EVALUATION

JUDY MILNER AS MEDIA

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Naturally my magazine would have to, in some way, resemble other professional media products or else it would be difficult to get any audience what so ever. Bringing something completely new to the table would probably backfire, because presently magazines like this are used purely for leisure purposes, if it were too different from something the audience was comfortable with it may throw them off. Metal music magazines are very similar because they have a similar target market. They have similar designs because they talk about the same kind of bands. It wouldn’t work in my magazines favor to try and stand out, and I kept this in mind when I created my magazine.

When you compare my cover to a professional one you can immediately see that we used a very similar colour scheme, red, white and black. Mine doesn’t quite have the same loud element the professional one does though, I could have achieved this by using sharper fonts and over exposing the cover image s n lightly to give it an extra edge.

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?I used ACORN to categorize my audience, which bases people off their social class, income and what they do in their free time. The media generalizes it’s audience a lot, but stereotyping isn’t meant to be an insult (like different forms of media tell us is bad, for example: any film with ‘believe in yourself’ as the bottom line) it’s simply a way to cater to the correct audience. My magazine caters more to the way people think and look than how much money they have, the type of music it focuses on is not exactly mainstream, and it’s very image based so as long as I keep advertising alternative/gothic clothing and keep researching into the kind of lifestyle these people are known for I should be safely catering towards the correct audience. The main indicator as to what the intended social class would be is the price; £2.50 is actually quite cheap for a magazine the comes with a CD, others would be the companies that advertise in the magazine and whether their products would be within the budget of my audience; the companies I chose were high-quality music brands and high street alternative fashion stores.

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

A media institution is a company that distributes and advertises and publishes your magazine. It’s very important because it’s your main connection between the you and the public, without proper distribution you would not have any readers. Somewhere like ‘TeamRock’, ‘IPC Media’ or ‘Bauer Media’ may distribute my magazine as it is similar to others that they distribute so they may be more willing to take it on. Having said that it’s quite unusual for one media institution to house two of the same kind of magazine, ‘Bauer Media’ may be more inclined to do so because the only two music magazines they distribute are ‘Kerrang!’ and ‘Q’, so they may be interested in housing something with heavier music.

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Like I said before, it’s important that heads of media generalize and stereotype so that they cater to the correct people. I got my target audience from a lifestyle questionnaire, a boy in the 21 – 26 age bracket was the only one out of the people I asked that listened to metal music, and that had to be placed at higher priority than anything else I asked. Although, both girls said that they liked hard rock and liked the way the magazine was designed. When I looked at similar magazines to mine I realized that they had the same kind of target audience, so marketing towards young men in their twenties would have been the best plan to follow, but I wanted to keep the girls in mind so I made sure not to put any content that was offensive to either gender.

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

First I did the obvious, I designed it in a way that reflects the music it is talking about. I kept a simple colour scheme, mainly black and white with a little bit of red, to make everything look quite cold. I did not have a variety of photographs for the front cover like similar professional magazines, which is a shame because I planned to have more but every time I tried to add some they made everything look messy and they were so out of place. The cover photo doesn’t really address a particular gender; it’s not over-sexualizing the model and it’s not explicitly promoting her as a role model, the photo is meant to have an edge to it, and the model is meant to represent the genre of music without offending anyone.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

I mainly used the same program to create the main images (Serif Page Plus X6), learning to use that program was quite easy but I ran into trouble when I was trying to remove the background from some images, it took my more time than I’d like to admit to figure it out. When I was at home and couldn’t access that program I used Adobe Photoshop CC which is initially a lot more difficult to use but I have used it before, being able to use Photoshop is a very useful skill to have. I didn’t know about Prezi or Slideshare before I started this project, it was easier to write things out on a PowerPoint and then put them on to my blog, so I was grateful for those other options.

I ended up using Prezi the most as it was an efficient way to arrange my magazine

analysis.

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

I really did learn quite a lot. My school front cover for my preliminary task had garish colours and mismatching fonts, I was taking everything I had learnt to the extreme. My method of making sure that the text was able to be seen over the complex background did not do the end product any good what so ever. The front cover for my music magazine, while not without problems of it’s own, is a lot better. The colours work together and the fonts are still easy to read (I learnt the importance of not having a distracting background). I think the main thing I learnt was that a lot of time and energy must be put into refining these publications professionally, maybe even more time then

it took to write the articles. A lot of people work on different things and it all has to come together in such

a short amount of time, I can barely fathom that some of

these publications distribute issues each and every week.