G321 Jack Herbert AS media studies
www.RippleMagazineEvaluation.com
Jack herbert
An exclusive breakdown of the production of Ripple
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Contents
May 2016 issue 205 @TheRealRipple @REALRipple
The Questions 3 | QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
17 | QUESTION 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups
14 | QUESTION 3
What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?
21 | QUESTION 4 Who would be the audience for your media product?
31 | QUESTION 5
How did you attract/address your audience?
13 | QUESTION 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
25 | QUESTION 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Programs used to construct
QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
M
y magazine Ripple both adheres and challenges the forms and conventions of actual media magazine products, my main idea was to challenge ideas of most media magazine outlets to represent my against the mainstream struggler audience. I noticed that despite my original idea to make a “hipster” magazine, that genre was too broad for me to adhere to this specific genre, without compromising a Mojolike style and layout I originally came up with. As well as this, with the shots I planned to take and the artists I chose to include within my magazine, I didn’t adhere to the conventions and themes of most music magazines, not incorporating musical features like instruments for example, therefore I had to not use better images in use this element, and even Photoshop drum sticks to adhere to this convention. Although adhering to that main idea of magazines incorporating a variety of musical features to challenge that convention. I also didn’t use images with musical constructs to adhere to my target audience being very alternate in the sense of indie music being apart from mainstream culture, still users of Vinyl and other physical music copies whilst having a very mature fashion taste from the 80s and 90s. But Differently, my magazine cover very much adheres to the codes and conventions of music magazines.
Firstly I ensured that before I created my magazine I had determined a set house style, and when coming up with a house style I realised that my target audience wouldn’t what to consume my product, as it wouldn’t adhere to their idea of gratification, being very mismatched in society, being a consumer of outdated products like Vinyl yet also consuming products like iPhones for example, therefore my style
Scan to view my Colours convention that most magazines include.
I challenged the form of music magazines to not incorporate a red colour to my magazine, yet conformed to introduce it in my logo in an accent subtitle as my title was to look similar to Mojo’s own title. I didn’t use red as it felt too formal and traditional and made my magazine look to similar to the styling of Q, which I didn’t want to adhere to as it has a more popular musical genre in which my target music wouldn’t find attractive. of my magazine was to be very unconventional in the sense of font colour and style, to give the audience a sense of personal identity as they can look at my front cover and relate to the house style being unmatched yet working in a sense of cohesion. I then picked a colour scheme to which I would stay at, using monochrome colours of black, grey and white, with gold to accent the gold and two shades of purple to adhere to a brighter coloured
To make my magazine look more unisex, I included both women and men, as I felt it was important so that it could appeal to a wider audience, as well as giving it a fresh, cool and funky connotation that reflects the genres styles and types of artists I intended to include, adhering to a very mixed target audience group. Differently, challenging modern ideas and conventions of music magazines, I didn’t include a main full bleed to my cover, and
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I intended this from the start as my magazine caters to unknown, indie music which my audience group would attend small venues for, so to have a large full bleed wouldn’t make sense to my struggler ABC1 audience, it wouldn’t look appealing as my audience do not want to listen to popular big stars, as they feel a sense of personal identity with these smaller artists having the normal everyday struggle of life, instead of being rich and almost uncaring of fans. My audience want to be able to relate to their artists as they are in similar situations therefore to make the audience feel comfortable with the main featured artist I didn’t include a large main bleed. This also adheres to the images, using a main and two secondary images to adhere with this idea that these acts aren’t so popular and famous they can be the only main selling point of a magazine. I also included two text and
Scan to view my Survey results image pugs to also further sell my magazine to audience, the “free CD” pug was used in create effect to further advertise my magazine’s freebie, as in my survey, my secondary image is the CD
cover of the CD that would come free with the magazine, I used to this as people feel a personal gratification to materialistic objects they can keep, as well as the fact my target audience of strugglers are heavy consumers of CD and Vinyl purchases, so again Yet to adhere with conventions of magazine, my feature artist Sophie Khoo was made to look dominating compared to secondary images, and to insure my main sell line was revolving around her, the text was larger, and in a different font to ensure this, I used the colour of her hair as the font colour and It was to great effect as it didn’t fit my set colour scheme, and to ensure this break in my house style my audience would be aware of what the difference of my magazine cover is, and staying away from this house style also ensures the focus was on her face and name and what her feature article in the magazine would be about. Thus conforming to the conventions of existing music magazines and other magazines in general, as they always insure their main sell line is revolving around their feature artist that appears on the cover. As well as this, the other sell lines I included in my “on the cover” section of my contents page, aside from the “reviews” section in the bordered out section and the “Act to watch out for” guide which falls next to “Free events this week” gives my audience a clear insight as to what my magazine will include as well as the feature article, which also conforms to the typical music magazine conventions. In addition, the masthead I chose for my magazine was “Ripple”. I had chosen this to be my
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magazine name as the intention of my magazine was to not conform to mainstream ideas, creating a ripple in the steam, as you would, and my name actually works well for challenging the ideas of normal conventions of music magazines. I wanted to break the normal conventions of typical music magazines through supporting and showcasing established and up and coming artists, as well as breaking into new music information. ‘Ripple’ best highlighted this as it could be interpreted as the mainstream metaphor being like a river of high flow, connotating once in this river it will just drag you down, and my target audience avoid following conventional ideas to living in modern society and any cost. Although my target audience caters to a small group of people, my actual music genre caters for many peoples music needs to enable the largest demographic and amount of profit as I am offering a media product that does not currently exist in one form of music magazine. As well as this, I styled my masthead to be bold, and similar to that of Mojo’s own masthead, as I personally feel the simplicity was key as it works with conventions of music mast heads to be clear and easy to read, as well as incorporating the red, in the subtitle to my masthead. I ensured to include a barcode so that my audience can buy my magazine in shops where it would be scanned, and a price so they know how much it costs. I kept my price at a fairly reasonable £3.99 which is similar to the pricing of other successful music magazines such as Q or NME. Moreover, I also decided this would be an appropriate pricing for my magazine given that my Target
audience is 16-23year old ABC1 male and females. I chose this price accordingly for my audience as at that age the audience will have disposable income or pocket money of a certain degree that they could potentially spend on my magazine as well as music related events/content such as
Scan to view my Proposal festivals and albums. Therefore this adheres to the typical
forms and conventions of music magazines in having similar price with a barcode, issue number and date. Differently, For audiences without a disposable income, I decided to include a section of my magazine to listening free gigs, so those less fortunate can still feel apart of this struggler audience and go see gigs, but mainly as my audience would go to cheap or free gigs to discover music they may not hear on radio or TV channels otherwise. Furthermore my contents page mainly adheres to the typical codes and conventions that you see in music magazines such as the structure and layout, however I went about the genre of it in a more versatile may by including a causal cool style and content, specifically with the headings and subheadings being in a bold
attractive font and the images of my artists. Firstly I swayed away from a house style onto the contents page, other than with the page footer at the bottom of my contents page, I use this to give audiences information as to what page they are on, but also adhering to the convention of having a page number at the bottom, though I would use the exact same one each time to almost form a house style that always stays with my magazine. My contents page also adheres to the typical conventions of music magazines and magazines generally as they will all most likely include new digital media information so that they can market their product further on social sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Following this I labelled the
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headings for my magazine content which slightly broke away from the usual codes and conventions of music magazines. By this I did multiple things, firstly I made the background grey instead of a more common white, this is to signify the darkness of gigs, feelings of nights in Camden instilled in the audience will gratify with the thoughts and feelings of experience for gigs. I would also broke away from conventions by titling the headings with the typical content such as Reviews, on the cover and every week, although I also added in some headings that are specific to my magazine and its content such as the “Act to watch out for”, “Free events this week”,Our unknown albums” and “Fashion world this week”. I decided to use these as he as headings as I wanted my magazine to challenge normal forms of magazines as the layout of magazines have become lacklustre, and my new ideas of headings spice up the originally thought ideas of contents page layouts. I have also used the same font for the feature article information to further suit the already casual and bold style of the headings as I thought the use of too many fonts would have not looked attractive, the forms of contents pages are really are to suit to a style and to not use more than
2 fonts, there I stuck to this to adhere to modern conventions of magazines. As well as including page numbers next to the article title, I also included page numbers on the images of the artists on my contents page that relate to the content within my magazine. This gives the reader an opportunity to see the artists that are included in my magazine and also to associate them with the article headings and descriptions, thus conforming to the typical conventions of music magazines. My magazine like a previously claimed doesn’t adhere to contents
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pages due to heading titles, I used the first being “Free events this week” in the way to give information to the audience, when going to the article, a small exposition will be written about the artist, venue and previous gigs to advertise and give information necessary for the gig, like location and time, this adheres to gratifications of audiences as they can enjoy gigs supported by Ripple magazine. “Acts to watch out for” is a title of subject to help audiences discover newer artists, whilst adhering to conventions of music magazines to give audiences new information on artists they haven’t first experienced. I also adhere to this idea within out “Our unknown albums” heading which is another subsection to help audiences gain new knowledge on music, not to mention the idea that my target audience want to avoid the mainstreamer ideas, so this would give a high level of gratification to be listening to unknown music more so. The final aspect of my contents page included was my subscription information. This adheres to the conventions of music magazines as they will typically include the subscription information for the magazine on the
contents page. I decided to include subscription information as it provides my reader with the opportunity to subscribe to each issue of my magazine so that they can get it each month. This means they benefits from getting an exclusive subscription issue and also a discounted price on the cost of a normal magazine. In having subscription information I also included a subscription front cover that differs slightly from my original magazine front cover as it will have less information that the magazine has and makes it more about the feature artist as the subscribers are already aware of what they are getting when they buy the magazine. In the information box itself I used a completely different magazine to make the experience more immersive, as a common convention to subscription information boxes is to use front covers that aren’t of the actual magazine. This also adheres to the typical codes and conventions of music magazines as successful magazines such as Q and NME have subscription information and subscription editions. Additionally for my first double page spreads I mostly adhered to the conventions of music
who are avid gig-goers would feel as to picture themselves being in the studio where this image was taken. The article also adheres to magazine conventions as the text wraps around the main focus of the image to signify more attention and focus from the reader to the artist.
magazines. Firstly, I adhered to the conventions of music magazines. Firstly, to adhere to the edgy indie themes my magazine produced My main image which is framed throughout the whole page adhering to main article conventions, a red tinted image through a red back light, shutter speed and blue accents elicit the feelings of gigs in the
sense when the audience look at the light trails of red and blue to signify the movement of coloured stage lighting, with the red tint adhering to the dark discoloured atmosphere of a gig, this image elicits a response of personal identity as my target audience,
Also, to adhere to forms and conventions, my house styled page number and footer go throughout the magazine to adhere information onto that page the reader is on, so they are able to use the contents page to read and direct themselves to what they are interested in. My magazine also adheres to forms of magazines in its layout, with a bold title and three column articles with adhere to the conventions of all sort of magazines, with the classic larger capital letter as this is a house style to magazines that all more adhere to, to maker reading and entertainment intake more accessible and easy to read. My second and third double page spreads both adhere to the same conventions as the last double page spread, in which a close up with direct address on my female models whilst my male models look away, this infers to the feminist ideas of sexualisation in media, looking at the audience to elicit a response to male audiences
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of tension and sexual attraction. Differently, to challenge forms and conventions I used multiple fonts and colours, with the use of a subtitle to let audiences understand what the article may be about, the font change and colour allows the audience to focus on it more, with this challenge of forms being obvious therefore attractive to my target audience which are trying to challenge the conventions and forms of the mainstream. I also use pull quotes in the third article to obey the conventions used in most magazine articles. My 4th article is very challenging to normal forms and conventions of magazines, yet whilst the content adhering to these forms. The use of a question and answer articles are used to convey a personal identity to the audience, my magazine conveys this form and convention by asking normal down to earth questions to normalise the artist, this
adheres to the personal identity gratification as it makes the artist feel more relatable to the audience. To further adhere with forms and conventions in this article I used box out text to make the text and image feel more vibrate and different to the other articles to signify that this is the main article, my intention was to be able make audiences be aware of the actual main article of the cover and be able to identify it in the magazine itself. I also framed my text to go around the body of the artist to make the artist seem almost 3D, this would signify as if the artist is so relatable that she is almost coming out of the page, to adhere to personal identity gratification. My last article does adhere to the themes present, I use a font similar to The Beatles whilst talking about a technology which occurred in their time, with a image that really represents the themes and cartoon like images signified by the Beatles themes, I use this to elicit
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a response through challenging forms of magazine to make the magazine seem less modern, as if the reader is reading an article from 40 years ago. In conclusion, I feel my magazine does a good job to adhere to music magazine conventions whilst having a challenging twist to differentiate from society’s view of my genre of magazine. My magazine Ripple both adheres and challenges the forms and conventions of actual media magazine products in this way, conforming with ideas and layouts that music magazines stereotypically adhere in order to represent themes of my magazine. I noticed that despite my original idea to make a “hipster� magazine, that genre was too broad for me to adhere to this specific genre, without compromising a Mojolike style and layout I originally came up with.
