Front Cover
Contents page
Double Page Spread
Friday, 3 April 2009
Evaluation
In what ways does your Media product ise, develop or challenge form and conventions of real Media products?
When I first started designing my music magazine I decided to use some ideas from ‘Dazed and Confused’ magazine, because it represents bands/music artists that I like therefore would be a good idea to create a magazine for my own liking, therefore I will know more about that genre, which is Dance/RnB and how the layout will be. I used the idea of having a singer/performer as the main headline and also as the background of the magazine cover. The girl i used as a new singer was a student from my college and to make her look like an RnB singer I dressed her up in a black slimmning dress and put bright colours of makeup on her face. I did this to make the colours represent the beats of music, to show how happy music can make you feel.
To develop my written plans i produced the magazine cover, contents page and double page spread on Desktop Publisher but after creating it the first time i realised it needed some drastic changes to make it look like a real media production like the 'Dazed and Confused' magazine.
When taking photos for all pages of the magazine i used a variety of people and shots such as an extreme close up for the main image on the cover to show the colours on her face and her facial expression. As for images in the contents page most of them were medium shots to show full body language and the clothes they are wearing to show that they represent the stereotype of RnB singers and fans. Challenging real Media Products i found the hardest, as i didn't want to make it unrealistic, but to do this i have focused my audience on females because most music magazines are targeted at a specific genre and at both genders but not necessarily all types of magazines are aimed at both male and female. I thought it would be a change to do this for my media product. I have stuck to a typical magazine layout, having images, plugs, headlines, bylines, title along the top, prices and barcodes to have it true to life of real media products and my aim was to create a music magazine like the 'dazed and Confused' as it is the genre i was basing my product on.
How does your Media product represent particular social groups?
The main social groups my media product has represented is of course the female nature, showing this with images of females, all at a similar age and wearing same styled clothes, keeping update with fashion. The Artists i have mentioned are Brintey Spears who i took a photo of a girl, aged 17 and on the top of a window sill, with an arched back pose, to look sexy and femanine and i did this because Britney is known so be one of the sexiest music artists. The idea for the picture of Sez, which is on the contents page, labelled to be on page 75, is to show a different style of RnB, rather than being all about being 'sexy' it's more about the sweet innocent, 'girl next door' image and i did this with having more clothing on the girl rather than wearing a shirt dress, also wearing the in fashion patterened tights and her facial expression is looking down, quite innocent like. This image would represent the more quiet girls. Also another Group i have mentioned are the Bloody Beetroots, they are a popular DJ group and perform at lot of Gigs, i did not create a photo of them as their image would be hard to create as they were specially designed masks as their identity, but having an article of them listed on the contents page, page 11 it shows an interest in them.
What kind of Media institution might distribute your Media product and why?
I think that the best Media Institution to distribute would be music stores such as 'HMV', as they sell CD's, DVD's and posters of all genres and my media product would fit in well with this and would hit the target audience. This may also increase sales in the stores if they get people who are interested in my music magazine production 'Fuse'. An alternative to this would be huge, well known supermarkets such as Asda or Tescos, the right aged people will be there and there will be a large number of people who will see it as lots if people go food shopping. The only downfall would be that there is already a wide variety of different types of magazines in them stores so it would have a lot of competition. Perhaps smaller News Agents would be a good place to have my media product distributed, it will still have the right aged people there and a reasonably high popularity of people in the News Agents as they are usually allocated in home places, close for people to walk to if they need something quickly. There is also the idea of having it advertised on the television and radio as they have a large popularity rate, most people in the world have either one of them, this would make it easier to let the audience know when the next issue is next out and what may be included in it without having to go to shop first to find out.
Finally computers and laptops nowadays have adverts on web pages and instead of having online games advertised, my media product could be advertised there, however it is not as simple to get hold of, unless the website for the magazine 'www.fuse.co.uk' would sell copies therefore people can then click on the advertisement and buy their magazine online.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Origianlly i was aiming my media product at 16-21 year olds, male, female and interested in the Dance/RnB but after creating my piece it seemed more relevant to be aimed at females, as it was bright and colourful with femamine colours such as pink and purple, lots of the images i took were also of females. This does limit who buys the magazine and i should have really considered making it aimed at males to because then perhaps if it was distributed it would have a wider audience and would be more popular.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience with bright colours like yellow, green and pink. I used plenty of female images, all in clothing that is fashionable and related to the 'sexy' image Dance/RnB singers try to portray. I created this image the best with the 'Sky' singer character on the cover, as i made her interview about her new success, so i put a happy, bright closeup of her face on the front and then used other images i had taken of her in a black dress looking relaxed and femanine. Most images did have the females dressed up in dresses and posed to attract attention to them. I also used a different race of people, i thought it would be good to use a different race, then it has a greater range of audience to target the product at. I did use an alternative image rather than of females by putting at image of the Pacha nightclub, to show the magazine is not all about female singers/music artists but other Dance/RnB things in the world.
