Evaluation.

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

I liked the posing of the first front cover, as it was neutral and was conventional. I changed it a bit on my magazine front cover as I wanted my artist to look happy and be facing the camera more to make the audience feel more involved and addressed. I took the idea of the triangle for the main story on the second front cover because I think it makes the story striking and it's the first thing you notice because of the size and the colours used in it. On the contents page, I liked the idea of the front cover being used to show you where the stories from the front cover would be. This makes it easier for the reader to navigate through the magazine as they may want to read something that is on the front cover straight away. The DPS that influenced me is the one with Solange Knowles on. I liked the idea of having one main image and then having lots of little images supporting it as it made it look interesting and fun, which was two of my aims when making my products.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

Institutions from lewisryan37

Although I researched IPC Media, I thought that this company wouldn’t be the best option because of the types of magazines they publish. One of the music magazines they publish is ‘NME’, which is a pop/rock music magazine and this isn’t the type of magazine I have made, as mine is pop genre. This company also distributes ‘Nuts’ which is a ‘lad mag’ which isn’t the audience my magazine is aimed at. This is an adult magazine, which is the main reason IPC Media wouldn’t distribute it; they wouldn’t have much, if any, experience with my genre.

Another company I looked at was Immediate Media Co. Two of the magazines they publish are ‘Top Of The Pops’ and ‘Girl Talk’ which are aimed at teenagers. This company sells millions of magazines a year, which is one reason I think this would be a great institution for my magazine to be distributed by. They also have 22 million people that they reach online a month, which is another reason this would be a great institution to distribute my product. The reason for not going with this company is that they already publish Top Of The Pops, which is a highly recgonised magazine. This would mean that my magazine would be in competition with it so wouldn’t sell as many as it could.

For my magazine, I think the best option would be to Bauer Media publish my product. This is because they don’t publish a lot of magazines that are targeted at the audience I am targeting my product at; teenage girls. This would make sure that the magazine wouldn’t have any competition within its own company. The company reaches over 19 million adults every week so would be great to get my magazine recognition. Although this company doesn’t have any pop genre magazines presently, with the company publishing my magazine, it would make people want to buy it more because they haven’t seen it before and would want to know why such a high profile company is distributing it.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

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

The things I used to make my products were;
Publisher; This was used to create the hearts and stars used throughout the magazine.
Photoshop; This was the main software I used for creating my magazine. I did the editing and moving around of the images and text on this.
Canon EOS 1100D camera; This was the camera I used to take all of my original images for my products. I used the flash on some of the images to brighten the images and also didn't on some to have a much darker image.
Lighting; I used this when taking my images because I wanted the light on parts of the images but not on the others. For the image of the 'in the dark' story for the front cover, I used lighting at the front of the image but not so much at the back to create a specific effect.
Computer; This is what I used to go on the software.
PowerPoint; This is the software I used to create the masthead for my products, as I created a variety of different mastheads to narrow it down and choose a specific one.


 How did you attract/address your audience?
How i attracted/addressed my audience by lewisryanstewart on GoAnimate

Audiences from lewisryan37

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

The masthead is something that is noticeably different, as more thought has gone into my music magazine than my college front cover. The masthead on the college magazine doesn't stand out as much as the one on the college magazine because it blends in with the background because it hasn't been edited or changed in any way. 

The choice of text in my college magazine front cover wasn't really thought out and I just chose any font that was there. This made the front cover look plain and boring, so didn't look very professional. On my music magazine, I spent a lot of time looking through different fonts and colours to see which ones suited the magazine and which ones stood out more so looked better.

On the college magazine, the image looks really plain and boring because I simply placed the image on the page without sorting out the levels or changing the saturation. Also, the brief for the college magazine stated that the image had to be a medium close up, so I didn't have any option of how to place my model. For the music magazine, I made sure that I took lots of different images so that I could have a selection when making my front cover. Another thing I made sure I did was the levels to make the image look better and to make sure it looked more professional.

On the college magazine, I placed the features on either side of the image in any place, which doesn't look very good because it looks plain. Although this is seen on magazines such as ELLE, pop magazines don't usually have this layout due to how the features are laid around the edges with the main feature in the middle.

This is how the features are placed on ELLE magazine. On my music magazine, I placed the features on either side of the image as this was where there was space, but also to fit conventions of a pop magazine I placed one at the top and bottom. The main feature I placed in the centre of the page so that you can instantly see the main feature of the magazine, and also put the text into a triangle shape so that it looked good and reflected the pop genre of the magazine.

The colour choice on my college magazine wasn't really thought out as the colour is kind of bland and neutral, and there is only 2 colours; green and black. This made the magazine front cover look boring and unprofessional because there is usually 3 colours used throughout the magazine. On my music magazine, I made sure to use 3 main colours; pink, green and white. This fitted conventions of a magazine, and the colour choice made it obvious that the magazine was pop genre.

Feedback from audience.

After doing my products and finishing them, I asked some people what they thought about them, and these were the questions I asked;

Feedback;

Final products.

