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!