Evaluation; Question 1

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

• When creating my three magazine pages I used lots of different features and conventions of current magazines to influence my ideas and designs, heavily of which influenced by NME due to liking the house style and simplicity of it. The genre that I was basing my magazine was Indie so I made sure that I knew who my target audience were and found out about what conventions are used to connect to them;

• I started this by creating my logo in a very simplistic yet bold and outstanding text that stands out from other similar products and is easily recognizable so people remember the name of my magazine. I wanted to keep it similar to the style of NME therefore I used my title, logo and masthead as the same thing so it is easily recognizable and also the colours of it meant that I can use any colour theme for my cover that could relate to a specific article which would change with each issue

Some other conventions of my magazine that I used were; • Hooks and lures such as “Win Reading tickets”• Links to websites such as “www.themaratones.co.uk• Rule of thirds on my cover my splitting it into heading, image, subtitles• It uses a strong colour theme throughout all the pages with the black and white masthead

reoccurring in the page layouts and designs on them• There is also a strong style that is kept within all the pages and is very simply but stands out and

also a slightly different style within specific articles relating to bands• I have kept the same fonts that I used for my masthead for some of the titles

My magazine compared to an NME has lots of similarities;

• Both my magazine and NME have the name as the masthead in a bold, standing out font

• They both have a main image that is looking out to the reader connecting with them and a supporting smaller image

• The main article titles are all written in their own unique font

• Both pages include competitions to entice people into buying the magazine

• The colour schemes on both stay with similar colours throughout the pages (eg: the green for the Maratones)

• On the covers there are more articles shown with a variety of bands to cover more of a range of audience

• Rather than simply saying contents page like you’d expect to see I copied NME’s idea saying “this week” to make it different

• I have put some images on the contents page to support headings like NME have done

• Sizes of my fonts vary to make things slightly different

• Lures are used which show free products that come with the magazine

• One main image in the centre is being used to support a major article in both mine and NME

• The titles are all written in different ways, ie, in boxes and list form in both • Both dps’s have a small paragraph that

stands out below the title to introduce the article

• The colour themes are kept throughout the article in both

• My page includes a link to a website for more information

• A quote from the article is in big too stand out and give people a preview of it

Evaluation; Question 2

How does my media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine does not represent a certain social group in any way but it is aimed towards a huge group of people due to the large variety of music although this is predominantly indie music it still includes a huge variety of bands and information about other bands and events as well. Therefore, there is no specific social group as all the people I asked about my magazine came from different groups and still all said they would like reading my magazine.

Evaluation; Question 3

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

I think that my magazine would be distributed in places like big supermarkets such as tesco as you get all different types of people going there so it would get lots of people seeing it, small corner shops and garages, in music shops and especially online as the majority of people have access to the internet so it is easy to get to reaching a wider target audience and is just another format for getting my product out and is also immediate so people can get it whenever/wherever they want.

I would also use the internet, TV, radio, newspapers and other magazines to advertise so more people are aware of my product such as places like facebook as a huge amount of people from all different stereotypes would see it.

The company “Comag” would be my choice of company to distribute my product as they are the biggest distribution company in the Uk and would help to get my product out and would help increase sales hugely.

‘COMAG’ is the UK's most dynamic marketing and distribution company. As the largest and most influential third party magazine distributor, COMAG represents high profile market leading titles and global brands as well as niche magazines and specialist publications, with frequencies ranging from time-sensitive weeklies to annuals. COMAG’s expertise across the business is reflected through their portfolio, which encompasses magazines, part works and collectables.

Evaluation; Question 4

Who would be the audience for my media product?

I have created my magazine so that it does not just cater for one group of people but for a vast target audience due to the huge variety of bands and articles featured in my magazine. The mode of address is written in a way so that it is easier to read and is more casual than formal which means that people of a younger age can also read it and people slightly older will also enjoy it. Generally this is aimed at 16+ due to some language inside but still can be interesting to younger people aswell.

From handing out questionnaires to people of all ages I found out this target audience to be correct and that everyone of all ages would enjoy it.

Evaluation; Question 5

How did I attract/address my audience?

The first thing that I think attracts people that I have used on my magazine is the masthead as it is bold and stands out, also, the clean, simple fonts and styles that I have used make people more interested as it is easy to understand and see what its all about.

The way I addressed my audience is with informal text but still very informative, I made the writing very casual so it seems less formal but more of just telling things how it is as though it was spoken to the reader rather than like them just reading a book and getting bored.

Evaluation; Question 6

What have I learnt about technology from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the whole process of creating my magazine from questionnaires to putting together the three pages I have learnt loads of new skills on apple computers. Firstly, whilst doing this course I have learnt how to use Mac's a lot bettter and how things work and what's what on them such as powerpoint and different word processing programmes that are slightly different on these.

I have learnt lots of different skills involving Photoshop and similar Mac software that I previously was not able to do which will help me in the future with other Mac related things.

Evaluation Question 7;Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you

have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since doing the preliminary task many months ago I feel that I have improved drastically on using Photoshop and just how magazines should look and be laid out. In the first task I also rushed it as we didn’t have much time therefore it looks un-professional, it also has little amounts of features that a good magazine should have and no proper logo for it either. I left many spaces and the image was not powerful letting the whole page down, this is where I have improved hugely as I know now a lot about magazines and how they should look after much research and looking at current magazines. I also took advice about changes that I should make that were suggested by my target audience which helped to make my final pages even better.