'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

There are many reasons for how my media product represents the social group of indie music fans, i have shown some of them here below.

MODELS

One way in which i have represented my social group is by the photography i have used. For instance in my front cover, i have two models and photos used. The first is the cover shot, which is a medium close up of my model, posed in an aggressive manner. I believe this represents my social category because it shows the passion that this model has, and by using a prop of the speaker, you can see that this passion is for music. Another way in which my model represents my social category is that it seems angry at the world, this is a recurring feeling that i believe a lot of my readership will feel, because a lot of them are males, who range from teenagers to late twenties. You can also compare my photography to other shots of artist that fall into the indie genre that my readers will be familiar with and so will instantly recognise that and this in turns represents my social group

I have also used a second model in my front cover who i believe represents my social category; this is the girl in the top left hand corner of my magazine. This is because my second model is a girl, who is representing the female readership of my magazine. Also the way she is dressed is representing the social category my magazine is aimed at, this is because she is wearing a stone roses tee-shirt. The stone roses are an English idie-rock band, formed in the late eighties and working through the nineties, Ian brown is also the frontman. They are a very influential indie band and all of my readers will know who they are. Another way in which my model is representing my social category is by the way she is looking extremely cool by conforming to the indie stereotypical dress sense; with a band tee shirt on, with skinny jeans and accessories. A final way she is showing my social category is the fact she is wearing headphones, this shows my social category as music fans excellently. This is because she is wearing them on her head, as an accessory which symbolises that music and listening to music is important to her. This represents my social category because it represents how they also feel the same way, and shows a link between the model and the readers  

COLOUR SCHEME

I have also tried to represent, my social category in the colours and colour scheme i have used. This is because my house style is red, blue and red, none of these colours fit into a generic gender stereotype colour, for example pink. So the colours don’t suggest a male or female only magazine, they show a unisex magazine, which is what my social category is. Another way is the way that the colours i have picked are bold and make the magazine look exciting, this i believe works well to promote the magazine and the music in it, which is what the audience reads it for.

So all in all i believe i have addressed my social group and the category of indie music fans. I believe there are elements in all my magazine which addresses them and that they will be happy with if they choose my magazine to read, also for those who are looking through and unsure whether to buy it, i believe the features i have used to address my social category will win them over

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

The front cover for my preliminary task

This is my preliminary task's magazine front cover, since finishing this i have learnt a lot about the processes that go into making a magazine and how to produce one. I believe this development can be seen when looking at a comparison of both my school magazine and my music magazine, this comparison can be seen below

I feel i have learnt a lot from doing my preliminary task and then my final music magazine, one of these things is how important a masthead is on the front cover of a magazine. My school magazine's masthead is extremely poor in my opinion looking back, this is due to the masthead being essentially the same colour as my background, thus making it camouflaged  and blending in. This means that the masthead is very hard to make out and read. However i feel i have learnt from this in my music magazine because i have deliberately made my masthead stand out here, this is managed by using an unconventional text and bold image inside it.

Another way in which i feel i have learnt from the progression in magazines is about photography. In my first task my photography is of a low standard, making it look extremely unprofessional. For instance the model itself is looking sideways on the cover, this is going against a convention as one convention of successful music magazines is having the model looking into the camera when the photo is taken, this makes the model look at the reader who picks up the magazine. I have learnt from my school magazine that this side view doesn't work and i don't like it, so in my final product i have over come this problem and shot a canted angle of my model, holding a boom box and looking aggressive. However unlike my preliminary task the model is facing the camera. Also in my school magazine the cover shot hasn't been edited much, i took the shot and in paint cropped the head out, meaning it wasnt edited to remove skin blemishes, or sharpen the image, or brighten up the face as its looking dark. On the other hand this realisation was good for me because it meant that my final product was as i made sure i edited it heavily, to make it look like a more professional image.

From comparing these two covers i can also see that i have learnt to use the boxes, which house the straplines more effectively, in my preliminary task the shapes are big and bulky and just dont create a higher standard where i have used them. However i have learnt from this and in my music magazine chosen much greater shapes by just picking rectangular boxes and adding text to them. To make them stand out more i have used alternate colours form my house style, to increase the simple effect. In my opinion i can see that less is more when it comes to the layout, a more neater and simpler design makes for a better cover.

The contents page for my preliminary task

This is my preliminary task's magazine contents page, since finishing this i have learnt a lot about the processes that go into making a magazine and how to produce one. I believe this development can be seen when looking at a comparison of both my school magazine and my music magazine contents pages, this comparison can be seen below

After looking at this comparison i have learnt quite a lot about contents pages themselves, and how they work and how to make them effective.

