1. AS Media Studies. Hannah Taylor.

2. 1) In what ways does your media productuse, develop or challenge forms and conventions ofreal media products?My media product follows several music conventions, it shows clearly that it is a musicmagazine with the colours, images and fonts; it has an image on the front like all musicmagazines which is placed in the centre. It uses a range of colours incorporated into thefront page, contents and double page spread. The images and colours are eye-catching todraw the audience in and grab their attention to look at the magazine. I have used asimilar layout as other magazines such as Kerrang! and Q. To do this I followed their routeof the eye, the masthead being the first thing seen across the top of the page from left toright, to from the upper right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner across theimage, cover story and possible cover lines that are there; before finally across to thebottom right hand corner to read the price.I found that from my research into similar and existing products, there is a certain uniquehouse-style font for the masthead and other fonts on the page, so that its easier for themagazine to be recognised, also that there is a colour scheme to follow the genre. A rockmagazine is made up from dark images, funky but easy to read fonts on the backgrounds.I assured that on my magazine, there was a house-style and unique font that will be easilyrecognised and that the text was easy to read on the images, to do this I usedblack, red, blue and white colours on my text.Also from my research, I looked at how the images are portrayed, how the colours, clothing, lighting and props are used to follow the convention of rock magazines. I had the artist holding a guitar and the lighting quite dark to suit the magazine, the artist was wearing rock style clothing to incorporate into the image. 3. Kerrang!My magazine.magazine. 4. 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?My media product represents people who enjoy reading a stylish music genre magazine which has a mixed range of genres from rock to metal and others. The mixed genre means that different social groups can interact and join in with the magazine. It doesnt just mean that only 13-18 year olds from one social group can enjoy the magazine, it means that people of any age and any social group can. In my images, I looked at clothes that 13-18 year olds wear (that are interested in rock + Kerrang!) and incorporated the colours and styles into my own magazine. The props I used was a guitar to stick to the media convention of rock, from asking my target audience what they thought of when I said rock. 5. 3)What kind of media institution might distributeyour media product and why?A media institution that could possibly distribute my media product is apopular media institution or even a educational institution. A possiblecompany would be Bauer Media, it is Europes largest private ownedpublishing group and it is a worldwide media company that offers over300 magazines in 15 countries. The company revolves around two maindivisions; Magazine and Radio, Bauer Media currently publish magazineslike Kerrang!, which is a magazine that publishes music such asrock, pop and metal; Kerrang! has 29 years of heritage and is the biggestmusic weekly in the world. I found from researching into Kerrang! thathaving the masthead over the top of the page in a bold and unique fontwill make it stand out more, no matter what the image or the rest of thetext on the page is.My magazine is rock and also follows the same conventions as Kerrang!The layouts of both magazines are similar, the masthead is across thetop, one main image in the centre that fills the page and also fills thehotspots to draw the attention to the image, the cover lines placed on theside of the image and the cover story over the image. Then lastly, in thebottom right hand corner (the terminal area), theres the price of themagazine and the barcode, for the audience to read last. 6. Bauer Media group is a large publishing group based in Germany. They are a private company, that was founded in 1875. Bauer Media is a sister company of H Bauer Publishing, publisher of the UKs biggest TV listings, Take a Break and Bella. Bauer employs over 6,400 people. Bauer produces Kerrang! MOJO and Q music magazines.Kerrang onBauers website.http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands/Kerrang/ 7. 4)Who would be the audience for your media product? 5)How did you attract/address your audience?To attract my target audience, I did research into existingproducts to discover how they used images, fonts, coloursand text to attract their audience. To make sure I appealed tothe target audience I was aiming for, which was teenagersaged 13-18, I submitted a questionnaire to those of that ageto find out what they preferred on my chosen genre, Rock. Imade sure that I followed what my target audience wanted soI could appeal to them as best I could and attract them to themagazine.I looked into Kerrang! magazine and found out that Kerrang!readers are the heaviest music consumers purchasing over 6albums per month on average (53% more than the nationalaverage) and 8 times more likely to spend over 200 a yearon albums. the readers are also 5.5 times more likely toattend a rock gig, the gender ratio for the magazine is 38.1%female and 61.9% male. Kerrang! is a multi-media platformwith magazine, online, radio and TV. 67.3% of Kerrang!readers are aged from 15-24. 8. From the questionnaire I put out to my target audience, 14 were male and 10 were female.Male.Female.I put out a questionnaire to find out what they liked to see within themagazine, I wanted to know how often they would want to purchase themagazine; once a month. I also asked if they liked having one mainimage on the front cover, a range of fonts plus opportunities to win gigtickets, band merchandise etc. within the magazine; yes, one mainimage is suited for a front cover as well as a different range of fonts fordifferent cover lines and finally lots of opportunities for the readers toget involved.The target audience for my magazine is teenagers, aged 13-18, it isaimed at both male and females. I have aimed my magazine at peoplewho are interested and/or involved with Rock music, but there is apossibility that people who listen to a range of genres would buy thismagazine. 9. 6)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?I have learnt that there are several ways to edit animage, e.g. adjusting the size, brightness, colouring etc.Technology wise, I mainly used a computer to create mymagazine. I used Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 tocreate the text and fonts (some fonts are fromwww.dafont.com, e.g. Masthead, Cover-story and cover-lines) and to piece together the magazine. To edit myimages, I usedWindows Live Photo Gallery to adjust thelight exposure on the image. (see image)The unedited image was too dark so I hadto adjust it to make it lighter. 10. Before.After. 11. The internet was my main source for my work, I usedwww.google.com/images to find the images of similar andexisting products. I used www.surveymonkey.com to conductmy surveys. And most importantly, I had to present all of my work, the research, drafts and final products www.blogger.com. This website is extremely useful and is easy to use. It made it simple for me up upload and edit work. It also let me receive feedback to improve my work to make it the best that I can. I could easily access what I wanted to view or change and remove. 12. 7)Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?From my preliminary task, I feel like I have understood how a magazine is put together, how images, colours, fonts and text are used to appeal to the correct target audience. I understand how the layout of the magazine has to be to attract the audience the best, using the route of the eye and the principle of thirds. I found that I had to make mistakes to understand how to correct them and how to make the good final product.I learned that to make the magazine have an impact on the target audience, I needed to look at how the fonts, colours and text tie together to suit the genre. I also learned that to really attract to the target audience, you need to understand what they want, what they prefer, what they like seeing and what they like to read. 13. Final Music magazine cover. Preliminary task.From looking at my preliminary task(left) and my final music magazinecover(right), I can certainly say that the genre changes how theimages, fonts, text and colours are portrayed onto the magazine. Though theconventions used on both magazines are still followed and used well enoughto know what it is about.