Media Coursework Evaluation By Ellie Seviour My Magazine

Media Coursework Evaluation By Ellie Seviour

My Magazine Product: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? FRONT PAGE USE My magazine and We Love Pop magazine both have the inspirational image on the left hand side and connect to audience as the models are smiling and using direct gaze. Both magazine also have boxed sub stories using bold colours such as yellow. I wanted to use this as the titles stood out more and made them look less formal. I decided to rotate some of the images as I thought it made the magazine look fun and more relaxed. in the We Love Pop magazine I loved the way the name of the artist rotated across the page so I decided to use this for my magazine. Both titles are in san serif and the text is bold and bright as this is easier for young people to read and attracts their attention. Also it seems slightly less formal which fits with the age group I am aiming at. Both magazines have also gone for the stereotypical girl colour of pink so my audience can instantly see my magazine is for females. Real Magazine Product: DEVELOP We Love Pop magazine and my magazine both include strap lines going across the page advertising offers and exclusive stories but I decided to place my ‘offer’ story at the top of the page rather than the bottom as I thought this would stand out more and make my audience tempted to buy my magazine. CHALLENGE In my magazine the mise en scene has symbols. I decided to add these symbols to fill up space and make the magazine look busier and fun. I feel the more compact the magazine looks the more bold and bright it appears. Also to make my magazine brighter I decided to add a stamp around the main story title which I feel in my magazine the title stands out more. To make the magazine relaxed and fun I decided to add quotes like ‘OMG!’ and ‘COOL!’.

My Magazine Product: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? USE CONTENTS PAGE In both magazines there are boxed images used to represent stories featuring in the magazine. By having the page filled with images it makes it clear to show what's going to be in the magazine straight away and it makes the overall appearance of the page look compact. This once again makes it look fun and busy for the target audience to read. Also from questionnaire feedback I found out my target audience like images rather than text so I know this appeals to my target audience. I liked in the We Love Pop magazine the message from the editor so I decided to add this to my magazine, however I wanted to make this shorter so the page was not full up with text. DEVELOP Real Magazine Product: With looking at the We Love Pop magazine I took many of their ideas and developed to fit more to my target audience. I liked the idea of the ‘Inside this month box’. So I decide to develop this into my final piece but make it more spacious. This layout makes it look clearer and simpler to read which fits more with my target audience as younger people will most likely to prefer a simple layout rather than a complex, as it may be too confusing. I also liked the way We Love Pop used numbers for pages but I wanted my numbers to stand out more so I decided to add bold circles around them to make them seem more fun. Also having more obvious page numbers it is easier for my target audience to follow stories in the magazine, especially for the younger end of my audience (10 -11). CHALLENGE In my magazine I decided to I include a chart of top pop music. I thought adding this to my magazine would be an extra unique feature to my magazine and would keep my audience informed of trending pop music right now.

My Magazine Product: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? USE Real Magazine Product: DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD In the real media product, I particularly liked the way they used a large, mid shot of the celebrity. I developed this in to my product too but I decided to place the image right to the left of the page as I have less text than double page spread I have researched. The large image draws the readers attention straight away because it fills a large amount of space. DEVELOP When looking for inspiration, I liked real life products that used a large quote that spread across the 2 pages – so I did this to draw attention to the reader to make them read the article. However I wanted to use the title of the story inside of the quote, so from the front page it was easy to find the story in the magazine. CHALLENGE With my double page spread, I wanted to include what I have used throughout my magazine – boxed text. This challenges other magazines I have researched, but I feel this makes my magazine look bolder and clearer and easier for my target audience to read. Many of the magazine I researched used colours such as black and white but I challenged this and stuck with more girly colours such as pink as I feel this shows connotations of fun and happiness more than black and white which I feel wouldn’t be attractive for my target audience.

