Rebecca Chapman

MEDIA EVALUATION QUESTIONS

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

I looked at very popular, mainstream magazines that already out there like Vogue, Pop,

Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone and more to try and get a good idea of what type of

conventions magazines use to keep them all looking in great form and slightly similar. I

imitated the convention of keeping the mast head in the top third taking over the whole

width, I did this with the title ‘Indigo’ to make it be the first thing that the reader see’s and

with it big and bold it will attract more attention than just a small masthead which doesn’t

take up the first third. I also used the idea of having a big mid shot photograph as the main

image as most magazines use this kind of shot instead of a full length one or close up, to get

in the most important part of the image in a way that you would see it. I did this by taking a

mid shot of my sister and editing this on photo shop and centering it in the middle of the

magazine to make it stand out. I also used the idea of having a 3 main cover pallet, I did this

by using the colours black, white and indigo, indigo to match the title of the magazine and

make this the signature look. Even though I stuck to the main forms and conventions of

normal magazines, I challenged the idea of having coverlines, as some magazines for

example ID don’t use coverlines so I wanted to see if this would work or not for me. I have

now seen though that it would look better with coverlines as without them it looks quite

blank, so I will be adding these in for my final piece. The genre of the real magazines in my

decision making was very important to the creation of my own as I wanted to make sure it

would work as well as the ones already out there do, but also adding my own twist to it to

make it unique to all the others out there. Looking at similar genres such as ‘Pop’, some bits

of ‘Complex’ and the pop parts in other magazines allowed me to create the same sense as

they do. For example I looked at the kind of photography they take and different poses and

clothing they use for the models, I also looked at how they set out their double page spread

and interviews for the pop/R’n’B genre I am using.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

On the cover of my magazine is a young female girl who is the age of an older teenager, the

photography is a mid-shot and she is standing up straight with her arms by her side and her

head tilted downwards, this represents her as just a normal girl who is minding her own

business with the pose of looking downwards. The costume she is dressed in is a black t-shirt

with a leopard print triangle on, this represents her as a fashionable girl as animal print is all

in fashion right now, so the magazine is kept up to date with the latest trends. The cover

artists facial expression is just a plain expression with a bit of a smile to represent that she is

a normal girl who can also be a bit shy too, just like any other woman in the world. The

colours I used are bold colours to bring the look to the magazine of bold pop and also

represent the idea that all teenagers are quite bright and confident in themselves these

days. I created my artist profile on a girl named ‘Georgia Hudgens’ who you could say is

similar to Rihanna, Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj in music sense, I created a blog post

which described the artist and who she is. For my double page spread I will use her in an

interview by asking questions that the young adults will want to know, interesting questions

about her career that won’t bore the audience and instead keep them wanting to read

Rebecca Chapman

more. From my contents page the type of things that will be written to be in the magazine

are headlines like ‘Rihanna talks that talk with her new album’ and ‘Bey and Jay’s baby hits

the mic’, this represents the young adult social group to be interested in new pop gossip like

this and always want to be kept updated with the latest news.

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

I think that the institution that would publish my magazine is IPC Media, I have chosen these

as they publish a variety of different genre's of magazines and therefore I think they would

also publish mine as they are a big company who seem to take invest into new ideas. The

kind of magazines they publish include of music magazines, sports magazines and gossip

magazines so I wide range which would hopefully be open for my area. IPC Media publishes

'NME' magazine,'Woman' magazine and more. 'NME' magazine is similar to mine as it is a

music magazine of a particular genre of indie rock, even though mine is of a different genre,

they both share the same target audience of between 16-26 year olds. Which means that

they are interested in this target audience, and hopefully would publish my Pop/R'n'B

magazine to open their variety of magazines to a wider range. The future of music

magazines and industry changes a lot and my institution will move with these changes

because they will always do the research on the latest trends to make sure they are always

up to date on what their audience are interested in. If they didn’t follow what the newest

trends are, then they would lose a lot of the audience as the people won’t be interested in

that ‘old’ stuff anymore, so the institution has to always be up to date.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my magazine will be mostly females around the ages of 15-30 as this is the

age range and gender which is most interested in pop and R’n’B music. Though there may

also be a male audience, and the ages may differ being older and younger, but I am defiantly

targeting at young adult females as I think this is where most the interest lays. I think that it

is important to make a selective choice with the audience, because if you leave it open for all

ages or both genders, then many people won’t buy it as there may only be a few pages that

the specific individual is interested in, as there is so much mixture of content type. I am

excluding the audience of people over 40+ as I don’t think many are interested in this genre,

and I will be creating the magazine in a fun, vibrant, young way which elder people are most

likely not to be interested in. You could also say that I am excluding the audience of males as

the models I am using are females, and the content I am including is mostly females,

although I still think some males would purchase it as they may like the music or even the

look of the cover artist or look of the magazine. I have reflected my choice of audience into

my magazine by keeping the models that I use female and in the age range of the audience I

aim for, by using my friend who is 17, and my sister who is 19. I will give it a young vibe with

music that young females are in to, dressing the models in fashions that are on the high

street at the moment, and also keeping the colours vibrant so it doesn’t look dull and boring.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

The elements in my media work that would relate to my audience is the design of the

magazine, the models I use should hopefully attract the audience as they will be interested

in the same fashions ect as the models will be seen in. The colour pallet I use should also

Rebecca Chapman

hopefully attract them as I will be using bright vibrant colours like indigo, pink and blue with

black and white to make the colours stand out in a bold way. This should hopefully attract

the audience as young people seem to like bright colours and get interested by eye catching

designs. In my designs I am also hoping to include some good patterns behind texts like

bright flowers or some Aztec as from doing research I found that this is what many young

adults are into at the moment. So hopefully everything I include in it will interest the right

audience that I hope for. Assumptions that I have made about my audiences tastes and

interests are that they are interested in artists such as Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kanye

West and more, because these are the main artists of these genres so I assume that they will

be interested in these as I have included these artists in my contents page. I’ve also assumed

that the audience will be quite lively and confident in them, as the magazine is going to

bright, bold and stand out, so maybe reflect on the buyer as well.

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 progression

from it to the full product?

http://kksaudienceandinstitution.blogspot.com/2012/02/as-evaluation-questions.html