EVALUATIONAS G321: By Daniel Jackson

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

My magazine conforms to most of the conventions of a

music magazine. My masthead is in bold font and can be recognised in the left

third. This is using the conventions of real media

products as many magazines, such as the ones

that influenced mine, have a strong masthead and also a main cover line across the

centre of the image, which I also have.

One thing in my magazine that is different to that of

magazines I‟ve seen, is that my double page spread has a coloured image one the

left and the main article on the right. Usually articles

take up both pages, and the photograph is usually

natural and shows something that shows

symbiosis between the star and the magazine.

Also, my contents page includes a main photograph in the middle whereas my

image is the whole background and creates a black canvas for the rest of the page. I found this useful as it was easier to find fonts and colours to match black

than it was the original pink.

Some magazines that mostly influenced my magazine were Rolling Stone, MOJO

magazine, We Love Pop, Q.

My main influence was Rolling Stone as it conformed

to nearly all of the media conventions and I wanted to emulate some of the visual things it included, and the

vibe it gives off, I wanted to use too.

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

Females are stereotypically perceived as more emotional, not as strong and maybe more passive – than males.

My main star, Monika, is featuring in my magazine to reveal stories from her

childhood, and showing off her bravery, courage and strength in getting to where

she is.

The age of my cover star is 21, and this shows that she‟s just becoming an adult in the big wide world alone. I thought this

would be effective as it is easily relatable to myself and members of my family and I felt more comfortable making an article and building a history of a person, after

one I already knew.

The additional stars in my magazine are Dutch duo „Mannequin‟ played by Jay and

Marianne. Their vibe inspired me to use them as my other artists, as they had a unique look,

that of two 17 year olds, that I wanted to portray in my magazine. As they are 1 male

and 1 female duo, it was easier to show a relationship between two genders in a music

sense, without bringing stereotypes into it.

Strong, independent woman, Monika.

Naïve, inquisitive Dutch duo, Mannequin.

I think Bauer distribution company would distribute my magazine. Firstly, because the kind of magazines they

already distribute have the same ethic and mission statement that I have for

my magazine.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

Q magazine is similar to my magazine, and in particular, Rolling Stone. Both magazines are two of the highest quality, highest bought magazines worldwide, available in over 100 countries and also take a different approach, such as that of

my magazine.

I feel that Bauer would distribute my media product as they only provide distribution for those products that are

guaranteed to sell well, they answer the audience‟s needs, and overall create a nice style to carry on the overall standard of

Bauer and other companies involved.

Women‟s lifestyle and fashion magazines also play a part in my media product as my music

magazine adds a feminine twist to most powerful music magazines and I took some ideas from

Grazia and InStyle to make my cover star give the vibe I wanted but in a rock music way similar

to Kerrang or Q.

Bauer distribute the world‟s biggest magazines and my magazine has the potential to be a big magazine as it

appeals to a mass audience.

http://magazines.bauermediaadvertising.com/

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

Before I started creating my magazine, I did research into my magazine and what the market was for

magazines such as those I had an idea for.

Bauer Media Company Distribute THE biggest magazines on the planet, and to get an idea of the

audience I should use, (as well as doing my survey to my target audience), I looked at the statistics for Q

magazine to see who their magazine appealed to mostly.

My survey involved questions which would

help me better understand my target

audience. I then manipulated the data into a graph, and then further manipulated it to make a mock-up of

the statistics table as seen on Bauer‟s website.

Now, I found that magazines similar to

mine had a good edge, more towards the rock side; and as my cover

star was a rock, unique looking female, it was

important that the personality of my star matched the type of

magazine. Now my target

audience is equally men and women, with the majority age range

being between 15 and 30.

When my ideas for my magazine were on paper, I decided that the magazine was gonna be a slightly carnivalesque, mainstream magazine,

but with reference to those who are keen singers. Not an instruction manual for aspiring singers, but just news about vocalists. My original title

was „Vocalist‟ and my original audience was (on average) 20 year old women who were interested in “real” music.

5. How did you address your audience?

I wanted to create a layout that

would be appealing to every certain

member of my target audience. I

wanted it to follow the conventions

of a normal magazine, but still be

unique in the way it is designed.

Initially, I opted for a

‘THIS COLOUR’ font with black and white contrasting around it to make that colour stand

out.

My predominantly female audience, would enjoy a colour that was feminine

but still was powerful and stood out. Also, the bold colour would be useful in

headings and the cover line.But after weeks of creating my media product, I decided that a classic blood

red would be better as it contrasts against the black and white easier, and

also red is a neuter colour and also matches the colour of Monika‟s lipstick.

