto the website and edit them with notes and annotations, these images have options for sharing with blogs which creates a very usefull link between my work with Flickr and Blogger. This website has similar problems to Blogger where if you dont label or file your photos correctly it can become a big mess, however this website has a possibility of creating sets of photos which allow you to seperate you work into different sections.

    

Evaluation question 1

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

Conventions

A convention of a magazine cover is a typically expected piece which has a particular place for example the masthead of most magazines is at the top of the cover taking up about one tenth of the page.

   Most cover pages are expected to have:

-          Masthead at the top of the page.

-          Cover lines around the page.

-          The main cover line somewhere visible, the placement of this text depends on the background image/colour.

-          Main image often taking up the full page.

-          The bar code.

All these conventions have a particular placement on the cover to either make them stand out, or to make other conventions stand out. For example the bar code is usually hidden in one of the bottom corners of the page because it is not exactly important and it spoils the look of images.

   It is not only cover pages which have conventions, contents pages and double page spreads also have aspects which have particular placements; of course these conventions may differ depending on the magazine style, audience and depending on the article.

    Most double page spreads are expected to have:

-          Kickers at the start of the article to interest the reader and to help them find out if they actually want to read the article if it interests them.

-          Article titles are usually based at the top of the page(s) in large font that interests the reader and draws their attention.

-          Drop caps at the beginning of the first paragraph of the article, drop caps look nice; they help to improve the aesthetics of the article.

-          Gutters (large enough to be able to read paragraphs without problems)

-          Pull quotes placed somewhere in the text to draw attention to the most interesting parts of the article.

-          Captions linked to images to help the reader understand what is going on and why things in the pictures are happening.

-          Main image to draw the reader’s attention and to allow readers of that genre to find out what this article is about if they recognise the person in the photo.

-          Perhaps bonus text or images to interest the reader or to advertise other, big articles or magazines (this usually happens with magazines who are owned by big publishing companies who new to boost the popularity of a different magazine.)

Genre

The genre of my magazine is rock, my magazine is pretty dark and in my thoughts, conventional.

Here are some images of magazines which helped me to follow the conventions of magazine development as well as create an aesthetically pleasing cover, double page spread and contents page.

To create the layout of my magazine pages, I outlined the main parts of these pages and then evolved my ideas from then on. I chose these pages because I felt they would appeal to the audience my magazine is aimed at. (Rock fans)

Connotational aspects of my cover, D.P.S, and contents page.

Title of the magazine

The name of my magazine is The Virge, this title is supposed to show that this magazine pushes you to the end; it’s got everything you want from the start to the end. It’s supposed to mean that my magazine is pretty crazy and fun, the kind of magazine which is going to blow your mind. I found the font for my magazine in Photoshop; the name of the font is Hard Rock I chose this font because it fitted well with the area and the size of the name “the virge” and because it was I kind of club font which looked scruffy and rushed, which makes the magazine look more like it is disobeying the rules on having to be neat and perfect.

Mise-en-sine of images

Costumes and props

For my images I got two of my friends and asked them to dress in clothes which would be thought of as fashionable to the rock community. They wore black shirts, black jeans and fedora hats, just generally dark clothing which is relatable to my audience.

 I set them up with these props:

-          Bass guitars

-          Electric guitars

-          Amplifiers

Honestly I didn’t have a wide variety of choices with the props; I only had 2 electric guitars, a bass guitar and an amplifier. I made them switch the guitars around so that it seemed a lot more realistic because rock band members don’t just have 1 guitar.

People in photo’s

Most of my photos are taken with a subjective gaze, sometimes I took pictures of them looking down at the camera at sometimes looking at eye level. I tried to take a large variety of different pictures with them in different poses and with different props so that I could certainly fit in pictures wherever I wanted them.

