This ismy updated version of my double page, hopefully this will be the last version and i will later explain the changes i have made in a double page evaluation of the changes.

This is the current version of my content page, i will continue to make changes until it is finshed then describe the changes in the evaluation of chnges for my contents page.

Evaluation of changes made to my front cover

Fonts - First off all the main type of font you can have on the front cover of your magazine is your masthead, I have not changed my masthead, but I have centralised it so that it looks in the right place of the page.

Subheadings - On my initial version front cover i had loads of subheadings down the left hand side of the page, I have removed them as the page looked to cluttered and something you would not want to read because it would take to much time, I now only have one subheading at the left hand side of the page with the word win made to stand out because people will be interested in winiing something. Also across the top left hand side of the cover there is a little banner which could be a subheading aswell saying official charts inside and this will draw the readers attention because it is slightly placed over the masthead and thats what people do hen they buy a magazine, see what its called, then they will notice the little subheading, then hopefully this will persuade them to buy my magazine. Instead of having all my subheadings at the left hand side of the page, I have created a pluss section at the bottom of the page, which is what you see on most magazines and put some subheading here which are in the shapes of little arrows and the subheadings are consecutive colour coordinated as one subheading is red then the next is black, this is just to split up the subheadings so you reealise different ones, also the shape they are in are filled in white and outlines blue, this is to contrast with the background and make them stand out. The information along the bottom of the page has been kept the same, although I have moved the barcoed a little bit and mae it a bit smaller to make the page look more organised and neat. The semi circle plug on the right hand side of the page hasent been changed, but it has been made smaller and outlined in white and I outlined it in white because it goes well with the other colours on my page and mixes in with my colour palette.

Headline- I have changed the headline on my front cover majorly. At first the headline was made on a website called font space, as it was made on that website it meant that i could only position it in front of things on my page and it had a black box around it which couldnt be removed, so this wasent very good, to improve this I used a simple font out of microsoft wordart called arial black, size 48 and made it bold o that it would stand out, colour wise of my headline I have kept the main colour of it which is blue. My old headline was outlined in white, but my current headline I have given it a dark red glow, to make it stand out even more and it fits in with the colour scheme of my magazine and also appeals to my target audience because the colour red symbolises anger and people stereotype rock artists/fans to be angry kind of people.

Image usage - I have used a totally different image from when I first created my magazine because I felt that the image didint go well on the page even though it did catch the readers eye by the image facing straight forward like it wa looking into the readers eyes. My new image for my front cover was taken with my own camer and it is a head shot because it shows the full head and some of the shoulders. The similarities between my old image and the new one is that they draw you in the same way because my new image is looking straight forward like its looking straight at the reader saying ' buy me'. The image is placed in the middle of the page which I think is most appropriate and the headline is on top of the main image, but doesnt interfere with the importance of the main image as it is slightly more down the page and this is because the main image links with the headline, so i put them together and this is known as anchorage text, but it is also the main headline for my page. So overall, I have kept my initial colour scheme the same because of the link it has with my taget audience but the major changes I have made is the main image, subheadings and the main headline.

The main image

This is the original image that I got my cousin to take in my bedroom, It is a headshot because it is took with the full head in the frame and some of the shoulers, it would nearly be a medium shot if the picture was taken lower down than the shoulders. I thought this would be a good image for my front cover because the person in the main image is looking straight forward and this would draw in the readers attention.

This is the version that I came up with after i had edited the original image. i got it like this by opening the image up in photoshop and used the magnetic lasso tool to draw around the background and when you finish drawing around the background you right click then fill the space in,i filled it inwhite. After that I saved the image then opened it back up in microsoft word to remove the white background using the remove background option at the top of the page. After I had done all this i copied the image then pasted it on my magazine front cover and positioned it in the right place.





