Q7. Looking back at the preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to a full product?

My preliminary task was to create a college magazine front cover and contents page.

For that task i had to take a variety of photographs that would go on to my front cover and contents page using a Canon EOS 400D. Then later my photographs would be loaded up on to the computer then edited on Photoshop CS3. When taking my pictures i had to think about what my cover and contents page was going to look like during that process. but I was new to operating the camera and soft-box , Also getting the camera to focus well on the subject was fairly tricky an kept giving out blurry pictures, however that did not turn out to be too much of a problem after a bit of practice and I took some decent photographs for my college magazine. Look back on this task I could of been better on choosing my locations as pictures were there’s a lot of sun is the best place to them.

Since that task, i noticed that deadlines set were very important as it only slows you down and makes you work harder due to work set by other subjects, so now i have really been hard on myself to meet deadlines. I completed my research on time, and when I had to start working on creating my final products, I found my models very quickly and booked a studio, soft-box and a Canon EOS 400D to take my picture with a long time within the deadline, this time I was certain of what I wanted from my models, many pictures of my models were in different poses, so that I could later choose the best ones.

When starting the main task organising the equipment became a routine so it wasn’t a problem anymore, i paid great attention to the safety hazards and the great amount of attention needed towards them to avoid injury from electric shock. Also I learnt more about the effect that soft-boxes create with the artificial light source. It then quickly spreads and hits the subjects softly getting rid of the darkness, this is what makes the picture look natural and smooth. Using Adobe Photoshop became easy for me after guidance and practice, so I focused on trying to get the best out of my skills when designing.

When creating my magazine, I used a variety of important fonts just as they are in real magazines. The majority of fonts that I used are sans-serif which is text without the flicks on the ends of the font. The effect that this gives my magazine is a modern feeling which is what my audience preferred as my target was teenagers and young adults.

The strengths of my work, is that people in my class have told me they  like it, the ways i put my colours together consistently and also the information it gives out, including my teacher who was pleased with what I created so that motivated me. Completing my work on time was good for my esteem; i seemed to be able to complete my magazine pages without rushing. This was because i was keen to learn more and become better so i done things such as research more magazines and doing more textual analysis.

The weaknesses of my work would be that some of the images used in my magazine products are slightly out of focus due to because this was when i first started using the cameras. Also my college magazine its self wasn’t very good i could of chosen a much better picture an included more things on the page.

 If I was to do this again you would be able to see the change in quality, I would definitely be sure to have the camera focus better on the model to have more defined images an add more to my pages.

Looking back at my preliminary college magazine task, I believe that I have improved. This is proved due to because Shorty after i created another magazine before creating my music magazine just to experiment.

Audience Feedback:

Elijah: ' next time use brighter colours as it will catch the audiences attention much quicker, buh its sick!'

Vanessa: very impressive'

Kevin: 'more colours would have been better so it can stand out more, buh i like wah you have produced' ;)

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In this assignment I used a variety of products to put together my music magazine. The internet was one of the main technologies that I used; to start off we all had to go on the internet to create a blogger account a blogging storage service that posts user’s private blogs with time-stamped entries with the ability to upload images. Blogger was something I wasn’t familiar with but I’ve seen blogs but just didn’t know how to programme it. After creating a blogger and using it for a couple days it became very straight forward to use, I had small issues with it were it was hard to put pictures that I would upload into the right places as it doesn’t let you drop and drag, it gives specific options: ‘left, right centre’ or for the sizes ‘small, medium, large, x large’. I ended up having pictures that I have uploaded looking messy on the blogs so it took me a while to sort them out, even to this very point some pictures aren’t where I want them to be.  

