Finished Products

 

 

 

Media Evaluation-Forms And Conventions

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

Media conventions refer practises which have become acceptable and commonplace over time. In the magazine industry it refers to how a magazine is laid out and presented according to its genre and audience. For example the masthead is nearly always placed on the top left corner. The reason for this is because, in our culture, we read left to right. Our eyes are initially attracted to the left side of the page normally, so we read the masthead, the magazine's title, first. The convention follows through the magazine for example, the double-page spread is also read from left to right in a Z shape. All mainstream magazine publishers follow these conventions to because they want potential readers to instantly recognise their magazine for what it is and therefore encourage them to buy it.

The majority of people don't like too much change or uncertainty when it comes to enjoying media texts, so magazines follow genre conventions to aid identification by the audience. It would not be a good idea for a media text, such as a magazine, to be identical to another, they all must have a unique selling point, a USP, however they must also follow certain codes and conventions too.

Some magazines, particularly art-themed ones tend to disrupt conventions in an effort to stand apart from mainstream ones in order to attract niche audiences who equally like to stand out from the crowd and be a bit more edgy and unpredictable. Alternative culture is becoming so popular among youths that ideas and styles which were once considered unconventional are becoming the norm. This means that there is a growing demand for a hybrid edgy-mainstream magazine for young audiences who want something different but with enough familiar conventions that they can recognise its form.  

With FM I wanted to be conventional but not too conventional. My target audience likes to be different but doesn't like a lot of change so I tried to keep the standard layout for a magazine but made the cover image, text and body type different. I was heavily influenced by Wonderland magazine which manages to look like a magazine whilst adopting non-conventional elements. I was seeking to appeal to a similar demographic as Wonderland readers, only younger. 

Throughout my magazine I chose a traditional colour scheme of red, black and white. Through these colours I wanted to connote a traditional design but the red I chose is red/pink which also conveys a slightly feminine style which reflects my target audience. Whilst the colour scheme is traditional, like Rolling Stone magazine, it is also contemporary because of the minimalist layout. I chose a bold,strong font 'Segoe UI' which I think allows the text to stand out. I wanted the font to reach out to the audience in a similar way as the text on the cover of Wonderland. 

The genre of my magazine is a hybrid of fashion and music. This combination is increasingly popular as magazines have to offer their readers a lot these days to attract them. I wanted to hit the chart followers but also fans of underground bands.

I took influences from Wonderland and the Rolling Stones magazines.



With these two magazines the focus of the cover is the main image. Both wrap the cover lines around the singular image which also inspired my production. Although these magazines don't promise freebies or competitions to help their market strategy I thought I would consider having freebies as a loyalty to the audience, encouraging them to choose mine over other similar publications on the selves.

A magazine whose form and style appealed to my plans is GQ. The layout of the magazine is very similar to what I wanted to achieve with FM. GQ is also an acronym, two-letter named magazine with the masthead being displayed in the top left hand corner.


I have demonstrated how I have followed magazine conventions when designing my pages on Flickr. Click on the links below to read my analysis.

FM Cover: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8471282518/
FM Contents: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8471285092/
FM Double-Page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8470189397/

Media Evaluation- Skills Development

Media Evaluation-Institutions

Media Evaluation-Technologies

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

Throughout the AS Media course, I have discovered and used various types of technologies and web 2.0 apps and my skills have developed a lot and the technologies have enabled me to produce near professional designs and communicate them via the internet, things I hadn't done before. Some of the programs which I used where:

 
Adobe Photoshop: Photoshop was a big part of producing FM, and helped me a lot in my vision and how I wanted the magazine to look. Some of the tools on Photoshop which I used were; the magic wand tool to cut around an image perfectly, cutting out the background to post the photo onto another setting. The quick select tool made a quicker selection of the area I wanted to change. Another tool I used was the eraser. By using a soft eraser I could get subtle edges which was particularly useful around the model's hair.

I used the colour picker to perfectly match colours. For my cover photo I produced a tinted glow to the background using the gradient tool, which I could position anywhere on the background where I wanted the glow to be displayed and also I could decide how big the glow/tint was and/or what shade I wanted.

Advantages to Photoshop are:

• It's available at college
• Industry-standard editing photo software programme
• Includes a variety of tools which aren't too difficult to learn

Disadvantages:

• Can be slow at picking it up if your a first time user
• If you rasterize a piece of text without meaning to you can't recover it back, you have to redo the same text again.

 Flickr: Flickr is a web programme which allowed me to upload images onto their site and then annotate text on certain areas of the photo. Once I was able to make all my annotations on the image I then could upload them straight from flickr onto my blog. I had some problems with this however so I had to just include the hyperlink rather than the image. Free software isn't perfect and was incompatible with my PC.

