Feedback

Emma's feedback;
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLOGYxNTgxYmUtMGQ1Ny00MzBmLTkwZGItMjY1MDY5YTA5Mjlh&hl=en

Julia's feedback;
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLNmEwZThjMWYtOTIxYS00NTdiLTgzY2MtYjRmM2RmZGViZWNm&hl=en

Samantha's feedback:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLYzBjYTJmYTctMTNiYS00ZjFlLWFjYjItZGEzODJhYzI1OTli&hl=en

As you can see all of my feedback is from the same gender; female, this was because my target audience was girls aged 14+ this is also why all of my participants are older than 14, from my feedback I have seen that it is positive and that the majority go with it being legible to be sold in shops, mostly newsagents and other leading stores. The reason I did not create something more modern, for example a 'Facebook' page is because I felt that I would not get a bigger response as I did the process that I took, and also many young girls may be unable to access such sites for parental reasons, this was a safe way and they also was able to view the magazine personally.

Final Magazine

This is the link to my final piece, front cover.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLNWE3ZjZmMTktYTY2ZS00NmY4LTllOTYtMjVhNDdiOTdhY2Zj&hl=en

This is the link to my final piece, contents page.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLYzBjZGEzNDktMjI3YS00YjhmLTgwY2UtYWFmZjRhYWYyNmU4&hl=en

This is the link to my final piece, double page spread.
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLODVmNWFmNTItZWI2NC00YTBhLTkyNTgtOTU2NjMzMTAyMWJi&hl=en

Evaluation of my Finished Magazine.

In this section I am going to talk about my magazines and whether or not I feel it fits into certain groups, explain why I done particular things and so on.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My magazine is similar to that of various other magazines, in that it includes all the items that a normal magazine would. At the beginning of the year whilst working on our preliminary task, we learnt key words for certain parts of the magazine, for example a masthead, which is basically the title of the piece of work or in my case my magazine, 'Pop Star.' Another item I also included is to have one main image in the centre of the page, this image is a person, or in case people/band, but this image will have the person looking at the camera making eye contact, eye contact plays a big part in holding an audience's attention and also attracting them along with this I included bright colours and big fonts.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine had an audience of young adults/teenagers and was for the genre of pop, the images, fonts and formality of the text were all appropriate for my chosen genre and audience. My magazine suggests that the audience of my genre are young, trendy -up to date with fashion, and enjoy being young, partying and reading the latest news or gossip. These are a few of the images I used, for appeal.


What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The publishers that may be likely to publish my magazine would be EMAP, these are the same company that publish the likes of Smash Hits magazine http://www.emap.com/ this company is a very modern business, who appeal to the likes of, fashion, awards, and education but are also big magazine publishers. I would expect my magazine to be stocked and sold in shops such like, WH Smiths, Supermarkets and Newsagents, mainly places where they will be accompanied by other big selling magazines and will be seen to all.




Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience that I am targeting is the younger audience, I plan to aim it at the ages of people 14+, but I also plan to aim it at the gender of girls, I feel girls will be more interested in it than what a boy would be. The magazine that I am going to compare my magazine to is; Top of the Pops.I got this information from the Top of the Pops website, it shows that the majority of people that read their magazine are girls at 81% aged 11-15, this is the target audience I'd like to associate my magazine with but with a slightly older audience. Another source that I'm going to use to analyse Top of the Pops is http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html I visited their site and their results show that 139,000 people, that are 15-44 read the magazine, and of that 122,000 of them are woman.
Smash Hits magazine was a fortnightly magazine that had a huge target audience of young children "120,063 copies a fortnight were sold which was around 60,000 a week." http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4690000/newsid_4690200/4690232.stm
The socio-economic group for this genre of magazines what be people of B/C2 group, but the way the way that plan is set out is as household owners, so my statistics aren't very relevant for this, but predicting what type of background they come from this was the most relevant.The typical type of person who would buy my magazine would have to be into Pop/'RnB' music. They would be quite 'girlie' and be into pink. Their interests would be fashion, gossip, boys, social networking sites, texting, make-up and celebrities. They would spend their money on clothes, make-up, hair products, shoes, sweets, jewellery and music. The TV programmes they would be into would be Hollyoaks, Eastenders, X Factor and Friends. The kinds of activities that they would enjoy would be shopping, partying, swimming, dancing and art. Their favourite shops would be New Look, H&M, Superdrug and River Island. The artists and groups that they would be into would be people such as Girls Aloud, Beyonce, Jonas Brothers, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Katy Perry, Pink, Chris Brown and Kanye West. Though the person they would most admire would be someone like Cheryl Cole.