I also noticed that Blogger claims to allow shortcut support, but it doesn’t work for me, for example ‘Ctrl+V’ to paste text from Microsoft Word, therefore the only way is to drag and drop the text which wasn’t easy for me to blend in with as when you drag and drop wherever you drag it from it disappears from that page.The internet was also a big part of included for my researching. Using www.google.com and www.Wikipedia.com  as my search engines of choice, I found many images of magazine front covers for my textual analysis in Google’s image browsing search engine, as well as using the web search to find relevant magazine publishing companies to write a case study on, Wikipedia became useful for finding out about these companies in detail for example when they were first established.

Software’s such as Microsoft Word 2007, which is a standard word processor, was mainly used to type up and stores my work as well as creates my audience research questionnaire. I made use of its spell-check ability to make sure that my work was grammatically correct before dragging and dropping it into my blogger. I used Microsoft Excel 2007 which wasn’t anything new to me so this was fairly easy to use, here i was able to create highly customisable graphs such as those that I used to represent my audience research results.

Another main application I used was Adobe Photoshop CS3; Adobe Creative Suite (CS) this is a collection of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications made by Adobe Systems. The collection consists of Adobe's applications (e.g., Photoshop, Acrobat, In Design), that are based on various technologies .this an advanced graphics editing software to convert my print screens of my audience research graphs into a .GIF image file that could be uploaded onto Blogger in a good resolution and small file size.

I mainly used this when actually creating my magazine i used it to edit my images and designing them. Adobe Photoshop isn’t easy to use but i has an idea of how to use it so i kept practising and gained more experience when my older brother showed me my way around it so i became fairly strong at designing. As my theme of my magazine was a black/white look i used ‘desaturate’ which would make the colour of the image change straight to black and white them i would just use ‘curves’ to level it out to the write tone. I also used the Spot Healing and Patch Tools to remove spots on my model’s faces,

Although I did not develop any more knowledge about the application, I gained new skills by trying new ideas of manipulating images such as texturing the statue design on my double page spread.

I used a Canon EOS 400D 10.1 megapixel camera to take my pictures. This was my first time using the camera therefore I was learning new things about this piece of technology all the way through. The first thing that I learnt about using the camera correctly is the correct orientation when taking a picture. They are usually taken in a portrait orientation to fit in as much of the subject as possible, leaving out unnecessary background. When taking my pictures, this made me consider how the image was going to turn out rather than just taking a picture. I also kept in mind how I would frame my subject and the type of shot that I was going to use. I also learnt about what different angles conveyed, and I took most of my pictures at a low angle to give my subjects a sense of authority. However I found difficulty in getting my camera to focus well on the subjects in a few of my pictures, getting the flash to actually flash was a problem at the start but i got know how to use that properly.

Positioning my models in the right place was always in mind between the background, soft-box and camera because my teacher before we took the photographs told us the positioning was vital. The models have to stand between the camera and background to allow the camera to focus on the subject, and the soft-box has to face the subject from the side to create the feeling of 3-dimensions in the model. The soft-box can be placed at any angle (low or high) to simulate the required light source.

Q5. How did you attract/adress your audience

My main photograph is of two young teenagers staring at each other, this gives a sort of 'battle rap' look so this would make my audience want to read more about the front image is about. The costumes they’re wearing targets my audience to, black bomber Nike jacket which are very familiar to my target audience this would make them think they can relate to the magazine.
When attracting my audience it was important to address certain features of the magazine well so that i could grab hold of a particular group of people. I noticed its little things that depend on who your audience are for example more writing than pictures attracts a different group of people.

I attracted my audience first of all by using dark colours and my black and white effect which is consistent throughout the magazine. The title was in red which connotes an alert message and sense of urgency. Secondly the pricing of the magazine which is affordable for my target audience. I recognised consistently was a key method used to attract my audience because if i was to have my contents and other feature different it might make them not want to read on as they should be relaxed and comfortable reading.

