Evaluation of My Music Magazine
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When researching pop music magazines I came across a lot of popular conventions that already existing magazines use. I looked at pop magazines such as 'Top of the Pops' and 'Smash Hits' to see what type of conventions they use to attract readers and represent the particular genre of music. These two magazines have something in common - they are aimed at young girls and they show this by using colours such as pink and using very informal language like 'cute hot boys'. I challenged these forms by aiming my magazine at an older audience - teenagers to young adults. My magazine has used more 'calmer' approach, the colours are not as bright and the layout is more organised in the fact that the pictures are more aligned and around the cover instead of slanted and all over the cover. Pop music magazines are usually bright with a very 'busy' cluttered page full of text and images; my magazine challenges the typical pop music magazine as it is not like that.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine would attract a young female audience. The main image on my front cover is of a young female pop singer wearing a floral dress; the other image on my cover is of 'Lady Gaga'; the masthead of my magazine shows clearly what genre of music my magazine represents and other bands and artists mentioned on my cover are known for their pop songs and this is clear to the majority of people. The social group that my magazine is aimed towards would be young females that take an interest in the music industry - especially pop music.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Media institutions such as newsagents, supermarkets, Kindle, Online Magazine and more may want to distribute this media product if they believe it has potential - if they think that customers will take an interest. My music magazine challenges the typical look of a pop magazine in the fact that the audience is not too young; a lot of teenagers that listen to pop music can't buy a magazine that suits their age group and maturity - this is where my magazine comes in. A lot of institutions may want to sell this product as it invites a bigger audience to music magazines resulting in more customers.
4. Who would be the audience of your media product?
My music magazine is aimed at females - teenagers to young adults (16 - 22 years of age.) According to my magazine questionnaire that I did at the beginning of my magazine research, all of the pop music magazine readers were female - this is an easy niche market to aim my magazine at. I have based my magazine's audience towards my own age group - knowing more about the type of television shows they may watch, typical bands/artists they might like and radio stations they may listen to. The age group(s) that I have targeted my magazine at would be BBC Radio 1 Listeners (this plays the latest music and gives the typical image and attitude of a particular genres artist/band) and viewers of Soap and Reality Shows.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
The main things that would attract the audience to a magazine would be the particular conventions the magazine has - colour, stories, bands mentioned, masthead, images and extra things that the magazine may offer (competitions etc.) My magazine's genre is pop but like I said before, I challenge the typical form and conventions of a pop magazine. This itself may attract an audience as it is a new approach to pop music magazines - it is new and different. I tried to attract my audience to my magazine by giving them particular stories that have been shown as 'exclusive' - this language tells the audience that the main story on my front cover can only be found in my magazine and no where else - this may persuade them to buy the magazine just for the fact of the story being exclusive to this magazine only.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of the constructing this product?
When it came to editing my images used for my magazine I used websites such as 'Piknik', 'Taaz', 'Photoshop' and 'PhotoDJ'. 'Taaz' was used to edit the actual artist used for my magazine - just to get the 'flawless' effect that all celebrities have on magazines - this website let me add more make-up to my artist. 'Photoshop' and 'Piknik' also aloud me to airbrush my artist but I mainly used it to adjust the lighting of the picture as most of my images where quite dim as they were taken from an average mobile phone. 'PhotoDJ' is not as such a website on the Internet but an app on my phone that I can use to also edit lighting, crop pictures, change effects and adjust the quality of the image. My images would not look as professional if I had not had access to these websites. When it came to actually creating my front cover, contents page and double page spread I used Microsoft Programmes such as 'Word' and 'Publisher'. I used 'Publisher' as the actual base of my magazine product - by adding the image and then the other conventions such as masthead etc. 'Word' was used mainly for the images - I used it to crop all of my images and create a background as when cropping my pictures the border was out of shape.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at my preliminary task I can see how much I have improved - If you compare the front cover of my preliminary school magazine to my recent pop music magazine you can see that I have used my research well to make sure that I can achieve a better product as I believe that my preliminary task was well below average. I have learnt quite a lot on the progression from my preliminary task to my full product - although I have done a product similar to this at GCSE, I have found this one quite challenging in the fact of making sure I have all the necessary conventions to produce a professional looking pop music magazine. For my preliminary task I didn't use any editing websites for the images I simply used 'Microsoft Word' and created it all on there. As I did not take a lot of time on my preliminary task I realised that taking time on research and production would equal to a complete product that I am pleased and satisfied with. The preliminary task was a good start to this project as it helped me get an idea of how my final magazine would be carried out and complete.
Here is my evaluation:
