Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? what message does my artist give to the audience?

My magazine only has a few of the normal conventions of a magazine, things like; a barcode on the front cover, page numbers, contents on the right of the page, a house style and a continued colour scheme. However, I challenged the conventions by using the magazine's name "8 BALL MAGAZINE" as the only using text on the front cover and using the logo within the image of my model. I think that I have created a fairly conventional rock themed music magazine because I have added musical instruments and included talk of Reading Festival, upcoming gigs and featured up and coming albums on my second double paged spread. My layouts are clear and interesting, however by making it more clearer and fresh I have challenged the conventions to create a magazine which I think will attract my target audience, although I feel more images could have been used to cut the amount of writing in my second double paged spread. My message my magazine sends to my target audience is that the magazine is aimed for ages, 15-25, because it has a fairly abstract look to it but has all the interests 15-25 year olds would seek i.e. interviews, album releases and festival announcements.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?who am i aiming the magazine at?

I wanted to aim my magazine at young adults interested in certain artists and the rock genre. My use of a strong female protagonist I felt, created a sense of real attraction with both males and females.
I felt that my magazine definitely managed to represent an interesting and mysterious feel whilst relating to the audience with it's easy to read colloquial language. My social group reflects my target audience as I feel young adults are going to want to read about their age group. I know this because myself and even a few of my older friends enjoy reading the same type of magazine's and novels. I tried to make my layouts as interesting as possible but with also cramming in enough information in the interviews so that the reader felt like they gained their money's worth out of the magazine. I didn't want them to read the article quickly because what my model Sophie was saying would be of interest to them. I have also included many pictures to attract my target audience to my social groups.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? does my magazine fit the music genre of a conventional music magazine?

When I initially began to research for my media project I started off by looking over other A-level students previous works and writing down what I liked and what I didn’t like, this then helped me find a foundation of what I wanted my magazine to achieve. Once I had these ideas down I started looking through suitable magazines such as ‘Mojo’, ‘Rolling Stone’ and ‘Q Magazine’ these helped me gain ideas and inspiration of what I wanted my magazine to look like. All of these magazines had the rock genre I was looking for. I also looked at less popular magazines like “froot” and realized from these that their slightly cheaper looking front covers really put me off from buying the magazine. My research could have gone better if I looked at the grid systems and general layout of the magazines more than the colour scheme and images. I mainly got my idea for the front cover from I-D magazine. They used no text and a simple image, which I felt was really effective; also I used the fact that they have an on going theme of covering one eye with an object. Themes like this allow the consumer to easily recognize the magazine, which is vital for a successful magazine.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My 15-25 target audience who are interested in the rock genre and insight into artists personal/musical lives.I decided my target audience was going to be 15-25 year olds because the they don't have much of a different interest in music and all ages are into reading about famous artists. I feel that I have successfully targeted my audience as my artist isn't young but isn't old either and has a life story to tell the readers on her old and new music. I have presented this by her persona and her stylish yet rock themed clothing. My article is a question and answer interview,with a chatty and personal feel therefore making sure that my target audience would me more likely read it and would then make them want to read on further to the following article about the artist.

How did you attract/address your audience? analyse magazine and say how you think it has attracted the audience, clothing, images, articles.

My original idea to attract my audience was to use a wrap around image onto the front and back cover with a lot of text information. However, I felt that young teens would be more likely to be attracted to this and wanted to make it slightly more sophisticated, but not too sophisticated. Therefore, to attract my audience I made the cover unusual and striking with the magazine's title as the only text. I feel that this worked really well as the majority of my feedback I received told me that the cover was "attractive", "interesting", "eye-catching" and "bright". On my Contents page I used large text and capital letters to emphasize some of the important parts of the text.

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

The programs that I used were Indesign, Photoshop CS2 and Iphoto. In the duration of my project I have learnt how to use Photoshop CS2 quickly and easily which I owe to the few tutorials I played around and explored with, this helped me a lot when I began to produce my magazine. I edited all my pictures on Photoshop CS2 and IPhoto and 'Placed' them onto my pages on Indesign.

At first I didn't quite grasp the concept of Indesign which was very frustrating and complicated however it didn't take too long to learn when I spent a little time on it.

I think I've benefitted from doing this project, for example; I now know which components and programs are needed for each different task, I know how to edit an image by balancing the brightness, contrast and hue, also how to crop and erase the background of the image by using the magnet tool.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Prilimmary task - how much i have learnt and developed since then?

Since creating my preliminary task my skills with Photoshop CS2 and InDesign have increasingly improved dramatically. I am now able to use Photoshop CS2 to edit, crop, cut and merge images. I used the InDesign program to produce the majority of my final magazine product, I felt that the fact I did a few tutorial practices I was able to complete my product more swiftly and had a was more confident in the production of it. I have also discovered a new way of understanding how the makers of magazines attract different age and social groups, and now know which components change which type of people are attracted to different layouts, images and text. Making my magazine did take a long period of time and I have definitely enjoyed making the product as I would like to be an editor of a magazine in the future.