Evaluation of Media Work

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

One of my goals from the very start was to produce a music magazine that was based entirely on the most important aspect of it, the music. I needed to find the right balance as I didn’t want too much joking about in the magazine and I didn’t want the magazine to appear as boring and something that looks like it would be aimed at for people in their mid life crisis.

Now as you can see with the front cover in slide 2 I have decided to keep with magazine design etiquette so to speak, I’ve made sure the vast majority of it on the left third and then also included a number of features that you would expect to find on your typical music magazine in stores. Some examples of these are: The Barcode, A Slogo and a Pull Quote to go with the main cover artist.

While it’s not that noticeable I’ve also covered up the masthead slightly with the picture, this is a technique a number of good magazines they use because it’s already a known magazine. Obviously because of this it wouldn’t be a good idea to be covering up a number of letters but slightly obscuring the last letter I feel doesn’t make a difference and if anything actually enhances the image of the masthead.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

First and foremost and it’s a case of stating the obvious, one of the social groups that will be interested in my magazine is anyone who is actually interested in music!

I generally feel my magazine can appeal to a wide variety of people from a range of different backgrounds.

However there are obviously some social groups that will have no interest in purchasing my magazine. Trying to promote this magazine to cheesy pop types or more gothic types would be pointless and a complete waste of time.

Targeting people who like the type of music shown on the left would be a complete and utter waste of time.

If I was asked to restrict my magazine to one certain social group, I’d say it would be teenagers with a liking for rock and indie music. However in an ideal world would like it to appeal to more people than that.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

To have a successful product you ideally want it being stocked in as many places as possible, this likely leads to more sales and a potential for increased reputation in the magazine.

The main hope would be to have it stored in all good magazine stores (EG WHSmith’s) and some rubbish ones as well.

I’d also like the magazine to be available at Issuu, while this is a complete different ball game to somewhere like WHSmith’s I feel my magazine is at a stage where it can be stocked at both places and be a success.

I've decided to make my magazine a weekly magazine, this makes it harder to get subscriptions to a magazine than say something that is produced monthly. Because of this it would be likely I’d introduce a number of special offers at different stages to entice people to buy my magazine.

One final thing is that I would choose Bauer to distribute my magazine, what with it’s close links to Kerrang I feel this is a great choice.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

When I was in the preliminary stages of my magazine project I had a very broad range in mind for the audience of my product. I originally aimed the magazine at people within the 18-35 range and wanted to produce something that would be suitable for both genders.

As the magazine process progressed it became clear I was starting to target more of the younger end of the scale of my target audience, this is reflected in the survey results I collected after my project was finished – here are the examples.

Age Group

7%

93%

11 to 16

17 to 21

22 to 30

31 to 40

40 +

As you can see 93% voted for the 17-21 range, while the other 7% voted for the 11-16 range. No one voted for any of the other 3 options. On the gender side it was much more split, while Male did have an advantage it wasn’t clear cut which suggests I’ve achieved my aim of appealing to both genders.

Gender

64%

36%Male

Female

How did you attract/address your audience? (Include evidence of audience feedback)

I used the wonders of survey monkey twice during this product, once before the start of making my magazine to get a grasp on what my target audience tastes in music and music magazine features were and once at the end of making my magazine to get feedback on what they thought of the finished article.

Some of the questions in the two would have related to each other, EG one of the questions in the first survey was ‘What’s your favourite music magazine?’ and one of the questions in the 2nd one was ‘What magazine is Banned most like?’. The results of the 2 following questions will give me an idea as to whether I’ve nailed my target audience or not. Here’s an example of the 2 questions mentioned.

Magazine like Banned?

51%

8%0%8%

0%8%

0%0%

25%

Kerrang

NME

Metal Hammer

Q

Total Guitar

Rock Sound

Mixmag

Mojo

Other

Music Magazines

20%

17%

2%

17%2%2%

12%

28%

0% Kerrang

NME

Metal Hammer

Q

Rock Sound

Mixmag

Mojo

Other

Total Guitar

The most popular magazine within my target audience was Kerrang and the survey results after feel that my magazine is also most like Kerrang, back of the net!

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

Well well well where to begin, the production of my music magazine was a massive journey. A massive journey that had many obstacles as at the start I was pretty much clueless with everything that we had to use.

To start, I had no idea you could upload PowerPoint presentations onto the internet, a rather handy tool I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Then onto Photoshop, it took me weeks to realise what on earth layers actually did, as you can guess from this I struggled in the early stages!

After that I started to realise even more basic things, like actually being able to change colours, zooming in on the image and even changing the size without distorting the picture.

Then it started to get really advanced, the use of the Magic Wand and Eraser were added to my Photoshop repertoire.

Finally, a key part in my Double Page Spread was to learn about the use of Brushes. Without learning this my Double Page Spread wouldn’t look anywhere near as good as it does.

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

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the

full product? Part 2

The very first thing to improve from my preliminary task was the actual cover shot taken. The main music magazine task has a picture that allows for plenty of space on the left third and with the face lower to allow more space at the top.

The second thing is the colour of the cover lines, both magazines have used the stroke feature quite a lot but the black and white is far more professional looking than the amateurish green and white in the preliminary task.

Thirdly there are far more advanced features in the final main project, the film strip along the bottom for the cover lines is a very good effect and the difference in masthead is huge. Being able to put text behind a picture is something that would have been beyond comprehension in the preliminary task. It’s harder to see on the smaller picture but a brush has also been used to make the brick wall seem darker to fit in with the rest of the cover.