Evaluation - Q7) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

How I have used forms and conventions

Masthead-

One of the main conventions of a magazine is the masthead. This is a very important feature of a magazine as it is the brand recognition for the product which is to be remembered and recognized by many. The masthead that I have created challenges the usual convention as it is set out differently than the generic magazine masthead. As you can see, the name of my magazine is created in a way that visually looks like an acrostic. The letters 'VIP' are placed down the side to emphasize the importance of the pop genre, the magazine and the readers. The shape of the masthead is also different to the usual type of masthead as it has been put into a circle shaped boarder. I did this as it separates the masthead from the rest of the magazine which highlights it and again, makes it stand out from other magazines.

Main Image-
Another convention is a main image on the front page of the magazine. This usually plays a big part when attracting the readers as, young audiences especially, tend to decide on a magazine due to the cover and who is featured on it. The mise-en-scene is different and challenges the usual conventions of a main image as it is set outside. Most pop magazines have images which are taken in a studio to use on their front cover, where as I decided to do this differently for my own product to make it different from others. Setting the main image outside instead of inside a studio helps my magazine to stand out from others on the shelf as it does not follow the usual conventions.

Sell Lines-
I have used the typical convention of sell lines on my magazine cover as I feel that they are an important and traditional way of attracting the audience to get them to buy the product. I feel that sell lines are very effective and this is the reason why I have many of them on the cover of my magazine. The sell lines that I have created do not challenge the usual conventions as they are quite similar in a sense that they portray small bits of information about what is inside of the magazine. However, I have used many images to support these sell lines as this also helps to attract the audience as images are more appealing to the eye than just writing. Therefore, my magazine is also different to others for the amount of images used, instead of just using one or two, I have used many to go along side the sell lines. This also helps my product to stand out on the shelf compared to other stereotypical magazines.

Layering-
Many pop magazines consist of lots of layering on the cover of their magazine, whereas, my magazine includes less of it. I decided to create my magazine so that everything is in sections and columns as it makes everything on the page stand out instead of being sunk into the background with the rest of the main conventions. This makes my magazine different to many as all of the stories are clear and you can easily see each feature that is being portrayed which contrasts with the idea of lots of layering covering the page.

Evaluation - Q6) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 

http://prezi.com/hcp-ymcg1udz/who-is-the-social-group-for-my-product/

Evaluation - Q5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Egmont Group

I think that Egmont would distribute my media product as they are a unique publishing company who have a target audience of a young age which is similar to the target audience for my own magazine. I think that Egmont would be the best publishing group to distribute my product as they publish the 'We Love Pop' magazine. I based a lot of my research on this magazine as inspiration to gather some ideas for my own product as it has a similar target audience. As Egmont is the publishing company for this magazine, I already know that they are popular with my target audience, especially due to their focus on younger generations therefore it would be a trust worthy institution for me to use. In addition to this I think they would be interested in my magazine as it fits in with the type of magazines that they already publish which could attract some new customers for them.

I have used Egmont's website to find out information about the group and the types of magazines that they distribute: http://www.egmont.co.uk/magazines.asp

Evaluation - Q5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Egmont - Research

Egmont is the UK's biggest children's publisher and they publish only for children as they are their main focus. Egmont Group is Scandinavian in origin and is one of the world's biggest media companies. They’re a private company owned by a charitable foundation and sell more than 25 million books and 12 million magazines a year.

Egmont are number 2 in the UK children's book market, number 1 in the character book market and number 2 in magazines. They have a team of many talents, more than 200 people based in their London offices and their titles and authors are loved by children, parents and teachers.

Egmont publish many popular magazine products such as Barbie, Hello Kitty, Ben 10, Go Girl, Disney and Me and We Love Pop.

I have used Egmont's website to educate myself on the different products that they publish and their unique and specific target audience: http://www.egmont.co.uk/

Evaluation - Q5) What kind of media insitution might distribute your media product and why?

Emap - Research

Emap International Limited is a British Media Company which specialises in the production of business-to-business magazines, and the organisation of business events and conferences. It is now owned by Apax and Guardian Media Group.

Emap is a content, subscription and networking business. They connect influential people and organisations to a high-value network of decision-makers, data and ideas through their industry-leading portfolio of brands including Retail Week, Health service journal, MEED, Architect’s journal and Drapers.

