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.

This hopefully is the last version of my contents page and as you can see from last time i have chose my main image changed the colour of the subheadings background and added some anchorage 3/4 of the way down the page.

Proof that I manipulated the main image
The main image on this contents page is not what I started out with, here is the proof

my contents page rationale

colour usage, image usage, text and font usage, layout

Colour usage

The main colours I have used on my contents page are red, white and black, which are the colours of my magazine house style because they link in with the target audience of my magazine. i have also used a little bit blue on my contents page and that is just to make something stand out. i have used the colour red for the background colour of the subheadings at the side of the page so that the subheadings stand out because they are wrote in black and white, so they will stand out on a contrasting background. I have also used the colour red for the text in the subscription box at the bottom of the page because yet again the background is black in this part, so therefore a contrasting colour will stand out and thats why I chose red. The other places i have used the colour red is the lines outlining the subscription and editors pick box this is so that you know they are two different boxes and so that it is clear to you. The very last part of this page where i have used the colour red is the information bar at the bottom of the page an this is so that the white writing stands out on the colour red because it is some important information and needs to be recognised. the reasons above explaining why i have used the colour red are just the basic reasons why I have used them, the main reasons why i have used the colour red is that, the colour red represents danger and anger and this might be peoples stereotypically view of people in the music industry who are rock stars because their performances are what some people might think aggressive and thats just the way they perform. the places where I have used the colour white on my contents page is the contents name which is break weekly and i have used the colour white here because it stands out on the background it is on which is red. Other places I have used the colour white on my contents page is for he subheadings that support the main image an I have used white here because the subheadings are actually wrote in black so the black subheadings stand out on the white background. I have also used the colour white for the background of the main image because I edited the main image to remove the background because it looked stupid with the original background it had and white also goes with the colour scheme of the page because white has been used in other places, such as the text in the editors pick box. The main reason why I have used the colour white on my contents page is because the colour white represents purity which could link into the age of the people in the magazine, because my magazine is based on young people in the music industry and the fact that they are young links into the colour white. The places on my contents page where i have used the colour black is the writing for most of the subheadings and for some of the background colour of the page which is at the bottom. The reason why I have used black for my subheadings is that they stand out in that colour upon the background they are on. The main reason why I have used the colour black is that it links in with the genre of my magazine which is indie/rock but mostly towards rock because people might associate the colour black with rock because like I've said before some people might think of rock artists performances as aggressive and to be aggressive you have to have a reason and mainly that reason is bad, which links into the colour black. the last and final colour I have used on my contents page is blue and I have only used blue in one place which is a little box in the right hand bottom side of my contents page which says next week and this box is blue because it is trying to draw the readers attention to it because it is a different colour to everything else an to highlight the importance of what its supporting.

Image usage
I have used 3 images on my content page including the main image. I think my min image for the contents page is appropriate and appealing for the contents page because The person in the main image who is a female is smiling and this represents female as happy people, so that a good ting, and it is also a good thing because you dont want to just open a magazine and find a picture of a misserable person, do you? The image i would say is a close up because its mainly jut a picture of the persons head and a little bit shoulders. The other two images i have used are sub images at the bottom of the page and they are pictures of the magazine front cover itself, in the subscription box and a image of the editor in the editors box. I used the picture of the magazine front cover in the subscription box to support the text because the subscription box is all about subscribing to the magazine and its relevant. I used a picture of the editor in the editorial box because yet again this supports the text and it familiarises the readers with the editor. The shot of this image would be a mediumish shot, its not a long shot because mainly the way you remember someone is by their face not anything else, mainly.

Text and font usage
The text that i have used on this contents page are all of the subheadings, the page title, the quotes, the content inside the subscription box an the editors pick box. The main fonts I have used for the text are simle fonts that I have got from word and they are calibri body and arial. I chose these simple fonts o adress my audience because they dont want to see har to understand fonts. The only special font I have used on this page is the quote that supports the main image and that font is from a website called font space I chose a special font for this part because I wanted the quote to stad out and I think it does.

layout
the layout of my contents page is very similar to my front cover, it is quite a simple layout. down most of the left hand side I have sectioned it off from the rest of the page with a dark red box which is for the subheadings, i have done this because it makes it clear to the reader that this is the main information that you need to know wen you are looking for something inside the magazine an this is clearly and neatly set out for you. I have a bar at the bottom of my page which is split up into two sections, these sections are the subscription box and the editors box, I have put these at the bottom of the page into these two sections because they are extra information that you might want to know, but they are not the most important features of the contents page. my main image is placed on the remaining of the page which is about 3/4 of the right hand side of the page I have done this because I wanted to get it across to the reader that this was the main image, but I didn't want the main image to be too big, just big enough so that it is noticeable to the reader that i is the main one. I think that the layout of my contents page appeals well to the target audience because it is not to complicated and is easy on the eye, because the stereotypical teenager which is my target audience are branded as being lazy and if they are faced with an information packed complicated looking page they will probably not read the page.