Advantages:

• A free programme
• Allowed me to write annotations clearly
• Edit text whenever
• Upload the images easily from flickr onto my blog
• People looking at the image will be able to read the text easy and will be able to see what I am talking about on specific details

Disadvantages:

• You have to create a Yahoo account before setting up your own flickr account
• Can take time to get used to how to use the web programme

Blogger: Blogger is where I upload all my work from the planning, ideas and making of FM. It allows people to see my work and share their comments with me. It shows my coursework in a quick, tidy way and show my personality on my blog. I have a few other blogs so I knew how to use blogs and the certain things you would place on the blog. Blogger also allowed me to link other web pages onto the blog and present them as a slide show for example using Issuu and also sharing You Tube links. On Blogger you can post your posts under certain labels making it quicker and easier for other people to find what they're looking for, and also another way to keep the blog neat and tidy.
Although Blogger is a great resource, it isn't perfect. I had lots of problems with it when it classified my blog as spam. We tried to get it reinstated but failed to. This was totally out of my control and was really frustrating. These types of problems happen with free sites.

 Survey-Monkey: Survey-Monkey let me produce a questionnaire making questions about magazines to collect feedback from my target audience on what they look for in a magazine, what types of music they like and other questions which could potentially help me which making FM.  Using the site is straight forward and it uses basic skills to make the questionnaire. It greatly increased my chances of getting responses, compared to a paper survey because people enjoy the novelty and simplicity of it.

Dafont: Dafont is a website which offers different font types and designs  which can be downloaded onto your computer and used for free as long as you are not selling your work. I used Dafont to see the types of fonts I would want to use on my magazine and that I thought would appeal to my audience. The range is huge and much better than the options on Photoshop.

 Issuu: Issuue is a web app which allowed me to upload PDF files from a word document onto their site and produce it into a internet slide show, making it easy to read and let me flick through the slides on the programme like a book. It made my blog more tidy, gave it a more professional look and showed more of my technical skills.

Media Evaluation-Addressing My Audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

Thinking about the point of sale of my magazine I could see the magazine being on the shelves of big stores such as HMV, WH Smiths and big brand supermarkets such as Asda and Tescos. If it was published by IPC it would have a greater chance of such wide distribution because IPC owns the distribution company Marketforce. These national locations will also fit my target audience plans.

The cover of a magazine is really important as many people decide to pick up a magazine on the strength of the cover image. My cover image attracts the viewer and grabs their attention because it is powerful, fierce and uses a subjective gaze. The colour choice of the magazine makes a statement; throughout the magazine the main colours are mainly black,red and white. I feel like the gaze of the image grabs your eye and draws you in to the magazine, also with the colour of her lipstick it makes her facial features stand out more.

The main font which is used on the cover is 'Segeo UI'. This was an appropriate style of font to used as it is sharp, bold and stands out on the page.
The name of the magazine 'FM' is shown in the top left corner and takes up a whole corner attracting our eyes straight away to the name. For some, it makes an intertextual reference to other popular magazines such as NME, GQ and Q.

Addressing the audience through the cover page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8471282518/

Addressing the audience through the contents page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8470189397/

Addressing the audience through the contents page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87603535@N06/8471285092/

In general my audience are addressed by the images throughout the magazine and the type of music the magazine will be focusing on. The fashion throughout the magazine is also designed to attract the audience, reflecting their own eclectic styles and encouraging them to explore and spend money on fashion as part of their identity and lifestyle.

Media Evaluation-Target Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

FM magazine represents their target audience in a certain way. The readers of the magazine might not necessarily look this way or act this way, but they aspire to therefore I see my magazine as a style guide for young music and fashion fans. 
This is the type of image which conveys what we feel the reader would dress like who reads my magazine. The audience who wants to buy FM has to be creative and quirky but almost looks effortless in their outfit choice. As you can see in the image the target audience wears baggy clothes and look almost 'scruffy'. For me this is the new fashion of today. My research, via SurveyMonkey and also among my friends and via social networks helped me to understand exactly who I was targeting.

The main spoken language of the audience will be English from different areas of the country displaying many different types of accents. The age of the reader will be between 17-24 year old, 70% female, 30% male, C1C2 social class and identifying themselves as individuals with a rebellious side which is demonstrated through their fashion and musical tastes. Whilst they think they are individuals, I also think they are aspirers who need some help from FM which I would like to be seen as a reference guide to contemporary indie taste.

Some of the brands which my target audience would wear and be on trend with are:

• Van's 'off the wall' shoes
• Chanel perfume/Paco Rabanne Calone
• IPhone
• Apple Ipod
• Beats Headphones
• TopShop
• H&M
• Urban Outfitters

The types of artist my target audience listens to are:

• Ed Sheeran
• Jamie T
• The Vaccines
• The Wombats
• Rihanna
• Ellie Goulding
• Swedish House Mafia

The festivals that my audience go to are:

• Reading
• Lattitude
• V