How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience by not only using, bright colours, lots of images, big fonts, interesting language but also making them appealing, for example, putting them into shapes, adding tiny images to go along with the writing, for example:

the reason I chose to do this was to fit with my target audience, most girls are quiet affectionate as every day people, so adding little emoticons like hearts would appeal to the girls much more and they would like that type of thing.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During my task of creating this magazine, I used a number of new technologies that I had never come across before until taking on this task, for example, I used InDesign to physically create my magazine, where every week I would change a certain aspect of my magazine, for example, colour, images, backgrounds just so that it looked perfect to me. The other programme that I used to help me create my magazine was Photoshop, I used this programme for particular adjustments to certain images I used, for example, changed contrast, brightness, cropping or in one of my cases i changed almost the whole picture. My original image did not match my required needs, by this I mean, the male in my picture was not looking in the camera and also the image itself was very dark, so using Photoshop I was able to adjust the positioning of his eyes and also the brightness of the background, at this time I was also able to adjust the background colour as our requirements were to have a white background. Here is an example of a change that I made:

From this image to:





The main change that is noticed between the two images is the brightness. The other change I made was the size, I didn't feel that the whole image was required for my piece of work, so I was able to use Photoshop to 'crop' my image to the size that I wanted for it.





To this image:




















Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I believe that from starting this task back in September knowing just basic skills and having to work fairly independently has enabled me to be able to learn new skills and new ideas on my own before having to ask for help or for ideas on certain ways of doing various tasks, for example using Photoshop to 'place' images into shapes, for example stars and circles. I also feel my use of language has improved in not only my evaluation but also within the articles, I think this is because as one of my courses at college is English and specifically the language, so I have a wider range of knowledge about certain words.

Here is a link to a PowerPoint that I produced to show my evaluation in a simpler form;
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4JGGRlHxlTLMTY5ODhmY2MtYTBmNy00MDI1LTg5ODItODQ5ZjliYTNkNWRi&hl=en

Planning and Evaluation of the article

These are two different double page spreads, one is more 0f a gossip article telling you the latest gossip and the other article is just for one particular thing, and focuses on one specific part, this is similar to what I have done in my article, I have followed the same idea as the article with the 3 boys, the reason I have done this is because I feel it's more focused and more interesting if you're interested in a particular band you may want to read about them. Although I think the gossip style is a good idea, it's not a chosen style I would do, but I would use it elsewhere in my magazine. The gossip magazine uses a lot of humour and is very informal, where as the article with the Boyband, is more serious as it is an interview and very factual, but can also contain some elements of humour, for example; odd images of the pussycat dolls that you'd never see them do naturally just out and about then the make a funny headline about that story which again I have also included in my article. The reason I have done this is because I wouldn't want my reader to become bored of what is being said , but is still fairly informal and very conversation like.

This is the draft of my double page spread, which I have changed quite a lot, for example the title of my band has stayed the same, but the sex has changed, so I changed the name of the band from from 'Blazin' Boys' to 'Blazin' Babes' the reason I have done this was because currently there are many bands that are boys but also girls, I felt at the moment girl bands are more successful than those boybands, the reason I think this is, is because female artists have a better image portrayed as oppose to male artists. This design is very basic and lacks a lot of eye catching material which I have included in my work, for example, the colour of my background, my text, images, fonts and other interesting details.

