What I've learnt since the prelimnary task

Since the preliminary task-making the school magazine I have learnt a lot about the process of constructing my magazine. Firstly, front covers and contents page must follow a particular style and have certain aspects included for it to look real and professional. For example a contents page should include a varying range of text, pictures and information. In my original school magazine there was only one box with a list of what's included in the magazine, it did not look like the typical page of a contents page as it was too simplistic and small but noticeable details were missing such as a varying range of information and the name of the magazine printed, date etc. The fact I created the music magazine contents page on indesign meant it looked more professional and real than the school magazine cover. I've learnt that when constructing a media product that you have never made before its best to look at other examples first and borrow ideas from successful media products that other people have created to help influence your ideas and create a more professional looking product.

Evaluation

I attracted and addressed my audience by  using conventions and features of a magazine that my particular target audience would like. For example, I did some research into the colour scheme, masthead font and features of a magazine that they would like to see included as part of my market research, this gave me a deeper insight and more information on what to include in my magazine in order to appeal to my target audience. As part of my research I found that the majority of people wanted the mood of the magazine to be 'fun' therefore I kept this consistent throughout my magazine for example the images of the main artist used in the feature article shows a fun and bubbly side to her, as she is smiling and her body language is open.












 The masthead and fonts in my magazine follow the theme of dance/ club music as the masthead appears to look like blue neon LED lighting, the type of lighting that you would see outside of a night club. Behind the masthead I have used a gradient effect along with an image of a brick wall to create the wall of a nightclub, this would appeal to my target audience as the magazine is all about the latest dance music, clubs and dance festivals therefore  they would be familiar with the nightclub scene and therefore creates a form of personal identity as they can associate themselves with the magazine- clubbing is a good area of knowledge they have and directly addresses the audience by creating imagery they are familiar with.

Being a dance music fan, people who read the magazine would want to know about what's going on in the music industry right now,  my magazine has articles and features in which information from the dance industry and upcoming artists is disclosed in the magazine, for example the feature of my magazine is an interview with a popular DJ therefore seeing this on the front cover when browsing at magazines a  dance music fan would want to know more and pick the magazine up.

Distribution of my product

The kind of media institution that might distribute my media product would IPC media group, a large publisher that owns several different titles. Including;  NME, look and Nuts magazine. A full list of brands owned by IPC can be found here. Ipc is a well known company therefore my magazine would get good publicity and people would be well aware of it.

Target audience for my media product

Target audience for music magazine on Prezi

Media representation of social groups

Representation

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Evaluation- technologies used in construting magazine

Through the process of constructing my product I learnt alot about technologies such as photoshop and indesign.Firstly, through using photoshop I learnt how you use layers to allow quicker selection and manipulation of your work- for example when making the front cover of a magazine it allows you to have seperate componants (masthead, straplines ect) and change and manipulate them without having to select everything at the same time. With layers you can also use change the layer visbility so you can see whats on each layer and makes it easier to control layers.

Secondly,the range of effects available on text allow you to create different effects on your fonts, for example on my masthead I used an outer shadow, inner glow and drop shadow, I used a neon blue colour which created the effect of an LED light bar. Therefore photoshop allows you to create different effects for different styles and themes. 

From using indesign I learnt various things. Firstly, when designing a document such as a contents page, you dont have to start from scratch you cqan build a template first to decide where you would like everything to be positioned e.g pictures, text and titles. This helps as it means you know exactly where everythings going to go and you can then just find the pictures you are going to use and think about the content of the text. By using the template it is easy to see what the text will look like when positioned on the place as you are able to fill the boxes with placeholder text. Creating a template using inspiration from other magazines gave my contents page a more professional look as I had never made one before and needed a guide on what to include and where to position things.

Secondly, indesign has built in features that helped specifically with constructing my magazine, for example the graphology of the contents page- drooped capitals at the start of the text a common feature of magazine articles this allows it to look more professional.

Since the preliminary task-making the school magazine I have learnt alot about the process of constructing my magazine. Firstly, front covers and contents page must follow a particular style and have certain aspects included for it to look real and professional. For example a contents page should include a varying range of text, pictures and information. In my original school magazine there was only one box with a list of what's included in the magazine, it did not look like the typical page of a contents page as it was too simplistic and small but noticeable details were missing such as a varying range of information and the name of the magazine printed, date ect. The fact I created the music magazine contents page on indesign meant it looked more professional and real than the school magazine cover.

This is the school magazine cover:

                              This is the music magazine contents page:

Front cover evaluation- voice over