Evaluation

Question 1

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

Mood Board:

Within my music magazine I have applied the use of different forms and conventions that I had discovered are present within the pre-existing pop music magazines such as the magazine 'WE LOVE POP'.  I used a variety of conventions from other magazines on to my own to make sure I was sticking to the right theme. I made sure that I paid close attention to the main features like the masthead, the main image, and the colour theme. When analysing the pre-existing pop music magazines it was clearly noticeable that all of them presented the use of bold and simplistic designs by using bright, contrasting colours with a youthful layout.  Looking at the mood board above, the genre shouts out big, bold, youthful colours, in which I decided to stick to; blue, pink, yellow and purple. To try and further increase the chance of selling my magazine I added advertisement which was a free poster of the celeb in the main image. In a lot of pop magazines I have noticed many have been giving free things in monthly issues like makeup, posters etc. Most pop magazines also feature one main image of the main artist on the front cover followed by a main cover line, so I followed this idea using a medium close up. I used cover lines that sound very intriguing to the audience, which is something a lot of other pop magazines do.

When looking at the pre existing magazine 'We Love Pop' I really got inspired by their masthead. It was eye catching, memorable, simple yet it stood out and gave the magazine a name. And so I tried to follow their conventions of their masthead. This is how I came up with the name and design 'Pop starz'. I knew straight away that I wanted to incorporate the word 'pop' as it told my young audience straight what the genre was. 

To make my magazine look professional and real, just like an other pop magazine, I had to look at how they were lay out. All were very identical and so I came up with the layout I currently have which was inspired by this magazine. 

Contents page:

Contents page: When stereotyping a teenage girl, we imagine they are getting to the stage of possibly liking makeup. And so this gave me the idea of creating a cover line where they can be inspired by a celebrity they love and how to get their makeup look. 

I looked at a few pop magazine contents pages to get an idea of the layout that I should be going for. I noticed that these magazines generally used a few photos to indicate the most important cover lines. This makes it less boring for the readers too, as a young audience they dont want to be looking at the first page to be full of writing. I then put the rest of my cover lines into a box in the bottom left corner. The title is always kept at the top and always uses intriguing words like "We Love This" which I followed on my own contents page. This will give the audience an urge to read on and find out what we love currently which is a good start to a magazine for any target. 

Double page spread:

I analysed other pop double page spreads to try and notice what the typical conventions of pop magazine double pages look like. From taking this step, it was obvious to me that normally there is no more than 2 or 3 photos to a page. So i stuck to this convention and used one main image, and a little image in between the text that I didn't want to stand out completely, so I used its opacity to 30%. However I also noticed that the titles were always huge on the page and were the first thing that caught the readers eye, along with the main image.

I examined one page spread in particular as I really liked the colour theme, the layout of the page and the text. I decided to use pink and black as the pink indicates its got the girly touch, however the black also stood out and added a hint of rebellion. To make my magazine seem real, I added the form of an interview. This gives it an informal approach and also gives the audience of young readers the chance to gain an insight to their idol. 

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The front cover of my magazine represents the pop music social group. It was extremely common that the focus of the magazine was on pop groups or artists that were extremely raved about with lots of young fans such as: One Direction, The Wanted, Katy Perry, and Little Mix. Due to the target demographic of the pop magazines being teenage girls, it was ideal to work with these type of ‘celebs’, as this is what my target audience would appreciate the most. In addition, I have also stereotyped teenage girls assuming they like to gossip, and always looking for an exciting story line like a ‘celeb break up’ to talk about. I have taken advantage of this stereotype and promoted it through the use of the selling line which reads “fashion, boys, gossip, celebs, quizzes, and advice”. These appeal to my social group drawing them in and enticing them to buy my magazine. One way that I thought I represented particular social groups well is through the main image. I researched stereotypical pop artists like Rihanna, and followed the codes and conventions she had. As an example, bright colours are important in the pop society, and many artists wear bright funky clothes with dramatic makeup and jewellery- so I made sure that I portrayed this in my main image. My main image consists of the artists bright red hair with dramatic winged eyeliner, and big earrings which is the stereotypical social group for the young pop genre . Pop artists are often seen as bubbly, young and colourful which I presented through the use of colours on my front cover. Again, the style of font I used is very bold and stand out against anything, which represents the stereotypical pop groups. As for my masthead, I thought that to make it clear to my young audience that this is aimed at pop music lovers, I named it ‘pop starz’ almost like a play on word for the usual successful celebrities in the music industry. I used a 'Z' instead of an 'S' as this seemed more cooler and slag, which is what a young audience would use. I think that if it was aimed at a different social group for example emo's who listen to heavy metal, would not pick up a magazine with the name 'popstarz'. Or again a group of jocks who are into sport would not look twice at a pop magazine with the likely colours of pink purple and yellow. Overall, I think that the conventions I used on the front cover of my magazine represent the pop society really well.

Question 3

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

If my magazine was to be big and successful, a big company such as EGMONT UK ltd. would distribute my pop magazine. Egmont is the largest specialist children's publisher in the UK. Their job is to inspire young people to read. They sell over millions of magazines a year including pop magazines such as "we love pop" and "go girl". Both of these magazines are what I aim my magazine to mirror, so by EGMONT distributing my music magazine, it would not only increase the sales of my magazine but it will get a mass amount of readers each month. If my magazine was to be published, it would be monthly as I can charge the magazine for a higher price of around the £3 mark, rather than my target audience spending £1.50 for a weekly magazine issue. This is effective for them as if they are young and wont have much money as an adult would, meaning they wont miss out on any monthly issue. EGMONT UK ltd. publishes its magazines through the use of different multimedia like iPad’s, Kindles and the internet. This is a useful advantage for my magazine and its popularity, as in this generation, teenagers are using more technology. Their books and magazines are sold worldwide giving my magazine the opportunity to go viral. Especially as pop has been a very popular music genre for some time now, it is most likely to keep on growing. 

Merchandise:

For good publicity, i would assume little companies to distribute merchandise with my magazine logo on to raise awareness of the magazine. ALso to fund such things as apps and tv advertisement, as this would increase not only the magazines income and popularity, but the little companies that are involved.

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Primary audience: 

My magazines target audience is aimed at mostly teenage girls between the ages of 11 to 16 years. I chose this age because they are the most likely audience to have an interest in the pop genre and culture. This can also be seen clearly by the use of colours I have incorporated, which consist of blue, pink, yellow and purple. The colour palette gives the impression of happiness, energy, and youth which is ideal, as these are the feelings we would associate with a younger audience. I think that females would be more of a target than males for this magazine because girls are stereotyped to be more into gossiping, fashion and the topic of boys. My magazine doesn't have a specific ethnic audience, as anybody from all backgrounds and ethnicities would be into the genre pop. My pop magazine is mainly focused on the younger generation, rather than the ethnicity.

Secondary audience:

My secondary audience would be people who would not necessarily purchase my magazine themselves, but have a browse through at any opportunity. For example, parents or older siblings of my target audience may get the chance to pick it up and flick through a few pages out of interest. However, even though having stated my primary audience is between 8-13 years old, an audience that is younger would be completely acceptable as it is age appropriate. Again with an older audience of 14 years above, they can still accept the topics included along with the competitions and freebies if its to their taste. 

Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

When my magazine is on the selling stand next to its competitors, it was crucial to involve these conventions onto my front cover: 

• eye contact
• bold masthead
• different sized text to emphasize the importance of the features
• a clear colour pallet
• unique selling point (freebies)

I attracted my audience through the use of bright colours, and having a bold masthead. I believe that by my magazine having the usual pop magazines conventions, this is what draws my audience in while next to its competitors such as "We Love Pop". By using bright colours, it makes the magazine stand out against any other magazine out there. Also by having a selling line at the bottom of the magazine, this will attract a certain audience if it fits their interests, in this case young teenagers. My masthead is music related "Popstarz" and is an easy play on word for young people to understand. My main image has the model looking straight into the camera to try and persuade the buyers to pick it up. She is smiling in a friendly manner which my audience will notice straight away, giving the impression the magazine involves lots of giggles and fun stuff. On my front cover I have a banner conveying that they will get a free poster within the magazine. This will hope to get the buyers excited, and it is one feature that makes my magazine value for money. Considering not every pop magazine out there supplies free give aways in every issue, this provides my magazine with a unique selling point.