I am going to make some changes to my front cover of my magazine to see if i can improve it, this is what i have come up with so far, as you can see it is not completed yet. The changes that i have already made is that i have removed the side headings and replaced them so that they are at the bottom of the page and there are less subheadings which goes easier on the eye, so theres not loads to read. Also i have changed the headline completley so that it is in a simpler font and repositioned it so that when i put my main image on the front cover it will go better with it. The last few changes i have made up to now are i have made a sub heading saying plus that supports the subheadings at the bottom of the page and created a little banner for the top left hand corner of the page that say the official charts inside and to o along with the main heading of the page i have put a quote underneath it and this was inspired by a kerrang front cover that i had been looking at. I am going to make some more changes as this page is not completed yet and hopefully this version of my front cover will be better than my initial one :)

EVALUATION

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups? *
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
5.How did you attract/address your audience?
6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? *

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

My media product, which is the magazine I have constructed uses forms and conventions of a real media products because it looks just like a real media product. The way I did this was through my research. When I researched magazine front covers I realised that the masthead from each of the magazines was either covered up slighly, still thats its recogniseable or overlaping the main picture, so I decided to do this on my front cover by covering the masthead up slightly with the main image on the front cover. The main image also links in with how my media products realsim because on every front cover of a magazine you have a main image and I do on the front cover of mine, but most importantly for the main image they normally atrract the reader by the eyes of the main image looking directly at you and I have a strong bold main image which does this very good. My media product challenges real media products because of a slight difference in the layout of the front cover, I mean this by the bar I have created at the bottom of the page, within this bar there is the headline which you would normally expect in the middle of the page and this is what makes the front cover of my magazine a little bit different. The lighting of my main image is darker rather than light and this represents my music genre for my magazine because the genre is rock and when you think of rock you don't think of bright and bubbly things you think of dark and serious things, this also interlinks with the expression on the person in the main image face because she looks very serious, I also think the lighting could represent rock artists moods and they way they act in they way people think of them stereotypically. i edited my main image in photoshop by increasing the contrast and making it darker so it would stand out more and give that dinghy mysterious feeling to it. the make up the person in the main image is wearing directly relates to what kind of make up a real female rock artist would wear, e.g. things such as the dark eye make up and yet again the use of darkness interlinks into the representation of the music genre i have chosen which is rock this is following the convention. My magazine is based on females and I think this challenges the conventions of a real rock magazine because stereotypically at first instance when someone who is not familiar with rock and you ask them what  kind of people do you associate with rock they would probably answer a group of men in a band, on the other hand my magazine only represents females and they are females that are rock artists, but they are totally different from the stereotypical view someone would give them because they are focused and do care and the stereotypical view would be a moody person who doesn't wants to talk to you and doesn't have a care in the world. The colours of the fonts and titles i have in my magazine uses conventions of a real media product because the main colours I have used are black red and blue, the black represents the whole stigma of rock the feeling to it, the red represents danger and this is what people would think that represents rock people and the blue just represents the main gender you would associate with rock but this is contrasted in my magazine because my magazine is about females. I have also used white for some of the fonts and the titles and this challenges the conventions of a rock magazine because you wouldn't compare the colour white to a rock artist because white represents purity and innocence but this actually does represent the people in my magazine. Overall I think my magazine challenges the conventions of a real rock magazine because of the people included in it and through some of the colours I have used and the images.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine represents teenagers. In my magazine teenagers are represented in a positive way, I represented them in a positive way because mostly teenagers are represented in a negative way in the media and I wanted to get across that people shouldn't just think of teenagers in a negative way because there is a positive side to them as well and this comes across in the images in my magazine and the articles. The images in my magazine represent teenagers in a positive way because the main image on my front cover shows a female teenager and she looks focused which is a good thing because you have to be focused when you have a music career, also their is a main image on my contents page that shows a female teenager smiling and she looks quite happy and this is representing teenagers in a positive way because people just think teenagers complain about everything but this is just stereotyping them. The articles in my magazine represent teenagers in a positive way because the articles are about the stars success. My magazine mainly represents females because thats what the magazine is about and they are the focus of the main representation, female teenagers. I have represented female teenagers in a posotive way aswel  through the use of language, for example on the contents page supporting the main image and on the doubke page there is a quote from the teenage female artist saying " well lifes not all about holding grudges on people", this represents her in a posotive way it shows she has a posotive attitude. On the front cover of my magazine because she loos focused and is giving the reader eye contact this shows confidence in her and if someone is confident they are more likely to be sucesful and this is portraying her in a posotive light again.

