EvaluationBy Ashley Sangu

The real media product I looked at for inspiration was the ‘VIBE’ magazine which looked like this:

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

The vibe magazine had the conventions, of having the masthead a the top which was on every magazine, and also used the same fonts throughout to keep consistency so regular buyers will automatically know by looking at the magazine that it is a ‘VIBE’ Magazine, it also has pull quotes from the main story which will sell the magazine and has a barcode. The way the magazine is presented has a fresh appeal about it and this is what I wanted my magazine to also represent.

Masthead

Issue Number

Pull Quote

QR Scanner Code

Another reason for people to buy the magazine in case they don’t like Eminem

Price

Skyline

Issue of Date

My magazine conforms to the following conventions because a masthead, and a consistent colour scheme, and the writing style fits to my demographic which is teenagers aged between 15-19, and has a consistent font throughout the magazine, and has a pull quote from my interview to attract people when they pick up the magazine. My magazine is quite different to the ‘VIBE’ magazine because I chose to put more images on the front, so the magazine would appeal to more potential customers that pick up the magazine in a shop.

I have represented teenagers in my magazine, I have represented them in a positive light, as normally teenagers are represented in a bad light because of a minority of teenagers. The way teenagers are thugs, and gangsters wearing hoody’s only out to just cause trouble, but however this is wrong because not all teenagers all like this and that is a common stereotype of nearly all adults, especially old people as they feel intimidated when a teenager wearing a hoody is near them. The style that my images promote is a normal teenager, in terms of their clothing, and the way they are acting. The lifestyle that is promoted is a lifestyle with music, money and bling. For example the cover that I have looked at for inspiration is the ‘Vibe’ magazine cover which is the same genre as my magazine and also has the same demographic, and they are representing particular social groups such as gangsters and thugs as being cool and people who like to drink and smoke, but in my magazine that differs because the demographic is a lower age, I can’t really put drinking and smoking is cool, because if I do and represent it in my magazine then teenagers will follow it, but what I have done instead is keep the thug/gangster look but toned it down, and the people on my front cover actually look like average teenagers, with the hair styles and the headphones and with the types of clothing, the hoodies and the jeans and converses, because that is just showing that teenagers are style conscious people, and this is represented in the teenager social groups. This is why my magazine represents the teenager social group in a positive light because normally in the news teenagers are represented as kids up to no good, but when really that's a small minority, my magazine represents the big minority of teenagers who are not up to no good and are good people.

The social groups that hip-hop represents is normally what nearly every teenager listens to, music also may change the way people act and dress, for example people that listen to R&B may dress up wearing jeans with patterns on their and stylish T-shirts with acronyms on them and also hoody’s.

How does your media product represent particular social groups

The kind of media institution that would distribute my media product would be the traditional methods such as stacking the magazines in a newsagents, and also selling them through supermarkets such as Asda, and Tesco as they have special isle’s in their supermarkets which are specifically designed for people that want to buy newspapers and magazines, and by doing this I can reach my demographic more effectively and can distribute the media product to more people of my demographic, I have also been more creative and thought out side the box and have had a QR reader scanner, which can be scanned by a smart phone and will direct people to the website which will have a copy of the digital magazine, I have done this because my demographic is most likely going to be using the internet because they are aged between 15-20 so they will use their free time on the internet, so this way I can distribute my magazine which will be more convenient for my demographic to access my magazine, also on the website my demographic would also be able to order a magazine pack, which provides them the magazine 12 times a year for £50, and this will be delivered to their door, this will allow convenience and all of these methods of distribution will allow the revenue from the magazine to be boosted as I am reaching a wider audience

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

The audience for my media product is teenagers aged around the 15-20 year old mark, and they earn £0-£10,000 which means some of them may have money by getting pocket money every week or some of my demographic may have weekend jobs so they will be able to afford to buy the media product which is an Hip-Hop & R&B music magazine with the name ‘Rhythm’, which shows that the media product is represent for this age group because the name is going to be appealing and no one aged around 40 would want to listen to a bunch of rappers or singers swearing throughout a song, because that isn’t a 40 year olds cup of tea, they would rather listen to mellow, slow music but on the other hand my demographic would like to listen to upbeat music with swearing in it.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I attracted my audience through doing my research and I did my research through creating a questionnaire on survey monkey and then posting the link on my Facebook profile for people to click on and fill out the questionnaire. My results told me that the majority of my demographic was teenagers aged 15-19 and were mostly male, and also had an annual income of £0-10,000, so using this information I had to create a hip-hop/ RnB magazine which was aimed at this demographic. And I think that I have met the requirements of the demographic and what they required from a music magazine.

How did you attract/address your audience ?

For research we used Microsoft Word to put all of our research in a document, and to upload it to our blogs we used Scribd which allowed us to upload PowerPoints and Word Documents to blogger quite easily rather than just upload a picture of the work. for the design and production stage we had to use Photoshop, InDesign and we also had to use the school computers for 5 hours a week, but the computers in school were very slow and half the time kept freezing which was quite annoying, and I have now learnt how to fully utilise photoshop and how to create media products.

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

Looking back at my Preliminary Task, which was a school newsletter/magazine which was designed to provide information about the school and it’s students to parents and carers and the students of the school. But I feel that I have made a lot progress from the preliminary task to the full product because before I did not know what magazines usually included in editions, such as I didn’t know the codes and conventions of a magazine and as a result I didn’t understand what to put in a magazine and I also didn’t have much knowledge on how to use programs such as Photoshop and InDesign. As a result of the experience I felt more confident when I had to create the full product because I knew what content I had to put in the magazine and how to attract an audience, but however when I was doing the preliminary task I didn’t know what to put into it and what kind of design I had to put on, and didn’t know how to attract my demographic. So overall I think that I have come a long way from my preliminary task as I have a lot more knowledge about magazines, and the codes and conventions of a music magazine.

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