Masthead font and placement

My masthead font is called “Hard Rock”, I chose this font because it is scruffy and rushed and it fits the genre of my magazine, it shows a kind of “I don’t care” attitude which is exactly the font which I needed for my magazine. I placed the masthead at the top of the magazine and edited it to fit about one tenth of the magazine height, I did this to keep to the conventions of average magazine covers and to make sure that the title of the magazine is read first.

Written content

In my written content I have used informal language which my audience would understand and find entertaining to read, I have used occasional swearing but not too much to make the reader think that the makers of this magazine are no better than them and that they can relate to them, with their genre (rock) their language (swearing, informal), these small parts in the text can boost and plummet the sales of the magazine. I chose a medium length article because not all people are interested by text, a lot of people (especially my audience) are interested in images and bright colours, and these things attract readers. My article is a medium length because it is specifically created for my target audience (rock fans) who are in the C/D section of the socio-economic scale which means that they would not like large amounts of fonts and would prefer a wide variety of different pictures.

Music genre and how the magazine suggests it

It is very important for magazines to immediately show the genre of their magazine in a variety of different ways for example something simple like the brightness of your magazine could show a different music genre (dark magazines could be accidentally presented as gothic). It is important to show the right genre, if someone thinks it is a different genre to what you made it to be then the readers you are looking for may look away from your magazine because it is presented wrong and the fans you attract will be put off because the articles are written for a different audience.

Contents page

For my contents page I have tried to follow the conventions of an average contents page, I have tried to use a wide variety of images and reduce the amount of text on the page to fit the requirements of my target audience and to make sure that the page easily shows the genre of my magazine as well as guiding my readers to the most interesting and new parts of this issue. I used a paper texture to make the page seem scruffy and untidy, this will attract rock readers. I placed the titles and descriptions on the left inside a column to allow the readers to find what they are interested in this magazine easily. I have chosen a main image to take up about one third of the page to attract the reader’s attention towards the main article of this issue; I have captioned the photo to link it to the page number of the article and also the brief description in the left hand side column of the contents page. I traced the outlines of the main features of the contents page from a different magazine to make an outline for my contents page so that I would have a template from an official magazine that I could adapt to my magazine and change to fit my pictures.

Double page spread

With my double page spread I took a different double page spread made by the Kerrang magazine and outlined the main aspects of the spread such as the title placement, size the placement of the main image, the placement of the text and other extra’s on the page. This helped me to make my spread look more professional and it saved me a lot of time from thinking about the layout. Through the development of the spread I changed this layout to fit my images and the amount of text I had. I made this spread a lot darker but I used the same paper texture as I used on my cover and my contents page so that they would look similar. I used a small amount of images on this page and put large amounts of text (the main article and the side column which explains the stories behind the songs) I have outlined the images placed around the page to help make them stand out, the background colour almost camouflages them so that you can’t see them however outlining them and brightening them helps to fix this problem.

House style

The overall style of my magazine is made to look scruffy, untidy and rushed as if no one cared about what it looks like, as if someone wanted to get it out of the way and done so that they could do whatever they wanted. The overall view of my magazine is associated with my audience because of the way it relates with them with their stereotypical “I don’t care” attitude.

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For my magazine i am trying to represent rock fans who have been know to have a very rebellious attitudes towards everything. Rock fans have been steretypically labelled as the generation who dont care, so this makes it very easy for me to create a magazine which is clearly set for rock fans by using the stereotypical "i dont care" value of the rock community and linking it in with my magazine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54288300@N05/5408832242/

In my magazine i have tried to establish rock fans and groups to be "the good guys", this is a very usefull way to win the crowd and attract more fans who are annoyed with their stereotypical label of "the generation who dont care". I think that sticking by their side my magazine will show a kind freindship towards the rock community and i suppose gain their gratitude which will increase the amount of sales for my magazine.

I think that my magazine would have advertisements for rock related products such as guitars, amplifiers and rock gizmo's e.g. drum skins. However although i am not a huge reader of rock magazines, i know how annoying advertisements can be, so i would only settle for minimal advertisement in my magazine which would allow the production of it.