MEDIA EVALUATIONSamantha Rothery

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

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When planning to make my magazine I knew from the start that I wanted to make it look as sleek and professional as possible, to do this I looked at the structure of some big magazines such as NME and Rolling Stone, and tried to find out the small things they did to make their magazines stand out from the others I took ideas from many different parts of the magazine such as the layout, the fonts, their cover photos and their coverlines.

Similarities• Female cover photos.• Name of featured artists in big letters to stand out

from everything else.• Rolling stone and my magazine stick to the theme

of white writing.• Direct address to the camera from the cover

artists.• Rolling stone and my magazine has writing all

down one side.• NME and my magazine both feature a pull quote

taken from the interview.• All magazines have lists of artists down one side.

Differences• Both magazines have different colours for

their title. • I have used a puff on my magazine

whereas the other two have their advertisements just with the rest of the storylines.

• I have used a more dramatic pose for my cover photo.

• NME have used 3 different colours for their font.

• I have slightly more writing in my coverlines than the other two magazines do.

• Other magazines have more daring coverlines.

Front Cover

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Double Page SpreadWhen planning for my double page spread I also looked at other magazines, to get an idea of how I wanted mine to be layed out. Due to the kind of magazine that I was trying to create I knew that I was going to use a photo across the whole of my double page spread I did this as I think it looks more professional than simply having random photos and colours. I did get a lot of my inspiration for my magazine from fashion magazines such as ‘Look’ and ‘Vogue’ this is because the target audience I have continuously had in mind is more female focused. I noticed that with the magazines I did my research looking at that when their picture was across two sides I felt much more compelled to read them as they looked more interesting and their wasn't to much to look at at once.

Similarities• All of the magazines start their writing with a

large letter.• My magazine and the one with Florence on

the front have plain writing on one side whereas the other has cut out pictures.

Differences• The other magazines have a small introduction

for their celebrity before they go into the interview.

• The NME magazine hasn't used a picture across their double page spread it is only over one side.

• I have taken a close up shot of my model whereas these magazines have used further away and in one case a full body shot.

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Contents Page

Overall I think that my magazine very much conforms to the style and conventions of other media products, it does this in having a similar style, theme and target audience. A lot more thought would have gone into the creation of a real media product such as would the pictures be offensive? And would everything that is said have been acceptable. The image used would also have been a lot more edited on Photoshop to make the models look different to how they look in real life often giving unrealistic ideas to others about how they should look. My magazine challenges the convention of real media products in this way, I have not changed anything about my model to help keep her as real and relatable to the public as possible the only difference to the original pictures is that I have changed the overall colours to make them blend in more/ stand out more and to make the background more discreet.

CONCLUSION

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

My media product has been directly made to represent young music enthusiasts. I have targeted it at one particular social group that are above the middle on the socio economic scale, I wanted to make a magazine to represent this group of younger people because most of the magazines now days are based on the top 40 and these suit people lower down because they are not as bothered or interested to find new music and well known artists, I wanted to use my magazine to show case newer artists and to preview exclusive music events.

The mise-en-scene of my front cover shows an up and coming singer, she is dressed remotely smartly with an eye catching earing this outfit would represent a wealthy social group.

Other social groups they belong to I will go into further detail in the target audience section.

Question 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?The media institution that I would ideally imagine distributing my magazine is Condé Nast.

A Brief HistoryCondé Nast, a division of Advance Publications,

is a magazine publisher. In the U.S.,

it produces 18 consumer magazines,

as well as four business-to-business publications,

27 websites, and more than 50 apps for mobile

and tablet devices.

The company's headquarters reside in New York City.

Condé Nast was founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast

and has been owned by the Newhouse family since 1959.

IMPORTANT PEOPLES.I. Newhouse Jr. is the chairman and CEO of Advance Publications, Charles H. Townsend is Condé Nast’s chief executive officer and Robert A. Sauerberg is Condé Nast’s president.

•Vogue• Teen Vogue•Glamour•Vanity Fair•GQ•Conde Nast traveller•Bon Appetit•Golf World•Wired

THEIR OTHER MAGAZINES

Why?

I think that my magazine would suit this institution because of the Look I have given it, and because the social group I have given it of wealthier buyers, this social group also suits Conde Nast and the other magazines which they distribute. I think that this distribution company have a large gap in their portfolio for a music magazine especially one such as mine as they do not currently distribute any music magazines, by distributing my magazine they would be attracting a whole different audience specifically including younger people and music fans. The magazine would be able to offering them a magazine with the newest music exclusive parties.

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

A Typical audience member for my magazine would be between 18-30 I have chosen these ages because I want my magazine to attract its audience by offering passes and invites and to exclusive parties which would not be appealing to a younger audience.

My magazine has unintentionally drifted towards being more female orientated I think this is because I took a lot of my inspiration from fashion magazines which I personally read.

Other interests that a reader of my magazine would have would be fashion, socialising, new music, attending small gigs, Other kinds of media that a reader of my magazine would consume would be the radio (radio 1, capital fm), and into television shows such as ‘Made in Chelsea’ and other reality TV programmes.

A typical member of my target audience would be interested in beauty and take care of their appearance possibly with long hair and fake eyelashes they would be quite dressy and often wear dresses out and things that are in with the latest fashion they would shop in

Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Female cover photo, direct address to audience.

Cover girls name in big letter. Attracting Female readers.

Pink-orange filter colors, femenime colors.

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

In the process of creating my magazine I used various different programmes and websites to create the product, such as InDesign which is the programme that I used to put the whole thing together and to edit my fonts and all of my writing on, this is also how I made my double page spread and how I created the columns for my interview. I found InDesign to be the most useful technology. I also learnt that InDesign can do almost anything you want it to when you have the right skill. It has made me realize how much work goes into real magazines.

The programme that I used to edit all of my photos on was Photoshop. I used this programme to change all of the lighting on my pictures so that it was able to suit the mood of my magazine. Using Photoshop on the photos makes them have a much more sleek and professional edge I especially found this with my double page spread. The things that you can do on photoshop are limitless and I didn’t want to take the editing of my model to far like some of the published magazines do.

Two other programmes that I used but not for as much as I used the other two were, Adobe Illustrator and Word.

I used adobe Illustrator for making the Puffs shown on my music magazine I then transferred the puff over to InDesign I found Illustrator very helpful for creating small editions to the magazine such as the puff you are able to make them look exactly as you want.

I used word to write my interview shown on the double page spread into. By writing it into here first I was able to spell check it and move it all around to find which bits were best where before I put it on the actual InDesign version it was very helpful for putting draft versions into.

I also used word to copy and paste my research from other magazines into and then to post on Blogger.

The final two technology's I used in the construction of my media product are Blogger and The Internet.

I used Blogger to post all of my research and the different steps of editing into

Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?