Evaluation part 7

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

Here you can see my final product compared to my first prelim task I completed in September. There is a cleat difference in the quality of the two pieces and I am extremely proud of the improvement I have made.

Obviously, I feel that the most important things
that I have learnt during the process is how to use the technology I used to their best of my ability in order to achieve the final look of my product. On my prelim task I had little experience with the software I used and I feel that comes across in my school magazine cover. I used pages to create my prelim magazine cover and when it came to create my final music magazine cover I choose to steer aware from using this software as I didn't think it was suitable and didn't have the capability to create the look I wanted to go for. I instead opted for Pixlr, and I initially had  trouble using it but after I got the hang of it it seemed the best software I could of used. Overall, I think that by learning to use different technology and playing around with different software to use really abled me to complete my final product to the best of my ability.

Another major thing which I have learnt during the process of creating my prelim and final task was general skills that I needed to use. As you can see, compared to my prelim task I use much more complex features in my final task in order to create the orofessional look I aimed for. I learnt how to use more adventurous fonts in order to match my genre as well as learning to overall make a better looking magazine cover by choices of images and style.

Leading on from this, I learned that research is crucial when trying to create a media product. For my school magazine cover I did barely any research into the construction and ideas behind the over all look of professional magazines whereas when completingmy final task I did a lot of research in depth. By researching everything from my already existing music magazines to magazines publishers really helped me to understand the reasonings behind the conventions of a magazine.

Prezi! This has played a major part in the process of my coursework and has been one of the most helpful things I have learned. It is a fantastic piece of software and has really helped me complete my coursework to a higher standard. At the beginning of the course i had never used prezi but I began to use it and after a few attempts I feel that I had mastered the skill. This also helped me learn that there are different ways of presenting things and doesn't have to be the standard typed essay.

As a result of the deadline I really had to be time conscious and learn how to manage my time effectively so I could get everything done. As part of my time management I had to learn to plan what I would do next in ordr yo allow me to complete everything In good time.

The research was a lot different to what I'd done before as well as we were doing it a lot more in depth so this was something new we had to learn. Other things I did in more depth were thinking throughly about our photos and creation of our products. For instance i thought about and planned where i would be taking our photos rather than just taking them randomly. I also had to pay attention to smaller details when creating, an example being a barcode on the cover which is something you wouldn't typically think about.

Overall, I am very pleased with the skills I have learnt through the duration of this course and believe that they have abled me to complete my final piece to the standard I did.

Evaluation 5

evaluation 6

what have you learnt about technologies in the process of creating this product?

the main technology i used when creating my magazine was an apple laptop (home) and a standard laptop  (school). on these, it enabled me to use very good software such as iMovie, pixlr and safari and prezi. however, although the software i used was 
  i was very new to how they all worked so i intact took a lot of time trying to figure out how to use them. For example, i was new to prezi and had to google how to get a prezi to appear in a blog post. 

the main software i use to complete my media product was pixlr. it was the first time i have used this software so it was bait confusing at first but once i had figured it out it was extremely useful and abled me to create my magazine pieces to the highest capability i could. after having to fiddle around working out what to do, it has taught me that as long as you understand the technology it can do whatever you want and prove extremely helpful.

the camera i used to take my photos was actually on my own iPhone 5. as you will know, this is a phone so unsurprisingly does not have the ability to create clear and focused photos as well as a top notch camera would be able to. saying this, i found my photos did come
out reasonable well. however, an iPhone camera is not very good at focusing on moving pictures so when i wanted to take a picture of the model spinning or running it was very difficult to get a clear image. despite this, i managed to achieve pictures that i thought would work really successfully. 

to conclude, i have learnt a lot during the process of creating my music magazine about technology by having to over come some very stressful issues. 

Evaluation part 3

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

After researching extensively through the many different magazine publishers like Bauer, IPC and volcano publishing. It proved very hard when trying to choose one which I would have publishing my magazine as they each had a strong appealing factors. I found that Bauer publishes 'Q'- a very successful music magazine but also that IPC publishes NME- another successful music magazine which focus' on alternative and indie music the same as my magazine which was the deciding factor.

why IPC?