Photo editing.

These are the images I used for my final piece front cover, they are the same images, but the image on the bottom was my edited image. As you can see the image on the top is all wrong as the boy is not looking at the camera and also the lighting is very dull. So I used Adobe Photoshop to edit this image. I started by changing the brightness and contrast of the image, to make it more lighter, and also used the 'clone stamp tool' to make sure that all of the background was not only the same colour but also that it looked the same. I then went on to adjusting his eyes, he was not looking at the camera, so again I used the clone stamp tool and copied his eyes into another section to make sure he was looking at the camera, I then filled in the section where he was looking with an 'off white' colour paint.

These are two other images that I have not only used in my work, but have also edited. Again the image on the top is my original image but, I found it very dark, so using Adobe Photoshop, I changed the brightness and contrast of the image and also cropped the image, so it wasn't so filled and also certain parts weren't as needed and wouldn't of been seen in the next stage of their use. I then 'placed' this image into a star for my contents page and it was part of my back drop for my contents page and I have also used it as my main image in my double page spread.

Photos.

These are the pictures that I used in my magazine, I did not use all of them in my magazine, as not all of them were appropriate for the style of magazine and didn't really fit the purpose, for example, the sailor pose picture and the one where the gentleman is not looking at the camera were images I didn't use purely becuase the sailor one did not fit the purpose of my magazine, and I couldn't not use the other image for obvious purposes that he was not making eye contact with the reader, although I did use that same image to make my final piece image, i used photoshop to adjust a couple of things for example, his eyes and where he was looking and also the contrast and background as the original was very dark and dismal.
My other images, for example the prom image was used as part of my contents page to represent my double page spread, 'Blazin' Babes.' The final image of the young girl pulling a face, was used again in my contents page for the page '70 most embarrassing mugshots' I felt this image really fitted in well with that specific theme.

Flat plans - Double page spread

This is the design for my double page spread, this is more for the girls that will be reading it, it is going to be an interview/Question and answers with a popular boy band that all girls love, so I am writing a double page spread about them, my front cover will be an image of the main singer, then the band image will be seen on this, my double page spread. I am using the idea of having a coloured box around each question so it not only makes it clear where it is but also to show that it is the most important thing about it. I am using the idea of each band member answer the question with their own personal thoughts, I think this is a good idea so that the fans can have a bit more 'insight' into their private lives, a young girl would love the opportunity for this to happen. Also in my double page spread there will be chances for the fans to meet the band and win tickets to go see them on their tour live in concert.
The reason my magazine will appeal to young girls is that it's going to use a lot of stars and hearts and very friendly 'girly' shapes, also the colours, red, pinks, blues and as well as that the images, my images will be appropriate and the articles, they will be interesting and what the girls want to read for example, every girl loves to read the latest gossip on a certain band or artist and if this band is fresh from a break then they're going to want to know what they've been doing since having that break.

Flat plans - Contents page.

This is the design for my contents page, again I have taken ideas from various other magazines, that I feel will fit in with my genre. I have divided my contents page into sections, I felt this idea made things more clear and sectioned off, relevant reality with fun, spare time reading, which include games and word searches.I have again carried on my star theme onto my contents page, I have used it in my 'O' as it doesn't produce a big change towards the word. The colour scheme will again be, pinks, purples, light blues and whites, I will produce a white background with coloured fonts for the titles of each section, but I will be using black for all other text as I think this is the most appropriate colour that will draw in someones attention.

I have made the fans more involved in this article, so that the reader can see it has also got other involvement rather than just the interviewers questions, I have a section in which the fans can have their own question and answer.

Flat plans - Front cover

This is my design for my front cover of my magazine, my genre is pop, so I've made it fairly child like but also added a bit of a mature approach towards it. Young girls idolise older teenage girls, so my magazine will carry this theme, but nothing too over the top. I have taken ideas from various other pop magazines so that I can relate my magazine and also make it appealing to the audience. I am going to use a large image of one person that is, smiley, looking at the camera, so that it is not threatening towards the reader, my image will also be making eye contact so that it will draw the reader in.

