Finished Products

These are my three finished products.

Evaluation Question 7

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

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The target audience for my magazine is young adults 18-22 who consider themselves Indie. Below is a brief video that I have made as an introduction about who my social group are and showing the aspects of my magazine that represent them.

The Interview section.The Interview section in my magazine represents the indie social group as it includes artists that people associate with this group. Furthermore it represents my group as those aged 18-22 will be interested in the background and the gossip of all that is going on in the celebrities lives. Whereas those ages 30+ may not be necessarily interested in this type of feature of a magazine.

The Festival Based Stories.
The festival based stories are important as it will be of huge interest to my social group. They are the most likely to be associated with festivals out of most music based social groups because of all the antics that occur are stereo typically done by the indie group. Furthermore normally at big festivals such as The Reading Festival there are smaller stages with less well known, less pop-like acts, that are linked to the indie social group, playing on them. 

The Jewelry On The Model.
I put Jewelry on my model that would represent my social group. I put her in a ring that said 'love' on it and made sure this was easily seen in the pictures. This goes back to origins of the 'indie' social group back in the 60's. 

The Music Mentioned.
The music I have mentioned within my magazine are all related and associated with the indie social group, these include Mumford and sons. 

The Abstract Fonts.
I chose to use abstract fonts as the indie group is often thought of as being different and abstract themselves. Until very recently the indie music group was considered as strange and different, that rebelled against the popular music of the time. Therefore I chose to make my fonts abstract as a way of linking it to my social group.

Evaluation Question 6

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

I have created a Prezi to look at the different technologies I have learnt about and used during the construction and planning of my magazine. I have used both hardware and software.

Hand Draw Designs - Double Page Spread

These are my three main designs for my double page spread.

Hand Drawn Designs - Contents Page

These are my four main designs for my contents page.

Hand Drawn Designs - Front Cover

These are my four main designs I am considering for my front page.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I have created a Prezi Show to answer this question.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Comparing my front page to my research.

To the right is my final front cover. There are many aspects that I included because they were inspired by my research. Below you see a video with all the cropped screen shots of my research up against my final front cover.

• The first way my magazine is similar to that of my research is by the title. Similar to one of my magazines I research, my title uses very rounded bubble text. Furthermore it is all in the lower case.
• The second way my magazine is alike my research is the bar at the top of the page. In one of my researched front covers there was a similar bar with writing in it. While I liked that idea I felt that it brought unwanted attention to my magazine top. But I still wanted to use this kind of sign so I tried it with a different colours including the gold seen on the front cover but eventually settled on using the red also found on the cover.
• Thirdly My model is pulling the same face and doing very similar things with her hands to that of my researched front cover. The only difference in the posing is that she is tilting her head to the right instead of the left. I did this diliberatly so that I could slot the title of my magazine in while still sticking to the rule of thirds.
• Furthermore another point where my front cover has been influenced by my research is by the way my text is layed out. In two of my researched examples I did not like the way they did the text as it was to sparse and I felt I would be missing out on a selling point without putting some alot of my big, main titles on the cover. Therefore I let my first research example inspire me to use this tight block of text we can see on my front cover on the left third of the page.
• Moreover, on one of my research peices there is box dedicated to just interveiws. This inspired my very own box of interveiws. However in the research it was possitioned in the top right corner but in mine it is in the bottom left. This is because I let another peice of research inspire the top of my magazine and so it would look out of place and it seemed to fit better at the bottom.

Comparing my Contents Page to my research.


On the left is my finished Contents page. I mainly used two of my researched pages to inspire my final peice. Below there is a short video clip showing you what aspects were influenced by which parts of my research.

• First element of my contents page that was influenced by my research was the bar at the top of my page with my title, date and issue number in it. I saw this in my research and really liked it. So I decided to use it in my work.
• Next is the review box. I thought it was a great selling point to have a small scale review as a regular feature in my magazine.
• Furthermore I liked the idea of having the relevant article information placed on the main picture on the page. I also liked how the background of white on this was connected to the rest of the white as it gave it a better flow to the picture. Making it seem it was connected to the articles, which of course it is. 
• In my Magazine contents page the right third of the page is a thick block of text listing selective articles. Furthermore there is a box similar to that on the one on the front with all the interviews in it. This was inspired by the similar aspect seen on one of my research pieces. However I choose to put it on the other side of the page.
• I really liked one particular example of my research but I also really like the look of the main image being on the left hand side. Therefore I choose to use my favourite example as inspiration but use a different one for the inspiration of my position of the picture.

Comparing my double page spread to my research.

This is my finished double page spread. My double page spread had a big influence of one particular magazine as aposed to lots. Below find a short video with an explanation next to it about particular aspects of my work that where influenced by different parts of the research I carried out.

• The title of my double page was considerable influenced and inspired by my research. I loved the use of bold text with different sizes and shapes to form what almost looks like a cloud of words. Therefore I kept this in mind when designing my double page spread on paper, allowing lots of room and space to do what I wanted to do.
• From doing my research I also noticed that most of the magazine double page spreads had a few sentences written in bold outside of the colums at the start of the article. I decided to involve this into my design as i though it helped connect the title and the article.
• Finally having a close up face on photograph taking up the whole of the left page again came from my research. All of my research examples has a picture taking up a minimum of 80% of one of the pages if not more. Also having my model make eye contact and look emotionless up at the camera lense again stemmed from my Research.

To conclude, my magazine has been influenced by real media products hugely. From doing my research I was able to choice aspects that I like about certain magazine pages and aspects that I didn't. This helped me get a much better picture, not just for the actual construction of my pages, but also while planing.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/adress your audience?

I have created a Prezi to show how I attracted and addressed my audience, see it below.

Specific Front Cover Research

This is a front cover from Q Magazine. It has one model all in black with half of his face in shadow. 

The model takes up the whole of the middle third and most of the third on the right hand side. The main bulk of the writing is on the third on the left hand side with thick black lines to show distinction between each story.

The colour scheme of the front cover is black white and red. Red is used as a highlighter while black is used for the main bulk of the writing while the white is the back ground and odd bits of written where white is not the background behind the writting. 

The top third of the page has two boxes with the models head between. There is a box on the left with the title of the magazine in it and the box on the right is a box advertising the different interviews they have in this edition.

The text is self is either black red or white, sticking to the colour scheme and it appears to only be one of the two fonts used throughout the front cover. The designer has only used two fonts so as not to make the front cover two chaotic and manic. Instead he has highlighted through colour and by editing the fonts ever slightly by making them longer or fatter, or separating the letters a bit. This is a great idea and I will keep this in mind when making my front cover.

I really like this magazine, it uses the rule of thirds really well and has a effective colour scheme. In my Magazine I think I will use this colour scheme or something similar. Furthermore I really like the way all the interveiws are grouped together in a box. I think i will try to work this idea into my magazine front cover two.

This front cover is from a addition of NME.

Similarly to my first research example it has one model who is all in black with one half o his face in shadow. the color scheme is again red black and white. the model takes up the middle third with text taking up the two side thirds. the text is more spaced out on this example which I like less than in my first example when it was all compacted at the side. 

This example has a bar of colour and thick writing at the the top and bottom. I like this on the top but not so much on the bottom. I will try to use this in my front cover. 

The model in this front cover is at a slant and he looks physically like he'd be uncomfortable I like this idea and will try to use it in some way in mine. 

I also prefer where the bar code is on this one as in the first example it was in the middle and I felt it stuck out to much, but in this one it is tilted on its side and is on the right hand side.

The title is again in the top left hand corner. But in this one the arm of the model has been brought infront of it so it is covering the very corner. I like this idea as it makes the model seem more important. I will try to use this when it comes to making my front cover.

This is a front cover from Mixmag magazine.

This one uses a women as the model instead of a man. I think that I will also use a women as I feel it will fit the target audience better. Again this magazine uses black red and white as the colour scheme and the model is again in all black. She takes up the centre third and the side thirds contain most of the text. However the text in this one is even less regular than the second example i found. It does not stick to the to the thirds. I do not like this design as much as the first example.

 

This one has writing across the body of the model, this can also be seen in my first example. I do not like this as much as in example two where the model took front stage.

In this example the title is much more casual. I like this rounded feel to the title rather than the square box-like feel of the title in the first two examples. I think I will use this type of title for my magazine instead of a block title like that seen in the first two examples.

Evaluation Question 3

Stages of making my double page spread

Stage of making my contents page

Stages of making my front cover