Original Images

Finished Products

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The institution that I would use to develop my magazine would be Bauer because the genre of my magazine is a big genre; therefore I need a big company to distribute my magazine. The Bauer Publishing Group was founded in Hamburg in 1875 by Johann Bauer. Bauer is the largest privately owned publisher in Europe, publishing in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Additionally, Bauer publishes in the United States and Mexico.

What are the disadvantages and the advantages to going with Bauer?

There are disadvantages to going with a wide company as I could be dealing with a lot of competition and this could affect my profit in the outcome. By going with a large company I may lose control over my magazine in terms of the index and the editing. By losing control over my magazine it means that I have less power and my magazine could not be what I wanted due to the fact that my magazine is not making much or no profit. By not making profit my magazine would consist of advertisements to make the money the company would need to keep making it.

The advantages to going with a large company is that all my billing costs are paid for by them and if my magazine does not make a profit straight away they company are able to keep running it until it does. Another advantage is that when distributing my magazine the bigger company can distribute it internationally and using stores like WHSmith which are a popular store and therefore my magazine will be known by more of the public. As i would have some competition, using a big company can help promote my magazine in ways a small company couldn't.

Synergy

My magazine will most likely have an online version due to the fact that i have gone with a big company. There could also be a radio station for the particular music that i have in my magazine so i can attract more of my targetted audience if they are unaware of my magazine. Also my magazine could have tieins with itunes and spotify. By having these tieins it could help distribute my music magazine better and attract a bigger audience. My magazine would also most likely be sponsering a tv programme.

Q5:How did you attract/address your audience?

• The language of my magazine is informal. This connects well with my audience as my age range starts at the age 18. If my audience are 18 then they are not likely to talk in a formal way so by using an informal language will help them to relate better to my magazine.
• Advertising a website on my magazine (contents page and article) helps to spread it virally and would attract my audience in terms that they are able to see videos and latest posts.
• The model on my front cover would attract my audience as they can see that this is for their age range and not for someone that is among the age of 40-50. The contents of my magazine contain artists that have a similar age to my audience.
• The colour of my magazine title shows that it is not aimed at one gender audience. By using red it helps to connote and attract a unisex audience.
• By using certain cover lines those featuring bands that they would be interest in helps to alert the audience of what type of magazine mine is.
• My audience would be well-educated so inserting a crossword would appeal to them.
• I have put in a gig guide as most of my targeted audience would enjoy going to festivals and gigs. By doing this is attracts my audience more to purchase my magazine.
• The reason for my fashion pages is because even though I aimed to make it 50/50 in terms that my audience varies between male and female, I haven’t as fashion is more of a female interest, but it can include some of my male audience.
• I believe that by using pull quote in my article it will make my audience more intrigued as they would be more interested in the artist’s answer rather than the interviewer’s questions.
• The blur effect I have used in my article connotes unknowing as my model is looking to her left in the distance and by making the left side of the image blurry it helps connote that she is looking further than she can see.

Q7: 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?

From my preliminary task, to my main task I think I have learnt a lot from using Photoshop. My knowledge and skills of Photoshop have developed as I have been creating my magazine. Whilst creating my preliminary task I have learnt the basics, such as, cropping an image, scaling and rotating an image. I have learnt how to use the magic wand tool to discard certain sections of the image, uploading images in to a page and the use of layers. My finished product was more complicated when it came to using Photoshop as I was aiming for more of a specific audience being part of a sub-culture. I needed to research already existing magazines and how they used advertisements and the colours of their magazine to attract their target audience. This included things like fashion, technology, films and CD’s. To help me with my target audience I created a mood board to narrow down the specifics of my audience. The design of my college magazine was more based around any type of student that attended college but with my music magazine it needed to be more specific in terms of the design. Because my audience was more specific with my finished product it was easier to design my magazine due to the colours and layout that I thought would attract my audience. For my college magazine my contents page was very basic and mainly contains things like jobs, college dates and upcoming events within the college. This is very different to my music magazine contents page as it is much more detailed, a more appealing page and was dominantly about music and lifestyle. For my magazine I included things like interviews, fashion, reviews, competitions and a gig guide. I was not confident when using Photoshop to begin with but as the lessons went on I used it more often and my confidence grew in terms of using it. I would sometimes use my private studies to become more familiar with the software. I found that the design that I wanted for my magazine was hard to do as I had little experience with Photoshop but i did get help from a teacher to find out how to do it. I found things like cropping an image, adjusting brightness and contrasts, and using the text tool quite easy as it was quite simple to use. Other skills that I picked up was with my images I found that I could use a drop shadow effect to make the images and the text stand out more on the page. I still do not know everything that I could do with Photoshop but I hope to discover them and be able to use more tools to make my work more appealing. Using layers and knowing how to use the layers was a critical aspect of creating my magazine. I needed to know how to put some layers in front of others and learnt how to link layers so it took up less of my time trying to move individual layers when I could move more than one at once. To boost my retail ability for my magazine I needed to look very closely at the detail of existing magazines and discover how to make my magazine just as appealing or maybe more. For my college magazine it was very basic and therefore I was not that worried about the appearance as it was never going to be in any shops. But for my finished product I spent more of my time on and cared more for my images and the alignments of my texts.