My colour scheme will be, 'girlie' colours, for example, pinks, purples, whites and light blues, I will carry this colour scheme throughout the magazine itself.

The title of my magazine 'POP STAR' has its own personal theme to it, which again will be carried on throughout, this is the 'A' being produced as a star, this will not be the same letter in all cases. I chose this as my title because it is not only a relevant title, but is also going to be really eye-catching and friendly. My issue is going to have a theme and that them is going to be love, the reason I have chosen this is because it is going to be published around Valentine's day, so most things will be related to love, the first noticeable relevance seen will be the '200' I will be using hearts in place of my '0' and have all my cover stories related to love and relationships. I have filled the front cover up as much as I feel it will be needed without going too over the top and making it look like a children's magazine as oppose to a young adults. I have included bands/people I believe they will be interested in, the same kind of bands that are around now, plus obviously make belief people.

Fonts

For my magazine, the type of font I will be using, will be from a website called; http://www.dafont.com/ there is a variety of fonts on there so finding the correct one will be fairly easy as they are put into categories so there will only be a few that will be relevant for my style of magazine. A font that I feel would not be ideal for my style of magazine would be will be something under the heading of 'Techno' within this label of fonts their main theme is along the lines of blunt edge, digital text, here is an example of this

I think this style of font would be used as the title of a computer, or boys magazine. The style of font I am using comes under a category of cartoon, it's fairly child like, but fits with my genre perfectly, here is the text I will be using for my magazine;

Out of these 2 style fonts of 'Cheri' the one I am going to use is the first with the clear background, I prefer this one because it's more friendly with it's curved edges andletters close together, the one with the dark background I don't feel is as friendly as the edges are blunt and sharp and the letters are seperated so there's not really a 'together-ness' that makes the reader feel involved. I also felt that it was quite similar to that of the 'Camp Rock' title, quite curvy and not too blunt edged, which wouldn't make people look and think twice about buying it, it's very customer friendly.

Double Page Spread analysing

This double page spread contains a lot of images, the main image is of the Jonas Brothers, which takes up the whole of the whole of the second page. This could be viewed in many ways, the most obvious being that the thing that attracts most of their fans is their looks, alot of female fans follow them for their looks, so having a large image will make the girl more interested.

From the colours you can guess that this magazine is for girls with use of the pink, red, blue and yellow. It also indicates the target audience is towards girls because in the bottom right hand corner it has girls asking questions with images. The article asks the Jonas brothers various questions to do with them that the magazine thinks the reader would like to hear. The text is in black which makes it stand out, and the titles of the questions is in red which indicates that their important to read. The columns in this article are shown clearly and makes it easier to read, there are also various pictures around the columns showing the band at what they do best, music. It has a main picture of the Jonas brothers to show what the article is about.

Contents Page analysing

The contents plan I have chosen to analyse is from the girl magazine 'MIZZ'. The reason I chose to analyse this magazine is because, Top of the Pops do not use contents pages in their magazines. I felt MIZZ was the most relevant magazine after that, as it still talks about the same things that I am going to be talking about in my magazine. The colour scheme is more than that of a front cover, on the contents page there is around 8 different colours; black, red, green, pink, purple, dark green, orange and white. I think the use of different colours makes it a lot more interesting and more eye catching, I think these colours are used as it's more of a girls magazine. Within the contents page there is limited pictures but are all relevant to a girl for example; Zac Efron and fashion.

The contents list has been categorised into 6 groups. This makes the layout of the magazine look more organised and clear. For each subheading, they have used a contrast of coloured backgrounds with white writing to allow it to stand out.

There are images with page numbers on the corner of them. This convention is used to show the reader what will be included in the magazine, without giving much away. This will therefore cause the reader to be curious about what the image is about.