Progression of final front cover.

For my draft, i had the masthead for my front cover in lower case which I changed as can be seen on the image below. I changed it to capital letters to follow the conventions of a magazine.

Although I like this main image on my front cover, I'm going to change it to one that is more conventional, like the one on the right of the picture above.

This image for the front cover works a lot better than the original one, as it looks more conventional of a magazine due to the posing of the artist. Also, in the first image you can see that she has a bobble on her wrist, which makes the front cover look untidy.

On this image of my front cover, it is clear that the levels have been adjusted to 'bring the picture to life'. I did this as this is conventional of a magazine, so makes it look professional.

Progression of contents page.

The photos on the first screenshot were a bit dark and didn't look very 'poppy' as a Pop magazine would have bright colours and bright images, due to it's genre being younger teenagers, leaning towards girls. This is why I edited the images to make them look better.

This background for the contents page made the page a bit dull and lifeless. It didn't really shout 'POP' at the reader, so I decided to change the colour of it.

This brings the page to life a lot more than the white background did. It's a pale pink as to not be too much.

The numbers on the top image were too small to be even slightly eye-catching. I made the page numbers bigger so that they filled more of the space and were a lot easier to read and easier for the reader to see. I again used green for this so that my magazine colours were consistent.

In the first image, the text that went with the main feature didn't look like they went together. This made it look like the image had nothing to do with the 'The exclusive!' title. I moved the text lower down; closer to the image to ensure it was clear that they went together, which you can see in the second image. I noticed that on the first image, the background looked slightly purple, so I decided to change this to make it more consistent. In the second image you can see I changed it to a pink colour, which looks a lot better. The stars at either side of the 'The exclusive!' title had white backgrounds as they were made on Publisher and copied across to Photoshop. I filled these white parts in with the same colour as the background so that they blended in. I noticed that there was a lot of pink on this section of the contents page and changed the page numbers on some of the images. I changed this to green to make my products flow, and it makes it more fun because there isn't only 2 colours.

Progression of double page spread.

I thought the circle didn't look very good and also thought I'd change the colour of the word 'movement' as there was slightly too much pink on the DPS, so thought I'd change it.

Cutting the bottom and top off the circle made it look a lot better, as it was more fitting with the genre of magazine, and changing the word 'movement' from pink to green made the DPS more consistent with it's colouring, and this made it so that there wasn't too much pink on the page.

I felt like the quote in the top left hand side of the left page wasn't easily noticeable, so I copied the triangle behind the text on the right hand side of the DPS and placed it behind the quote, so the text stood out more. I did this as I wanted people to read the quote so they would be intrigued to read the interview and want to know what is going on.

This didn't fit in with the contents page and the front cover due to the background being a plain white colour. This made the whole product look unprofessional and so I thought to change it to make it look right. I thought that a pink colour would look a lot nicer because it's a lot more girly, and the colours on this page are a bit to 'in your face'.

I changed the background to a light pink, the same as the contents page. I did this because I wanted the front cover, contents page and double page spread to flow, and with the DPS having a white background it didn't; it looked out of place. I chose for the colour to be similar to the contents page and not the front cover because I think the front cover should be a lot brighter and have a lot, lot more on it than the contents page and DPS. Also, the front cover is the first thing the consumer will see, so this has to have much more of an impact than the contents page and DPS does. I think this looks a lot better because it seems a lot calmer and less 'in your face'. Although bright colours on a plain background can be a positive thing, as it attracts the reader's eyes, it can also have a negative impact on the reader. This is because lots of colour on each page can be a bit too much, and the reader may get sick of seeing it, therefore the magazine would lose out on profit because the reader would maybe not buy the product again because of this.

The text for my images wasn't very easy to read and also didn't have a font that could easily be read. I changed the font and added a coloured background to make it stand out and to make it clear.

The images at the top of the right hand page looked a bit dull and boring. I changed these to look like Polaroid prints as this is something current. I am also possibly going to edit the background of the images because they are all grey but they are also slightly different shades.

I rotated these images to fit in with the pop genre, as they look like Polaroid instant prints. This looks a lot better.

I switched these questions around because they didn't seem like they followed on. Having a question on personal life before ending on a question about her album made more sense.

As there was a bobble on the artists wrist, I used the 'Content Aware' fill tool to erase it, so that it disappeared. I used this instead of the erase tool because the erase tool would have erased her wrist also.

Final Products unfinished.

This needs more columns of text for different topics. It also needs a page number to fit conventions of a magazine.

For this, I just need to change the main image as it isn't really conventional; you can't see much of the person.

Deadlines.

14th February
Double page spread, contents page, front cover and all production/research

11th April
Evaluation and all changes and updates

15th May
Grades are submitted

23rd May
AS exam

Draft of Double Page Spread

Draft of Contents page.

Drawn version on paper.

Photoshop version.

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Media Language of a Contents Page.

Media Language of a Double Page Spread.

Contents page influences.