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience of my music magazine would be young artist who are actually into the industry but are struggling to move to a bigger industry. The age range this magazine is aimed at would be between 15-20 this is because most young hip-hop artist is at this age. Whilst I was putting together my magazine i decided to make it more aimed at males as in the industry there much more men than women so that explains the layout of my magazine and the colours used. I specifically aimed my magazine at a certain social groups with a certain lifestyle, people that will purchase this magazine will be college students and individuals who aren’t in education and are unemployed, individuals who have an ambition in music and are putting all their effort into their music. Within this magazine it shows teenagers who are in the position where they’re unemployed an out of education who now are signed to independent music companies, so this would be a type of light for them not to give up.

The audience that would be interested in this ‘Music Industry’ magazine would be also interested in fashion and reading about the hip hop celebrities and how they’re leaving their glamorous lifestyles and what their future plans are. I put this into the magazine because it shows two sides to the music lifestyle from the bottom to top so when they’re reading about the teenagers that have been signed and are moving forward they will also look at the artists who have made it successfully. This will start to create a source of motivation for them, making them to want to purchase these magazines every time a new one is produced.

This would be beneficial for ‘Bauer’ as they don’t have this type of magazine already.

Q3. What kind of media intuitions might distribute your media products and why?

Looking back to my case study that i researched previously about a publishing company, I have decided that a magazine publisher such as Bauer Media would be likely to distribute my music magazine for various reasons that i will discuss. Link: http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/

Having a overview of this company and the genres that consist within their magazines there’s a contrast between the one i have designed and their wide variety of magazines published, mine looks at the younger working class audience who have a dream about become artist whilst theirs look at the older audience who just want information on artist that have made it successfully. The magazine they produce seem to look more on the rock and pop side of music whilst mine refers to the hip-hop side, I noticed my magazine is slightly pointed more towards the black culture and this company is pointed more towards the white subculture and for all these reason i believe it would be beneficial for Bauer media to publish my magazine for reasons that i will state further into this.

my magazine would be beneficial to Bauer Media firstly because they have nothing in their music magazine portfolio that is similar to the genre of my music magazine. So this would mean they would be able to spread even more than they successfully have from Sports to Gardening ,but now more towards teenagers who are interested in Grime/hip-hop, publishing my magazine would bring a new audience because people would feel they can relate to the lifestyle of it, due to the audience feeling they can relate to the lifestyle and it also consist of a lot of information they’re familiar with. This would increase the demand for this magazine meaning an increase of revenue would be made as teenagers will be deeply interested into my magazine as they can relate to it.

‘Bauer Media’s existing brands reach over nineteen million UK adults across

Multiple media channels.’ This would mean that my magazine would be the first to appeal to a new market for this company as it targets teenagers and the rap audience.

Another benefit is that this would be financially beneficial to Bauer because they would be distributing a magazine into a new niche market for themselves with no other competition in their company. Since my magazine is just based on one genre that Bauer hasn’t tackled before, the rap audience that didn’t usually purchase magazines from this company may be pulled toward by the rap and end liking all the genres on a whole, proving to be a good investment for Bauer Media.

Thirdly, rap is a very popular genre. That would mean that my magazine would have a strong impact as advertisers would want to make an effective entrance into the market. The focus of this point is that it would bring in new advertisers that would advertise rap-related items such as new albums or mix tapes.

From my audience research, I have found out that people would rather order their magazines through subscription; therefore I would definitely encourage subscription to my magazine through Bauer Media which would prove its success with the fact that people are ordering it to their door, as opposed to picking it up off a shelf but on the other hand now that its to a younger audience i would distribute it in local off license shops. I would like Bauer Media to make a synergy with a retail store such as footlocker were teenagers will always visit, this would be my USP as footlocker would ffit in well with my magazine and its overall look.

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I Designed my magazine to be aimed at mainly males aged between 15-20, the reason why i aimed it at the young adults at the age of 20 not just teenagers is because people may think if they’re at that age they may not be able to make it successful if they are not in the industry at a young age there’s not a chance, but within the magazine it consist of artist who have just been noticed who are not teenagers. The reason why i started at the age of 15 and up is because teenager’s doe’s ages are the ones who are deeply interested in this genre.