QUESTION 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups
M
y media product represents social groups through my use of costume, body language, props and Model's tone in my magazine content. They are manipulated within my magazine in order to communicate with the reader in a style they'd find engaging and also to attract a wide demographic whilst engaging my original target audience. The social group I have chosen to represent in my magazine consists of cool and creative individuals who have an interest in staying out of social norms, supporters of ideas of free will without conformity with older ideas of musical influence of fashion, music and socializing based upon musical ideas in common and preferences. Their social class would be that of ABC1 as I would expect the social group my magazine represents to be in higher education or with part/full time jobs as a source or income, due to the pricing and sophistication of my magazine. Thus this would enable the social group to spend their disposable income on my magazine as well as events such as Wireless and Reading Festival including regular gigs in the city of London and its vast venues. Therefore, in order to represent this social group accurately, I enabled my magazine to adhere to these interests and passions of live music through the use of misc-en-scene. Firstly, I represented the particular social groups of my magazine
mainly through the representation of the artists. My magazine consisting up and coming artists, I focused the main representation on my artists to be apart of the night time life gigs, in small venues through their look, for example my model "Sophie Khoo" from model Tilly Lewis.
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Her character was representing a mainly indie genre but having her hair Blue through Photoshop established a style of variety
from most people to gain different representations: Edgy and rebellious, which could represent my social group well, being of a common, well educated group of people trying to rebel from common conventions that they portray, and blue being an unconventional colour of hair represents the unconventional ideas, which appear to many social groups within my target audience. I styled 'Sophie Khoo' to dress in a smart wear for an indie culture to represent the idea of higher education and work in life, with the juxtaposed free time where retro clothing comes out, accented with Denim coats and funky patterned clothes, this mix cleverly represents the idea of ABC1 whilst conflicting with my audiences ideas of gigs. This strong-minded, rebellious persona continues throughout the tone of her three page article. I decided to set my article in a fairly casual speech as I didn't want it to feel too formulated and boring as her character comes from as far away on the spectrum of boring and predicable. But I kept it formal in the sense of text font to therefore represent
to ABC1 as a social group being sophisticated, with a lot of writing and words, as this social group will be able to read well. Therefore, in setting the article outside enables my readers to see many background shapes and colours to ensure the idea of boringness not to happen. as well as liking the artist to a regular person outside without bodyguards or fans, and thus this representation allows her to be extremely relatable to the audience. As well as this, I represented her edgy, yet normal character through use of an interview to demonstrate how she is like the audience that adores her, representing the small audience Indie genre she belongs to. Secondly, I presented Montgomery and Susana Mariz in a way on my front cover and the contents page and double page spreads through use of dark, impactful backgrounds paired with Moody expressions for Susana and Happy for Monty to convey and elicit different effects to represent my social groups. Susana with a moody expression portrays her in a powerful and
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respectful light that mainly the female skew of my demographic would look up to and aspire to have, with the connotation of stage lights through use of overlays and shutter speed represent my social groups gig attendance through their own disposable money. Differently, Monty's happy expression mixed with the light in his eye connotates to the idea he is on stage, holding a guitar, the smile on his face is to demonstrate and represent the idea of joy artists and audience feel when attending these gigs, this is meant to fulfil a sense of personal Identity to the reader as they can almost picture themselves in the crowd looking at this artist, this represents the social group well as they are regular attenders of gigs due to having the money to spare. I used Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze and Feminist Theory to entice and represent my target social group, using these sexualized ideas of women and the objectification of women I am able to then adhere to dress codes and conventions of different social groups as society in reality is formed around these principles of sexualising women in my opinion. my media product represents social groups through using ideas of Laura Mulvey’s ideas and theorys and usage of my use of costume, body language, props and Model’s tone in my music magazine content effectively to represent an ABC1 social group with struggler ideas, and doing so, correctly manipulated within my magazine helps in order to communicate with the reader in a style they’d find engaging and also to attract a wide demographic whilst engaging my original target audience in an effective meaningful way for the audience.