Analysis of existing magazines / Flat plans - Cover

First Analysing

Top of the pops magazine has inspired me the most; this is because I like the, layout, style, images and the fun of the magazine. I also like the age group that it’s based for, you can have a lot of fun with it. Top of the Pops magazine is monthly published. It features chart information, star gossip, fashion and beauty advice, quizzes, song lyrics and posters. It is an additional magazine for the TV show Top of the Pops. The magazine was launched in 1995 along with the show, which has now been cancelled however the magazine is still being published.

The main thing that stands out to me about this magazine is their colour scheme and fonts they've used, they've used 3 simple colours; white, pink and purple sparkle, this has made the presentation towards the page more eye catching and exciting, which I think works really well with their choice of fonts, they've used fonts that are quite free-flowing and elegant rather than bold and blunt, I think it works well with the target audience of young girls too, it's not so much a boys theme.

Their use of images works really well, they have a lot of images on their front page, but not loads so that it completely takes over and looks bad. Their main picture is most effective, Zac Efron is a big sex appeal to young girls so if they see him on the front cover of the magazine they'll want their parents to buy it for them, on the same subject, they use High School Musical as their theme so there is a bit of relevance to the other images too.

Another thing that stands out which is relevant to the age range, is the picture, the main thing that is seen when a magazine is picked up is the image as it is always the biggest part. The objects that make this picture stand out so much is the sparkles that cover the image. I think this is a really effective device to use. From the research that I done prior, the age range/gender of this magazine is 11-15 year old girls, so everything they have done/used has made the whole thing relevant towards them.

Second Analysing

I did not find the Smash Hits magazine quite as interesting or exciting as the Top of the Pops magazine, I think this is because it has a dull, ordinary colour scheme, it uses again 3 main colours, black, yellow and white, yet these aren't are interesting or as effective. I think this is because this magazine is more of a uni-sex magazine, it's not like Top of the Pops who is mainly targeted at girls, but has an equal interest from both genders. It's not 100% clear what the name of the magazine is because it is covered by the singer, but this could also be quite effective, it's effective because the magazine is a well known magazine that has been around for years that people will know what it is and would be able to tell by the style which magazine it is. The main thing that stands out is the phrase in the centre of the image reading; "SON OF DORK" I think this is only relevant if you know what they're talking about, to some people the word 'DORK' might just mean a rude offensive word, but to people of that generation and stereotypes that would be relevant and they may understand more.

I think the Top of the Pops magazine is presented a lot better than the Smash Hits magazine, to me it looks like Smash hits haven't really thought there design through, everything just seems so bold and blunt, where as with Top of the Pops they make it more smooth flowing and elegant.

Both magazines use strap lines in very different ways, Top of the Pops use theirs in a way which talks a little about each story, where as in the Smash Hits magazine they are simple with what they say, for example they just use the names of artists; Simon Webbe. Rihanna. They don't go into any detail about them at all.

Target Audience

http://www.bbcmagazinesadvertising.com/Magazines/Top_Of_The_Pops.html
The audience that I am targeting is the younger audience, I plan to aim it at the ages of people 14+, but I also plan to aim it at the gender of girls, I feel girls will be more interested in it than what a boy would be. The magazine that I am going to compare my magazine to is; Top of the Pops.
I got this information from the Top of the Pops website, it shows that the majority of people that read their magazine are girls at 81% aged 11-15, this is the target audience I'd like to associate my magazine with but with a slightly older audience.

Another source that I'm going to use to analyse Top of the Pops is http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html I visited their site and their results show that 139,000 people, that are 15-44 read the magazine, and of that 122,000 of them are woman.

Smash Hits magazine was a fortnightly magazine that had a huge target audience of young children "120,063 copies a fortnight were sold which was around 60,000 a week." http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4690000/newsid_4690200/4690232.stm

The socio-economic group for this genre of magazines what be people of B/C2 group, but the way the way that plan is set out is as household owners, so my statistics aren't very relevant for this, but predicting what type of background they come from this was the most relevant.