The Both artist in the foreground are dressed typically in an ‘ghetto’ type of clothing – the one on the left side is dressed in the usual black bomber jacket which is often associated with UK youth gang and street culture most youths would go and buy this jacket to get a certain look or to fit in a group as many youths will be seen wearing these jackets in hot weather he also has on a black fitted new era hat on to finish the look.

The one on the right is wearing a puffy body warmer which is similar to the Nike bomber jacket worn by the other model; this is done purposely to show a consistency between the sub cultures, this model has a high top and a prop round his neck (headphones) gives him that type of retro look.

On the other hand, this is not a convention in music magazines because they typically feature rappers in T-shirts, vests or over-sized jackets the American look. These two models have got the working class look as its target audience is for the working class artists who are trying to become successful.



 The most obvious item I have used to represent the rapper is the Headphones that the model has round his neck. This is easily identified i purposely added this into the front cover to show that working class as now the headphones that are in fashion are the ‘Dre Beats’ made by Dr Dre, the models headphones are just basic this Cleary shows who it is aimed at.

My models are both staring in each  others eyes this connotes Determination and anger and lastly passion competition and power. this is a great way to describe rap as a whole as the industry is about them all competing and who has the most money and street creditability, but on the other hand this could be seen as a stereotype as some rappers may not see them self as street at all as they’re just rapping about their lives and might find it rather rude to be called street.

Determination because staring at something for long shows that you hope to have it, anger because to stare someone in the eyes especially with a cheeky smile put that look and emotion across. Passion because obviously these rappers have dreams in becoming successful in music and are willing to knock down anyone in their way.

Q1. in what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and coventions of real media products?

When first starting my music magazine to get to depths with what i had to do i first analysed a ‘Rolling stone’ music magazine front cover with rap star Jay Z as the main image. I carefully evaluated the denotations and connotations of the cover in detail based on the props and costumes that was warn and used and how the conventions of music magazines were presented on the cover. In my music magazine, as i have viewed professional companies magazines i was able to use many conventions of real magazines and challenged some parts to be able to attract audiences by the typical recognisable magazine style. For example:

Masthead

Masthead

I have used a large masthead, but i paced it at the top right of my magazine front cover which is challenging the convention as it usually on the left side. This is a very common convention I challenged among British music magazines such as Q and NME magazines. My masthead is covered by an red background which connotes danger or a type of an alert creating my masthead in that way, it is able to attract audiences by being the dominating point on the magazine’s front page which displays the magazine brand name and is also visible when stacked on the shelves of the magazine’s retailers as the real magazines do to attract readers. Its boldness reflects the powerful nature of my magazine and genre.

Left Third

I followed the convention of the left third as everything is in the left third is lined up well.

Main Image

I followed the convention and included a main image of two people staring at each other on my front cover. This was taken as a close up to show the intensity of both rappers staring at each other this is to show the passion they both have for the industry. This is a common convention of music magazines, most popular music magazines main image would only be of one person rather than a group of people for various reasons, and they may think it reaches the audience better. So you can argue that I’m going against the convention of the main image.

Cover lines
I have used cover-lines and a barcode on my front page. Cover-lines are usually used on all magazine front pages as seen in big magazine labels. This is to attract the audience by displaying the magazine’s content in short eye-catching, colourful titles. I slightly challenged this convention on my front cover  as coverlines are usually on both right and left of the page but my magazine only has it on the left side. My cover-lines are also in different colours, sizes and fonts, just as they are in real magazines to connote a sense of variety. My barcode is on the front page, but I have developed the convention by putting it on the left side on my front page, as opposed to the right where some of the real magazines put it

Selling Line

I have included a selling line that states ‘Music on a higher level’ this is just there to make sure the audience no it’s mainly about music. This is a popular convention used in music magazines to create a very visible status which promotes them and convinces the readers into purchasing the magazine.

Main Cover line

With My main cover line i followed the convention and placed it in the centre but slightly lower, ‘young & Ready’ is what it states, i named it this because of my target audience and the overall concept of the magazine.


Date line

Dateline at the bottom of the magazine.

Research of an British media company

Bauer Media 

Bauer Media reaches over nineteen million UK adults across multiple media channels to identify what the customers wants are this is heavy market research. Bauer Media owns more than eighty influential media brands spanning a wide range of interests, including heat, GRAZIA, Closer, MCN, FHM, Parker's, MATCH, Magic 105.4, Kiss 100, Kerrang!, Q and the Big City Network, our group of twenty local radio stations. Bauer’s business is built on millions of personal relationships with engaged readers and listeners. They connect audiences with compelling content, whenever, wherever, and however they want. They state that their ‘unique insight allows us to work closely with our customers to develop innovative solutions that create a difference to their business.’

Bauer Media joined the Bauer Media Group in January 2008 following acquisition of Emap plc’s consumer and specialist magazines, radio, TV, online and digital businesses. Collectively, the Group employs some 6,400 people and has a 2008 turnover of 2.08 billion Euros

Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group; Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group, the business is a multi-platform UK-based media Group consisting of many companies collected around two main divisions – Magazines and Radio - widely recognized and rewarded as being industry innovators.

Double page spread

Contents page

Music Magazine Front Cover

Brief Information about Equipment used

This is an canon Eos 400D which we have had acces to use for our media photos for both our college and music magazines.Before using this piece of eqiupment we were taken through the saftey requirements and given detailed instructions on how to use the camera.

Features

10.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor EOS Integrated Cleaning System 2.5" LCD 9-point wide-area AF Picture Styles DIGIC II 3fps with up to 27 frame burst DPP RAW image processing software Compact and lightweight EF/EF-S lens and EX Speedlite flash compatible Bowens Radio Trigger This multifunctional device can be used to trigger flash units, film and digital cameras and light meters up to 100m. This device is placed on top of the camera. 60CM Soft Box A Soft box is a type of photographic lighting device, one of a number of photographic soft light devices. All the various soft light types create soft diffused light by directing light through some diffusing material, or by "bouncing" light off a second surface to diffuse the light. Circular reflector Photographers make regular use of walls, ceilings and even entire rooms as reflectors, especially with the interior of buildings which may lack sufficient available light.

Pictures

I want to use this particular picture as my front cover because It gives an overall look of the rap industry the whole competition to become the best. Both of them staring in each others eyes give the audience an identification of what consist in the magazine.

I would like to input this picture somewhere in my magazine so that it shows its not just for males, and that females don’t go unnoticed in the industry.

This is an average look of a young youth from the streets (woolly hat, bomber jacket) who wants to become a successful artist.

This picture is going to be put there to show one of the main guys from the group I’m also going to put up.

A group picture.

Textual Analysis ,Magazine Research

I’ve been looking at a couple of music magazines but this one in particular i seem to like, the theme of the magazine just goes together well. The specifically like where the two rappers ‘fabulous & the dream’ are placed with one standing slightly in front of the other. This photograph would have been taken in a studio the black clothing look also blends well with the green and white background. Shiny props are used such as the gold belt which suggest his the champion of Hip-hop , A chain which the word ‘ Loso’ and other bits of jewellery.  

The masthead which in red behind the rapper named ‘the dream’ is good because it stand out with it bright colour and simple brand name. The cover lines in the top right hand corner is unusual which is different which caught my attention as its usually in the middle section of the magazines but slightly to the right or to the left.

The main cover line which consist of both colours white and green,  the main word seems to be ‘Hip-Hop Soul’ which is written in capitals this is because from that its easy to notice the content of the magazine.

