Sath's AS Media: February 2012

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Evaluation Activity 7

Question:
Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Below is my preliminary task:

My final media product:

When I created my preliminary task I had basic Photoshop knowledge and I lacked in creativity.

But as i was planning and constructing my final media product I learnt a lot more and improved my creativity skills.

As you can see there is a massive difference between my preliminary task and my final media product. This could be due to the research that I did to help create my magazine by looking at what the real life magazines do and how they design their magazines.

The use of technology also helped make a difference because when I did my preliminary task, I used a 12MP camera phone to take my pictures and I only used Photoshop to create the finish product. On the other hand when did my media product I used; Nikon D5100 SLR to take pictures, Adobe Photoshop to create front cover and contents page, Adobe InDesign to create double page spreads, and the internet as part of research.

This is how i think it has gone from my preliminary task to my final media product.

Evaluation Activity 6

Question:

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

The technology that I used to create my media product were:

Adobe Photoshop CS4
Adobe Indesign CS4
Blogger
Internet
Nikon D5100 SLR camera

Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adobe Photoshop( mostly referred to as 'Photoshop' ), is a photo manipulation software. This software allows a user to manipulate a photo in many ways. To begin with I've been using Photoshop for about 3 years before the course but after the course started I discovered more about this software and have developed my understanding and use of all the different tools available. Throughout the entire course I've been learning new things every day about this software and its features.

Here is an example of me using Photoshop- Front page construction

Adobe Indesign CS4
Adobe Indesign CS4 is a publishing software. It allows the user to create work such as; posters, flyers, brouchers, magazine, newspapers, and books.At the start of the course I knew nothing about the course but when it got to creating my double page spread, I used Indesign to help create my double page spread.

Blogger
Blogger is an blog website which allows the user to create their own blog which could be set up using a Google account. It allows the user to blog whatever they want. It has a lot of accessibility options which allow the user to modify their own blog and make it unique from the rest. You're able to organise your work properly as you can label every post you do which allows you and visitors to navigate through your blog easily.

Blogger allowed me to use colour in my posts so i could highlight all the important things in the posts.

Blogger allows me upload pictures onto my posts which is great as i could show examples of other products or show construction of my work.

Internet

The internet allowed me to do some of my research and gather pictures and idea for my media product. It also allowed me to help create my media product by watching tutorials on 'Youtube' or other websites found on the internet.

This is me using the internet during my research of other magazine's contents pages.

Below is an example of how i used internet to develop my Photoshop skills:

Nikon D5100 SLR

The Nikon D5100 SLR is my camera which I took all the pictures with for my magazine. It's a 16 megapixels camera which allowed me to take picture with good detail which meant when i edited them using 'Photoshop' the pictures didn't lose quality. I learnt a lot about this camera during the photoshoots and it allowed me to take photos whihch looked a lot better.

Evaluation Activity 5

Question:

How did you attract/address your audience?

To begin with I identified my target audience which is the urban type (Analysed in an earlier post).

Once I identified my target audience, I researched into other music magazines which the target audience read. In this case it was 'Vibe' magazine. I began by looking at different front covers published by the magazine:

You can see that all these magazines have only one picture of the main artist on the front cover which takes up most of the space. The artists are all shown with an attitude looking straight into the camera as if they are looking straight at the reader. and have clothes that relate to the types of genre of music they relate to which is generally a top with a chain and in some cases snapback hats.

As well as the main picture the colour of the text would relate to the target audience as it makes the text stand out and appeal to the audience. For rap magazines the most appealing colours to the urban target audience are; Red, Black, White, and Yellow.You can see that this is the case with most editions of 'Vibe' magazine.

I put these aspects into my mind when i started planing my front cover:

The feature artist in my magazine is posing as if he is bending over a little bit looking straight at the reader as if he wishes to listen to what they reader is saying which creates a connection between the reader and the front cover image. This also addresses to the reader. The artist is shown wearing clothes that relate to the urban audience such as a baseball jacket, silver curb chain, and a snapback hat which has become a frequent choice of clothing for this category of audience.

I decided to keep the colours in mind when I chose the clothing for the artist and the text when making this. I made the artist wear a red baseball jacket and a red snapback. This makes the picture stand out and catch a potential customer's eyes.

For the text i used the colours; Black, White, Red, and Grey. I used three of the colours which would appeal to the urban audience also I got the colour Grey from the sleeve of the baseball jacket. I used two different fonts in the front cover, one was called "Allstar4" and the other was "American typewriter". I used two different fonts to differentiate from the main content and the remaining content.