This is Emap's website which helped me to find out information about the company and their target audience: http://www.emap.com/

Evaluation - Q5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Bauer - Research

Bauer media group is an international distribution company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. It operates in 16 countries worldwide and was founded in 1875. It has been privately owned by the Bauer family.

Bauer have more than 80 influential media brands, spanning a wide range of interests. These include Heat, Grazia, Closer, MCN, FHM, Parkers, MATCH, Magic 105.4, Kerrang and 4music. The business is built on millions of personal relationships with engaged audiences.

The Bauer website helped me with my research to understand the company and who they appeal to: http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/

Evalutation - Q5) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

IPC - Research

IPC Media (International Publishing Corporation) is a magazine consumer and digital publishing company in the United Kingdom which has a large portfolio and selling over 350 million copies of magazines each year.

It has more than 60 iconic media brands, IPC creates content for multiple platforms, across-print, online, mobile, tablets and events. It also has an award winning portfolio of websites reaches over 25 million global users every month.

IPC publishes many magazine products such as Teen Now, Look, Woman's Weekly, Soap Life, TV Easy, Golf monthly and many more.

I have used the IPC website to do some individual research to get a clear idea of what the company do and how they do it: http://www.ipcmedia.com/

Evaluation - Q4) Who are your target audience?

My target audience for my music magazine are females who are of the ages 12-15 and have a love for pop music. I chose this age and gender because stereotypically females of young ages enjoy pop music so I decided to target my magazine at them to appeal to the majority of the pop fans. Also many people like pop music as it is one of the most popular genre's due to the internet, radio and their pop charts and is also popular as it is a universal genre of music, therefore, I thought it would be a good target audience to have in able to create a successful magazine.

I have created a Power Point slideshow consisting of information about my target audience and what appeals to them:
http://www.slideshare.net/katiecmaher/target-audience-powerpoint-for-blog

Evaluation - Q3) How did you attract/address your target audience?

Writing style

As well as the appearance of my magazine attracting and addressing my audience, the writing style within it does too. As an additional page in my music magazine, I had to create a double page spread which I chose to be an exclusive interview from a famous 'pop-star'. I knew that in order to attract and address my audience I had to make sure my writing style appealed to the age that would be reading the magazine. This meant that due to the young age of my target audience, I could not use sophisticated language or a formal style but to use colloquial language and quite short paragraphs making it easy to read also. To attract the target audience, I decided to use short questions and answers and also a hint of humour making sure no interest is lost whilst reading it. This is the finished double page spread:

Evaluation - Q3) How did you attract/address your target audience?

Photography

I used a lot of photography and images within my music magazine. A lot of the images I used were of models which were directly addressing the audience as they were looking right out at them making eye contact. This attracts and addresses the audience as it makes them feel like the magazine is personal and the artists on there are looking directly at them as a reader. When you are reading a magazine and the images contain direct address to the reader, it feels like the person is talking directly to you which is welcoming to the audience, again, attracting them to buy it. These are some of my images which have direct address towards the audience:

Evaluation - Q3) How did you attract/address your target audience?

Content

Along with the appearance of the magazine, I think the contents of the magazine also attracts the audience. People are more likely to buy a magazine due to what is inside of it over it's image, therefore, I think the magazine's content plays a very important role when attracting and addressing the audience. Here is the contents page annotated with how and why it attracts my target audience:

Evaluation - Q3) How did you attract/address your target audience?

My target audience are girls from the age of 12 to 15 who are interested in  pop music.

Layout

My music magazine attracts and addresses my target audience as it is very stereotypical of this age and gender. Here is the cover of my magazine and how it appeals to the chosen audience:

Evaluation - Q2) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Blogger

In the progress of making my magazines, I had to blog everything that I was doing and how I did it. In order to do this, I had to learn how to use Google's 'Blogger' which I had not used before. We were given part of a lesson to learn how to use the software so we could confidently update our blogs each time we had improved our products. Therefore, in the process of constructing the magazine I had learnt how to create my own blog and successfully update it frequently so all of my information was blogged.

Evaluation - Q2) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Websites

I used many websites to create my final products. The main websites I used were www.fontspace.com, www.google.com and www.youtube.com. These websites made the editing of my magazine easier in many different areas of it I used youtube especially to educate myself with different tutorials on how to take a successful photo and edit images. These websites were very useful as they were needed a lot in the making of my magazines. This is how I used Youtube for tutorials:

I went on the website and typed in what I wanted to know into the search engine which was information about good photography.



The website then provided the recommended videos to watch that corresponded to my search.