The age range i targeted at was 16-21 so the images i used were of people around that age otherwise they wouldn't be relevant to the magazine.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The first new technology to me was the Blogger site, i had never been on it before and found it hard to use when i first started posting posts. The more and more a looked around on my Blogger account the easier it got to use.
When i had uploaded my photos onto my desktop, to edit my photos i had to use Photoshop Editor, i think this was that hardest software and i still find it very difficult to use. The benefit of using this was that i could use many different effects to edit my images. These effects helped the most for the main image on the cover because the original image was all in colour but i wanted only the makeup on Sky's face to stand out and the rest of her face, hair and body to be black, grey and white. To do this i had to created different layers and change each layer to what i want it to be like and then merge them together, it took some time but the outcome was worth it, it created the image i was trying to show which was the colours to represent the beat and happiness in music.
The easiest technology for me was using the Desktop Publisher, i have used it plenty of times before and have learnt how to do new different things on it for example laying out the pages to have text columns so the double page spread could look more like an article.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back I realise it takes a lot of hard work to create a good product and that you can’t always get it right straight away, it takes more than once to get it right but the downside to that is that in the Media Industry I won’t always have a second chance so perhaps I need to spend more time researching what I am doing before designing and getting straight into the task. Also that the programmes that real magazines editors will use will have much more better developed workshops to used so they can edit their images much better and use different effects. I think that i have massively improved since the preliminary task, i have used more images, filled up space with relevant plugs or images. I think i have learnt to use my time more wisely and use my own knowledge on things rather than choose a topic that is more popular for example i was considering creating a magazine for the Indie image simply because i knew it was more popular but because i have more knowledge on Dance/RnB it was much more easier to do. As a whole the full main product is a better outcome and shows i have improved.
When I first started designing my music magazine I decided to use some ideas from ‘Dazed and Confused’ magazine, because it represents bands/music artists that I like therefore would be a good idea to create a magazine for my own liking, therefore I will know more about that genre, which is Dance/RnB and how the layout will be. I used the idea of having a singer/performer as the main headline and also as the background of the magazine cover. The girl i used as a new singer was a student from my college and to make her look like an RnB singer I dressed her up in a black slimmning dress and put bright colours of makeup on her face. I did this to make the colours represent the beats of music, to show how happy music can make you feel.
To develop my written plans i produced the magazine cover, contents page and double page spread on Desktop Publisher but after creating it the first time i realised it needed some drastic changes to make it look like a real media production like the 'Dazed and Confused' magazine.
When taking photos for all pages of the magazine i used a variety of people and shots such as an extreme close up for the main image on the cover to show the colours on her face and her facial expression. As for images in the contents page most of them were medium shots to show full body language and the clothes they are wearing to show that they represent the stereotype of RnB singers and fans. Challenging real Media Products i found the hardest, as i didn't want to make it unrealistic, but to do this i have focused my audience on females because most music magazines are targeted at a specific genre and at both genders but not necessarily all types of magazines are aimed at both male and female. I thought it would be a change to do this for my media product. I have stuck to a typical magazine layout, having images, plugs, headlines, bylines, title along the top, prices and barcodes to have it true to life of real media products and my aim was to create a music magazine like the 'dazed and Confused' as it is the genre i was basing my product on.
How does your Media product represent particular social groups?
The main social groups my media product has represented is of course the female nature, showing this with images of females, all at a similar age and wearing same styled clothes, keeping update with fashion. The Artists i have mentioned are Brintey Spears who i took a photo of a girl, aged 17 and on the top of a window sill, with an arched back pose, to look sexy and femanine and i did this because Britney is known so be one of the sexiest music artists. The idea for the picture of Sez, which is on the contents page, labelled to be on page 75, is to show a different style of RnB, rather than being all about being 'sexy' it's more about the sweet innocent, 'girl next door' image and i did this with having more clothing on the girl rather than wearing a shirt dress, also wearing the in fashion patterened tights and her facial expression is looking down, quite innocent like. This image would represent the more quiet girls. Also another Group i have mentioned are the Bloody Beetroots, they are a popular DJ group and perform at lot of Gigs, i did not create a photo of them as their image would be hard to create as they were specially designed masks as their identity, but having an article of them listed on the contents page, page 11 it shows an interest in them.
What kind of Media institution might distribute your Media product and why?