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

I think IPC Media would distribute my media product because they are a very large and sucessfull media institution and they distribute magazines from country life to NME and I think my magazine will fit into one of the many categories that they have, Also for IPC Media this would be a chance for them to extend their institution and have more types of magazines and this could widen their audience by bringing my target audience to them and therefore they will become more recogniseable, so if they did distribute my magazine I would benefit and so would they. I think my media product aswell as being able to buy it from retailers, it could be sold at music festivals, because this is the place where my target audience will be and i think people will buy it there because people who will be performing at the festivals will be inside the magazine and this will get the people who go to the festivals interested in my magazine because the main reason why they are going to the festival anyway is because they like the people that are playing there.

here is an animate video where i meet the manager of IPC media and ask them to distribute my product

http://goanimate.com/videos/0ueew7bMJnOQ?utm_source=linkshare

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for my magazine is teenagers aged between 15-19 and they have a taste in indie and rock music and interested with whats happening with the young people in that area of the music industry because thats what my magazine is about, young people in the music industry. The primary audience would be females within the target audience age range because the magazine is female dominated and quite girly and this is shown in the interviews and you wouldnt expect a boy to be reading girly inerviews would you? and this is what makes them the secondary audience. Also other people who are not my target audience or people who dont fit into my primary audience wouls also be classed as the secondary audience and this could be people much older who just fancy a read of my magazine or people who enjoy other genres of music and also just fancy a change.

This is a mood board showing the audience for my magzine

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

When creating my magazine attracting and adressing the main audience was the main factor I was thinking about. To attract the main audience which is my target audience I thought about them and what they would want from a magazine. As my target audience are tennagers aged between 15-19, they are probably unemployed or go to college or university which makes them students and then this puts them into the E category of the audience code and people in this category dont have much money and this is why I have priced my magazie at £2.99 which I think is a very good price for my magazine and afoordable for the target audience, so this is a factor that would attract them because my magazine is cheap. Another way in how I attracted/adressed my audience is the use of language I have on  my magazine front cover, for example the masthead of my magazine is called ' BREAK' that is very easy to read and teenagers are stereotypically seen as lazy, so if they seen a magazine with a very long masthead they might be put of by it, they wan something quick, easy and interesting to read which is what my magazine demonstrates very good.

Below is the link for a little animation i have made that includes real answers from someone who has viewed my magazine.

http://goanimate.com/videos/0vImL8K1khtA?utm_source=linkshare

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

At the begining of the process I never knew how to use photoshop at all, but this is what nearly all magazine editors and makers use when constructing their products because its modern day technology that povides them to do all kinds of things like make celebrities look skinner and their faces look flawless, and it is actually quite important to have a nice flawless face on the front of your magazine, because if you had a one with loads of blemishes on and spots people would think it looked horrible and not buy the magazine, so I thought I would use it when making my magazine. I needed to remove the background from my images so that the original backgrounds didint interere with my magazine, so I opened the image into photoshop and I did that by clicking on file at the top left hand corner and open and it brought up a box with options where I could choose my pictures from. I chose my picture from the file I saved it in ( my main image for the front cover) and opened it up, then it appeared on the page. Even thought there looks like there was no image background, there was because it was white and I needed to remove this. I scrolled down the toolbar at the side of the page and read what each of the tools were, finally i found a tool that was called quick selection and with this tool I could select an area and then delete it and this is what I needed to do, so this was something new I learned. After I did that I then resaved my picture and put it on my front cover, which I made in word, which I knew how to use and I cropped it down using the crop tool and ajusted the brightness by formating the picture and clicking on ajust brightness. Another new thing that I learned from photoshop was how to change the colour of hair, because I thought it would look good to change the colour of the hair for the person in my main image. I googled how to do this, but I didint understand the instructions very good, so I worked half of it out by myself. I knew you had to daw around the hair somehow, but I didint know what tool to use, so i tested all the options and found out magnetic lasso tool was the one you used. All you had to do was draw around the area you wanted to change colour, then it made a line around it. After that I right clicked and chose save selection because it seemed the most sensible to do. I did have some vague knowledge on photoshop and knew that it was the image I wanted to change colour so I went to the top of the page and clicked on image then ajustments, then hue/saturation, then a box came up with some options in. I clicked on colourize because thats what I wanted to do to the picture and moved the scrollers side to side to choose a colour. When I chose my colour I clicked ok and it was done. I tried a few colours out for evidence