The typical type of person who would buy my magazine would have to be into Pop/'RnB' music. They would be quite 'girlie' and be into pink. Their interests would be fashion, gossip, boys, social networking sites, texting, make-up and celebrities. They would spend their money on clothes, make-up, hair products, shoes, sweets, jewellery and music. The TV programmes they would be into would be Hollyoaks, Eastenders, X Factor and Friends. The kinds of activities that they would enjoy would be shopping, partying, swimming, dancing and art. Their favourite shops would be New Look, H&M, Superdrug and River Island. The artists and groups that they would be into would be people such as Girls Aloud, Beyonce, Jonas Brothers, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Katy Perry, Pink, Chris Brown and Kanye West. Though the person they would most admire would be someone like Cheryl Cole.

Introduction of main task.

My main task is to create a music magazine. I have been asked to create the music magazine's; front cover, contents page and a double page spread. I was also asked to base my magazine on a type of music genre, there are a variety of music genres about but the genre that I have chosen to base my magazine on is Pop, the reason I have chosen this genre is because I feel the youth of today are more into Pop or 'RnB' music, so my plan is to make it interesting and valuable towards that generation.

Mock-up contents page

This is the mock up of my contents page, I designed this on Adobe InDesign CS2 then edited it on Adobe Photoshop to make it able to be in my evaluation. I got the idea of how I wanted it to look from another magazine and made a couple of changes as to how I wanted it to look.
I think the layout for it is really simple and would be easy to read plus there isn't too much going on that it would appear over the top and in-interesting.
I chose to use a capital letter with bold font for the start of every word of the masthead as I think personally, if I saw that on the contents page of a magazine, it would interest me so I think that appeals to most teenagers which is who my magazine target is for.

Complete Cover

This is my completed cover, I designed this on Adobe InDesign CS2, I made a sketch as to how I wanted it to look prior to designing it so everything was perfect. I kept the colour scheme to a minimum, using 4 different colours so not all the attention was bought to that. I then adjusted it on Adobe Photoshop, sto that I could put it into my evaluation. I am pleased with my completed version, as I thought it wasn't too 'over-whelming' it was basic but still eye catching.
I asked a fellow student if they would be interest and if it would interest them and all the feedback that I received was positive so I knew that it would approve to my target audience.
My colour choice were bright to appeal to my target audience, if the colours were dull, the whole theme to the magazine/genre to the magazine wouldn't be so 'effective.'

Flat Plans

These are the flat plans of my front cover and my contents page, I created these before I designed my final piece then adjusted it if I made any changes.
I got the idea for my contents page, from the contents page of the magazine 'REVEAL' I didn't want anything too over-powering for the contents, so I kept it fairly basic.
I also had the thought of my target audience in my head, I knew that them being the same age range as me, they wouldn't of wanted lots of information because they'd get bored easily, so I tried to keep it as basic and colourful as possible, without going to over the top. I tried to contain as many images as I felt needed, without making it look like a childrens magazine.

Photographs

These are the two pictures that I took for the main image on the front cover of my magazine. The image that I decided to use, was the image on the bottom, the reason I chose this image over the image on the top was because everything was wrong with the top image, the main noticeable problem was that the model was not looking straight on at the camera and another reason that this image was a bad image to use was because the lighting was really dark, both pictures were taken in the same place but the top image was not an ideal brightness. The reason that I chose the image on the bottom was because the lighting was just right and also the model was making eye contact with the reader, which automatically makes the reader feel engaged. The reason I also chose this picture was because it appealed to the target audience, one of my articles was pictures from freshers and a review of it, so I asked the model to pose in a 'Sailor' type way, which was relevant to one article.

Elisa Knight AS Media Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task I have been asked to create a magazine front cover using the software; Adobe InDesign CS2, this is also used by magazine artists. I have to use a picture of a person shoulders up as well as creating my own title for the magazine and also straplines and side colomns. The target audience for this magazine is for teenagers/students attending the college that are interested in the 'going on's' around the college, the age range specifically would be from 16-19 year olds.