I think that the best Media Institution to distribute would be music stores such as 'HMV', as they sell CD's, DVD's and posters of all genres and my media product would fit in well with this and would hit the target audience. This may also increase sales in the stores if they get people who are interested in my music magazine production 'Fuse'. An alternative to this would be huge, well known supermarkets such as Asda or Tescos, the right aged people will be there and there will be a large number of people who will see it as lots if people go food shopping. The only downfall would be that there is already a wide variety of different types of magazines in them stores so it would have a lot of competition. Perhaps smaller News Agents would be a good place to have my media product distributed, it will still have the right aged people there and a reasonably high popularity of people in the News Agents as they are usually allocated in home places, close for people to walk to if they need something quickly. There is also the idea of having it advertised on the television and radio as they have a large popularity rate, most people in the world have either one of them, this would make it easier to let the audience know when the next issue is next out and what may be included in it without having to go to shop first to find out.
Finally computers and laptops nowadays have adverts on web pages and instead of having online games advertised, my media product could be advertised there, however it is not as simple to get hold of, unless the website for the magazine 'www.fuse.co.uk' would sell copies therefore people can then click on the advertisement and buy their magazine online.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Origianlly i was aiming my media product at 16-21 year olds, male, female and interested in the Dance/RnB but after creating my piece it seemed more relevant to be aimed at females, as it was bright and colourful with femamine colours such as pink and purple, lots of the images i took were also of females. This does limit who buys the magazine and i should have really considered making it aimed at males to because then perhaps if it was distributed it would have a wider audience and would be more popular.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience with bright colours like yellow, green and pink. I used plenty of female images, all in clothing that is fashionable and related to the 'sexy' image Dance/RnB singers try to portray. I created this image the best with the 'Sky' singer character on the cover, as i made her interview about her new success, so i put a happy, bright closeup of her face on the front and then used other images i had taken of her in a black dress looking relaxed and femanine. Most images did have the females dressed up in dresses and posed to attract attention to them. I also used a different race of people, i thought it would be good to use a different race, then it has a greater range of audience to target the product at. I did use an alternative image rather than of females by putting at image of the Pacha nightclub, to show the magazine is not all about female singers/music artists but other Dance/RnB things in the world.
The age range i targeted at was 16-21 so the images i used were of people around that age otherwise they wouldn't be relevant to the magazine.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The first new technology to me was the Blogger site, i had never been on it before and found it hard to use when i first started posting posts. The more and more a looked around on my Blogger account the easier it got to use.
When i had uploaded my photos onto my desktop, to edit my photos i had to use Photoshop Editor, i think this was that hardest software and i still find it very difficult to use. The benefit of using this was that i could use many different effects to edit my images. These effects helped the most for the main image on the cover because the original image was all in colour but i wanted only the makeup on Sky's face to stand out and the rest of her face, hair and body to be black, grey and white. To do this i had to created different layers and change each layer to what i want it to be like and then merge them together, it took some time but the outcome was worth it, it created the image i was trying to show which was the colours to represent the beat and happiness in music.
The easiest technology for me was using the Desktop Publisher, i have used it plenty of times before and have learnt how to do new different things on it for example laying out the pages to have text columns so the double page spread could look more like an article.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back I realise it takes a lot of hard work to create a good product and that you can’t always get it right straight away, it takes more than once to get it right but the downside to that is that in the Media Industry I won’t always have a second chance so perhaps I need to spend more time researching what I am doing before designing and getting straight into the task. Also that the programmes that real magazines editors will use will have much more better developed workshops to used so they can edit their images much better and use different effects. I think that i have massively improved since the preliminary task, i have used more images, filled up space with relevant plugs or images. I think i have learnt to use my time more wisely and use my own knowledge on things rather than choose a topic that is more popular for example i was considering creating a magazine for the Indie image simply because i knew it was more popular but because i have more knowledge on Dance/RnB it was much more easier to do. As a whole the full main product is a better outcome and shows i have improved.
Friday, 13 March 2009
The outcome of my music magazine and double page spread.
Basically i think that the only part of my magazine which is good are the title and the image. 'Sky speaks out..' quote needs to be more snappier and look less tabloid like. The Pacha night club and Rhianna interview are not needed at all, they need to be replaced by something better with perhaps a new original image. I have forgotten to put a date and issue on it and a bar code, they may be small details but all magazines have them not just music magazines. The 'free inside' needs removing and the '70 page special' needs to be the same font as 'Britain's top artists' as they are related and also needs to be clear that it's the top music artists.
When i printed the double page spread out i realised how big the text was and that it needed to be much smaller which therefor means that more interview is needed. The advertisement at the right needs to be taken off so there is more space for the interview. Also the image of 'Sky' needs to be re thought about, it could be better and needs to be more images, if i opened a magazine i would expect more on the interview. Also there needs to be some pull lines and an introduction to what this page is, i have only gone straight to the interview without letting he audience know what it is.
Once again when printed off the text was too big and there needs to be more pages listed. The images ok but i could have some more original images so that i can make as much as possible of it to be my ideas.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Designing my own music magazine cover and double page spread.
