Question 7:

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

Here is a link to a video i made to answer this question
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIGitJam9I

Question 6:

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the first media lesson of the year i had no past experience using a mac. I learnt how to use shortcuts and hotkeys to carry out task quicker and easier. The program we used to create our magazine was In-Design. I had never used In-Design before so all the tools were new to me. One of the most important things i learnt about these new technologies was how to wrap text around and image or shape. I used this technique to make the text wrap around background images on my double page spread and to place images into the middle of text.

To edit alot of the images on my magazine i used Photoshop. Photoshop helped me create the right shapes for my images and even helped me create the logo for my magazine. On Photoshop I had to outline a picture of a guitar then fill it with a colour then drag it onto my In-desgin page. I learnt how to create different shapes by creating edit points and dragging them out to create my desired shape.

To publish our coursework we used Blogger. I have never used a Blog before so I was new to creating posts and edditing them although the style and layout helps alot as it works almost like a diary so all of my work is kept organised. Technologies are very important when producing a piece of media as with every new product innovations need to be made to keep audiences interested and for the magazine to be able to relate to the audience.

Question 4/5:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is a link to a prezi I made to answer questions 4 and 5.
http://prezi.com/_ndcnjxmuabr/question-4-5/

Question 3:

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The company I have chosen to distribute my magazine is Bauer. I have chosen this as it is a fairly large distributor with alot of different ways of distributing media. They also cover a large amount of genres and magazine types.

As you can see from the image below this distributor already is in business with kerrang and Q which are very big magazines. Q is simular to the genre of my magazine as it features a lot of indie bands and the genre of my magazine is indie-acoustic. Buear do not distribute a magazine like mine at this moment so it could be a chance for it to create a new audience by combining ones from the exsisting magazines with other audiances that are looking for a magazine like mine to be on the market. Bauer will help get my media out in various ways which will help profits as they have alot of their magazines with radio stations, online websites and even some with mobile access, this would help get my product into the market by using modern technology.



Add caption



Question 2:

How does my media product represent particular social groups?


The layout and style of the cover on my magazine reinforces the Stereotypes of an indie-acoustic guitar players with his casual dress sense, hairstyle and the place that the image is taken. The posture of the character on the cover is passive and unthreatening where as if it was a cover for a death metal magazine i may choose to make the character more aggressive and dominant.

The price and the artists I've chosen to feature also represent a particular social group as my magazine is priced at £2.99 which is not easily affordable to everybody so the main buyers of my magazine will probably be middle class. I've included both male and female artists in my magazine to both genders are represented to keep the potential audience as large as possible. The artists featured in the pictures of my magazines have particular dress sense which is very popular with the age of my target audience in todays society. For example, in the album cover, The artist is wearing chinos. Chinos worn a lot by Ed Sheeran who is very popular with the target audience of my magazine and is also featured in my magazine. The Coat my artist is wearing is a very popular coat these days so that will also represent a large proportion of males and females.

The artist i have featured on my Contents page displays an alternative style which would help to represent members of the potential audience that deviate from the norm. I have tried to represent as much 

Question 1:

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

My cover uses forms of a regular music magazine as it includes the basic style of main image with smaller sub images around it with cover-lines and a clear, bold masthead. I have included conventions such as barcode, main image and cover-lines to keep the feel of a regular magazine but i have developed on a few aspects. The genre of my magazine is Indie-Acoustic, there are not a lot of magazines that focus on this particular genre. I have also tried to include newer technology on the magazine by offering a free MP3 download rather than a poster.

Here is an analysis of my cover and its conventions

In my contents page I have used a colour pallet like other magazines, I chose my pallet to be black, white and red, i chose these colours because it makes the red stand out. so i can use it to create noticeable conventions like exclusive stamps and banners. I used images to illustrate the features in my magazine. I have kept a regular style to keep the structure simple and easy to understand. I did not want to challenge anything because I didn't see the benefit as audiences tend to dislike change.

Here is an analysis of my contents and its conventions

My double page spread challenges the norm as it features a slightly unknown artist while most magazines tend to focus on mainstream artists. I have kept the convention of a large image and made the text wrap around the image. I have kept the font size 12 which is large enough to be read easily but not too big and is used a lot by other magazines.

Here is an analysis of my double page spread and its conventions

Finished Magazine

Preliminary cover

This is my preliminary cover. I asked my peers what they think I should improve, they recommended I make all the fonts on the cover the same style and make the masthead a lot more noticeable. 

Techniques used on double page spread

I needed to wrap text round the shoulder of the image but as this picture was a background image i had to create a new shape and mould it to the shape of the shoulder then wrap the text around that to give the impression the text is wrapping around his shoulder.

For the background image of the double page spread the original image was around 50mm too small in terms of width, to resolve this problem I had to double up the image and then crop from left to right so it appeared that the bricks continued.

Masthead and logo

This is the masthead I made, i used the background to make the title of the magazine stand out on the front page. I created the logo by getting a picture of an acoustic guitar from the internet then tracing around it on photoshop then, after that, filling it in white and creating a black circle to clearly show the genre of the magazine.

Practice double page spread

Second attempt

I have included a page number and magazine title and the bottom of each page. I also inserted an image into a photo box then used text wrap from the window menu and pushed the text 1mm out horizontally and 2mm vertically.

First attempt