Overall by doing my preliminary task it helped me to make my finished product what it is by giving me that experience of using Photoshop. The hardest part of my magazine was trying to make sure that it appealed to my target audience and creating the design, using certain colours and the content of my magazine.

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

CONTENTS PAGE.
Originally uploaded by Summer King2

Front Cover
Originally uploaded by Summer King2

Article Page
Originally uploaded by Summer King2

The title of my magazine helps the target audience realise this is the magazine for them as it is an educated magazine but yet still very similar to what most rock, indie music magazines contain. My target audience would be aged among 18-25. By the way I have layed out my front cover and the images I have used throughout my cover, contents and my article page, my magazine looks more of a female based audience. The social class of my audience would be B/C1, Intermediate managerial or professional/ Supervisory and junior managerial or professional. I have written in an informal way as shown on my article page. It is like a normal conversation in taking place when you read through my article. The genre of my magazine in Indie, Rock, but the lifestyle of my audience will most likely be middle class, semi-detached, well educated lifestyle. They will most likely be single or in a relationship, but most likely would not be married and would have no children. My model represents my target audience. Her age is within my age range. The attitude of my model is sophisticated and casually dressed. My targeted audience would be stylish and up to date with the latest gadgets and clothes. I have not used any props myself but what is in the background. The psychographic profile of my audience would be mainly aspirers and succeeders. They are people that have the luxury lifestyle or want that luxury lifestyle. A small part of my targeted audience could be individuals. Individuals are people that are difficult to classify and are often young. My targeted audience would enjoy hobbies like going to festivals and gigs. Most of my audience would be up to date with fashion, the latest gadgets and have a Facebook account. The cars that they would drive would be things like a Vauxhall, Fiat or a Peugeot. These cars are common within my age range. Most of my audience I think would still be in education e.g. university.

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Photoshop CS4 – I used Photoshop to create my magazine. Before I began this course I knew nothing about Photoshop but at the point when I produced my preliminary task I only had a basic understanding of it.

The main task helped me to understand and know more than the basics of Photoshop. The “Image>>Adjustments” helped me to edit my images in terms of effects but mainly using exposure, brightness and contrast.
I also learnt how to use the “magic wand tool” I used this when I wanted to put a different background in one of my images. This helped me if I was unable to get the background that I wanted.

The main thing that I learnt was about layers. This was essential when editing my work. It helped with putting images in front of one another and putting another layer underneath my main image so when printing it didn’t leave a space around the edge of my page.

Blogger –I used blogger to display my work from planning materials, preliminary task, initial ideas, my finished work and my evaluation.

It helps to display my work and progress and I can edit and keep updating my work.

Flickr – I have used Flickr to annotate and analyse some existing magazines and my own magazines. I used notes for this analysis.

I found that Flickr often crashed on me so I was unable to add notes to my images at times when I was working on a computer.

Photography – I am very interested in photography but thought I was never good at getting the right shots. When I took the photos for my main product I realised that even though I edited my images I was happy with the shots that I had taken. To get the best shots I needed to borrow an SLR camera. I tried taking each shot at different angles and some in different filters. For my front cover image I have edited it to look like I have used the sepia colour effect. For my contents page I have used either mono or normal colour effects for my images. The process of taking my shots helped me learn how to use an SLR camera, and Photoshop helped me with editing some of my images.