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

media products?In my music magazine I have developed and challenged the forms and conventions of the media product by researching into different music magazine of the same genre in order to get some idea of how to create and design the layout of my own music magazine. I also challenged the forms and conventions by using the ideas of Q magazine, but represented, constructed and displayed in a different way. In general I used conventional methods in my music magazine in order to present my own work.

For example, in my front cover page and contents page I used ideas of Q magazine’s contents page to make my magazine look more conventional and to give it a more professional look. I used pictures on the

page to give the audiences an idea of what is inside the magazine. I placed the information on the left hand side because it looks conventional. For the front cover page I used a dark grey background with a bright picture of Valy instead of a bright background. Usually and most of the times some music magazines are using bright colours hence it attracts that kind of audience more because of the type of music that it represents.

In my music magazine, I have aimed to represent young and upcoming artists or a singer hence that’s why I featured a young upcoming singer, Valy in my magazine. In my contents

page I continued to use one of his other picture as well as some other pictures which will still interact the audience. I used a medium close up.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My double page spread again continues with couple of his images, the singer is posing on a medium shot but the pose is more serious. The fonts I used in my music magazine are meant to be simplistic and professional in order to help reach out to a wider audience. The colour scheme I chose and used in the magazine reflects my target audience, who are between age range of 20 to 45 years old both males and females, the use of red background of my logo and white font over it and also the yellow/green colour another colour is to help appeal to my targeted audiences and represent this particular social group which is B and C1 and C2.

My music magazine is more mainstream as it’s following the idea of many other music magazines such as its genre . I think the kind of distribution company that would distribute my music magazine would most arguably be IPC and Bauer.

I think this is mainly because of audiences the product is aimed at, and my music magazine would be best suited to IPC and Bauer as they distribute a wide range of music genre. The type of advertisements in my music magazine will be, popular clothing stores, popular venues, music channels, or popular venues. Therefore my magazine should be distributed to popular clothing stores, music venues and some bars and ofcourse it should be online as well.

As we all know the majority of the media products have more than one way to be distributed. The majority of music magazines have a website which makes it easier for audiences to go online and read the articles and stories that are printed in the magazine. The whole concept of having a website and the idea behind it is that it is more interactive way for audiences to be able to read all the stories and interviews.

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

I think having an official website for my music magazine is useful because it provides its readers with almost the same features as you would find it in the published magazine.  The website is online 24/7 and the users can go to the website and read the magazine anytime they want as the internet is a good way to distribute. Publishing my music magazine in this way is great because it attracts more audiences and readers. Obviously I would not publish all stories online as no one would buy the magazine.

The main reason why Bauer attracted me is the fact that they distribute Q magazine which is the closest style to my music magazine. Also from my questionnaire to find out about what type of magazines people like, Q music magazine came out on top as the favourite music magazine.

The target audience for my music magazine is people around the age range of 20-45. This age range was not compulsory as there were also certain other exceptions. However I thought that that the connotations of my music magazine would be most suited to people within this categorical zone. There are a lot of different music magazines that are specialized in one particular genre of music, such as Rock, Pop or rap whereas my music magazines focuses in all type of music including Pop, Hip-hop and more this is because of my music magazine’s audience who are young adults who aspire to be knowledgeable about music generally . The target audience for Q magazine are also the older generation such as people in their 30's and 40's who are sophisticated and just want to know more about the music instead of fashion or what to wearing.  

Who would be the audience for your media product?

In order to evaluate my magazine I asked about 10 of my friends who previously also studied media and were in the age range I am targeting to have a look in my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread and comment what things needs to be done in order to improve it or what improvements needs to be done so I could change it. I asked them questions like, are you able to recognize the genre of the music magazine just by looking to the front cover picture? Or have I used the right pictures for my magazine? And what they were thinking about the overall design and the layout of my music magazine. The responses were very positive, they suggest me to use the Font, “verdana” As it looks more professional and they also suggest me to use light colours because it attracts the targeted audiences attention as they walk pass by it.

I believe that the design, the colours and the fonts and the pictures, I used in this magazine attract people of this age range. The fact that the Pictures and the Language used in my music magazine is formal which suggests a rich culture which will really attract young adults who wish to be one day like one of them artist featuring in the magazine.

The picture I have used in my front cover music magazine attracts a lot of attention of its audiences. This because the reader of the magazine are mainly same age. Also is mainly due to the fonts I used and attractive colours I used which are red, white and yellow/green. These colours are both extremely bright, they are matching and when put together they contrast greatly therefore attracting a lot of attention from its audience. What also attracts attention is the medium shot of “Valy”, who’s posing very seriously and his strong eye contact with the readers.

The layout of my contents page attracts its audience mainly by the colours and types of font I used. The red, black and white contrast well against the white background, which also gives a professional look and attracts attention, Also the main image of "Valy", because of his look, attracts a lot of attention from the audience.

In my double page spread that mainly attracts attention of the audience is the medium shot image of Valy, and the heading. The image is high quality which takes up almost 90% of the left page. This instantly attracts the attention from the reader. The heading is in bold and a large size, and the font is unique different from other fonts I used in the magazine. This attracts

attention as it is not a standard font that people will recognize.

           How did you attract/address your audience?

I have learnt quite a lot of techniques while constructing and designing this music magazine. The technique that I think was one of the most useful techniques was changing the background of the image, which is a tool in Adobe Photoshop. This tool allowed me to highlight sections of images and delete the unwanted areas of the background.

Which allows you then to give any background for the image you want. I also learned how to give the image a professional look by going to “image” and choose “adjustments” and then “bright/contrast” where you can change the colour of the picture.

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

During creating my music magazine I also used a list of other technologies including a Digital Camera, for taking pictures, Adobe Photoshop, for editing pictures as I mentioned above, Internet Explorer for the research and blogger as well as slideshare for uploading my presentations. Microsoft Word Office , for typing the evaluation and finally Microsoft PowerPoint, for creating my presentations.

I believe that I have extremely progressed and improved from when I first made my preliminary products using the design programs such as Indesign and Photoshop. I think the main thing I have learnt with no doubt is planning. As Planning is the most important task that you must do in order to succeed in your project and making drafts. However In my preliminary exercise I did not do any

planning and did not create drafts that is why the final media product was not good as I wanted and expected to be. Finally, in this project I tried to make planning and created some drafts which makes it easy to finalize your product and have a successful media product and it also gives you some idea of how it is going to be look like.

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

From the Preliminary task, I have also learnt how to use professional technologies like Photoshop and InDesign to create professional media products. I carried some researches through different music magazines and have learnt that the audience is the main propeller when designing/creating a magazine- everything depends on the audience and the genre of the magazine. For the Preliminary task, I did not carry out as much research as I did for the main task.

The research was extremely helpful as I was able to refer to other music magazines for ideas on subject choices, images and colour scheme. I also noticed one thing between my Preliminary magazine and my Music magazine- that none of the images in my Preliminary magazine were edited in any way, except for the one used for the front cover which was only cropped the background.