Music Magazine Drafts

Notes and Research on Music Magazines Contents Page

I looked at some magazines and researched on how many pages, photos music magazines contains and also how the contents page is organised:

No. of photograph that’s in the contents page: 1-11 photos
Pages that magazines contains: 71-218 pages
How different magazine contents page is organised:

Q: The contents page is organised with most of the information on the left hand side of the page with one big photograph of a man and a woman on the right and the word 'Contents' is situated at the top. The information is split into two sections, 'Features' and 'Every Month' and the contents page runs onto another with one more section 'Review'.

Ker rang: The contents page is organised so that the photographs are placed on the left and take up approximately 3/4 of the page. Page numbers are mentioned on the right hand side, and occupy only a very small area suggesting that words are less important to a Kerrang reader than images.

MOJO: The MOJO magazine I looked at features two contents page, the first features a whole page background image of Frank Zappa with page numbers in red and white on the right hand side in a collumn. The second contents page features 8 photographs on the left of the page, with writing in black (on a white background) which identifies the various features through the magazine.

Profiling for my Audience

MRI Fall 2010 Rolling Stones Profile Audience I’ve analyses this particular magazine website as it’s similar to what I’m intending to produce. Rolling Stone goes beyond just taking the pulse of youth culture. Rolling Stone is the pulse of youth culture. Whether the subject is music, TV, movies or politics—over 12 million young Americans trust and turn to Rolling Stone every two weeks to keep them up on the subjects they care about most. Bold stories. Big interviews. Insightful commentary. All delivered with energy, passion, irreverence and a point of view that defines its audience.   MRI TwelvePlus 2007 MRI Fall 2010 Base: Adults 18+ Audience (000) % Comp Adults 12,742 100% Men 7,103 56% Women 5,639 44% Age 18 to 24 3,840 30% Age 25 to 34 3,330 26% Age 35 to 44 2,442 19% Age 45 to 54 2,020 16% Age 55+ 1,110 9% Age 18 to 24 7,170 56% Age 18 to 49 10,693 84% Age 25 to 49 6,853 54% Age 25 to 54 7,792 61% Median Age 32.3 HHI $100,000+ 3,378 27% HHI $75,000+ 5,112 41% HHI $60,000+ 6,780 54% HHI $50,000+ 7,834 63% HHI $40,000+ 8,903 72% HHI $30,000+ 10,144 81% Median HHI $63,676 IEI $60,000+ 1,987 16% IEI $50,000+ 2,477 19% IEI $40,000+ 3,531 28% IEI $30,000+ 4,793 38% Median IEI $32,710 Employed 8,802 69% Professional/Managerial 2,950 23% Any College 7,386 58% Grad College+ 3,062 24% Attending College 1,906 15% Single 6,385 50% Married 4,634 36% Any Kids in Household 5,829 46% Own Home 7,574 59% Median Value of Home $198,532 White 9,613 75% Black 1,570 12% Asian 176 * 1% Other 1,479 12% Spanish/Hispanic Origin 2,255 18% Metropolitan CBSA 11,138 88% A/B County 9,754 78% C/D County 2,586 22%

Source: MRI Fall 2010 MRI TwelvePlus 2007 Base: Total Persons 12+ Audience (000) % Comp Total Person 12+ 12,542 100.0% Male 7,304 58.2% Female 5,238 41.8% Age 12 to 17 1,589 12.7% Age 12 to 20 3,335 26.6% Age 12 to 24 5,171 41.2% Age 12 to 34 8,038 64.1% Age 15 to 17 1,023 8.2% Age 15 to 20 2,768 22.1% Age 15 to 24 4,604 36.7% Age 15 to 34 7,472 59.6% Age 18 to 24 3,581 28.6% Age 25 to 34 2,867 22.9% Age 35 to 44 2,200 17.5% Age 45 to 54 1,699 13.5% Age 55+ 605 4.8% Median Age 28.2 HHI $100,000+ 2,806 22.4% HHI $75,000+ 4,534 36.2% HHI $60,000+ 6,059 47.3% HHI $50,000+ 7,137 56.9% Median HHI Source: MRI TwelvePlus 2007 $58,032