Media Studies: Foundation Portfolio – Evaluation of Magazine by Claudia Barton

Introduction

• My aim was to make a music magazine for my project including a front cover, contents and article. I had to write my own article, come up with different aspects of my magazine such as the title and who would be featured in my magazine as well as taking pictures to include in each page.

• The Genre of my magazine was pop music and it was mainly aimed to be appealing to teenage girls around 16 towards a range of 25. I chose this because I think that age range are most likely to spend money on music and fashion magazines as they are the age range which follow celebrities and the media most.

• I completed this whole task by myself.

• All contributions within this project were made by myself.

• I decided to make a pop music magazine following a solo singer as it is what appeals to girls my age and slightly older.

• I also found I could create a genre hybrid of music and include some elements of fashion in my magazine as I thought as a whole it would be more appealing after researching different magazines. However, I found doing fashion for girls would eliminate the male audience entirely. This didn’t bother me as although it would cut my target audience down to just girls it may widen my female target audience as others may find the fashion side of my magazine more appealing.

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

Continued..

The typical conventions of a magazine I have used are:• The Title I chose as it is bold, catchy and short. It also immediately states the

magazine is a music magazine as it is called Volume which is relevant to music.• The Pictures I took as they were in a similar style to other music magazines I found

after researching pictures of similar artists such as Rihanna, this includes the white plain background I chose which made the artist stand out as well as the lighting and editing I used such as editing photos on the article pages for a black and white photo colour scheme.

• The front page, contents and article style and layouts, this includes the straplines which most magazines include, eye catching colours and headings which are on the front page as well as the style of fitting text together with writing and appropriate contrasting fonts.

At the beginning, I thought my innovations would be successful as I included aspects of fashion within my music magazine widening my target audience, I also found that the colour scheme I originally had in mind and the bold fonts and layouts I thought of were similar to magazines already out there however I didn’t feel there were many music magazines appealing to this age group.

Continued..

• At the beginning, I thought my innovations would be successful as I included aspects of fashion within my music magazine widening my target audience, I also found that the colour scheme I originally had in mind and the bold fonts and layouts I thought of were similar to magazines already out there however I didn’t feel there were many music magazines appealing to this age group.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• My media product particularly represents young people and the fashion and style celebrities and the public follow today; mainly teenage girls and younger adults.

• This is in the style of celebrities such as Rihanna, Beyonce, Fergie, Cheryl Cole etc. Apart from the music, to include aspects of fashion I had to research clothing shops such as topshop and river island and found many celebrities wore these clothes too so this was perfect research to develop for my magazine.

• I found many pictures used in magazines had a white background with the focus on the celebrity so used this setting to include in my magazine pictures.

• From my evaluation questionaire, I found my research was accurate as the genre and appeal which I wanted my magazine to fulfill worked well and overall suited my target audience.

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

• For my magazine institution choice, I chose Emap. Emap is a media group which operates with many different sectors such as the media and fashion sectors. I have chosen this institution to distribute my magazine as they cover both these music and fashion sectors which fits my magazine genres. They provide information and analysis around different sectors and develop a programme to distribute a product. Emap markets and offers information to companies of how they can take advantage of the market. They offer news on how the market is changing both in the UK and throughout the world and this is clear research from them which would benefit a magazine such as mine.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• My target audience for my magazine was females age 16-25 however I felt it could reach up to the age of females age 30.

• I thought the race for my magazine would be any and the social class I chose was middle class.

• I analysed many differet magazine covers, contents pages and articles to overall find this target audience was the best.

• To help my identify my target audience I used GRAS (Gender/Race/Age/Status) to make sure I had applied my magazine to each of these sectors and to make sure I had considered each for my target audience.

• From my evaluation questionaire results I could clearly see my magazine target audience was clear and from my magazine it was easy to tell what I was aiming to achieve from the beginning as everybody I asked thought the genre and audience fit appropriately therefore I would not do this different next time.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• I firstly looked through and analysed a variety of similar music magazines to the one I wanted mine to achieve a similar result of.

• After getting an idea of what I wanted my magazine to include I began thinking of a title and asked a few people on their opinion for the best title choice. The result was my instinct favourite ‘Volume’ as I found it immediately catchy and bold and perfect to make my magazine stand out and at the same time make it clear it was a music magazine from the beginning.

• I wanted my images to be clear and simple but with an element of fashion included. I think I did this well by using a white background and no props apart from a scarf in one of the pictures however this was still an element of fashion.

• I also researched and analysed a number of different articles and came up with my colour scheme from analysing those magazines as I knew from those magazines what colours fonts and what content attracts this audience.

• From anaylsing these magazines I also used celebrity ideologies such as the poses and fashion garments and the content of my magazine.

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

• Looking back, I firstly feel I have learnt a great deal about how different Apple Mac computers are as I couldn’t get used to it at first due to the style of keyboard being different as well as the programmes.

• I also have learnt a lot about photoshop and indesign because at first I had no idea how to use them at first.

• I also learnt how to edit and adjust images and my products to make sure the colour schemes and layout went well together as well as learning fonts may look good but when applied to a magazine they need to be simpler and bold/clear to capture the target audience.

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

I used technology throughout my magazine production:• I used my blog to express how my magazine was researched,

put together, developed and evaluated and used the internet throughout to research celebrities, fonts from dafont.com and to research and copy front covers, contents and articles to analysed.

• I also used youtube to research celebrity styles and looked at the top 40 music charts and fashion stores such as Topshop and River Island to analyse what is popular with my audience choice currently.

• I used the camera and lighting in the studio to shoot my pictures for my magazine and then used photoshop to edit the lighting and distort the photos such as making some black and white to fit in with my colour scheme. I had to retake some photos, however this wasn’t of my main character featured in my article it was for a fashion photo to create more images like a real magazine would have.If I was to do this again I would take my second lot of photos in a different setting to create more depth in the pictures as they as similar in my magazine.

Conclusion• Overall I think my magazine worked very well and I think it looks very professional.

I wouldn’t have changed my article or colour scheme or photos of my celebrity featured if I was to do it again however I would have taken more photos of different people to gain greater variety in my project. I think my front cover worked the best as it is bold and the picture it bright and stands out. I also think my article is very professional and realistic as a lot of thought went into the content of it. At first, I struggled with Indesign and photoshop programmes but in the end feel my magazine came together well and I am proud of my project.