For instance you can see that the layout for my preliminary task wasn’t that well planned, it also didn’t work. To build on this i researched this a lot to find a layout for my contents page that would work. I came across the older layout for the NME music magazine, and thought that i could use this layout to model mine. I believe by doing this i have learned how to essentially make a really effective contents page, which is easy to understand and easy to follow, also looks good for the eyes of the reader.

I have also learned that a contrasting house style colour scheme, like mine works quite well. Because the bold blue works with the red to make the text inside the boxes stand out. This i have learnt also makes my contents page look more professional and ultimately clearer when reading.

Oh the whole i have learnt that there is a lot on time, planning and preparation that go into creating a magazine. I have also learnt that to have a successful magazine you need to get sort out the brand identity, house style and target audience before you start to produce your ,magazine as this makes the overall project easier due to you knowing how to approach your magazine. Anotther thing i feel i have learnt from the progression is that you need to make titles and subheading clear , and stand out to make the contents page more effective.



My double page spread

My final double page spread

My contents page

My final contents page

My front cover

My final front cover

The creation of my masthead

The masthead

After i had decided on my title of my magazine i decided that the masthead had to be bold and stand out due to the nature of m magazine. I thought that having an iconic masthead is also a convention of a music magazine, so i decided to look at other magazine titles and mastheads.

 This is Q magazines title, it is a simple design which works and is recognised by every music magazine reader who reads q or doesn’t.  It is just a simple white capital Q in a red box; however it is effect in drawing the reader’s attention because it is bold and the colours used make it stand out because the red symbolises the passion the magazine has for music and the readers love this!

This is the rolling stone magazine logo; this is a more complex logo and masthead, it consists of a main red text, with fancy features like the elongated ‘R’. It has a white border around the red text and then in the background it is a three dimensional effect which is created, with the shadow being mainly black with white stripes, starting at the white border of the letter to the edge of the shadow. In my opinion this title masthead is effective because it is bold and unusual as a text, it is easy to see why this is such an iconic masthead. Again the colour red and white is the main colours of the text which a common feature of most mastheads.

This masthead is the logo for the magazine NME or the New Musical Express. It features in bold letters the title of the magazine in red and a white and black border around the font. The font is a military style font, like stencil, and creates a sense of importance by this choice of font. Again like Q magazine and Rolling Stone magazine the main colours of the masthead are red and white, this shows that it is a conventional magazine masthead in my opinion, and so shows the general public exactly what the magazine contains and in turn shows their target audience as being music listeners

By researching a lot of mastheads I have found that a number of music magazine’s mastheads are made up mainly of the colours red and white. So to make my music magazine more conventional and more concurrent with other magazines like it i am also going to incorporate red and white in my masthead. I have also found out that the designs range from simple to complicate in how they are presented so i am going to use a font which replicates this and go for a more abstract font than something like Q. However the most important thing i have learnt from my research and planning into mastheads is that the masthead to be iconic has to be bold and so i am going to make my masthead as bold and out there as possible.

I then went and looked at a lot of potential fonts to use as my masthead and these are a few that i shortlisted below

After looking at a lot of ideas i found a cross between two fonts i like and decided instead of just having it red and white to incorporate something different into the font, after looking at a lot of things i could use i came across a picture of a union jack and thought that would be perfect as my music magazine would aim to promote British indie bands and artists. Also as my target audience would be British indie music fans this would be a great idea in showing that.

Once i found a font i like i decided that to make it even bolder and stand out i would reproduce a union Jack flag inside the text itself to do this i would use publisher to make the font transparent and then take a picture of the British background and place it behind the font. I will then make this a picture by pressing print screen and transferring this file over to paint and adding the final touches to it there.

In paint what i did was to neaten up the edges of the text and go over where the black outline is, i then made the union jack more clear and the finished product is here

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

What kind of media institution might distribute your

View more presentations from louisss123

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Instead of just writing this evaluation question, I decided to break up my blog and create a video of my question instead

How did you attract/ address your audience?

How did you attract/ address your audience?

To start with my audience is fans of the music genre labelled indie-rock; they are not of a certain age but are mainly male in my opinion. I have tried to address this audience in many different ways for instant my photography was one way i addressed my audience. For example my front cover photo.

This photo is a bold and striking front cover image for my magazine and i believe it addresses my audience because it emphasise the passion this cover star has. Also the boombox shows that this magazine is about music and addresses my audience there as well. Also i have based the image on a photo used in a magazine article about Tempa T a music artist. The photo is seen below

There are definite resemblances in the two pictures, one being the fact they are both holding objects that can be seen as weapons, although their original purpose isn’t that. A second similarity is the look of aggression seen in the two models featured. However i personally feel that i have taken my own spin on the image and addressed my audience more in the process.

