AS resubmission

This blog is the resubmission of my AS coursework!

Evaluation

Audience feedback

Below you will find images i have print screened from audience feedback. I used the social networking site facebook, to ask for audience feedback, from images of my magazine.

Front cover feedback (1st and 2nd images)

Contents page feedback (below 3rd and 4th images)

Double page spread feedback (5th, 6th and 7th images)

Evaluation - How have you used/challenged connections of real products?

1. How have you used/challenged connections of real products?

By researching – magazines from shops that distribute the products, where you can see a variety of magazines and see what stands out the most, in comparison to all the genres and styles they include. Looking at other magazines, they pack the front cover with a lot of text which looks cluttered. The front cover is the first thing you see when looking at the magazine, the image and colors, style are the first things you see and then you are interested in the text, and what is included in the magazine. If there is a connection to the images on the front cover to the stories and coverage inside the magazine that interest the reader then they are most likely to buy the magazine. In comparison to other magazines, that seem have various colors splattered on the page, with all different types of text, draw the reader away because they do not know what to look at, and probably get confused. I needed to research a mixture of men and women targeted magazines, so i could find out what was included in each and mix them together for my target audience!
I knew that reading the contents of magazines, they do not only focus on the music artist in this case, but they try and retrieve extra information from their personal life, to try and attract the audience. Many audience members can be known for being very naïve. The hyperemic syringe audience model describes the audience as passive and are focused on believing everything they read and are easily persuaded to believe things they read. They can also follow the audience models if inoculation from long exposure of magazines, and become fascinated in stories they see. After learning about audiences, I knew that including personal information in my magazine would attract a young audience.

Evaluation - How have you represented social groups?

2. How have you represented social groups?

Because I had a mixture of a rock/pop genre I needed to create a happy medium of the two and create the style of this genre that is recognizable to the audience.
In the music industry the rock and pop cultures that are listed in the top 40 charts are represented very similar to each other. They all look similar and act. However having a mixture of the two I wanted to create the style of the pop magazine with a hint of rock genre. The links made between a rock social group would be dark, black clothes, hair, make-up, with big messy hair and are usually associated in a band with instruments, usually guitars or drums etc. On the other hand a popular social group would be considered very well maintained and bright. They would probably wear simple and colourful clothes. Usually girl or boy bands or just single artists themselves. Using a mixture of the two I created one artist with a mix of both representations, using simple black clothes and simple make-up to create a rock/pop girl, hopefully familiar to the audience of the style of magazine. Inspiration for the look of the artist I found from real artists and bands in the music industry such as Avril Lavigne,

Katy Perry, Queen, My Chemical romance.
The audience model of uses and gratifications, can be applied to the music industry and audiences, as the audience chose to fulfill to create an identity and interact with the magazine, they can consciously make a choice to what they identify as their most passionate type of music, even including what choice of magazine. We can identify social groups easily and understand what they look like including the colours they wear, what they are associated with etc.

The use of language and the style of language i have used is informal english. I have not used any abbreviations or registers, however i have used an informal tone, because this is most likely the tone my audience can engage with and relate to.

Evaluation - What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

3. What kind of institution might distrubute your product and why?

Shops with a wide audience would be the perfect place to distribute my magazine. These are the places a wide audience are seen at and are most likely to buy a magazine if they see it. Airports that have shops like Whsmiths would be a good oppurtunity for distrubution, as many travellers are known for buying magaazines when travelling in the airport, but also at train station newsagents or petrol stations and other forms of transport linked retail shops.

Because it would be a weekly issue (with the price of £1.20) and the audience may becoming more familiar with this magazine, eventually an online insight to the magazine may be available for the audiences who want to browse the most important parts of the magazine, however do not have the oppurtunity to purchase the magazine. The website could include advertising as well as the magazine to create more funding.

Evaluation - Who is the audience?

4. Who is the audience?

Male and Females.

Ages between 16-24.

No preference on income or lifestyle.

Most likely tertiary readers, for example on trains, buses, any type of travelling. Or a short read for at home etc.