I made the decision to stray away from using „exclusives‟

on the main pages of my magazine, as on the ones I used for inspiration, often they distracted from the

ethos of the magazine and sometimes ruined the reading

experience. I decided to include just an image of

Monika‟s new album, and with a PUG, say that it was

„out now‟.

I wanted the language in my magazine to be quite

sophisticated, and give off a vibe that you‟re reading a more intelligent magazine

than the others on the rack. I wanted the reader to

understand what‟s going on in the articles by using good vocabulary and an easy to

read font and font size.

My masthead was something that I found quite difficult to create. Firstly,

as I changed my magazine‟s title, I had to remake the masthead to fit

my media product. The name „Shadow‟ came to me when I had evaluated my photography and

found that my photos had shadows and although some photographers see that as a bad thing, I wanted to emphasise that it was like seeing the dark behind someone now they‟re in

the light.

The „attitude‟ of my magazine was quite a casual one. I wanted to

create a media product that had a certain je ne sais quoi. The certain

„edge‟ that a raw rock magazine has, but with a vulnerable, innocent slant

to it that gave off a young, charismatic effect and I think that

the photography, the masthead, the language and the colours help it

achieve this.

The pictures to me are the key component of a magazine. They are often the first thing you see, and the thing they remember most.

People always say: “Did you see --- in that magazine?”

The photography was VITAL to me. Vital to make sure I got all photography perfect, VITAL to me that I made sure I had enough photos to show and also VITAL to make sure the ones that I had

chosen worked.

hotographyIt took me over 4 attempts to make sure that I got the

right photographs. On a weekend, I took about 130 photographs on my digital

camera and iPhone and narrowed them down to

the top 20 best ones.

I set up my sister's house to be quite bright and well-lit, and the sun shone through creating shadows in the right places.

Blocking of objects around her will be unique, stylish and very chic. (Sorry about the radiator)

In her bedroom, the neutral coloured wall created a serene backdrop and contrasted her black hair and tattoos in a sensual, dramatic way.

The lighting played a huge part in this, as there was no professional lighting, the sun and artificial lighting were needed to create a good sense of shadowing and effect on

the mood of my sister and the photographs.

It was my first time directing someone in a kind of photoshoot and it was difficult finding the right costume, hair and makeup to suit the image I

wanted to portray as my sister, (cover-star Monika) had real tattoos and a great dramatic vibe that I

wanted to put across to match the personality of my magazine.

Overall, I think that my photography has helped show the style of magazine that I wanted to produce.

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

Software What I used it for? Strengths Weaknesses

Microsoft Word •To type up my evaluations and my posts ready to put onto my blog.

•I am used to it and was able to use every function successfully.

•Some things like moving text boxesand fonts can be quite fiddly.

Paint I used it to edit some photos, e.g. colouring in edges or cropping etc.

•It’s very easy to use, and easy to find what you want to do. It can be tricky but finding the right colours etc. is easy.

•The image blurs when you make it smaller or bigger and there’s not a lot you can do on just Paint.

Paint.Net I used to put my image in front of mymasthead and also add layers to images.

• It was the only software available which was easy enough o put the image in front of my masthead.

•I don’t like Paint.Net, it’s too simple looking yet too complex to use. I did’nt have time to understand it all so I used my initiative and moved on.

PagePlus To make the template for my magazine and keep uploading images and layouts to make my magazine. The ultimate product was created on here.

•It was easy to see how your magazine will look as it has zoom settings. Also it was easy to navigate around and also the resolution was high.

•It can be quite complex when adding certain effects or more than one photo. The CutOut studio was tricky to use as it took more out than you wanted.

Picasa I used Picasa3 to edit my photography, with filters and effects and also to rotate or flip it to make it fit.

•Navigation: as I have used it to edit photos at home, it was easy to just plug in my camera and start editing.

• It can sometimes reduce quality and sometimes choosing more than one effect can make the editing panel more complex to undo certain things.

MicrosoftPowerPoint

I used this to write out my evaluation and ensure all the key components of my magazine concept were thoroughly explained.

•As I have used Microsoft Officesince primary school, it was easy to navigate, and using 2010 was even better. It was easy to crop images and lay out text boxes, images made to suit the way I wanted my slides to look.

•As there’s a word limit to my evaluation, I had to make sure that not all my writing was in small font, which meant constantly changing it, instead of setting a font for each slide.