Another way in which i have attracted my audience is by the masthead. My masthead has been specifically designed to show the nationality of my audience as my audience will be mainly British due to it being distributed in the United Kingdom. It also is a bold and striking masthead that will hopefully attract my audience and become an iconic image in the indie music scene. My masthead can be seen below

On my front cover i have also tried to attract my reader’s attention by creating a banner on the bottom of the page, enticing them to buy the magazine a win. Not only have i created this to entice my readership into buying my magazine, i have also used a competition that will interest my readers because from my reader profile i can see that my audience like going to festivals, so my competition to win free tickets for them and a friend should work in boosting the number of readers and also attracting my audience! This is the competition banner

So to conclude there are many ways in how i have tried to attract and address my target audience, and in my opinion they have been successful and worked

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

This is the logo for the blogging website i have used to track my progress with my magazine, the website is http://www.blogger.com. The address of my personal blog is http://louismediaportfolio.blogspot.com. The website provides a blog publishing service that is used by millions across the world. It was created by Prya labs and was bought by google in 2003, this is why you can log into your blog with your Google account, which is how i log in.

This is the photo and graphic editing software i have used to created the desired effect and image manipulation of the pictures i have used in my magazine. Before i had started the course i had very little knowledge of software like this however i have quickly learned how to use it and believe that Photoshop is very good at editing. I have used it in photos too lasso the image i want and crop it from the background of that picture, i have also used Photoshop to sharpen certain images that didn’t look as professional and of high quality as they could. On Photoshop i have also removed the background of images and then added text and changed the background.

This is the logo of Microsoft publisher; this is a desktop publishing application that is part of the Microsoft office package. I have used this application to create my magazine in its entirety, this is because Microsoft publisher is publishing software that makes it very easy to create single page and double paged articles. I have also used the application because it makes it very easy to design a page because of the layout of the program. On Publisher i have also used the text box and shape tools to make my magazine a greater product.

This is the icon of the Microsoft movie maker; I have used this to create a more visual evaluation question about my audience.  Before i had started the AS media studies course i had never, ever used this program. I have found it relatively easy to use and would use this technology again, i added titles and credits at the start, with pictures in my movie and also slides with text explaining the evaluation question

This is the icon for another Microsoft office application called Microsoft PowerPoint. This is the software i have used to create a slideshow and plan for my magazine, i have also used it in creating a slideshow for my evaluation.

This is the icon for a website called slidehsare (http://www.slideshare.net). This is a website that you can upload presentations too and share them on blogs and all over the internet. To use this technology you first create a slides how presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint and then save it as a presentation document, and then just click upload presentation publicly on slidesshare, as easy as that.

This is the icon and also a screenshot of the application that i have used quite a lot and have become very used to it over the time. Paint is just a bog standard image application that I have used to design quite a bit of my music magazine HYPE!

So all in all i have learned a lot about technologies from producing my magazine, and all the tasks associated with it. Looking back i now feel a lot more confident in the technologies i have used and feel that i have grown in abilities from my preliminary task of a school magazine. In my opinion i also believe that my advancement in the use of technology has also made my magazine on the whole better, and made the magazine have a touch of professionalism that being confident and excellent using these technologies could provide. I feel I have learned a lot through using each one of these programs and believe it is quite evident in my magazine.

The plan for my magazine

COVER PAGE

This is my front page of my magazine or the cover page. This is the plan of what i want my front cover to look like. In my opion i have styled my magazine on mainly NME magazine as i believe that is the biggest magazine that speaks out to the indie fans in the UK. The colour scheme and house style will be mainly red, blue and white (the three colours featured in my masthead). For my main image i want to incorporate like my masthead something bold, to make it stand out from other magazines. I have also decided to include a banner in my design as i think this will make my cover look neater and more professional because all the bands and artists that will be featured in the magazine will be there not scattered around the cover. I have also put the date, issue number and price under the masthead as that is a convention of music magazines.

Double page spread

This is my double page spread plan. For my double page spread i plan on having two quite big images, instead of having just one. For the article i plan on doing an interview style article getting to know a music artist. I plan on asking questions like who would you say your influences are? What has been the best thing in the past year for you? How is the tour going? What are your aspirations for the next few years? I am going to have a background on my double page spread and its going to be blue, or a mixture of blues. Unlike a lot of articles in music magazines; I don’t want there to be tonnes of writing I really would like there to be just enough, so it doesn’t draw attention away from the images.