Because my magazine is based on a very wide audience i do not have any specific preference for them. The top 40 sinlges, list music that varies but mainly include pop/rock. There is a mixture of social groups, it is very generalised and most likely reaches typical teenagers and young mature adults, that listen to the type of music on the radio etc and would most likely purchase this magazine to keep up to date etc.

Evaluation - How is the audience attracted?

5. How is the audience attracted?

The image to the left shows a large magazine stand.

When appraching a magazine stand in a shop, you can see the types of magazines in their own sections, for example home magazines would have their section compared to music magazines. As there is alot of magazines on a stand you need to find the right section too, which stands out amongst the rest. I think having my black and white theme in the music genre will stand out, because it has a running theme of colours and a bold title. The main image is very large and i think some of the white text and the white image of the i-pod stand out against the black background.

The audience would be attracted the contents showed on the front cover, as this would be the first stories and images they see. There are bands and artists they can familarise themselves with, possibly be interested in the competitions, as a young audience being fascinated in technology etc, an i-pod competition may attract their attention.

Other ways i addressed the audience was by using familiar language and the tone and style of the language to communicate with them. This allows the audience to identify the magazine and become engaged with the magazine quickly from the interest of the style or tone they understand.

I have had a lot of audience feedback through the networking site Facebook. The audience were my exact target audience, and helped me create a better magazine, to suit all of their needs.

The first post on my page, named audience feedback, shows the exact images of the feedback i was given.

Evaluation - What have you learnt about technologies?

6. What have you learnt about technologies?

I used many different technologies including adobe in design software, paint shop pro editing software, digital camera, webcam and the internet. I have learnt that using the software on the computers to edit photos and my magazine needed more time than I thought. Because I had a lot of different ideas of my own and from audience feedback, I took a while on how to place the text and images. I understood most of the software, but after they got updated I had to understand how the new software worked. It was hard to understand how to place text and images on top of each other, and also how to make some images because more faint and effected digitally. Using a digital camera helped me a lot to take the photo’s for my magazine front cover and the contents in the magazine. I had to edit these using paint shop pro. It was easy to edit because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, for example brighten them and change the colour to black and white. But I learnt to use hue and saturation to enhance the image too. I also used the digital camera to upload videos of my diary to my blog. I learnt that uploading the video was the longest process. As it took 17 hours to upload one video to YouTube, after waiting an hour to upload it the blogger website and then finding out it cancelled itself. Lastly I used the internet to use images for my magazine such as logos and images of objects to include in my magazine. Finding the right images to fit into the colour scheme was hard and which images simply fitted into the magazine well.

Evaluation - What did you learn in terms of progression?

7. What did you learn in terms of progression?
I have learnt a lot since creating my magazine last year in comparison to my magazine I have made now. I now understand how to use my time and what needs to be dealt with more. I spent a lot of time changing many parts of the magazine around which was good at first but realized I needed to use my time well to complete it. I previously did not spend a lot of time on my contents page, but now think that it is the strongest part of my magazine. I was able to include a lot more fonts and texts, because there was not a main running theme on the contents page compared to the front cover and double page spread. I learnt from the past what rules to include. For example the image normally creates around 60-70% of the main cover compared to around 30% text. I knew i had to make the headlines a larger text and the captions stand out by using a bold or italic text.
I also understand the software of adobe in design more and have become a lot of quicker in the progression of the magazine. I was frustrated a lot after they had changed the software and had to learn about it more. But after using it at least every day, it became easier to understand, how to change the text boxes from text to image settings, or how to edit the images on the software itself, instead of a photo editing software. I learnt more about the audience and how a variety of people give you more ideas than just yourself. The audience I asked was my target audience and all gave me so much different feedback, it was hard to choose what I could include in it.
Even after creating my magazine, I still feel I could have included more. I think it may be too simple and that it might not have enough contents.

Final double page spread

I have made a few minor changes, to make the double page spread, create more variety instead of blocks of text and images.
I moved the images around so they were not placed together, and moved the main image to the centre of the page.