I have now started to design my own music magazine cover. I will draw out a few ideas first before i think of a final decision and i will start taking many photos so i have plenty to choose from when i pick the final design. So far i do have a brief idea what i would like to do but i will compare it to other ideas first.
My Ideas.
The genre that i have decided to use for my magazine cover is Dance/RnB. Stars that would be apart of this genre would be Eric Prydz, Pacha (a popular night club), Faithless, Ciara, Rhianna, Chris Brown and Bass hunter.
The target audience for the magazine will be ages 16 - 21 for males and females. To target this audience i will use a variety of images of men and women and use musicians that appeal to them like the ones listed above.
The title i have decided to give my music magazine is 'Fuse' because it links to the idea of electricity which is what speakers need to play music outloud.
My idea for the the image was at first to take a photo of a young woman listeneing to music from her head phones dancing and i would represent the music beats with bright colours of paint thrown on a white wall but because this was difficult to do, i decided to represent the music with bright colours still but have them on the face of the young woman dancing which i think has still created a good effect.
The double page spread will be a interview with the young woman having an interview for being a new music artist in the music industry. I will have a large picture of her in the middle with the questions and answers around her. The questions will be about how she feels abou doing music and how good she thinks she may be, and also to make it more interesting have some personal questions, perhaps about her love life.
The contents page will have all the page numbers and whats on those pages along the left side with images relating to the inside on the right, i just want to keep the contents page simple because it's more about whas inside the magazine.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Q magazine
Here is another magazine cover were i will be analysing the Genre, Media Language, Representation and Ideology.
Genre
To find out more about the magazine i looked at other 'Q' magazines to find out what other music celebrities have been on the cover, there have been people like Kings of Lion, Madonna, U2, Coldplay, Kylie and so on. I thinks thisshows that the magazine is more based on the individual music stars who create there own genre rather than the magazine as a whole be based on one genre. This can be similar to other magazines in the way of who is on the cover as on the cover i am using it has Madonna but she could also be used on a cover such as 'Mixmag' because that appears to have the genre of dance which to some extent Madonna has used as an image. I think the title 'Q' reminds me of questions, it gives the idea that it questions the music industry. I don't think music magazine necessarily not represent other genres because as previously mentioned it appears to be a magazine which represents more than one genre. Also the idea of all the different genres does give variety within genre and time period as artists like Madonna have been around for years.
Media Language
The fonts used appear to be straight, clear fonts and the same font appears to be used over the whole of the cover, different colours have been used to seperate them up. The largest font of course is the name on the magazine but 'Madonna' has been enlarged to, so that it stands out. The main colours used are red and white, most texts are in white to stand out against the dark background of Madonna in a black boxing robe. The main photo is the photo of Madonna wearing a black boxing robe and a dark silver glove. There is also an image of 'women in music' free 70 page special. Although there is a large photo of Madonna other stars are listed along the left side; Michael Stipe, Russel Brand, Kasier Chiefs, Girls Aloud, Mighty Boosh, Ian Brown and Little Britain which have been interviewed. There is no white space on the cover which shows the editors have used as music space as possible but i have noticed that the background behind Madonna is black which blends into her costume which prevents the idea of white space, which shows as a whole black is the main colour. When i look at the magazine i can't help but look at Madonna as her eyes always appear to be looking my way.
The title is simple and reminds me of the idea of a questionnaire. The idea of the title is to show the audience what the magazine is about but i think if it wasn't for the images of singers/bands as in this case Madonna, which does question whether its the images selling the magazine rather than the title.
The facial expression on Madonna's face looks very relaxed but also has a look of sexiness, her hair is curly but covered up by the hood of a boxing robe, this image has been used to show that they have got an interview from her inside the magazine. I think it makes Madonna look very serous and shows that she is a sensible person. The second image of 'women in music' magazine cover that the audience recieve inside has a woman on the front in a very unusual pose, when i first looked at it i thought it was about gym exercises but when you look closer she is infact in a nice blue dress, looks stylish and has a plug stating that it is a music magazine feature.
Representation
On the cover of this magazine it does appear to represent women mainly through image but to represent men, it has been written in text what bands will be featured in side, which of some have men in. I don't think it's a question of who is not represented on this magazine because i think that this magazine has an all around genre of music represented and also as well i representing music stars, it has some popular television stars mentioned for example Russel Brand and Mighty Boosh. I think it's hard to say basing it on this cover that there is any sexul prientation/attraction because only women have been shown through image, no men. Also race is not an issue only one race seems clear on this particular cover of white people.
Ideology
Although this magazine appears to represent more than one genre, i think the target audience are people who like music such as Indie, Rock, Dance and Punk but are in between the ages 18 - 25 due to new younger stars that appeal to them such as Girls Aloud but on the other hadn may appeal to people at the age of 40 because of some of the stars in the magazine which were around when they were younger as in this case Madonna, who also appeals for the younger people aswell due to new styles she experiements.
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