This is my finished double page for my magazine, it looks a little blurry because i couldnt upload it any other way.

Rationalle
Colour usage, image usage, text usage, layout and font usage
Colour usage
The colours I have used on my double page feature are, pink, red, grey and black. The reason why I have used the colour pink is to add some femenicity to the page because it links in with the main image, who the article is about. I have used the colour pink for the image in the background which is the symbol D, I used pink here because orinally I used a redish colour and that made the red text barley noticable so i made the colour lighter, which turned out to be pink and the red writing shows up just fine on top of this colour. The reason why I have used the colour red is not that it gives the text coloour variety, but so that it is clear what are the questions in the interview and what are the answers and this separates one from the other, also I have used the colour red because it stands out nice on the background and the text is noticable. The reason why I have used the colour grey is because it links in with the main image which some people would say is black and white, but actually its a greyish colour, so I have used the colour grey to create some colour co-ordination for the page. The places where I have used the colour grey is the highlighting colour of the quotes and I have used this colour here because It highlights the main parts of the text so that they stand out nd yet again like ive said to link in with the main image and to also keep my colour palette as minimal as possible. I have used the colour black because that is the colour of wht text normally is, But I have also used the colour black for the same reason I have used the colour red for the text, to separate the questions from the answers and so that it stands out on the background and is easy to red.
Imgage usage
The image I have used on this page is a picture of the person who the article is about, and I think is very good because it is black and white, which links into the clour scheme of the page, and also the way the person in the main image is looking down onto th text in the article is a really good effect because it shows that the text and the main image link in tgether and the interview is including the person in the main image, so its like shes looking back on what shes said. Also, the way the person in the main image is looking down to the side links in with the quote that is under the main image, which is '' well lifes not all about holding grudges'' so this pose could suggest that she is turning her back on whats happened in the past and doesnt want to surface those problems again, putting everything behind her. The sub image that I have used in the middle of the page is an image of former band twisted souls, which danielle used to be in. I have included this image because it links in with the text because danielle is talking about what her bnd was like and the betrayl her band member gave her. the subimage is black and white and this is to link in with the colour scheme and to link in with the main image. I have used the symbol D in the background and have used this because it is the first initial of danielles name, and it just links in with the whole article and adds a bit of decoration to the page.
Text Usage & font usage
The text I have used is abviosly the whole of the interview, the title, the sub title and the quote under the main image. Text is the vital part of my double page feature because my double page feature is an interview with Danielle Cooper, and in an interview questions are asked and then everything is wrote down then printed onto a page. The font I have used for the body of the interview is calibri body size 10, the quotes are also calibri body size ten but are in capitals, and this shows importance. The sub title is in times new roman, a size 12 and is in bold and italics, the italics links in with the colour pink which adds femenicty to the page. The title of the page, the heading anfd the quote at the bottom of the page under the main image are a font called great vibes from a website called font space and I have just resized them to different sizes.
Layout
I have got a very effective, but simple layout for my double page feature, on one side of the page there is the main image and this takes up the whole page to show the relevance and importace of it, because it is quite important, and on the other side of the page is the text, the interview and this is split up into three colums.

This looks a bit blurry but its just the way that it has been uploaded, as you can see this is a newer version of my double page feature because I have changed the quote font from the bottom of the page, highlighted the quotes dotted about the page in a diferent colour, which is grey, to blend in more with the image and I have changed the main headline and changed to a different font which I got from the website font space.

This is a newer version of my contents page, but as you can see there is less on the page because the main images have gone, this is because i want to choose some different main images because i didn't like the last ones, also on this contents page i have changed the subheadings font at the left hand side of the page to make them stand out more.

21st November 2012
As you can see I have made some more changes to my contents page, the changes are a background colour to the subheadings which is dark red and i have changed the text that was white to dark red aswell. Another thing that I have also changed dark red is the lines at the bottom of the page and the text in the subscrption box and the information line background colour. I have made these changes because I think dark red is more of a suitable and blendable colour that goes well with the design and housestyle of my magazine, also the front cover of my magazine has the same shade red on it, so it all links together like i said and creates a suitable housestyle.

The image on this contents page is not my own, but I just tried it on my contents page to see what it would look like, and I like the way it looks so I am going to take a picture of my own with a peron posing like this because it fits well on the page and hopefully i will be finished my contents page.

I did not use this pose