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

Cover Page

I have used this cover image to break convent of the normal media magazine, a normal cover image has the main cover band looking towards the camera so the audience thinks the band are looking towards them and it anchors the audience towards the magazine, my cover image has the band playing music at a gig, this makes the audience think that the band are having a good time and not just posing for the camera. The masthead of my magazine, I made myself on Photoshop, I used the font ‘’ but it looked very basic on its own, I used smudge tool to make the title look bolder and stand out, it allows makes it look the magazine look like it is set for a younger audience. The colours I have used for the front cover go with the cover picture as the cover picture has spotlights with different colours, but the colours would attract the younger audience instead of the older audience as it is more ‘in your face’ and it stands out towards the younger audience. The cover line of the front cover is a simple ‘Guitar.solos.and.a.killer.rhythm.’ is in the same font of the mast head as I didn’t want to make the cover have to many fonts and colours, it bends to go around the mast head so it doesn’t take up to much space, this is so you can see more of the cover image and pull the audience in more towards paying the magazine.

Contents Pages and Double Page Spread

For the contents page, I have used 3 pictures, one of the band ‘Foster the people’, one of ‘ ‘ and one the front cover to sell the image even more as it is the band that I am focusing the magazine on, images on the contents page are important as it tells the reader who is in the magazine they are going to buy and it pulls different audiences in, if they like the band in the magazine, then they normally buy the magazine. The images I have used on the double page spread, it is the image of the band playing at the gig still, this image shows the band in there element and what they love doing, it allows the audience to see what they are like out with a crowd and how they act. The use of columns, on the contents page, I have one column going down the left hand side with the text of what is going to be in the magazine, it has organized the text so it doesn’t look messy on the page. On the double page spread, I have used 3 columns to a page, it is easy to read and it doesn’t look messy on the page. I have tried to follow the same colour scheme of the front cover in both the contents page and the double page spread, I have used black text and a white background, I have stuck to the traditional use of magazines, all magazine on the market have black text, white background, it is the colours that go opposite together but work so well.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media work speaks out to the younger audience more than the older one, as it focuses on the new generation of music, as it has new upcoming artists in the magazine and the older generation doesn’t really want to know about new artists, they are more into the 60’s and the 70’s style of music which the magazine will not be focusing on. I would hope to think that a wide range of musicians and fans would pick up the magazine but it mainly focuses on indie and upcoming range of music, it will have bands that play big gigs and when a song does well in the charts, which some people may not like in a magazine, but for people who are into indie magazines, I hope they will like what is in the magazine and it speaks out to them as it has a lot of the band which are big at the moment in the indie world. The magazine will speak out to both men and women, it will not focus on one stereotype of group, It will have articles about both females and males, it will be evenly proportional to both, as in one page will be about a male band and another will be a female band, or it will be a band that has both male and female fronts and it will focus on them. The magazine will be £1.59 so it will be available to both working and middle class citizens, the working class people will be able to pay this price for a music magazine as in research, other magazines cost between £3.00 to £6.00, and as the magazine is under both the minimum and maximum price range, I have done the price so low as when customers go to a shop, they don’t expect to be shocked by the price of the magazine, they expect to feel as if it is a fair price to pay for a magazine.  The magazine will be available in both the north and south on England, it will be available in any well known shop in your area, this is as the magazine doesn’t cost a lot to make and as the price is so low, it will be easy to sell.

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

Future publishing will be the best distributing company for my magazine, this is because it is the number one UK magazine exporting company so it will be easier to get my magazine out to different parts of the world, this helps the company as it makes a share of the profit and the company will be making more money as the magazine is now being sold worldwide and it won’t just be a English sold magazine, it will be a world selling magazine. Future publishing is licensed in 89 countries so the magazine will be exported out to the country and will be available to buy the magazine all over the world, the fact that the company is licensed in so many countries helps the music magazine industry as it helps little companies sell more copies of the magazine in different parts of the country and even the world. On average the company sells 2.9 million a month, which allows up to 33.8 million a year, and with those figures, it would be hard to turn down the offer if they asked to distribute your magazine, future publishing has on average 100 magazines on the run at once in 3 major countries, the UK, USA and Australia, so each magazine makes around 29,000 a month.

http://www.futureplc.com/

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my magazine will be the younger generation, aged 14 to 18 and it will sterotypically free, this will help the magazine to be a big hit as it will reach out to everyone in that age range, it will also make the magazine not racist as it will feature everyone that can be in the world of music. The main aim of the magazine is for anyone in that age range can buy and afford the magazine and it won't feel like they have to spend so much money on the magazine, also i don't want people to feel like they need to buy the magazine so they fit in with society and feel like they can be part of the world, that i why the magazine will always change to fit social groups.

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

I have used the internet as a research tool to find out any information that I couldn’t find out myself as in how many magazines was sold or how many magazines future publishing have going at once, the internet can be a very helpful tool for when you are creating a magazine as it allows you to get information within seconds but it can also be a very useful tool as a lot of pages on the web are not true and they could be sending you false information which would not help you with making your magazine. I used blogging to organise and arrange research and planning methods, it helped as it had the date and the time you put it onto the blog, so it was easy to find any work I have put onto the blog and if I needed to edit it, it would just bring the work up and allow you to edit what needed to be edited and it would then go back to the main page of the blog. I used a digital camera to take any picture on the magazine and the blog, it was easy to take a detailed picture and it would be in great focus as I would use auto focus and it would focus on the object/person that you were looking at and blur the other surrounding, and it was also easy to upload the images to a computer and import then into the magazine or the blog. Photoshop was a big part of making the magazine as I used it to make the front cover, I was able to import images with ease and add text to the cover, it was easy to get the text above the images and the image still looked very clear even though it had be made bigger so it fitted the page, the tools in Photoshop are very easy to use, I used the smudge tool to make the title, I made the title very unique and I didn’t use the fonts that was given as a option, it was easy to do as all you had to do was move the cursor over the text. Quark was used to make my contents page and my double page spread, this is because it is easy to combine text and images together, as you type the text up, it would go into columns for you, which makes the pages look more formal and not all over the place, it makes the audience think that the magazine will all be neat and formal, making it a easier read and follow the story easy. The images on quark would import as easy as they do on Photoshop, the good thing about quark is that the text wraps around the image, so if you move the image into the text, the text would move around the image.

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

I feel that I have learnt a lot over the past couple of months, I feel that when I am now research an item or looking something up, it is easier to find the information and I can find the right information, not some false information. When I planned the first task, I didn’t really think too much into what the cover would look like and I just put what I thought looked good onto the cover but when it came to making the real thing, I planned what it would look like, where all the text would go and what the font would be for the text, ect. When it came to planning the contents page, I looked at other contents pages that are in the other magazines, and when I seen that a lot of magazines had pictures down the right hand side of the contents and a lot of the magazines had a editors message that would tell the reader what the month has been like for the magazine and what would be inside, I decided to have both the images down the right hand side and a editors message right underneath the title.