Media Magazine EvaluationBY LOUIS TAYLOR

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

Front cover

My magazine uses numerous of forms and conventions that develop on what you would see on a normal magazine an example of a few of these are a masthead which is used in a the popular fashion used in the best magazine by being confident and only showing half of the masthead showing, another thing that develops the normal codes and conventions used is the use of a big feature title to make the main artist feature stand out and then smaller features, the reason for this is so that it can hook in readers who are interested in the main top artist but can also attract other readers to who are interested in different types of artist to the magazine front making a wider target audience so more people will buy the magazine. The way that I have changed the codes and conventions of a magazine is by having my issue number sideward at the top of the page, this leaves me more space around this area to put subjects and artists featured in the magazine making it more likely to attract a reader by seeing a feature which catches their eyes.

Contents page

In my contents page the general codes and convention I follow are the page splits in between each section to show where there would be adverts with in the magazine, this follows what the top magazines in the production industry do so it would be more likely to be looked at by a production company. Something that changes/challenge the form and conventions in my contents page is the way that I have used two photos instead of the usual long shot to be presented of the main artist in the context page, I did this because when the reader is looks at the magazine they will see to perspectives of the artist and also make it clear to the reader what the main double page spread article will be a about.

Double page spread

Within the double page spread that I have made I decided to use a Q and A instead of just a normal article as I think through a Q and A in a magazine the reader gets to know the artist more personally and this may interest more readers e.g. people who are looking to make it in the music industry to help give them ideas of what they have to do to give themselves a chance. Something that I used in my double page spread that I used in my magazine that isn’t normally used with the general codes and conventions are the quote used going across the artist photo, the reason this is good to be in the magazine is firstly because It takes all questions away about who said the quote and makes it clear to the reader who says it, it also helps to give an initial representation of the artist as it is quite an eye catching thing to have on the double page spread so if the reader reads the quote and it represents the artist in a good way it may help convince them to read onto the other page where the Q and A is.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product will represent all social groups as equal as there will be no discriminating through stereotypes towards a certain group of people it only matters on the music. It will represent people who are interested in rap/hip hop music as people who are not just seen as chavs but people who are just listening to what they enjoy and trying to follow their favourite artist footsteps. It also breaks away the stereotype that all rapper and hip hop artist are chavs as you can see through the model used he is not wearing the typical chav clothes related to this stereotype. Another thing that is changes the overlook on is that all people who wear clothes related to rap music are all dumb and do drugs, as reading is linked to more intelligent people it will show that the people interested in the music can also sit down and read their favourite magazine.

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

My magazine follows all the codes and conducts of what all of the top selling magazines do and also has a lot of things on each of the pages to hook a reader in e.g. numerous of photos and features. By following these codes and conducts I did it so that it would be a relevant product for a institution such as Bauer media to invest in or one of the bigger more prestigious production companies to. Another type of institution that may distribute my media product is a production institution which invest in a lot of products to do with hip hop/rap an example of a magazine production institution that does this is Town square media. Formerly known as regent communication, the reason I think this institution would distribute my media product is because its own numerous of music stations showing that the institution as a whole has a interest in music and most of the magazines owned by the company are hip hop/ rap magazines such as XXL and King magazine.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product? And how do you attract your audience?

during the planning of my magazine I have developed my skills on Microsoft word, power point and publisher for my planning once I have finished my planning I learnt new creative ways to apply them to my blog I used things such as YouTube videos, Prezi, slide share and survey monkeys to make my blog more creative and interesting. When actually constructing my Media product I was taught how to used things such as Photoshop and InDesign, Photoshop was my biggest contributor to making my magazine look professional on it I was able to crop images for my front cover, contents page and double page spread getting the background out of my photos was really useful as it made my magazine look a lot more professional. Another thing that I was able to do on Photoshop which helped a lot was the use spot healing, the reason this was so useful was because it enabled me to follow the usual codes and conducts of a magazine, generally in most magazines you never see a model with any types of spots over their face by using spot healing it let me make my model look perfect as the general reader of a magazine may be grossed out by face acne etc. they will only be attracted by well-presented good looking people. The third most important in Photoshop that allowed my magazine to look impressive was the use of selecting more than one layer at once to be able to move things in an orderly fashion so things weren’t out of place when needed to be in an identical line e.g. the numbers in my contents page, I was able to move these all at once so that they didn’t move out of place.

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

I have learnt numerous of new skills since I first did the preliminary task, when first doing the preliminary task I had to use websites what basically creates the magazine for you to make me a front cover, I had to skip numerous of images as the quality wasn’t good enough and I had to make a contents page on Word which is only for work documents so not very relevant resources were used. Since then I have progressed a ridiculous amount I can now use Photoshop and InDesign in various more advanced ways to make creative product, this makes the quality of my magazine a lot better as the software being used in actually designed to help with creative products. An example of how the new software has been able to help me after using the resources I originally did is that I can create products in my own way how I want, when using the software I originally used my decisions were very limited in what I actually wanted to do and it was made very difficult for me to make a product which actually looked something you would realistically see on the market with a professional edge. Another way that I have progressed since the preliminary task is when making my original magazine for the preliminary task I had to pass a lot of images I want to use in my magazine because of various reasons such as things in the background not want and pixelated photos. I can now stop my photos from becoming pixelated through Photoshop keeping the quality good no matter the size, this is done by holding shift when changing the scale of the photo that is needed to be edited. Photoshop editing also helped the quality of images I could use through using the quick selection tool to crop the background out of images. This meant I didn’t have to skip any images I wanted to use because of the background I could crop the background out and keep the specific area of the photo that I wanted.