As I said, IPC publishes NME who promote to a similar audience as my magazine. This means IPC would already have experience in the kind of promotion and distribution I'd need. IPC has also stretch NME across a variety of other media forms with a TV channel and website, this is something I would hope might be a possibility if my magazine gathered the right fan base. This is a good idea as well because indie music listeners and specifically my target market are frequent users of different technologies.
IPC is also a UK based media institution which would be helpful for my magazine as I don't think it would have a big enough following to be took abroad because of the newness of the indie genre.


the correct decision?


To check this was the right decision I revisited earlier research from www.nrs.co.uk that looked at readership figures for NME, this confirmed that IPC could grab the readers as NME had an astonishing  253,000 buyers between October 2010 and September 2011, this reinforced my earlier decision as it made me realise that even though they do have a lot of readers for their existing magazines they still had a gap for mine.


who would stock my magazine?


I would want quite a well known retailer to stock my magazine. i would try to get it into somewhere like WHSmith or even HMV as they stock similar products. Also as my product is more 'mainstream' it would fit in more there than somewhere less known. Adding to this, HMV obviously attract a lot of music lovers which would help secure a 'fan base' immediately. 

Evaluation part 4

who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience I have aimed my product at are the older teenager age to 30's. This is because my genre of music that I have based my music magazine on has its own social group: indie. 

Although this meant I almost had guidelines to follow to make sure I kept the conventions of this genre. It also meant I had to be not only creative, but careful when straying from conventions to create new trends to not stray too far from the obvious themes. 

  

It has different aspects that will appeal to both men, and women. For example, subjects of the front cover photo, the young girl, will appeal to men because she is attractive but also woman as they will aspire to look like her. Also, the colour scheme doesn't limit me to one particular gender either as they are all multi-sex colours. The sell lines will also appeal to men and women because they aren't all just about "hot guys" or "sports news" or ''girls'' or ''dancing''. Another reason I have made sure that my magazine doesn't just target one single gender is because the social group of indie people tend to not stick to just sex friendship groups but often have it half female, half male by researching. 

In terms of class and whom my magazine would be aimed at, it would be mainly the middle class (C1-E). This is because the people in my social group are mainly in this class. Also, I don't think a lot of the things included in my magazine would be relevant or interesting for people from different classes. This is reinforced by the price as i had to make sure that it was affordable for the amount of income they have.

The lifestyle of the audience my magazine would have would be quite laid back with interests and hobbies including things such as art and photography. Earlier in my research I did a questionnaire to see what sort of things people expected from an indie pop magazine, and one of the questions was: 

'What do you expect of a indie pop fan?' 

and the four main answers that came back was; 

• laid back
• individual
• artsy
• fun

I tried to make sure that I maintained these stereotypes throughout the magazine, some more subtly than others, but still maintaining the identity of the genre. 

Evaluation part 2

Evaluation part 1

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

Immedietly by looking at my magazine pieces they do fit well into the conventional idea of music magazines. I tried to aim for a more conventional look as when I did a survey on what my target audience wanted they suggested something 'similar' to magazines already available on the market and a sense of a house style which is familiar. 

However, when looking deeper into my products I did realise that I challenge the forms and conventions of media products firstly by my main image. Although I think the image works well with my overall look of my magazine it doesn't necessarily conform with the generic style of images as it is not a simple front facing mid shot so it in some way does present a challenge to an extent.

Adding to this, I personally think my contents page challenges the conventional look of a music magazine when comparing them to magazines such as Q and NME. I decided to make a whole image the background with simplistic features including the font used. Although this is not conventional of a stereotypical contents page I think it does work successfully and gives a more relaxed feel. I wanted to keep the over all look of my magazine very simplistic and simple as the indie industry mirrors this so although I did challenge the generic forms I think it still worked successfully and help give more depth to the genre.

My double page doesn't not challenge the 'normal' conventions of a professional one as I thought it was important to not go over board with originality as as I said earlier my audience preferred a familiar feeling product. I used columns within my article as well as the layout of having a picture of one side and the article on another which is in almost all magazine double page spreads.

To conclude, my media product did challenge the stereotypical forms of music magazines but without going over the top and loosing the overall look of a magazine.