Tuesday 13 May 2014

Question 7- Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I’ve learnt in the progression of it?


I feel as if I have expanded my knowledge of production of media products, magazines in particular, I have learnt about target audiences and what conventions should be used to engage that audience and draw in a selective group of people, I have continued to broaden my skills when developing a magazine using software I had never used before and am now confident in using the software to manipulate a product so it looks a certain way and looks the way I want it. I have l gain knowledge of layouts and visual syntax of media products. I have been able to produce various pages that look much more professional than my original attempts; I have achieved this through learning about the following:
·         Visual syntax
·         Page material/ furniture
·         Photo editing
·         Camera angles
·         Creating a prominent house style
·         Conventions of a music magazine
·         Connotation/ denotation
·         Fireworks Software + tools
By learning about tools that are available through fireworks, I was able to create a product that looked professional and would stand out, I was able to see a gap in the music magazine market and create a magazine that presented a certain genre in my own individual way.
When taking photographs and editing them I leant about what angles, the rule of 3rds and also what background and lighting I should be using to get the best result. On one occasion I had to retake photos in a different place and also with better lighting to get a better quality of images to use on my product, I also manipulated the photos to get an effect and a certain style or look to the finished photograph.
With my music magazine I was able to get a clear house style by using the same colour and text throughout made it look professional and look like it would be able to sold as a marketable product. I also had to choose the right fonts for my audience of my music magazine and stick with them, before when making my front cover and contents for my school magazine I didn’t stick with the same fonts or colours so it looked unprofessional, whereas I used the same fonts throughout when making my music magazine. Even though I used sans serif fonts throughout it didn’t make the product look unprofessional just more casual.

The colours were also vitally important, I needed to create a good coo, casual house style that fitted in and appealed to my audiences I kept the colours throughout. During this project I have had to learn about a lot of different ways and techniques to address and target a specific audience, and how to fulfil their needs both when looking at information that is required and aesthetically, through the use of media conventions. As you can tell from looking at both of my media products I have vastly expanded my knowledge of using media software and learnt about the conventions of media products. I think it is showed throughout my work that my understanding of media products has widened dramatically as I am now able to produce a professional marketable product. 

Question 6- What have I learnt about technologies when creating my product?

Monday 7 April 2014

Question 4- what is your ideal reader?

My magazine audience- perfect reader C1-C2 (primary) -D (secondary or smaller percentage of Audience)... more info below
Age Range- 18-30 (primary) Drop in audience may be higher or lower, people read magazines, mothers, fathers, brothers sister or friends may pick it up and have a read for example. 
Job title- Anywhere from manual labouring (C2) where they are able to listen to music a lot of the radio for example and earn a good wage, or an office worker in the C1 category, all my readers will have one thing in common, the same affection for the same types, genres, and style of music that I would right about, have interviews with the bands that create that type of music and promote events for in my product. Hard workers that love the weekends where they can go out after a hard week of work and go to the pub, gigs or other music events with friends and have a few beers, dress in designer clothing, or branded clothing that their favourite bands dress in for example – Pretty green, Liam Gallagher’s own brand, or dress in the style of their favourite bands. People who dress in the same style as ‘Britpop’ artists are smart/ casual, they typically wear navy or black jeans, smart shirts or t shirts, branded clothing including; pretty green, stone island, fred perry, adidas, lyle and scott, lacoste, ralph lauren. Its not just the brands my audience care about the style of jacket, hat, jeans, trainers etc are also important to them.


This image shows the most well known Britpop band oasis, as you can see haircut, style of jacket (large over shirts, leather jackets, the style of haircut, the style of sunglasses) this is what my target audience would aspire to look like in some way. My target audience would be very interested in the latest music being produced by there favorite bands, even though oasis are no longer together, fans of these bands would most likely be fans of 'Beady eye' and
'Noel Gallagher High flying Birds'.
Clothing and how they present themselves aesthetically would be very important to them, so my main target audience would be from the C1-C2 category where they have a salary where they are comfortable and spend money on more expensive clothing as some of the brands i have named above are quite expensive, but others not so much. People who are towards the higher scale of C1 would probably buy brands that they see their idols where, they would buy similar style clothing but that were more expensive. For C1's for example office workers, or managers of companies, would be hard workers and get all the work they needed to do, but when they get the chance, or when the weekend comes, they would be down the pub, playing football, or getting themselves to the shops to spend there money on clothes on pay day. For younger aged fans that are 18-20 i would expect most to have a job full time or part-time, possibly still be in education studying, but with the money that they earn i would expect most to spend money on clothing, going out with friends, and going to see, they are more than likely going to have parents/ guardians that provide for them comfortably.
One thing all my readers would have one thing in common- a love and appreciation for band music, and people with real musical talent, bands that pick up instruments and put on live shows. I would expect most of my readers to either be at university (so living in an apartment with friends or living in dorms, if still at college or working (18-20) I would be expecting them to be living with there parents/guardians in a, detached, semi detached, or terrace houses as Britpop during the early years reached out to people from all different backgrounds and wealth.
Some of my target audience would spend money on musical instruments and everyone of them would spend money on downloading/ buying CD's/ singles to listen to music.