Contents page

This is my contents page. For my contents page I plan on having a small article in the center of the page, with a picture. I plan on using the start of a piece on an artist to entice the reader to reader the rest and ultimately buy the magazine if they’ll flicking through it in a shop. Much like the front page and double page spread it will be a bold image that i use, and the article will hopefully be interesting. The layout for my page is simple, on the left is a index of the whole magazine running from the front to the back, in chronological order. Then to make the magazine more user friendly i plan on categorising the pages into subheading to make them easier to find what you want, the heading will be: News; Reviews; Live and Miscellaneous. I am also going to make it look like a professional magazine by creating a subscription type advertisement banner, with a special offer on it, making the advert more appealing.

The creation of my magazine's name

To decide on a name i used a random word generator and put the names i liked into a mind map, however I only selected the names that related to music and i liked!

Here is a link to the website used.

THE RANDOM WORD CREATOR!

After i had created this mind map, i decided that the best name would be the name i had used in my preliminary task. I had many reasons for choosing this name, one of the main reasons was to show to improvement i have made from my school magazine. Another of the reasons why i chose this name was because i believe that hype is a bold type of word that would make my magazine stand out from the crowd. I also decided on adding an exclamation mark as well to HYPE - HYPE! To make it stand out even more.

The reader profile of magazines

As part of my research and planning i decided to look at reader profiles of certain magazines and learn about what they are. By doing this it would mean i could start to create my own reader profile myself.

NME reader profile

NME or new musical express is an indie-rock magazine which is one of the main music magazines in press in England. The magazine has been in production since March 1952 and so as you can imagine has a big readership, and appeal to a specific social category . I am going to breakdown their reader profile here.

The percentage of males who read NME on the whole is 69% of the readership. The percentage of females who read NME is a mere 31% of the readership, thus meaning there is over double the amount of males who read NME than females. The usual NME reader as well is in full time work, with over half of all readers working full time, that’s 52% of the readership. There is also a mere 7% of readers who are in part time work also. Students also play a big part in the readership of NME with 29 percent of all NME readers being students. The whole readership of NME consists of 369,000 people.

A picture of the reader profile, with picture of things associated with the target audience can be seen here from IPC advertising, the company who print NME

NME READER PROFILE!

Mixmag reader profile

Mixmag is a British dance music and clubbing magazine. It styles itself as "the world's biggest selling dance music magazine". The first issue was printed on February 1^st 1983, and since then has continued to grow.

The reader profile of Mixmag is seen above and we can tell from the first paragraph a short description of the average Mixmag reader. It describes the readers as being huge club and dance music fans and are in the know, it also portrays the average Mixmag reader to be quite a cool individual and is seen as that by people. It also tells us that they are into music and are the biggest music download-ers in the United Kingdom.

We can aslso draw from this reader profile that there is a high percentage of males that read Mixmag as males make up 72% of the readership. Females however only make up a tiny 28% in comparison to the boys. Also we can tell that the average mixmag reader is in their mid twenties and enjoys buying clothe, mobile phones, mp3 players, music and on nights out. 

The reader profile from the Mixmag website (http://www.mixmag.net/2008/01/29/reader-profile) can be seen above

Fedback

After I had finished my questionnaire, I spell checked it and checked that all the questions were okay to ask people. I then printed off fifteen copies, and handed them too various people who were in the common room and asked them to complete them for me. After they had filled them out, I comprised a set of results tables to show my findings.

This table shows the ratio of boys too girls i asked. The ratio in its lowest form is 3:2.

For ‘what makes a good music magazine’ I received a number of good answers for this question.

A few responses too my questions are the quotes that follow on.

‘A simple, yet bold design’ 

‘A magazine that is different, and stands out from the rest of the crowd’ 

‘Features good bands and good music, with reviews which are truthful and nicely written’

 The prices that people said they would pay for a magazine, and is a good price for one is between £2.99 too £4.99. Most people then said this is a good price as it is just enough money that people wont mind spending on a good bit of reading matieral once, twice or even four times a month.

An example questionaire

After i produced a questionnaire i began distribution of the finished product, i gained a lot of feedback and knowledge from this process. The first filled out questionnaire i received back was this one below, i decided to scan it and upload to my blog as an example.

As you can see from this, the feedback was good and has taught me quite a bit. It was by a girl called 'Charlotte Smith' who fits in the target audience of my readership, as she is a teenage indie music fan. It has given a lot of thoughts on my magazine as i hadn't even thought about the style of writing i was going to use and whether it would be formal or informal. Also the what makes a good magazine answers were helpful as i am now going to concentrate on including these said items. I also was thankful for he answer too what would convince you to buy a magazine because the excellent cover shot is something i was aiming to have in my front cover to make it appealing as a magazine.