8. BloggerI found Blogger to be quite handy for certain things over the course of creating my magazine. One thing I liked in particular was that you could edit a post and add more to it if you felt it needed it.

Also, you could label posts after drafting and planning, organisation, production or research which meant that posts were easy to find if you wanted to make sure you had done a sufficient amount of each.

Blogger on occasion, had its weaknesses. Sometimes, I would find it hard to upload certain posts as the work was either on computers at school, or at home etc. and therefore time management was affected.Also, labelling certain posts as „drafting & planning‟ etc. could be difficult if your work didn‟t necessarily fit into one of the categories.

Using a blog to upload the work seemed a pretty good idea at first, as it could be accessed from at home or at school, and due to modern technology, it was easier and quicker to complete work and upload posts whenever you needed to.

In hindsight, I think I would‟ve preferred a tangible folder of work, as work could be shown in chronological order and just put in by hand and taken out and altered whenever needed. Although Blogger can do this too, it‟s always much better to see a piece of work in your hand, that you have completed.

Although Blogger was quite easy to use, I think I would‟ve preferred a portfolio that I could hand in at the end, split into certain areas for drafting and planning, organisation and ultimately, the final piece.

http://danieljacksonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/

9. Management of the 3 elements.

Making the front page was hard as I needed to make sure I had the key

elements of a conventional music

magazine cover, and also make sure that I

didn‟t stray away from the ethos of the

magazine too much when adding my own

things.Overall though, I feel that I managed my

front page very well and it‟s my favourite of the 3

productions.

Producing the contents page was the hardest of the 3 I think, as not only has this page got to be clear for the reader to navigate around the magazine but it also

needs to appeal to the reader so they would

want to carry on. It was difficult for me to follow a

conventional contents page as I didn‟t want my page numbers in a pane

on the left but I wanted a main photo in the middle with text around it and I

feel that this helped create the edge I was

looking for.

Originally, I thought that the double page spread was going to be the most fun to make as it was the

largest of the three, and also the most visual. The thing I found difficult was

the freedom you had in deciding what went where. As on a cover page you have conventions to

conform to, whereas here, you could put the article wherever you want,

lay it around the photograph, change the colours, make the font huge –anything you wanted to do was available to create. But, whilst

creating my DPS, I found that it was much difficult than planned and the

management therefore was difficult. I couldn‟t make quick decision on

where to put my interview/article. I couldn‟t decide on the design. The whole DPS made me question the

colour scheme of my entire magazine and overall became more of a

struggle managing it and creating it than I had originally thought.

10. What do I think I have learnt from the progression between my preliminary task, to now?

In the preliminary task, I used basic photography which didn‟t really give any personality to the magazine cover. The photograph didn‟t portray any kind of message to the magazine, and although the cover line I still feel is great, I think that my additional cover lines and masthead could do with a lot of improvement.

The contents page of my preliminary task is atrocious compared to the standard I am at now. The bright carnivalesque colour scheme didn‟t appeal to any audience, and research into my audience with my music magazine helped me overcome those problems.

I feel that with my magazine now, I have not only improved the visual aspect of the magazine, i.e. its colour, the layout, the design – but also the understanding and the planning and the thought process too.

The thought process behind my preliminary task was non-existent. At the time, I thought that as long as it had a mast head and cover lines and a few photos it would look OK, but the huge leap from then, to now, shows a completely new transformation of my media skills, and shows my understanding of the conventions of a magazine, the management of the elements in a magazine, and basically just an improvement in knowing what a high quality music magazine should look like.

OVERALL EVAULATIONOverall, I am really happy with my final product as it has shown that over a period of time, I can

make a high quality product using basic software, basic photography, just by using my knowledge of media studies, and the codes and conventions of a magazine and the facilities available to me.

It gives me great pleasure in looking at my final product because although there are certain things that are not completed, it shows a great understanding a working media product and also the leap I

have made from a basic preliminary task, to an outstanding final product I have now.

I have overcome some difficulties along the way and proved that I have made a great leap in my studies and know that I can focus on making a completed product that I can be show off and be

proud of.I feel that my magazine fits the brief very well, as I have shown a great improvement from my

preliminary task, and also shown that I can improve my work from criticisms and drafting. Also, I have used adequate organisation skills to show my completed work via the use of a blog; and I have used several software facilities to help create my finished media product – to show my understanding of a

modern, live, working media production concept.

By Daniel Jackson