Other methods used to attract my audience was:

Price- My media product was priced at £2.50 which is relatively cheap even though this is a weekly magazine which contains 60 pages. As part of my research i looked at NME magazine which was a weekly magazine priced at £2.40 containing around 70 pages. Another factor I kept in mind which considering a price was my target audience. My target audience are 14-30 year old and are mostly middle classed so i thought £2.50 was not a huge price for a weekly magazine and was affordable for my target audience.
Content- My media product offers exclusive content which wouldn't be offered by other magazines with similar target audiences. My magazine also focuses on the upcoming artist as well as the popular artist which would inspire the youths.

Evaluation Activity 4

Question:

Who would be the audience for your media product?

"The target audience for my magazine is the urban category. Within the urban category it's mostly going to be the young males aged 15-25 who have an interest in hip-hop/rap because my magazine focuses on the well known artists as well as the upcoming and new artists. There are a lot of new upcoming and new artists as many youths are trying to get away from the streets by making music so this would encourage those who makes music or have interest in new artists to buy and read my magazine."

As you can see here i have already discussed about who my target audience would be for my media product.To help me choose my target audience, i had to do some research into this social group. You can see the post that i have done on my target audience here.

The genre of music that people from this social group listen to is Hip-Hop and Rap. One of the biggest influences for this social group was N.W.A and Tupac. Below are songs by N.W.A and Tupac, both of these songs are well known:

Below is an example of a few rappers, this is how a stereotypical person from this social group would look:

General facts:

The majority of the audience is aged between 13 - 30
There are male and female audiences but majority of the audience are male audiences
Most of the audience are middle class or lower class
They could be any race but are dominated by African Americans and Asians.
People from this social group tend to; listen to a lot of music, use the internet frequently, watch TV often, and go to the cinema a lot.
In terms of fashion, they are influenced by others but mix it around to make it their own. The majority shop for clothes at JD and Footlocker but this varies with some as they could be well off. The most popular clothing brand is Nike, Adidas, and New Era.
Looking at statistics from UK tribes, in terms of of media they; listen to Kiss 100 radio and BBC 1xtra Radio, watch channel 4 on TV, watch sky one channel on TV, and watch MTV base on TV.
In terms of entertainment; they play on the Playstation 3 games console, use Youtube frquently, and have a Blackberry phone.

Evaluation Activity 3

Question:

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

The magazine industry is currently dominated by the three big publishers; "Bauer Consumer Media", "IPC Media" and "Channelfly Enterprises" according to statistics from "ABC".

The statistics show the following figures in the year 2011 from ABC:

The Fly free ( Channelfly Enterprises Ltd ) : 100,574 ; -0.4%
Mojo ( Bauer Consumer Media ) : 87,555 ; -7.5%
Q ( Bauer Consumer Media ) : 77,522 ; -12.1%
Classic Rock ( Future Publishing Ltd ) : 62,354 ; -7.9%
Uncut ( IPC Media Ltd ) : 62,305 ; -14.2%
The Stool Pigeon free ( Junko Partners Publishing ) : 53,676 ; N/A
Properganda free ( Proper Music Distribution ) : 46,542 ; N/A
Kerrang! ( Bauer Consumer Media ) : 42,077 ; -2.1%
DIY Magazine free ( RWD Creative Media Limited ) : 36,801 ; N/A
Metal Hammer ( Future Publishing Ltd ) : 35,259 ; -15.7%
New Musical Express ( IPC Media Ltd ) : 27,650 ; -14.0%
Hot Press ( Osnovina Ltd ) : 17,688 ; -0.2%

As you can see from the statistics, the sales are falling by large percentages even for the biggest magazine's such as Q and NME. There could be many reasons for this such as:

Technology- The technology has developed rapidly over the last decade which gave people access to technology that they never had before such as; personal smartphones, tablets, personal computing devices, and many more. This allows people the freedom to carry content on their mobile phones such as apps to keep notes of their appointments etc which reduced the need of having a diary which was a double win for the user as they got an app to keep appointments in as well as not pay for a diary. Simple things like this lead onto the reduction in need of having traditional things such as diary, printout newspapers, printout magazines.
Internet- The most crucial part of technology that allowed this was, the internet. The internet allowed them to access the content they have to pay to use for free online which was better for the consumers but for the publishers it wasn't. Since the birth of the internet, the rate of piracy has gone up which lead onto the loss of money for publishers in most media publishing industry especially the music and film industry.
Economy- The economy plays a part in the fall in sales in the magazine. Due to the recession that the world is in, most people have less disposable income so people choose to spend the disposable income they have on other things such as clothing instead of purchasing magazines.This factor alone causes a fall in the magazine industry sales.
Magazine websites- There are numerous websites setup by publishers for their magazines. Examples are NME, Q, and Vibe. These websites give users access to articles, news, and other content which would be featured in the actual printout of the magazines for FREE. Due to the fact its free and its easier to access and navigate through.