QUESTION 3
What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?
A
n institution that would distribute my media product would be Times Inc. which are one of the World’s leading media companies and top conglomerates in film, that has a monthly global print audience of around 120 million and worldwide digital properties that again attract over 120 million people each month, including over 50 different websites, highlighting this company to be incredibly successful in its professionalism and would be suitable for my magazine to ensure that I receive a large reading audience allowing me to make an overall profit for my own organization of Ripple. Time Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros. entertainment, their organization is a professional and collected company which I can produce my media product in a professional standard also.
Times Inc is known for already distributing over 60 popular brands such as NME and Women’s weekly. One of the brands that they distribute is the NME,
making Times Inc, an ideal distributer for my magazine as they currently don’t distribute a magazine of a similar genre and style, Organizations try to not include similar genres of music magazine so they are not competing against themselves, therefore gaining overall profit, for example, Atlanta records wouldn't want a guitarist that uses a loop pedal as they already have someone that fits a similar description: Ed Sheeran. In addition Time Inc. not already distributing a magazine similar to mine, as I have identified myself from being as dissimilar to other magazines to adhere to the forms my audience obey, being unconventional and I believe that it would enable my magazine to achieve a large target audience than I expect, as other audiences away from my audience would like to experience my music magazine as it could be a new experience they haven't felt before, aspirers may be interested in this by the fact they aspire to be great, trying new things to do so. Times Inc is a global company reaching over 28 million users each month just on its website. This therefore would enable my own magazine to be distributed on a worldwide scale, reinforcing the purpose of my magazine to be a music magazine that is appealing and easily accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world whilst being completely different to audiences previous experience suiting my original target audience.
on in synergy with parent company Time Warner which are made up of both print and digital. Therefore, this makes them an ideal company as it will allow my magazine to be distributed in a variety of different ways reaching out to a larger audience as some people would prefer to use digital and some prefer physical print. Print would include methods such as Billboards and posters within Bus/ Train stations and digital methods include websites. As well as this I’d like Ripple to be distrubuted and promoted on radio adverts qand prime time TV slots for channels such as MTV, ITV and E4 as these music channels are expected to have those in my target audience watching it. In advertising on radio stations such as Radio 1, which plays a variety of artists, it enables me to directly address my target audience and enables them to find out about my magazine Therefore, In Time Inc. being a large distributor, the possibility for the type of promotion would be easily accessible for Ripple enabling Time inc. to be an ideal distributor for my media product.
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Also as I have previously mentioned Times Inc. operates
QUESTION 4
M
Who would be the audience for your media product? y target audience for Ripple is 16-23 year old ABC1 males and females.
Scan to view my Audience Profile I chose this age as it this age my audience will have disposable money in purchasing my magazine (in conjunction with their ABC1 social class) that they would chose to spend on music related events/content such as festivals, gigs, albums and magazines. Most importantly, from 16, young adults are gaining more independents Thus, They are in awe experiencing as much music as possible, being there own body and having individualistic views on society, my audience at this age will be starting the musical event experience thus in need of a magazine to fill their metaphoric appetite for new music. My target audience ending at around 23 is relative to an individual, at this point young adults will be finished with university, and now with full time jobs becoming adults finding love and creating a family or professional life, therefore this idea of musical event going becomes faded in the different responsibilities of life, not
having time for this, obviously my magazine caters to without being prejudice to any one group of people, but maintaining the target of 16-23 year olds. Due to my magazine having artists up and coming and being a variety of unknown music genres and conventions, my audience will consist of individualists, aspirers to not be apart of a mainstream convention and form. The genres of the demographic will be spilt in a 50:50 female: male skew. My target audience will have a strong interest in social and networking and digital media with the use of sites such as YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram.
Scan to view my New media
This is because my target audience will be made up of sociable people that like to interact with one another even when they are not physically together about musical topic that when apart may not have in common with individuals around them, they will enjoy using a variety of social media platforms to connect and share personal information, opinions as well as musical content. As well as this my audience will most likely own new technology such as smartphones that they can access lots of digital
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media on, as well laptops such as an Apple Mac. On these platforms, they will most likely have apps such as Spotify iTunes and Sound cloud so they can download/ stream/buy music and music content as well as potentially making their own as a hobby. Contrasting to older technologies such as Record players and cassette players being a main focal point for my audience, thus to show this contrast in technology my media pages with influence an older style of part and design, to demonstrate older conventions in a newer age, thus also identifying with my audience, being old fashioned in a new age also. Finally, in having an interest in music, they will also have a strong interest in fashion trends, practically ones that artists within my magazine are seen to be wearing, thus my magazine influencing a Fashion section helps to identify interests in my audience, Having this interest in fashion will also allow my audience not only to be able to further connect with one another, but also to be able to connect with the artists within my magazine as they may like to look of what a particular artist is wearing and try to replicate a similar look, wearing edgy, old fashioned clothes you wouldn't expect from a younger person.
QUESTION 5 How did you attract/address your audience?
worth the expense, not to mention the ideas of my target audience being avid hunters of new music and physical copies of musical content, due to the social group of ABC1 having disposable money to spend, therefore the chance of free music is even better as it still saves them money they would have spent anyway, therefore giving them even more to purchase with, although being disposable to them.Additionally, with the use
I
initially attracted my target audience with the use of my front cover. In using unisex colouring choices of a light blue, contrasting with again another unisex purple, being attractive to both genders contrasting well to give a manic theme that signifies to the idea of my target audience having a juxtaposition in their life, having old fashioned conventions in a modern era. My Model is enlarged heavily, to produce an extreme close up with
Scan to view my Model release
edgy hair colours which aren’t ordinary to a normal person. This would immediately draw the reader’s attention as my model is using direct address towards the camera catching the audience’s eye. In conjunction with Sophie on my front cover, I fell that the use of my other sell lines placed around the full bleed image aided in enticing my target audience to put up my magazine and read the content. The use of pugs and secondary images also help entice C2DE audiences which aren’t as interested in words, the use of many images help to entice this social group as it gives a connotation that the magazine is heavily image based, further helping me profit although this not being my target audience.
Scan to view my Audience gratification
the use of “FREE CD” and including an image of it on my magazine front cover also helps to entice audiences to my magazine, extra content and Freebies make purchases more
of social media platforms, I was able to attract my target audience. Because of my target audience’s age range of 16 to 23 years old, they would familiar with the variety of different use of social media, thus including links to my social media platforms in the title banner of the contents page within my magazine, as it would most probably appeal to them due to the fact that so many people use it nowadays and many are becoming dependent on it, as well as using social media to convey musical themes and opinions. Therefore adhering to my audience as not only can they buy my magazine, but they can also keep up to date with all of the latest information on the go through social media.
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is vital for magazine selling, my magazine does this in the articles by speaking casually, but sticking to the conventions of magazines to still be formal, this makes reading more fluent and easier for audiences to make them enjoy reading the article more.
This would entice my target audience as they would appreciate the convenience this brings to them, especially given that they are made up of ABC1 males and females who may be either full time workers or part time. Not only does this prove to be highly convenient for my audience, it also follows the social interaction that wanted my magazine to be able to give to readers, allowing them to build on personal relationship. Music is a very sociable topic which I have said previously, which many people love to discuss with one another, sharing their experience and opinions, in a
friendly way to help broaden their experiences of music more to gain more knowledge. Therefore, including social media has enabled me to enhance this experience for my target audience and would provide a large factor in addressing my audience as well as attracting them into buying my magazine issues. My audience will feel the four main gratifications when reading and purchasing my magazine. They will get a sense of entertainment as magazines are a form of entertainment and help to release people from stress and normal living issues, and this
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Reading magazines would provide entertainment for their audiences, dependent on content, for example puzzles in magazines, people may find this entertaining, or sexual gratifications, which links to the feminist theory, how women are sexualized in media, and specifically music magazines, yet I haven’t conformed to this idea of sexualizing women, in fact my male model has less clothing than my female models, this is actually to signify to my younger audience, rather than looking for relationships being more influenced in music and music making, so to release a sexual tension is more enjoyable for my audience as they are not as interested in this as other demographics of a similar age. we use media for information, and magazines are a source of information for their relative audiences, any genre is the same. However each separate magazine will have individual information accustom to the needs of its target audience. For music magazines, information would include events, new albums and artists and genuine news in the music industry. They give key information on events like music awards, festivals or concerts. This information allows the reader of the magazine to feel more involved and informed on the music industry. And may be the reason for music magazine consumption. This
gratifies the readers interest of music through reading content within the magazine. My magazine does this particularly well as it includes information such as reviews, up and coming artists and gigs in the week. My contents page features alot of important information for my audience so a gratification of information is released as they can use my contents page to refer back to if needed, and with its simple, well layed out format makes it easier to get particular information from. Integration and social interaction allows audiences to connect with each other, and to share opinions and views on the subject of magazines they may like in common. This could also be seen as spreading the magazines audience through social encounters, help selling magazines further. For example if there is a group of young adults and one enjoys reading feature articles on Justin Bieber, and these other young adults like the same artist, this social interaction will also help sell the magazine as it helps connect friendships. To use this to further bolster my magazine, and my magazine Ripple will feature this form of gratification by holding social events, meet ups with their favourite artist, in an open social environment, almost party like in a formal wear where multiple artists are booked at a time with a large mixture of fans hand picked by a competition that features once a month in our magazine. These fans will be gratified by meetings people with the same interests they have never meet before. We will also have social
media platforms where posts will allow strangers to converse on musical topics presented by each different social media platform. Personal Identity will also feature audiences enabled to read music magazines and any magazine and link the content within that magazine to themselves. This is another virtual selling point of magazines to an audience as if you can get the audience to almost emphasis with the magazine that emotional link because strong, Authors try to do something similar with their characters to help make the story
interesting and it is no different for magazines, the empathy the audience have for the magazine will create a gratification. And the writers at Ripple will allow audiences to feel this through normal down to earth feature articles about the more normal side of their favourite artist’s exciting lives. I would finally add a section where tweets, emails and comments get put in the magazine therefore audiences would use social media and attract them to my magazine more to try and get an issue with their own personal message.
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QUESTION 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
I
n the production of my final product I used a variety of hardware and software’s and in this process I learnt a great deal about them, not to mention other products to create my blog. The main piece of software I used were Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Premier Pro, as these to produce my magazine and blog work. Prior to the making of this product I had used InDesign for making my magazine in GCSE but it was not as complex as my magazine that I have created in A-Level but I did already have some prior knowledge of the InDesign tools such as paragraph style so that I could change the texts so it fits the same format as the others, for example around the images I had added a boarder around them to give them more off an affect and also changing the writing to different titles as when I highlighted the text and change it to the paragraph style for ‘Headings’ it would automatically format it into the same style. However, Differently using expanding knowledge in photoshop, I was able to produce a more professional work. At GCSE my media and photoshop ability were limited. Yet through online tutorials I have learnt valuable lessons and techniques, I have no learn how to manipulate photos in the sense I can remove certain objects that I dont want in images, I am able to clear blemishes more efficiently without making it look unrealistic, my ability to make image backgrounds larger than taken as also improved.
Yet my most notable improvement in Photoshop was being able to change eye colour and hair colour of individuals. I learnt this technique through prior knowledge until I was able to get it right, learning this was the most important technology as my entire products convention portrayal lied upon the image looking real and looking professional. I learnt media skills through my construction that I previously hadn't got a good gauge on, In my previous magazine in GCSE I lacked marks in sticking to convention, rather than making a film magazine it looked more like a generic rookie magazine more to fashion. Thus in this construction of my magazine I used music conventions and developing knowledge in Adobe suite to make my magazine more musically inherent and more professional, straying away from white backgrounds which other candidates had used previously, this allowed me to use conventions of my target audience to correctly make a magazine which strayed away from normal mainstream conventions in the media magazine consumption market also to candidates previously. I chose to take my images just in school and on location, as I felt that it would be different and give my magazine more of original affect, more open in environment to seem more immersive to audiences. The camera that I had used was Cannon 5 50D Digital SLR Camera. I used the Prime lens
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which had a fixed zoom, giving images a better quality. The 50mm lens acts like an 85mm and I chose to use this lens as I learnt that it was ideal for portrait shot which are what I used primarily in my photo shot as this reflects the shot styling of 1.8 adjustable capture which is the cheaper alternative to the zoom lens but still worked just a s successfully for my desired shots. I also learnt in image taking was to be more conventional in the projection of genders, and use of lighting and filters gave my magazine a more effective feel, looking to be better quality unlike my previous works.
Scan to view my Equipment post
Differently, I had learnt many different software types and technologies in producing my product, I learnt how to edit videos for my blog in this production which I previously had no experience in, what so ever, I was able to use a Gopro, Computer screen capture and ability to use editing techniques when filming myself to produce an entertaining blog full of different medias. I also learnt how to use other programs like Prezi and Slideshare to produce better ways to convey my magazine blog using different media. Thus I believe this highlights that I have learnt a great deal about the different types of technologies’, I used within my magazine – both software and hardware.
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After
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QUESTION 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
A
t the beginning of our AS media course the first practical task we were faced was to create a School magazine featuring a welcome back to school theme. This preliminary task consisted of creating the magazine through: taking our own photos, creating a layout and designing a front cover and contents page. When looking back at my preliminary task and our final product we had to compare from then to now. Firstly, we had to take some photos, these photos were taken within our lesson time and consisted of fairly basic shots of school set and some willing pupils in the areas of our school. This is very different to the way I conducted taking photos within my preliminary task it was fairly spontaneous, I took about 5 photographs of the same pupil compared to about 700 photos of my models in my final product, at the start of the year I had no understanding of lighting, conventions and ways to convey images to the best ability, which juxtaposed to my final images which incorporated the use of lighting, whilst using conventions of my genre to convey images to give meaning and give it bolster to be able to be sold, my knowledge of camera work has changed the most, being able to now use
shutter speed to give added effect unlike my preliminary task which I used no effect or photoshop editing, as my knowledge was undeveloped compared to now. I created both my School magazine and my Music magazine on InDesign. All of the text was in the same two fonts, and I didn't use different sizes of fonts. Also my colours stuck to basic primary colours of blue and yellow thus not being creative or particularly
Scan to view my Magazine sessions eye catching to entice my audience
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Scan to view my Name ideas giving simplistic connotations. However my final production was completely different in layout, I took a completely different approach to my preliminary task, I planned my final product to fine detail separately from colour scheme, name ideas and my magazine production to which I slowly developed and reshaped things to my best ability, I used a fixed vibrant colour scheme to give positive connotations to my magazine, not to mention using conventions and forms to produce a more realistic final piece. In addition to this, as my Music magazine consisted of a lot more pages with double spreads, I manipulated the text wrap tool and the paragraph styles as it made creating my Music magazine seem more like an actual article,
warping around main focal points, This was a completely new skill learnt in the making of my magazine and other media products completed this year in my course.
have, unlike my original first task which was a bland boring imagination similar to my peers and previous year magazines, which I feel I progressed the most on.
Also, in my first task the colours I used were basic primary colours and thus didn’t stand out against the background or entine people to read my magazine- giving my product a very simplistic and borting look, however in my music magazine I strectched my Indesign knowledge and used different tools, styles and structures as well as following tutorials in order to give my magazine the professional music magazine look I wanted. In regard to the look of my magazine, I took time and consideration in chosing all of the colours and the house styles within my magazine so that they conformed to the style and values my magazine holds as well as appealing to its target demographic. I then downloaded new and ambishious fonts in order to portray a larger meaning and effect of orginal and quirky ideals to create a new house style like idea that other magazines don’t
By this I mean I tried to make my magazine as individualistic as possible in regard to make my magazine morew interesting, and this good marketing sense of idealism to my future products has progressed completely from my preliminary task, thinking and planning ahead from the starting point. In comparing the main features of both my school magazine and my music magazine, it is clear that I learnt and progressed a great deal from then until now. This has been through extending my skills in using the tools the programmes offer as well as enhancing my knowledge of codes and conventions of magazines in order to make my music magazine profession and appealing to audiences.
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