I then chose the video that I wanted to watch and learnt some tips and skills on how to take a successful photograph..

Evaluation - Q2) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Photography

I have used a range of technology when creating my magazines. A key item in creating my product was the camera for my photography. I decided to use my own camera as I knew exactly how to use it and get the perfect shot. I have also learnt about the framing of an image by using the Ipad supplied by school which 

portrayed lines across the screen so you were able to see exactly where the model should be placed within the frame. This was very helpful when taking my actual pictures as I knew more information on how to take a successful image by the position of the model which contributes to the motive of the picture too.

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Layout

In the progression from my school magazine to my music magazine, I feel I have improved on the layout of my magazine as everything is a lot more structured and organized on each page in the music magazine compared to the school magazine. Structuring the magazine in a different and organized manner enabled my full product to look a lot more original as it's appearance is more similar to an actual magazine than the first product. To change my layout, I placed the information into columns and boxes to make it's appearance neater and appealing to the eye. Here you can see the contrast in the different layout ideas used:

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Double page spread

In my school magazine I was instructed to create only a cover and contents page. However, when creating my music magazine I had to include a double page spread too. This meant that I had to work on my writing style in able for me to create a successful double page spread interview. I had to adapt to the idea of adding in this extra page by learning many new skills such as a successful writing technique which appeals to my target audience, what to include within the interview and also how to edit the page so it continues with my house style and looks professional. I created my double page spread on the Publisher software with the rest of my magazine. I used questions which I thought would appeal to my young female target audience such as information about boys and the pop star's love life as this is what they would be most interested in reading about. This was an improvement from my previous product as it was more time consuming and I learnt new skills in order to create it. This is my double page spread: 

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Direct Address

In my progression, I also feel that I have learnt to include more direct address to attract my audience than there was in my first school magazine.I feel that I have improved on this as more of my images have direct appeal to the audience as my models are looking straight out to the camera. This will attract the audience as it makes them feel involved with the magazine as it is more personal and makes them feel as if the models are looking straight at them. As well as this, I have included features such as prizes and fashion style ideas to attract the target audience which highlights direct address also.

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Masthead

In the progression from my school magazine to my music magazine, I have also created an improved original masthead. The masthead that I had created for my music magazine is more original in terms of appearance as it has a unique style compared to my school magazine masthead. To create my school and music magazine mastheads I used www.fontspace.com and Paint. Below shows how I used FontSpace to create my mastheads and the comparison between them:

First, I went onto the website and clicked on the 'browse' option. The website would then show me all of the different categories of text types that I could choose from. I would look to find which font style would best suit my masthead and click on it.

Once I had chosen the category I wanted to look under, the website displayed all the matches that were available and what there was to choose from. Once I had found the text type that I wanted to use I would click on it.

I was then able to type in my own text and change the colour of the font to what fit the magazine the best and related to my target audience.

I feel that my music magazine masthead is more effective than my school magazine masthead and that I have improved in this area. I think it is more effective as it has an original design meaning it has a unique selling point to it as it is very different to the usual type of block-text mastheads. 

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Use of space

As well as the editing of my images, I also feel that I have progressed by learning the skills of how to use up space effectively within the pages of my magazine so it is not too empty. My school magazine consisted of a lot of unused space, particularly on the contents page, which I knew had to be changed for my music magazine. I used up the space by using different techniques such as text boxes and images to add more to the page than just the main information. Here are both the cover and contents pages of both of the magazines where you can see the progression of using up the space that was empty:

Evaluation - Q1) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Editing photography

In the progression from my school magazine to my music magazine I have learnt new skills whilst editing my photography. I have edited the images for my music magazine differently and in a more complex manner than the images from my first product. The main skill I had learnt for editing my images was to crop them out so they could be used on a different background to which the photo was originally taken with. I had found a website which enabled me to crop out my photos in a way which was less time consuming than using paint. The website I used was http://clippingmagic.com/. It worked by letting me shade the areas that I wanted to remove in red, and the areas I wanted to keep in green. The red would then be removed leaving me with the cropped image that I wanted. This is what it looked like:

Although this website was very useful when cropping images, It did not always work as effectively as the Paint software did as it got rid of parts of the images that I wanted to keep. Therefore, to crop some of my images I used Paint as well as Clipping Magic. On the Paint software you are able to remove the background by simply clicking on the rubber icon and removing the background yourself, however, this requires a steady hand and is also a lot more time consuming. This is how it worked:

I decided to crop out the images as on some on some of them I used a green screen however the editing software was not enabling my to remove the background effectively. Therefore, I had to use both Clipping Magic and Paint to get the final image how I wanted it. This took longer than the original editing software would have but I still wanted to continue with my idea.

