MARY SMITH MEDIA EVALUATION

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

For initial research for my magazine, I studied various magazines, both pop music and gossip, as they both have the same informal tone that was appropriate for my magazine. From doing this I discovered the necessities in the construction of my magazine for it to be professional, but also areas that I would be able to challenge and experiment with to make my magazine unique. I found that most magazines in this type of genre make use of colour blocking with bold colours and are more image orientated and I decided to incorporate this into my magazine. For my cover i decided to use the most familiar conventions on all magazines to make mine realistic. If I didn't make use of a barcode, date, masthead, coverlines and a central image, my magazine would not be taken seriously by potential buyers. I decided not to overload the layout of my magazine, as many of this genre do because it puts more emphasis on the main features of the magazine and makes them more important.Also during my research, I noticed that many magazines have the central images overlapping the masthead. I decided to use this on mine and found it to be effective. I didn't use my origainal cover image as it was a full length shot and I thought this was ineffective so decided to go with the normal convention of using a half shot on the cover.   Also, because I have a young target audience, I wanted to make the content of my magazine very clear and colourful. I decided that the nearest competitor of my magazine was Top of the Pops, so I decided to use it as a guideline for mine. It has a very similar target audience of roughly girls aged 8-14 and similar to mine, makes use of more than just music orientated information to tend to this target audience.

        





































For my contents page, I decided to take a different approach to most magazines on the market. Most contents are simply laid out with lots of whitespace and few images. I decided to vary my font shape, size and colour, to make the information stand out more. I used my colour scheme, to show that it is part of the same magazine, seeming more professional and used images to make the content of the magazine more accessible. 

For my double page spread, I used a Saturdays interview from Now! magazine as my inspiration. From this article, I decided to use the colour blocking circles, but used my own colour scheme, the block letters for the heading and the enlarged quotes. However, the numerous images had a different effect on my article as the focus was on one artist, not a band. I found this convention to be very effective, as it came across as more playful and showed variety.





 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?



The target audience of my magazine is girls roughly aged 8-14 and my magazine is of the Brit-Pop genre. I decided to name my magazine B.OP as it is an abbrieviation of Brit Pop, but also represents my target audience because the word 'bop' has conotations of music and dancing.  To further establish the identity of my magzine, I made use of a colour scheme consistently through my cover, contents and ouble page spread. I decided on the colours bright pink, orange and yellow, as they are fun and girly and represent my target audience best. From my colour scheme I created a logo of three hearts, used it on my masthead and used it for all my text boxes. However, for information I wanted to stand out more, I deviated from my colour scheme and used bright green and purple to immediately attract attention of my audience. I also used the features and contents of my magazine to captivate the attention of my target audience. The interest of girls this age in the way of music magazines includes competitions, posters, quizzes and horoscopes. I included this when doing the contents of my magazine. One of the main ways I represented this social group was through my use of images. for my double page article I used a variety of images with different poses of the superstar 'ROXANNE.' I felt the variety of poses and the friendly, fun and quirky nature of them best represented my target group. Underneath are some of the pictures I used. 

However, there were images that I originally thought to use to represent my potential buyers, but later realised that they were not as effective as I thought. The main example of this was when I used the clone tool on one of my images to make three of Roxanne. I felt this detracted from my magazine and wouldn't be appealing to young girls. 

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


My magazine would be distributed in shops, especially supermarkets, as it would be more available for families to buy for young girls when doing their weekly shopping. Also at record shops as they specifically draw in people with an interest in music. It has a uniquely specific identity as it focuses on British music only, so it would have a space in the retail market. I would also stream my magazine on the internet, as the progression of technology is very relevant in the lives of young girls. Many of my potential target audience will be an internet user and a webzine is more accessible to more people. I would also include games, features and competitions on the website, to further appeal to the interests of this audience. My magazine could also be distributed at British Pop concerts as it is relevant to most famous artists of this genre today.

4. Who would be the audience of your media product?


The chosen target audience for my magazine is roughly girls 8-14. I decided on this as I felt there was a younger target audience in need of a magazine and I adapted my magazine to suit them. In my initial research of questionnaires and individual and group interviews, I used girls within this group to find out what they look for in a magazine and what would be appropriate content for them.  I felt that it would be quite easy to make my magazine appropriate for this age group as I am just a bit older, so I have a very good understanding of the interests of girls this age. I decided on this target group and not just teenagers, as most music magazines today are aimed at teengaers or adults, so there was a unique space in the market for my magazine.




5. How did you attract/address your audience? 


I used the information from all of my initial research to best suit my audience. I used the genre pop as it was voted the most popular by my target audience. I also put content in the magazine that was gossip based, celebrity based and not just music, as my target audience also told me they don't take the music side too seriously and read magazines for leisure and prefer them with varied features. I used my colour scheme to attract my target audience as it represents them best. The colours are bright, fun and girly which incorporates the whole vision of the magazine. I used a variety of images to address my audience and a variety of poses to hold their interest. In my contents I put that there was a pin-up inside as young girls look up to relevant successful celebrities. From looking at Top of the Pops I discovered that games, puzzles and prizes are a good use of features to attract this target audience. Also, all of the celebrities mentioned in my magazine are also young, as I wanted to make my magazine relatable to my target audience, a lot of it is based around teenage artists. My initial research also showed that layout is important to my target audience. After I made three layouts and got my audience to vote for one, it showed that the most popular was the one with the least text on and the boldest colours and clearest layout. I showed this through my magazine, as it is not overloaded with textual information, but the important parts of text stand out and are mainly surrounded by images or have a different font size, shape or colour to  the rest. I think that in addressing my particular audience, variety was one of the most important things to maintain throughout to hold their attention.






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


From constructing my magazine, I can see that my ability to use the software increased greatly. During my first draft of magazine, I was not very comfortable with Photoshop and InDesign. The mistakes made in the first draft made it easier for me to see what makes a good magazine and make appropriate changes. In my final draft I used the the magnetic lasso tool, which enabled me to cut out pictures more accurately and quickly than the first time when i could only use the cutting out tool. This improved the quality and edged of my images. I also discovered different effects to manipulate images and experimented more the second time round to find the most appropriate. In my first draft, many of the images were too yellowy and after this i discovered how to correct this and change the saturation to improve the quality. After analysing my fist draft I discovered it was too simple and was able to use the software to include more content to a better standard. I also incorporated teeth whitening and spot healing and changed the lip colour on the second draft. On InDesign, I found that it was easy to construct a layout and maintain colour swatches. I also improved my mastheads in my second draft as I decided to make a new set after i was more comfortable with the software. I liquified some of my text and found this quite effective and also added a glow to some of my mastheads.



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


Looking at my preliminary task, I can see that I have a learnt a great deal about the construction of a magazine. I was unfamiliar with the software and how to use it and this is evident in my preliminary task which is minimal, ineffective and not presented very well. My task images are not manipulated and I developed my ability to manipulate them after this.I also did a lot of research after my preliminary task and this helped me with relevant content of a music magazine.