Examples Britpop Style-
 
  
 

Female readers- Female readers are more likely to have different styles and not one particular way of dressing, i think that female readers would be interested in my music magazine because of the band members and what they look like aesthetically.  One of the reasons female readers would pick this magazine is because of the way it is set out and the way the band members portray themselves in photographs.

My target audience would have a lot of values in life, predominantly music, spending time with friends and family and how they present themselves to people. Some would play musical instruments and would want to advance at this, some may be in to cars, for example some would want to drive cars such as classic mini's whereas others would drive cars that were more modern (2002 onward)  such as a a vauxhall corsa, mini cooper, Audi's A3, some may not even drive as i would expect some to be at school, uni, i also think that some of my readers would be more interested in fashion and spending money on going out and having fun instead of cars for example. 
Technology-
I would expect most of my target audience and readers to have the latest phones, use music apps on them, and read up on musical development. For the consumers that play musical instruments themselves, they would have nice guitars, drum kits, bass's for example and would experiment using musical technology to create different sounds for example, using different distortions, or sound pedals to produce different types of sounds.
Many of my readers would own Ipods, phones or mp3 devices where music can be played off via headphones, speakers, radio or even in cars for example as most of my consumers that drive would listen to music when driving. Some of my consumers would use technology on laptops and phone such as spotify, and possible soundcloud to listen to music as they are free (can pay for spotify- premium) they are also easy to use and allow you to listen to a mass of different artists and playlists. I think my consumers would use this because it allows them to listen to the various artists i would write about in my magazine and they would also be interested in discovering new rock 'n' roll music.
I think that CD's would also be part of the way my consumers listen to music, this is because they would be valuable to my audience, they are something of value. Using ipods, phones mp3's mean you could lose a lot of music, if one of these were lost, but keeping a CD collection, means you have that music forever. 'New Recording' - Feedback for Front Cover

Monday 24 February 2014

Page Furniture + Conventions

Page Furniture

Page furniture is an added convention to a page.

This can be any of these;
  • Opinion Box
  • Caption
  • Pull Quote
  • Drop Cap
  • Byline
  • Information Section
  • Boxout

Other conventions

Other conventions may include:
An image where the model is making eye contact with the audience, engaging the reader further.
The Name Of the artist being written about will also be in one of the largest texts of the page.
Before the actually article or interview that is wrote, there will be an introduction in to who the artist is, information describing them and telling the reader who they are.
The article itself is usually informal as it relaxes the reader making it a more enjoyable read.




Wednesday 5 February 2014

Research for contents pages



Contents Page conventions


Conventions of a Contents Page

Page Numbers                       
Colour Scheme/ house style(same as front cover)
Subtext                         
Pictures
Subheadings               
Headline
Text           
Information on Articles and specific features of my magazine
Captions                      
Pull Quotes

I looked at various different magazine contents pages before i settled with a distinctive style myself.
I looked at busy and wild contents pages, to minimalist contents, i also looked at styles between double or singles pages for a contents page.
I looked at different layouts and how pictures were used in various was to create a distinctive 'look' for particular magazines.

Monday 3 February 2014

Examples of Possible layouts i could have used for my front cover







Front cover and contents mocks and Development of final front cover front cover

Development of front cover









Contents Mock


Front Cover Mocks




Examples of differences between 2 photo shoots


Before-







2nd time round




this was my original plan for photos in my magazine

After the original photo shoot was taken i decided to do a second soon after as the lighting was'nt great in the studio and this made the quality of the photos poor, as you can see from the ones i have taken there were a few photos that were blurred and also no brilliant for magazine photos

Wednesday 8 January 2014

plan for my front cover

Plan for my front cover

In my questionnaire one of the questions compared different styles of layout, for example one example was minimalist, and another very busy with lots of text. Most people preferred the minimalist layout, so i plan to use very little text, with a large image of the artist.
I plan to have the masthead in the top left corner and the head line to overlap the image of the artist in the center of the page, i also plan to use coverlines and a pull quote from an article down the side of the page. I plan to have the background very plain with the main focus point the faces of the model/ models. The background colour will contrast the photo i choose, this way i will create my main focal point.

I am planning to use, red, blacks and whites as my colour scheme as they contrast each other and makes the text easy to read, there will be various styles and sizes of text used, as i want my magazine to be formal but with a laid back twist to it, this is because my target audience age is 16-25.

The magazine name is undecided, but i have narrowed it down to a few names and am in favour of 'WKM' standing for 'we know music'. This will be the biggest text on the page, this way the readers eye will be drawn to it.