lolli. POP! The fonts I used for the title of my magazine and throughout were sans serif and bold. I used this as it is seen as less formal and youthful and more relaxed. This would mean my target audience would be attracted to my magazine as it looks fun and relaxed and doesn’t seem to look expensive which my target audience wanted from questionnaire results. On the front of my magazine I used many tempting story lines including ‘Celebrity Confessions’ and a pop artist realising a new album. The pop genre is known for the latest popular music and pop magazines are known for including all of the latest celeb gossip. I feel my magazine would appeal to pop music fans as it includes the very stereotypical things seen in pop magazines. From questionnaire feedback my target audience gave me lots of information of what they’d like to see in a magazine aimed for them. I then worked on these results throughout the making of my magazine. I used suggested stories such as stories about new music. Also I used questionnaire feedback when coming up with the story for the double page spread. I chose a question & answer interview as this was the most popular choice with my target audience so in my magazine this format would be attractive to read. At the time of my magazine selling Kelly Kat will be a very famous pop artist. I have used this to my advantage, as I know this will increase sells as Kelly Kat will be seen as a role model and young girls will be aspiring to be just like her. Also with Kelly Kat, I made her look like ‘the girl next door’, smiling and using direct gaze. Instantly this draws my target audience in and makes a relationship with the reader. It is almost like she is looking at you personally, persuading you to buy the magazine. Questionnaire feedback also gave me the colour scheme pink for my magazine. I was hoping for this choice as stereotypically this is seen as the favourite colour for girly girls and this is who my magazine is aimed at. In my magazine I also decided to include free make- up. This once again is following the very stereotypical view of a girly girl which is my target audience. Also the word ‘free’ would be very appealing for my target audience.

To produce my final product I had to construct my magazine using 2 different software. One was Photoshop where I edited all the photos I had taken to put on to my magazine as Photoshop is a photo manipulation tool. In Photoshop I made my photos the correct resolution (300 dpi), changed the levels to make them look better quality and edited backgrounds out ready to place them in to In. Design. Here in In. Design I to put the magazine together, e. g. constructing the composition and text. While using Photoshop I didn’t have many issues as I have used it quite a lot previously due to taking other creative subjects like Photography and Graphic Design. So editing on Photoshop allowed me to practise and expand on my previous skills. However I did have a slight problem when editing the original photo I had taken for my DPS but I overcame that issue and used a other image I had taken originally to be used for the front page. One thing that took a long time on Photoshop was editing out backgrounds for the main images for my magazine. However I overcame this issue with looking for solutions online – click onto refine edge to make the line smoother to delete background. With this software, I have made the most progress in my skills and knowledge. I had some previous experience using In. Designbut not to the extent I felt comfortable to use it to construct a magazine. At the beginning I found it difficult to learn which was why my front cover took me the longest as it was the first thing I constructed. Once I came around to creating my contents page and double page spread I found it easier and it was a quicker process as I had learnt that using it wasn’t that difficult. My teacher firstly taught us the basics like inserting pictures and text. After that I went onto opening a few document with construction lines ready to piece together my final product. This is the layout I used for my front page. With both technologies, as I was developing my product with the previous basic knowledge I had, I found it easy to expand my skills and broaden my basic knowledge.

Gender – My music magazine is for a female audience. Age – My magazine is aimed for pre-teens and teenagers so Target Audience ID card between the ages of 10 -16 years old. Favourite music genre – My target audience have a keen interest in trending pop music because they love how it is upbeat and fun. Interests – Someone who would buy my magazine would be keen in knowing the latest gossip about pop artists and their secrets. Also they would have an interest in fashion and make-up and love to go shopping. In my magazine I included stories about confessions and secrets. Also I included fashion with the story “fashion foul-ups” and makeup with offering free lipstick. Also my target audience is obsessed with cute boybands so I included a story on this topic. Hobbies – Hobbies for someone who would buy my magazine would be regularly listening to the latest music charts for pop. In case my audience did not know the latest pop music and to further highlight my magazine is for pop music lovers, I included a chart of trending pop music on the contents page. Also someone from my target audience would love to sing and dance as they aspire to become the next big pop star – this is why I chose this topic for the main story. Dreams – Someone who would buy my magazine would have the dream to become famous and successful like a trending female artist right now. This is why in my magazine I included an artist my audience inspire to be on the front page. Favourite colour - My target audiences favourite colours would be girly colours such as pink and purple. This is the reason why I chose to have pink as my main colour scheme as stereotypically this is seen as a female colour. Personality & Social Life – the personality of someone who would buy my magazine would be out-going, upbeat and fun. This is one of the reasons why I chose to layout the magazine the way that I did with being busy, over the top and over whelming She would be popular at school with a large group of female friends. They all love to know the latest gossip which is talked about at sleepovers.