Questionaire

For more research into magazine, and what magazine genre I would pursue; I decided too crate a survey, this would help me get the general opinion. In i included basic questions like ‘what is your name?’ and ‘How old are you?’ There were also several specific questions that would help me decide on my magazine’s genre. For instance ‘What is your favourite genre of music’ or ‘what are your favourite articles in a magazine?’

I set my questionnaire out so that it would give me the best results. By this i mean it would give me results for some that i could use in a table and others that i could select quotes from. For a simple answer, I decided to use a simple tick box. However for answers where I wanted more than just a simple tick, I created a box with adequate room for a written response.

My questionnaire is shown in picture form below.

My research into music magazine genres

When I was deciding on what music genre i was going to pursue for my music magazine. I did a lot of research on what magazines I would be interested in, and the conventions I would need to follow too make my magazine successful. One of the Magazine genres i look at in my research was Hip-Hop magazines.

An example of a hip-hop magazine is RWD. Rewind magazine is a British based music magazine which features news, interviews and charts on genres across the board. For instance: hip hop; RnB; UK garage; Drum and bass and US house.

In this cover of Rewind magazine Tinie Tempah is the featured model. It is a mid close up shot with a simple design theme. The designs feature is a simple white and blue theme which makes the cover very effective in my opinion. It has many conventions that an urban magazine tends too include. For instance the House style is simple consisting of basic colours; white and blue. Also there is an effective masthead of RWD magazine. Also is very little text as the image is very effective.

For my research I also looked into genres such as dance and rave styles. One magazine I found was Mixmag magazine. Mixmag is a British music magazine which features predominately dance music and club music. It is the worlds biggest selling dance magazine with a huge audience of readers.

On this front cover of Mixmag, the DJ Kissy Sell Out graces the cover. He is posing in a way which shows the magazine in a fun, and interesting light. The cover features a mid long shot size where the model is jumping in the air, this shows the wacky attitude that the picture is aiming for. The Cover also features a bold colour scheme, with a lot of bright colours and an electric style backdrop. Although I think this cover works in attracting the audience’s eye, I believe it is too packed as a magazine and the colours too bright to one another.

Whilst researching magazine genres, I also looked into indie genres of magazines. One of the magazines I looked at was NME. NME stands for New Musical Express; it is a British magazine which mainly focuses on the Indie music scene. Its audience is more of a genre based than age range, writing for fans of the indie genre.

This image is taken from an NME cover, featuring M.I.A. The cover is a Medium Close up of the artist. The model is showing an edgy pose which is a recurring theme. The house style is also simple and effective, which makes the bold image stand out. The backdrop of a simple tinted colour is also a convention of a indie magazine. I personally think that this cover works and is effective as an indie magazine should be.

There are also many conventions I found out that you need to include in an indie magazine. As i was researching this topic, i found an image which clearly points out a number of them.

A deconstruction of my school magazine

This is the banner for my magazine. I think that it works well as the House Style for my magazine is a mixture of light blues and dark blues, with the text staying white or black. For the text itself I made it bold and put it in italics so that it would stand out more and to show that it was a special magazine.

This is the masthead for my magazine and the title of the magazine. When I was coming up with ideas I was looking for a word that would stand out against a lot of other words. To do this I decided to randomly select my title; so what I did was press shuffle on my iPod and pick a word that way. The first song was a track called next hype that is where the name for my name derived from. However i believe that Hype! Is a very good title as it is bold and can connect with my target audience of sixth form students.

My Lead cover shot is a picture of Kane Gibbons turning to the side. I didn’t want my magazine to be a conventional school magazine, so I decided that was front cover will be bold and different. That is why he is turned to the side. I think that the idea was successful and it worked but the graphic wasn’t the best. I can see why most magazines don’t have their front cover graphic model, turned a different way. However although my idea did not fully work I believe that is shows the edgy side that my magazine was aiming for.

These stories are my strap lines that draw the attention of the buyer of the magazine into reading them. I chose the colours as they are my house style and also the white background on blue white background is a contrast to the rest of my magazine style.

For my contents page I chose to use a word art picture, as to contrast from the bold ‘HYPE!’ font. My personal opinion is that it didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would. However, on the plus side though it does keep in with my house style of mainly different shades of blue.

This image is an example of the stories that feature in my contents page. On my magazine they have a transparent background however they don’t come out well as clear on a white background, like this blog because the white text does not come out as well. This works well I feel because the white text stands out on my magazine, I am pleased with this aspect of my magazine.