Evaluation Questions

Zak Michael

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

products?In terms of the ways in which my media uses, challenges or develops

existing media products, my product takes all of the conventions associated with a rock/metal genre magazine, and subverts them throughout the majority of my magazine. The front cover of my magazine has a background which has a stylistic and rock-like feel about it. The extra graphics as the background correlate with the rock and metal genre well, and further to this, adds a sense of an increased visual element to the magazine. The type fonts and colours used are not necessarily a true reflection of the genre my magazine is portraying. The predominant colours within my product was mainly red, black, blue and white. Despite the simplicity of these colours, they were used to good effect as they used the stereotypical colours associated with the genre of music I have chosen for my

magazine. In terms of the model I used for my magazine, I chose my particular model so that he did not stereotype into the genre of my magazine, therefore challenging some of the existing products. The reasoning behind having a model which did not completely categorize with the stereotype of this genre was fairly simple. By having my model seem ‘ordinary’, there is no real aspiration which readers would have to desire to look like my model. By using this idea, my models

do not challenge or go against potential readers of my magazine. My magazine did have some points of matching up against existing magazines or ‘rockstars’. This can be seen within my double page spread whereby my model answers some of the questions with colloquial terminology as well as some swearing in parts. I purposely generated this idea when producing to create a sense of a relationship with my reader and person telling the story.

How does your media product represent a particular social group?

• My media product targets a certain group in different ways. First and foremost, my product bases its stories on music artists relevant to the genre I have chosen. In addition to this, my music magazine features bands which are of a correlating age to my target audience. By doing this, my audience can therefore be considered to have more relation with the artists views and opinions etc.

What kind of media institution may distribute your magazine and why?

• In terms of distributing my magazine, I have decided that Kable services would more than likely be the best company to distribute my magazine. Their success and reputation within the industry speaks for itself, and with the company now in its 80 year as of 2012, they will be looking to possibly expands their horizons further and do some new business for their 80th year. Because of this, as a magazine, I could possibly use the idea of the companies 80th year in establishment to advertise their company and benefit myself in another way (possibly by deducting some prices for travel etc) . By creating a sense of a ‘joint force’ between my magazine and the company Kable, it can be therefore considered a form of convergence, a technique which is particularly common within the video game industry, which is used to generate and garnish a higher social recognition.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• The audience for my media product as mentioned within my initial pitch, is teenagers to people in their early 20’s, and predominantly males. This age range and gender choice was chosen because after research, this age range and gender are the choices which were most popular amongst the rock/metal genre my magazine is based on. The amount of magazine units sold each month is also from people around this age as they want to find out the latest news and exclusives from their respective favourite artists.

• With my choice of audience and gender being one of regularity, I have made my magazine a unique, yet affordable product. The price of my magazine is going to be £1.95 . I have chosen this price so that it is suitable for my target audience. With the current economic situation in the western world, many people aged in their 20’s (my age of target audience) are out of a job. Therefore, by having a cheaper price of magazine than my main competitors, my buyers will still get the same great content, just at a substantially better price.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• I attracted my audience in many different ways. Firstly, I created a media hype for my magazine so that people were familiarised by the magazine name ‘Touch the Sound’ even before release. By generating social awareness with my magazine, even readers who were not necessarily going to buy the magazine were aware of its upcoming release which may have helped to spread the brand name by word of mouth. Following the awareness of my magazine which was created, I informed people around my area of my upcoming magazine via social networking sites, and also, created posters and advertisements via radio to inform people of the magazines upcoming release. By doing this, I managed to create an audience base from different multimedia's an therefore, a fan base which was not all the same.

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

From the variety of technologies I have used during the process of constructing my product, I have managed to learn a lot of different styles of uploading and presenting my work. The inclusion of using technologies such as Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Slideshare, Yola, Photoshop, Questionnaires and using a camera for photos, show a form of independency within my work and production. Despite these different types of technology teaching me a lot about the presentation of my work, there were some difficulties which occurred within my construction and uploading process. Mainly, the uploading site Yola, as well as Slideshare caused massive problems for me. The site Slideshare kept on corrupting files and uploading my work into different formats and languages, which caused me massive problems and lost me valuable time in the construction process. In addition to this, without blaming anyone, we as students had to work out how to use Yola and Slideshare ourselves which we were all unfamiliar with and we received no or little guidance on how to work the sites. Despite this, it did have a plus side as I managed to learn how to use the sites without any help, which helped my understanding of file sharing websites and how they work dramatically.

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 the preliminary task, I can

honestly say that my work lacked any kind of creativity or originality. Following this, in the build up to the production of my magazine, the research and planning prior to my production helped me learn about the industry and the way things such as price, content, marketing, advertising, distributing and consumption of magazines.