G321 Foundation Portfolio EvaluationQUESTIONS 5-7

Q5 – How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract the attention of my chosen audience the main aim was to use a key signifier that was of the same age group as my audience. This meant that the audience would see and recognise that he was the roughly the same age and would become more interested in how someone like them ended in the music industry; also leaving them wondering how they got there and if they could do it themselves.

Another way I tried to attract the audience was to use colours that would stand out against most backgrounds and colours, the colours are also gender neutral so I was attracting males and females instead of just one. The colours chosen didn’t represent a particular style of music or social group, which supported the fact I do not want the magazine to focus on one thing. Although certain people associate certain colours with a particular genre, I feel that by using colours not used frequently it was possible to reach out to everyone by showing something they could consider different but actually has everything they look for in a music magazine.

Q5 Continued

Another way I attracted the audience was using styles which continued to follow the general conventions of other magazines with a young fan base, so using large text to fill out spaces and giving the reader something to read that they care about, the puffs on the cover which are about festivals and artists will attract my target audience because they are large, they can be read from some distance and the people who like going to festivals are going to want to read about it.

Q6 – What have learnt about technologies from the process of construction this product?

During the process of making my magazine, I had to learn how to use software such as photo shop and InDesign to produce professional looking photos and designs to use in my magazine. To start with I had no experience with either of these two pieces of software and had to figure out how to use them by myself. I ended up taking random photos from the internet and trying to manipulate them in any way possible using photo shop, at first I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I was able to pick a certain aspect of a photo, for example a guitar and add effects to that particular item and make that stand out from the image. In addition to this I was able to completely remove the backgrounds form images and replace them, I decided not to do this in my final product because I thought it was better if the photos used were completely original.

Q6 Continued

The other piece of software I was unfamiliar with was InDesign. This was because I was completely new to me and had never heard or seen of it before. I struggled to get to grips with InDesign because there are a so many options and choices to choose from that I didn’t know where to start. To start with I decided to create all the main text for all of the pages, starting with the masthead and puffs for the front cover and then the anchorage text. The hardest part of each page was creating and using a background that fit well with the magazine. After the completion of my magazine I have a better understanding of how to use the two types of software effectively to produce a professional looking final product.

Q7 – Looking back at your preliminary task, what have you learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task I have learnt a great deal in terms of the planning and production of my magazine. Firstly, I found that researching the conventions other magazines follow helped me to decide which genres my magazine would cover, unlike in the preliminary task where I just made the magazine based on how it looks. From the research into the conventions magazines use to attract their audiences I was put together a magazine which followed these conventions well enough to attract the chosen target audience. Something else I've learnt is not to rush any part of the magazine, this only creates mistakes which make the magazine look unprofessional. So I took my time making each page to make sure it looked exactly how a magazine should look.Overall the most important thing I've learnt from my preliminary task is to plan as much as possible what will feature in your magazine; because without planning first the magazine will not have the same effect, look or feel as a genuine magazine does.