To attract my audience through my contents page, I had to keep a constant colour scheme. This was so that it looked more professional and attractive to the eye. I also used many more images to convey that these were the more important story lines. I took into account who my target audience were and what they really wanted from a music magazine. I believed that it would make my audience happier having a lot less to read, and more images etc to look at. If I was to have more writing on my contents page, I think the readers would open the first page and get very bored just at the sight of a huge amount of writing. I also wanted to remind my readers of their free poster included, still building up the excited from the front cover. I put this in the top left hand corner as my readers would be reading from the top, left to right as normal. 

Again with my double page spread, the colour theme was kept the same so it didn't look out of place and my audience wouldn't get too confused. Just like the contents page, i thought about how much text they should actually be reading to stay interested in my magazine, and so I scaled the font smaller to '9pt' so that it fitted very nicely on one page, which gave me the opportunity to make my image bigger and center of attention along with the title. When doing some research on an average double page spread, I discovered that other magazine companies establish their whole product at a font size of between '8-12pt'. My main image is a bold statement to this page and so I thought it would be reliable to link it to my front cover magazine, which is shown in a shape "cover story" to let the audience known that this was the big front cover story. I assume that to pick up and buy the magazine, the audience would of seen the main cover line and wanted it straight away. To come up with my story, I believed it would be ideal to involve a celebrity couple of how they met. This links with the stereotypical girls loved topics of gossip, romance and celebs.

Question 6

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

This task has helped me develop knowledge on the use of technology such as Photoshop, scribus, publisher and a digital camera. When producing my music magazine, I have gained the knowledge of editing photos to a high standard, experimenting with fonts and in general improved my IT knowledge. I have further improved my editing skills, as well as taking top-quality photos which have helped me produce and overall high-standard, professional pop magazine.
Doing this task helped to build my confidence with apple macs by using different websites such as blogger and slide share. This wasn't the first blog I have owned for example i have Tumblr which i'm extremely confident with, however blogger was a little different and it opened up my varieties. 

• Slide share was different, but fun to experiment with, as through this I could improve my knowledge of media and film. not only from my power points, but from others all over the web too.
• Photoshop allowed me to edit my photos to the extent i wanted, including adding images such as shoes or backgrounds to create a well designed realistic image. It allowed to to cut out things using a lasso tool so i can then use my own background. I had used Photoshop in the past but very little which can explain some of the bad lasso technique. but it was easy to get the hand of. 
• Scribus was very effective when creating my two page spread, as it allowed me to use realistic measurements of an existing magazine. It was very different to Photoshop and didn't like it as much, however it was more simple with less editing techniques. Using this new software was difficult and was the first time I had heard of it. I had to do my own research on how to do many things as it wasnt as clear as Photoshop. 
• Blogger was fun to use, and has encouraged me to carry on using blogger for other things in the future. I learnt how to decorate my blog by using different backgrounds and texts. Again, i changed my blog up by knowing how to add a link to the page, followed by posts and pages.
• Digital cameras gave me the opportunity to handle the photos taken in my own stride and in my own time. It gave me the knowledge I needed to use photography to its potential and i gained a new skill out of it. Using a digital camera wasn't new to me as i've used one very similar in the past. But it was fascinating learning about all sorts of camera shots needed for a specific magazine, for example in a pop music magazine, the most common shot is a medium close up.

Question 7

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

Doing my preliminary task was the first time that I had the chance to use a Mac and software's such as Photoshop and scribus. I found it a challenge as i had no knowledge in these except publisher. I managed to use all three; Photoshop, scribus and publisher to get a feel of them all and a greater knowledge. However in my real task of creating my magazine, I chose to stick to the more professional side which included only Photoshop and scribus. 
Looking back on my preliminary task, I have developed a lot more skills and knowledge in the media area, and how magazines are developed. I was able to get used to the different Photoshop techniques by experimenting to a higher standard, and learnt a lot more techniques to improve the look of any type of magazine. When creating my preliminary task, I didn't take into account magazine conventions that make up the front cover, there for it didn't look professional, it was very bland and wouldn't attract any eyes of the audience. 
The main conventions of a magazine include:

• masthead
• cover lines
• main image 
• barcode 
• selling line

However I only used 3 of the above. In my main task I made sure that I used all of the conventions above plus many more throughout the task. I feel I have learnt many new skills to prepare myself the media industry. Again, I have learnt an incredible amount of the production and distribution of magazines, for example how to attract a specific audience type in certain ways. I learnt this from my research into other magazines and social groups.