Front cover

Using my audience feedback i changed my front ocver to more appealing articles, images, competitions etc.

Audience Feedback

After looking at my double page spread i have been told that the writing is too big and needs to be smaller for more photos to be able to fit in. Being on Easter Holiday makes it hard to access my projects, but making finishing touches to my magazine such as fonts and a few images will make a big difference. Hopefully i can get as much audience feedback as i can, to make it even better!

Double page spread

I am currently working on the double page spread interview with an artist. I have tried to focus on alot of music, as it is a music based magazine. I need to try and work out if i need to add in that she is a rock singer, but if she already a recognised artist, it should not be a worry for the audience to identify with her.

I have also researched in other magazines, that the reporter also includes personal life stories and information. I think this also draws the readers attention in, because they can relate to the celebrity and feel as if they are included and attatched in some way to the person. It also sometimes makes the audience sympathy with the person as well.

contents page

Here is more work i have done to my contents page.

I am trying to fill it with stories and competitions to draw the audiences attention. Because a modern, younger audience, i have added pictures, big, bright text so it is quite visual.

Changes

I am currently working on my double page spread, and still need to upload a photo onto here of what i have been doing to it. I have nearly finished!
I was going to add photo's from the same pictures i had previously uploaded, of the girl on the front cover. However adding them into i found they were boring and did not create anything new to the content. I have now added other photo's which also creates more text and a variety of a story to put im. Here are the photo's i have added into the double page spread.

Audience feedback

I was given some feedback from a male point of view, from my target audience. He gave me some tips and what i could work on to make it stand out to a male audience as well as a female audience.



http://www.youtube.com/user/Mego1001#p/a/u/0/0XFYJ_TDv4s

Video Blog

Progression and evaluation of my magazine so far.
Changes that may be made.
BELOW IS LINK TO MY BLOG ON YOUTUBE...........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr3-D5WYhos

Video

Here is a link to a video blog of my progression so far! 11 hours uploading - big technical difficulty!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnNQxwPxrfQ

Progression

Currently i am in progress of making my contents page.

I have exported the adobe indesign version of my front cover, into a Jpeg image and copied it onto a new document for my contents page. I have made a smaller version of it and annotated it for the audience to see where they can find each part of the front cover in the magazine, numbering them with pages. I have stuck with the black, white and red theme in my contents page, because its recognisable and flows well. If i had suddenly changed the idea to different colours, it would look very messy and not look similar to issue cover. I feel that in regular magazines i buy there is an occuring theme from the colours, contrast and composition from the cover to the contents page. There is also usually an occuring theme or topic that runs throughout the magazine itself. So on the contents page i will try and include a mixture of stories, that tie in with similar stories and do not go off on tangent.

Layout of magazine article

I have been looking at the layout of other genres of magazines at my convenience to see how they have produced the layout of the article. So far, including the examples, the images seem to take up around 40% of the page and a caption of the article takes up around 25% leaving a small percentage for the actual article itself, in a smaller font and size. Although they are not very eye catching examples i need to research music genre magazine articles and look at their layouts.

I will soon make a base to my article and create a tag line, that fits in with content of the article. I have already written the article which includes questions and answers.

Development

I have recently created my own logo for my magazine. To create the difference to other magaazines, and make its own special feature, to be recognised.
I did this because at the moment my magazine does not look very typically musical, and falls into a fashion genre magazine. Although i wanted to make it quite simple and stylish i need to put a few more touches to it, to make it originally its own. Alot of people say nothing is original, however nothing is the same, but can be similar!
Moving on, i made this logo by taking one of my own images and editing it on adobe photoshop.
I firstly changed the brightness and contrast to enhance the pictures brightness, from its darker tones. I then searched around on the editing and artistic effects you can use, i looked through many including sketched styles, neon styles and greyscales. I finally came accross cutout, which makes the image looked very animated and more vibrant. I then changed the hue and saturation which made it possible to change the colour and shading of the image. I did not want to go exactly by my white, red and black theme, but i wanted to create a colour quite similar. I realised this logo would not just only be on this one issue and would have to be the same colour for every issue. The colour i chose was a bright shade of orange. This stands out against many colours and is very bold and eye catching. I think i will place the logo close to the title of the magazine 'loud.' I think the logo resembles the title, becuase orange, brightness, boldness and fun signify being loud. The content of the photo is an image that simply represents fun, with a person 'jumping for joy!' They're arms are in the air, but the way it is edited, the arms are the main focus of the emotions fun, bubbly, creative and most of all loud!

Magazine

I have now developed my magazine front cover. I have included more content on the page, that i have used from a template magazine, to see what is included on a music magazine front cover, in the genre of pop/rock. These include competitions, winning prizes, stories from musical celebrities etc. I also made the most revealing parts of the content bold, in larger font size and bolder colours. For example the word 'Exclusive' is large and in red, and underneath in a smaller, white font it reveals the purpose of the caption.

Starting the magazine

So far i have placed the background image on the bottom of my template on my front cover. I made sure when i edited the image on jasc paint shop i pro i brightened the image to a rich black colour, so it was one set colour and did not have different tones in it, this is because i wanted the whites and red texts to show up against the background instead of some letters being faint. I made sure the image was appealing for the male and female audience, i wanted the males to be attracted and the females to be curious.
I used the font Georgia for the name of the magazine, it was simple, large and i could read it clearly. For the rest of the front cover i have used sealife sf, it is also clear to understand and simple but still has a bit more of a style to it. I want the rest of my cover to be filled but not too cluttered. I want the audience to be attracted and want to read more with the details on the front of it.

Magazine exploration

I have also researched other magazines, not only music magazines but other fashion magazines too, to see how they have presented there front covers. I wanted to see how much text they use, where they place their images and exactly what they say. Another feature i want to look for is how they represent women, because i am using a woman on my front cover. I know they all have different audiences as mine is for men and women with a wide age range i need to create a happy medium for all of the audiences interest to draw them in. Here are a few i have found that i can analyse.

Images i have taken.

These are a few images i have taken to include on the front cover and also inside the double page spread interview i will create. I want to make one of the photo's the background to the interview, or atleast create a frame to the content of words in the interview.
I will also edit these images to follow the black and white theme.

Creating my magazine cover.

I have recently taken some photographs, which were inspired by the mojo magazine front cover, of a black and white, head shot image of a singer. These simple photo's have created a nice base for my front cover, and i will try and run with the theme of using black and white, with splashes of a mixture of bright colours to stand out. I want to make my magazine cover filled with content that will hopefully catch the eye of the audience. The audience of my magazine will be between the ages of 16-30, female and males. I do not want there to be too much on the page, but enough to fulfill the task of making the audience want to read more.

The image i have added in this post is one of many i have taken for the front cover, a simple head on shot with eye contact with the camera. These are the original images and have not been edited at all, unfortunately i did not have a black and white mode on the camera i was using. I will soon edit these photos to change the colour and also brightness to highten the photo's some more and make them more interesting and eye catching.

Initial front cover planning.

I am currently making a background which is a basic dark grey background which willl be the basic colour, and i will gradually add more layers of images and text on top of it. I am also trying to find a font for the Title of the magazine, which i think will be called 'LOUD' as it is simple and short. It emphasises how the magzine is, within terms of music language. I want the magazine to be percieved and bold, bright and loud. Chosing the text and font at the moment is quite hard and im sure i will change my mind more than once in the process.

Genre choices

My first reaction for producing a music magazine is firstly deciding which genre of music to chose. I have researched different types of genre of music and the cover of magazines that explore that type of music. I will also look at magazines in general for their layout etc.

These magazines explore rock and punk music magazines. They are both very different look at different colours on the covers, black and white and bright, bold eye catching covers.

I realise that i need to take some photographs for a base, for my front cover before i start making the magazine and need to think if i want to use a band of people or a solo artist.

I also need to make a final decison on the genre and even explore more magazine, also look at ones in real life, not just using other media sources like the internet.