1) What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?
We decided that for our magazines the genre of music would be rock as it was the most popular in our focus group. We did some research into typical music magazines and found that it is very common for them to use a color theme of red and black, so we chose to do this also. We felt that this would help make it look more like a real product. We also used other forms and conventions that real products include, such as a bar code, price of the magazine, and even the interview. After looking at other music magazines with teh same genre as ours, we could clearly see that they all featured an interview with the band/artist on the front cover. We did this to make it look as real as possible.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The particular social group that my product represents is teenagers/young adults who are into this type of music. This is the reason I wanted to use a young person for the front cover, as it draws people of the same age into it. I also chose a model to use who isnt very girly in the typical way as this wouldnt have gone with the magazine, instead she fits the genre of music by the way she looks. This represents my social group as a lot of them can relate to this.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
We decided as a group that our target audience would be unisex and aged 15-25. We decided this because of our focus group based on their sex and age. We had a variety of males and females and although the age range of our focus group only went up to 17, we wanted to extend it as we did some reasearch on the age limit of people who read rock magazines and found that it was over 17. We wanted it to be available for both males and females as, for one, most music magazines(rock genre) are and also we wanted to reach out to a variety of people. I feel that we achieved this by using the colours we did, which are unisex.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted/adressed my audience in many ways such as the colour themes I used. We all decided to use red, black and white as it looks professional. Red is also a very bright colour and I used it frequently in the magazine to draw in our target audience. I also think I chose the picture on the front cover very well, as it looks dark and intriguing, much like a typical music magazine. I think this picture looks very different but also still fits our genre well, as the model has make up running down her face and has a sad expression which automaticlaly attracts people to it. I also think that the pictures on the contetns page and double page spread are also very eye catching and could draw someone in easily. Another thing, I made the text on all the pages very clear and the titles stand out, by writing something intruiging and making the text big and bold, which makes people want to read them. On the front cover, i included a few things which would be in the magazine so this could easily attract my target audience as they would know what they are buying.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have found out that Serif plus 5 isnt as difficult as I thought it would be. When i first started designing my magazine layout using this, I figured it was going to be very hard to use and it did take me a while to get used to it. I began to test my ability on Serif and started experimenting with it, which payed off. I did edit the pictures slightly by cropping them to the right size and shape I wanted and increasing and decresing the contrast/brightness. I found this very simple and easy to do. I also think this gave a good effect as I made them even more eyecatching.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I was doing the preliminary task, I found using Serif plus 5 very difficult and struggled a lot to make it look and feel like a magazine and i think this was obvious by looking at it. Since then, we did a lot of research into what makes a music magazine look like a music magazine, specifically rock genre. I think this helped a lot as it gave me a better idea as to how it should look. I also, surprisingly, got used to sderif plus 5 very easy and found myself experimenting with different things on it to also make my magazine look better and more real. I have also learnt that a lot of work goes into make a product like this, which I had never actually realised before. Making a music magazine isnt easy.
