Evaluation Questions

Questions for evaluation:
Who would be the audience for your magazine?
How does your magazine represent particular social groups?
In what ways does your magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real (music) magazines?
How did you attract/address your audience?
What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Screen Shots

My Final Magazine

Overall I am quiet impressed with my final magazine turn out, it was difficult using PhotoShop at the start and figuring out how i could use my new knowledge of camera angles and lighting to my advantage, but in the end it all worked out and i was pleased with my final result.

Preliminary Task

At the start of the year for my AS Media Studies, i was assigned a task, which was to create a magazine for students. I chose to do it on helping children from year 11 adjusting into 6th form life. This was the first time i was doing something of the sort, by starting off like this it helped me learn new skills, i learnt a few brief conventions of magazines in order to help me with constructing my own magazine. However, my Preliminary Task was not too much of a success, my final magazine helped me to use many different skills.

We were told to use Publisher in order to do our Preliminary Task, whereas i did my final magazine using PhotoShop.

That is the main difference, and by using different programmes you can see a huge change in the quality of both my magazines.

Throughout the process of this course i have learnt to use PhotoShop and also developed on my camera skills, and learnt about many different magazines and how much thought goes into every single little detail which is put at the front or inside the magazine.

Preliminary Task-Front Cover

Preliminary Task-Contents Page

Preliminary Task-Interview Page

Colour Palet

I Didn't want to go to bright and use random colours, so i stuck to the basics: Red..Pink..Purple..Black..White!

I wanted to keep the Hip Hop and R&B theme by choosing calm, subtle colours, i didn't want my colours to be too loud or bright.

Planing my interview

How did you start off?

Why did you become a singer?

Did you ever imagine getting this big, just by uploading videos onto YouTube?

Which University did you go to? What were you studying at University?

Do you regret your decision?

How did your parents and family members take your decision?

Who did you get your singing talent from, Mum or Dad?

What sort of boys do you go for? “bad boys”

What do you eat for breakfast?

What time do you go to bed?

Do you have any embarrassing facts about yourself?

Writing up My Interview

This is My Final Interview Questions and Answers

My final reader profile

This is my reader profile, targeted for my music magazine. The type of audience who are interested and i am targeting at are, they will be using these conventions in order to purchase their music. The gender for my magazine is both males and females, aged 13-21.

They may have a part time job. The price of my magazine is reasonable £1.00 as they are students and may not be earning so much money.

Test Shots

Here are a few shots i took, i took a range of different angles, i stood on chairs to get a full view of the model and made her look up at me. I took a full view by standing right in front of her, I also took a picture through the mirror, i experimented new and different ways with the camera.

Constructing Interview

Layout of Interview Page

This is a rough idea of how i want my interview page to look, on the double page spread, one page will have a picture of "Sasha" and the other page will be were the interview will be laid out.

Constructing Contents page

Planing Contents Page

This is a draft of how I want the Contents page of my magazine to be, this is just a rough idea which I had in mind for my contents page. This is my outline, and I will be using this as to just a start and as it progresses, develop my ideas and see how it looks as it comes together on the screen.

Constructing Front Cover

Rough Layout of Front Cover

This is a draft of how I want the Front Cover of magazine to be, this isn’t exactly how I expect it to be, just a rough idea or sketch. This is my outline, and I will be using this as to just a start and as it progresses, develop my ideas and see how it looks as it comes together on the screen.

Final Name For Magazine: Pulse

This is what my Magazine name looks like:

After thinking of different ideas for each of the names I came up with and experimenting with each, I chose “Pulse” as my Hip Hop and R&B title for my music magazine.

I thought it would appeal to my target audience, and went well with my music genre.

I chose this word because when you listen to music your pulse increases and your mood changes, because music and songs have that effect on you. I put speakers on either side, to indicate the “base”.

Youngsters nowadays love music with a great base, it attracts them to the song, Base was also in my brainstorm when deciding a magazine name, but I went with Pulse, I thought it sounded different and would be quite catchy…

Possible Names For My Music Magazine

A few possible names for my music magazine:

I brainstormed possible names i could use for my music magazine on a rough paper. I had to make sure they suited my genre: R&B and Hip Hop.

All had different meanings and concepts behind each, which is why it was so hard to choose one, as i liked them all.

Eventually i chose "Pulse" as I had a distinctive idea on how to illustrate the word as my magazine name.

Main Image Edited

This is what my image looked like after i edited it on PhotoShop.

I cut around the image and airbrushed her face, I then made a white outer glow around the picture, so that it stands out and is visible in the front cover.

Photography

This is the original picture, which i had taken of my model.

I took a full view shot of her through the mirror, I thought that it would be appropriate to take a picture of her looking through the mirror. Reason being, I thought seeing as she is a new singer, and an upcoming artist, it would make sense if I showed her looking through the mirror, in order to capture the change. So she would look in the mirror and see how much she's changed or if she's still the same.

Her looking into the mirror makes her look back through the years and see the difference, and what situation she is now and will be in the future.

The name of my Magazine

Originally, this was how I wanted my title to be presented.