Removing the background

Add caption

Changing hair colour                                                                                                               

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 and at my music magazine I have produced there is a big difference. The big difference is that the quality of my preliminary task is actually not very good and it doesn't look that professional and the music magazine I have created looks much better this is because I have done loads of research and realised the key features of a popular magazine and what makes them sell, like using language that appeals to the target audience and having a good colour scheme that fits in well with the genre of the magazine. The genre of my magazine is indie/rock and the magazines I researched e.g. Kerrang and NME have used colours like black and red, and I have also used the colours black and red, because you wouldn't expect a rock magazine to be pink. Also since my preliminary task I have learned how to use photoshop and that has been a big help in editing my images to make them look better and the better they look the more professional my magazine will look. So in conclusion, I think my fully produced music magazine is much better than the college magazine I produced for my preliminary task, because I didn't have the skills then to produce a very professional looking magazine and never did any research.

Preliminary task product

This is the front cover for my college magazine that i did for my preliminary task, it has a neat layout but as you can see it doesn't look very professional.

This is the contents page for my college magazine and just like my front cover it has a neat layout and yet again it doesn't look very professional.

this is my music magazine front cover and you can see the difference between my college magazine front cover and his is very significant, for example the colours on my music magazine relate so much to the genre of my magazine which is rock and the image and lighting is more professional as i took the picture with a digital camera rather than the camera off my phone and manipulated it in photoshop. The overall difference is very seeable ad if you have the same opinion as me I think this magazine cover is much much better and more appealing, and this is because I had learned how to use a variety of programs e.g. such as photoshop to help me create a better looking magazine cover.

This is the contents page of my music magazine and just like the changes between my front covers the change in quality is very significant and yet again this is because I have learned to use programmes like photoshop to make my skills at creating pages for my magazine better.

This is hopefully the last version of my double page feature. The changes I have made are that I have made the main image a bit smaller and edited some of the text out, I have done this because I needed to put page numbers on the bottom of each page and I had no space to I made these changes and I have put an odd number on one side of the page and an even number on one side of the page.

I have changed my magazine front cover, if you look to the previous one you will see the changes I have made and hopefully this is the last time I will change it

The changes I have made and why.

I have changed the subheading colum so that it doesnt have a background colour, I have done this because The last one didint really go weel on the front cover it looked more like a contents cover so this change made it look more like a front cover and the subheadings now blend in with the front cover more and it looks more like a front cover now. I have changed the colour of the subheadings text and I have changed this to white and blue. I have done this because it goves the page more of a neat colour scheme and is easy on the eye which makes it easy to establish which subheading gos with which text. Lastly I have moved the main image more to the centre of the page as the subheadings dont take up most of the page and this looks better because it is proportion and because it is in the middle it is going to be the first ting you see and this is the purpose of it, so this change went well. Also I have moved the masthead to the centre aswell in line with the main image and the reason I did this is the same reason why I moved the main image, also if I never moved the masthead when I moved the main image then it would look out of proportion and wrong.