This shows my progression as I had not cropped any of my images used in the school magazine whereas I learnt to for my music magazine. These are some of the pictures I used in the school magazine and music magazine easily identifying where my skills have improved:

Cover page - side stories (annotation)

Cover page - Masthead, Colour, Layout (annotation)

Cover page - Skyline, Strapline, Main image, Anchorage text (annotation)

Finished cover page with annotations:

Edited photos

I edited most of my images for my magazines. Each of my images below are the ones I have edited. I have also explained how and why I have edited them in the way I have.

This photo was also taken using a green screen so I was able to remove it in order to get a transparent background. This image was used for a side story on the front page which was about a singer talking about what kind of girlfriend he would want. For this reason, I removed the background and replaced it with a block purple with pink hearts floating around his head. I did this as it created a poster effect and felt that it would appeal to the target audience as he is one of the main stars that the girls may have a 'crush' on.

These are three separate images which I  removed the background from using paint. I did this as I wanted to put the three images together to show the different styles of clothing that the image is portraying. The only editing I did to these images were crop them out and put them together in a slanted formation. I think this makes the magazine look more original as it was used for another side story and I have also used some overlapping which is common in magazines.

I also used a green screen for this image too, however, the lighting on the green screen was not bright enough for this image to remove the background easily, therefore, it was a lot harder and more time consuming with still parts of green showing. However, this image was placed back onto a green grass background so it is hard to notice the green outline of the hair and still looks effective. I cropped the model out so I was able to use the grass background for my double page spread. As well as this, I also enhanced the brightness on the image to highlight the model so she was able to stand out from the background and, again, look vibrant as people in magazines do.

I edited this image as I used a green screen so I was able to crop it. I wanted her to be stood outside with a view of nature behind her to represent her down to earth personality. I decided to use a green screen as I could not guarantee that the day I took this image the weather would be nice outside, therefore, I took the images on different days. I edited this picture by removing the green screen to get a transparent background. I also enhanced the brightness and slightly enhanced the contrast in order to highlight her face so she looked more vibrant.

A green screen was used again to capture this image so that I could create a transparent background. This image was also used for the double page spread however it was being used as a smaller picture on the page of the interview. I cropped the image out so that it would also have the grass as the background to fit in with the rest of the page. Like my other images, I enhanced the brightness to highlight her face and hair to add a bit more colour to her so she looks more vibrant. Editing images like this made the photography look a lot more professional and similar to photography in other magazines.

Double page spread - Colour, Layout, Title (annotation)

Editing photography - Website

When editing some of my images, I decided to crop them out so they had no background. When researching editing techniques I came across a helpful website to help me when cropping which is less time consuming than using the 'Paint' software. The website allows you to get rid of the unwanted parts of the image by shading it red, and the wanted areas green. The unwanted parts would then disappear leaving only what you wanted. The website I used was http://clippingmagic.com/

Here is an image of how you use it:

Editing Photography - Video

I have done some research on how to edit a photo to make it look like a professional photograph to get the most out of my images. This is one of the videos that I have seen and is a helpful tutorial on tips to edit photos. We have the 'GIMP' software at school which I like to use to edit some of my images, this video helped me with how to use it effectively.

Double page spread - Interview, Images (annotation)

Double paged spread completed

I have completed my double page spread and have annotated it to show why I have used everything I have and how it relates to and represents the target audience.

Double page spread progression

I have now finished my interview script that I will use for my main story on the double page spread. However I have still not completed the page as the images are not edited. This is my interview script:

Double page spread feedback

Again, I have asked my classmates and teacher for some feedback on my double page spread. My classmates said that they thought it was effective how my image was only on one side but I still used a smaller image on the other as magazines are usually full of them. To improve they said to continue with the work and begin my next task of editing images. My teacher read my interview draft that was written in my exercise book and said that that was good also, however, it could be improved by inserting more exclusive secretive information so the reader feels like they are involved. I will consider these points when continuing to work on my page and editing it to make improvements.

Double page spread

I have now began my double page spread. I have decided to stick with my original plan that I have made with the main image on the left side and the text on the right. I have almost completed the interview, but still have to add some more and edit the images too. This is what I have done so far: