EVALUATION

Qu1) - In what ways does your media

product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

I chose to call my magazine ‘SOUND’

because it is a short title and I also needed to make my font bold for my masthead because the main

image for my front cover is quite feminine and I don’t want my magazine to just appeal to woman, I want it to appeal to men too. So I made I tried to stop making

the front cover so feminine by making the font different and masculine. If I wanted my front cover to look very feminine I would have used the ‘Times New Roman’ font which is smart and chic, but in doing this I would be in danger of making my magazine look like

a fashion magazine, for example like Vogue whom also uses this font.

SOUND

For the front over of my magazine I wanted the model to be the entire focus, so I wanted no distractions in the background therefore I made sure my background was completely clear and white by hiring out my college photography studio. I chose simple lighting, trying to avoid creating any shadows on my models face because I wanted the face to be the main focus, and I achieved this by doing a close up shot (Similar to the RollingStone Magazine). In having an image like this, if I didn’t make the font around the image look masculine, my front cover would have looked like a fashion magazine, but in my research I found a few magazines with main images very similar to mine so as the RollingStone Magazine and Q Magazine of famous female artists like Florence and The Machine and Adele. Also to make my music genre more obvious to the audience I did more music magazine research into cover line of a genre similar to mine. So Q and RollingStone Magazine were a big influence to me again. My magazine front cover image does look very similar to magazines with the same genre as mine, partly because I used these magazines as inspiration, but also because this sort of images the average image you would see and associate with a mainstream/chart music magazine.

My image is only of my model, giving the impression she is an up and coming or already famous artist. So I think and wanted my audience to think my magazine is of mainstream/chart music because, from my audience research questionnaire, I was told mainstream music and music in the charts are most popular, mostly because it is easily found and accessible, played on radio stations such as Radio 1 and Capital.

My image was originally quite colourful; my model had turquoise eye shadow

on, but I wanted my models eyes to be a big main focus and the bright colour of the

turquoise took the ‘limelight’ away from her

eyes a bit, so I manipulated my image to make it a tiny bit grey with small hints of

colour still coming through. I also changed the colour of my models eyes to make them ‘pop’ ore by making them I light hazel colour.

After changing the colour of my image the turquoise eye shadow went a grey colour and I added the colour grey

into my colour scheme along with white and black.

I had no props for my front cover image, my models face was most important for

my image, so the makeup was very important. The image makes the artist

look innocent and new, and this is exactly what I wanted because she is supposed to be, “The New Heartbreak

Superstar”.

To make the genre of my magazine clear in my image I

made my model look like a “pop star”, someone who you could imagine being in the charts. I

didn’t make my artist look ‘individual’ to avoid confusion of

what genre my magazine is.

My model featured a lot in my magazine but festivals goers did too, because this magazine is aimed to

the. I think the images I used for my magazine are very appropriate for a

magazine genre such as mine because it really appeals to me and

my friends, whom are my target audience, and we love festivals and

chart music.

Straight away I knew how I wanted my masthead font to look like; I have already said that I needed it to look masculine because of my feminine

looking front cover image, so I needed the font for my masthead to be big and bold which I think worked well. But for the rest of my cover the font went

all feminine again! I didn’t mean to do in on purpose, I think I can’t help it because I am a girl, so if I could do it again I would be more disciplined on

making my front cover fonts look more masculine. But in saying that I think I did well on the contents page making the fonts look masculine but I go back to feminine again on my double page spread. I got my masthead font from dafont.com, it was called ‘Nova Solid’, and the rest of the fonts I used were easily accessed on either Photoshop or InDesign. For my masthead I print

screen the font from the website and cropped in in paint then, but using the lasso tool on Photoshop I was able to crop the font even, but this time really accurately leaving to white from the website behind. Font for a magazine, especially for the front cover of a magazine is very important because it is

the first thing the consumer looks at when deciding whether to buy the magazine or not, so I made my font smart and easy to read with no other

distractions of PLUS or EXTRA ruining the front cover. I am most proud of my contents page title, I originally did it by accident but I love how it’s my

models eyes colouring the word contents.

My front cover doesn’t have much text on it because I didn’t want it to

look chaotic and have too many other things distracting consumers from

looking at the image.

So my exclamation marks and slang comes out better in my Contents

page selling the magazine a bit more. The contents using ‘young’ language hopefully appealing more to young

people aged 16-25.

Chaotic Neat

For my front cover, I wanted my image to be the centre of attention and I made this happen by not putting much text on to the front cover avoiding the image to be ruined, I made the image of my model go on top of the masthead and I made sure no text covered my models face. For my contents page I wanted to balance it out a bit by making the text the main thing on the page but images do take a lot of the page up and also for my double page spread one page is solely for an image and the other one for text. I didn’t want to do loads of text though because personally I am not a big reader, I like to look at pictures, this may to be the same for other people but for the people I am aiming this magazine at are like me and prefer photos to text. I have made the genre very clear with the images I have used, a few of a famous artist and the rest of people at a festival. The front cover is not colourful but the contents page and the double page spread especially are much more colourful giving my magazine more of a fun, you and colourful vibe. I have followed conventions with my magazine because I know it is successful with the consumer and will look for like a real magazine.

Qu2)- How does your media product

represent particular social groups?

The magazine I have made is definitely a young people’s music

magazine. To make this clear I have only used pictures of young people throughout my magazine, from my

young artist/model on my front page to the festival goers on my contents

page covered in mud wearing colourful clothes and covered in

neon paint. This magazine is aimed to a social group of young people

who love music, having fun and are interested in new bands and artists.

I have represented them through the clothes the people wear in my

photos and the language I use which is simple, with no long words – not

that they won’t be able to understand them but because they

do not care for long words, they want it straight up and easy… just

like me.