I chose the magazine name to be “PULSE” with the speaker type approach to resemble music and sound.

I also used the word “pulse” as in, when you check your pulse via the pulse machine in hospitals, because when you listen to music you pulse increases and moves more rapidly.

Test shots

In this picture, the model is showing attitude, and is holding a mike with attitude, so that the theme of music is still in tact. The model is staring right at the camera lens in order to make contact with the reader, her pose is also very well thought out, she is laying on a table and I have taken a Medium Close Up Shot of the model.

The only criticism I received for this photo was the fact that she was holding a mike, may symbolise a sense of “pop” genre.

Test shots

I experimented with different types of instruments, seeing as the magazine is going to be a music magazine I thought it would be a good accessories to use. The reason I got her to stand in front of the instrument instead of making it seem as though she is playing it, was because i wanted to show a bit of attitude, because my magazine is going to be a Hip-Hop/R&B magazine, I thought it would make more sense for her to stand in front showing attitude.

Test shots

I tried making my model stand in different positions, while posing with the instrument, i didn't want her to seem as though she was playing the instrument. I wanted her to look directly at the camera lens, so that she would be making eye contact with the reader, to show a sense of attitude within in the model.

Test shots

This was one of the first pictures I took, the pose of the model was correct but her facial expressions wasn't exactly what i was going for. The model is smiling in this picture, but i wanted her to give attitude, which is why I took more pictures to get the attitude across in her facial expression.

Questionnaire..Target Audience Research

I carried out a questionnaire on my target audience to see what type of content they would like to see featured in my magazine.

Advertising simulation

We were put into pairs and our task was to make a advertising simulation task. We were told to create a magazine front cover for young people aged 7-12 or also known as the 'pro-teens'.

Then we were told to decide how much I would charge an advertising company for an A4 colour advert.

As this was a completion with the class, we had to quickly come up with a design of a magazine, then stand in front of the whole class and say why we chose to do the magazine how we done it.

Making this magazine helped me think of new ideas when making my own magazine, i was able to discover how to use Photoshop and i now know different ways in which i can make my magazine stand out. After producing this magazine i had a few ideas of what i could do with my magazine and how i could present it, and what i could do on Photoshop with images and words, ect.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this task as it helped me gain many new skills such as Photoshop and it was good practice for planning my final magazine.

Now when I first hear the words ‘pop music’automatically the typical stereotypes of thousands of young girls screaming for a well known pop artist or pop group comes to my mind.

Now with this my partner and me thought that keeping our target audience in mind we have to do like a more feminine, girly house style, as they are whom we were targeting.

Therefore we used a baby pink background and we used ‘Britney Spears’ as the main image. We used her because in the description it said that she was an iconic role model to the proto-teens at the time. Now this leads us to the name of the magazine. We chose the name ‘iWannaBe’ as young children of this age look up to many artists and try to aspire to be like them, whether it’s the way they start to dress, talk, walk etc.

We also used an image of one of the biggest boy bands of the country [JLS). We thought they would be an ideal artist to place on the cover as they are very well know pop artists and they have a huge fan base ranging from all types of ages. By using them on the cover and stating that there is an exclusive interview of them featured in the magazine, this helps attract more potential buyers, as they are a one of the most successful boy bands in music history. They also have thousands of fans that they seem to leave in some sort of hysteria and we kind of took advantage of this and placed them on the front in hope of it endorsing our magazine and attracting thousands of buyers.

A Mood board on Masthead Research

Here is a mood board of different Music Magazine Mastheads. I put this together to give me inspiration into creating and designing my own magazine name.

These mastheads are short yet catchy and most of them you can automatically tell which type of magazine they are from.

I did some research on current mastheads on current music magazines just to represent current conventions and to compare my own masthead to those of professional magazines i feel that i have followed current conventions as my masthead is white and 4 major music magazines have white mastheads.

Understanding My Music Genre

My main music genres for my magazine are R&B and Hip Hop, therefore i have quite a broad reach. I need to be able to understand the style and image these genres to construct my complete visual relating to these genres.

I have researched different R&B and Hip Hop artists and created a collage to help me with building up my magazine image and content.

Here is the collage of R&B, Hip Hop singers, by doing this i was able to think of different ways in which i could tell my model to stand, and pose. There isn't exactly a certain type of way in which they have to pose, everyone picture is different and individual.

These are different types of Hip Hop and R&B Music album covers.

Analysis of Mix Mag Contents Page

Analysis on NME Magazine

'Top Of The Pops' Magazine Analysis Interview With JLS

In a group of three, we annotated parts of JLS' interview and section dedicated to them in 'Top Of The Pops' magazine. This task allowed me to see the conventions of an interview and this helped me think of ways in which i could layout my interview page. Doing this task made me realise that I need to target a specific group. I saw that my images need to address my target audience.

The title: A pull quote from the article – What was your most embarrassing moment?

Well it had something to do with a concert and the wrong lyrics!

Target Audience RWD Reader Profile and Research

We were put into a group of three, we researched RWD magazine and its target audience. We put together a presentation displaying examples from the magazine and a moodboard on the target audience