When researching for media companies that could be suitable for releasing I looked at two – Bauer Media Group and Immediate Media Company. I feel after research that Immediate Media Company would be more suited to release my product. This media company already publishes magazines such as ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘Girl Talk’ which have the same target audience as my magazine. The fact that the company saw potential in these magazines could mean that they could see potential in my magazine and give it the marketing platforms they used for their magazines when they first went on sell. Their platforms have been proven to sell magazines as they sell 74 million magazines every year with 1 million active subscribers, and 33 million online views every month. The company has also made a massive advance in digital technology by selling their magazines through the app store for apple phones and Google play for android phones. This is a perfect way of marketing for my target audience as nowadays many young people use mobile phones so this would be an easy and covenant way of my target audience accessing my magazine content. The company has become well established over time and has won over 25 industry awards and was recently named Media Company of the year at the British Media Awards. I would want my product to be released by a company with a good representation and has been successful in it’s sells. Also I would want a company that keeps up with the new ways of marketing and changes their platforms to adapt to what is popular right now and Immediate Media Company definitely does this. This is why I would chose this company to release my product.

Progress from my preliminary task. . For my prelim task we were asked to create a school magazine. This was my first time of designing and creating a magazine and also in the software Adobe In. Design. Since this task I am impressed with my progress I have made and my understanding now of the codes and conventions of magazines. The research I have done for creating my final product has made me realise that I missed out key conventions in prelim. Such as not making my strap line look important enough and stand out clearly to the reader. I feel that the stamp I used stood out more than the main story featuring in the magazine. My Prelim Task Through the process of research, I have learnt the importance of choosing a theme, colour scheme, font and images that appeal to the target audience of your magazine. In my prelim I wasn’t too sure if I was appealing to parents or children so the elements didn’t have a clear direction. But I made sure through questionnaires and codes and convention research I had a clear audience to aim my magazine at. Also looking at real life products with the same target audience as mine, this helped me construct my final product as I could see what layouts and colour schemes work. With my final product the quality of the image, editing, fonts and refined colour scheme instantly makes this magazine look more professional than my prelim task. I have also realised in this process that quality is determined by time. My prelim only took a few days whereas the process of making my final product months and I feel the outcome shows how much time I put in to making the magazine. My Final Product

Representing a particular social group I always reflected back to popular magazine such as ‘We love pop’ and ‘Top of the Pops as they have the same social group I was aiming for. These magazines were good examples for me to follow as I wanted my magazine to be fun, bright, bold and crowded just like this magazine. I think the design and layout of my whole magazine shows that I constantly had this target audience in my head with the choice of my colour scheme, story lines, fonts and layout of busy and crowded magazine. In the research and planning stage initially I wanted to attract to young female teens. I decided to stick with this and make this my target audience for my magazine. From questionnaire feedback, this gave me all the information I needed to make all the aspects of my magazine representative of my target audience. This included the colour scheme chosen of pink. Pink is stereotypically seen as a young, female, girly colour so this instantly gives the impression for anyone wanting to buy my magazine that it is for young female teens. I think my double page spread story can be related to my target audience as the featured successful pop artist talks about when she was younger (the age the readers of my magazine would be) and what got her into music and what advice she would give to any aspiring pop artists.