Even thought these factprs cause a fall in sales numbers, there are still sales because:

Physicality- Some people still like the physicality of the printout magazines so they like to buy the actual magazine and read it as it feels more natural. This is the case with most people and people in their old age like the physicality instead of reading off a screen.
Knowledge- Some people still lack in computer knowledge so they wouldn't know how to access the internet and look at magazine's online so they still buy the printout magazine. Most people like this tend to be the older people because they would be the sort of people who didn't use the computer/internet much as both of those facilities were in their introduction stages and not many people had access to it in their day.
Collections- Some people have collections of magazines so they would buy and keep all of the magazine editions that they can get. The people who do this tend to be a bit older also they do this for the self satisfaction of having all editions of one magazine but others just collect it to sell when to others as collections later in life.

My magazine

As you already know my magazine is a Hip-Hop/Rap magazine aimed at the urban audience. My magazine is published weekly, contains 60 pages and is priced at £2.50.

Bauer Media who publish their magazine's on a monthly and weekly basis at a similar price would most likely publish my media product because they would need something new to help bring their sales back up again. Bauer's weekly magazine is Kerrang and it is aimed at the Emo social group whereas my magazine is aimed at a different target audience which is the urban social group and since my magazine is published on a weekly basis( It'd help improve their revenue ) they'd be likely to publish my magazine.

As you can see my magazine fits into the Bauer Media group house style in all of their magazines of having a logo and having red in their magazines.

Evaluation Activity 2

Question:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social group that my media product represents is the urban group. I go into depth about the different social groups in and earlier post which can be read here.

However I'll explain some of the characteristics of this social group in brief. The urban social catorgary tend to listen to Hip-Hop and Rap music which is known to be one of the most influential music genres. This is a main reason why there are many in this social group.

To begin with in my front cover the picture represents the social group as the picture shows the male artist wearing a snap-back hat and a baseball jacket which is a popular choice of clothing for those within this social group.


Here is an example of a role model within the urban social group. This is Rapper Jay Z, as you can see his clothing style is mostly with a snap-back hat and accessories such as a ring, watch and a chain.

This is another role model for this social group. This is rapper Tinie Tempah, as you can see he is shown wearing a baseball jacket and clear glasses with a black frame.

The picture in my front cover clearly shows the representation of this social group. The picture does this by the clothing, the model is wearing a snap-back hat, baseball jacket, black-framed clear glasses, and a curb chain.:

In my contents page, I have two pictures. There is one picture of Vapourtwist and Kav:

The picture of Kav (top right), is a close up of his face. The picture is desaturated but has the clothing in colour. The picture shows the artist winking at the camera which gives the picture some humor which is used other magazine but rarely used in magazines that target the urban genre. However i brought some humor into my magazine picture making it unique.

The same sort of image is used in my double page spread to show that this social group have good humor and aren't like how other people would think they are:

Evaluation Activity 1

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

My magazine uses and develops of real media products. My complete can be viewed here.

My front cover uses two elements from the 'Vibe' magazine. To begin with 'Vibe' magazine use a strap line at the top of their front cover to write names of feature artists:

I used this idea and wrote the names of feature artists on the top of my magazine front cover:

Next I used the idea of having the magazine name behind the picture of the artist on the front cover. This is mostly used by 'Vibe' magazine:

This is an example from an edition of 'Vibe' magazine.

I used this idea in my magazine by placing the magazine title behind the picture of the feature artist:

Unlike 'Vibe' magazine, only a little bit of the picture is in front of the title because it makes this a bit different. Also it allows the read to see the magazine name clearer without any obstructions.
This would also help make the magazine stand out as there is just a huge title with no obstructions in front of it which allows those who pass by to see the magazine name clearer and increasing the potential of purchase due to the good reputation and eye-catching features of this magazine edition.

These were all the elements that i used from existing magazines for my front page.

The next thing i used from an existing magazine was the idea of having the magazine logo on the magazine contents page from 'Q' magazine: