Final Design:Front Cover

Final Design:Contents Page

Final Design: Double Page Spread

Evaluation 7: Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression form it to the full product?

Here is my preliminary task, what I made at the start of the course and I am going to say how and what I improved on and compare it to my 'Emerge' magazine. 



Front cover:

There is a clear difference in picture quality from both front covers. My second front cover looks much more clear and easy to read the text. After making my school magazines I learnt the conventions of a magazine and this helped me improve it. On my preliminary task I made a magazine for school but looking back on it, I think I chose the wrong font as it hard to read and can loose the audience's attention. I prefer my colour scheme on my 'Emerge' magazine as it portrays a pop music magazine very well. Looking back on my prelim task front cover I am questioning why I chose green because the school colour' is red and red is so much brighter and fun. I do not like the layout of the first front cover as there are to many blank spaces and it makes it more obvious as the background colour is white, which isn't effective. I thought the title on my prelim task was clever because i used an '@' sign as it can be a title and a link to there social media pages. I think to improve the prelim task I would add even more photographs of the students at school to show other schools and people what there missing out on.

 I could have overlapped small photos on my 'Emerge' front cover to spread out the text. I added different coloured lines on my school front cover to fill in the spaces. I did the same on my final front cover but added love hearts as it went with the pop theme and made the page more interesting. I decided to use one main image on my 'Emerge' front cover as I didn't think a white background looked realistic. As I had a deadline for my preliminary task I didn't have enough time to add a bar code to the front cover to make it look more real. I made the first front cover on the iMac's at school and fond it hard to transfer my photos from my phone to the iMac. Therefore for my final magazine I made it all on a laptop and used drop box to save all my photos so I could work at home and school. i made the font bigger on my Music magazine because looking back on the other task I can't actually read any of text in the green squares. 

Contents Page:

 

I think there is an equal amount of improvements between my front covers and contents pages. I have used a similar layout on my final contents page but moved the title to the side to challenge the stereotypical conventions of a pop magazine. I added another title 'Inside this Month...' because it tells the audience that this is a monthly magazine. My second contents page shows off my editing skills because the preliminary task is very basic and childish. I added a similar star to my final contents page because they make the page look more interesting and makes certain parts of the text stand out. I think adding a frame around the picture makes it look more professional and a more realistic magazine. I think I wrote to many page descriptions compared to the amount of photos.

 

Therefore on my final contents page I added 4 photos with 4 page descriptions. Overall I think my final magazine is ten times better than my preliminary task because of the choice of colour, font, decorations and the editing software. I didn't have a lot of time to make my preliminary task therefore I rushed it when writing the page descriptions. My photos are much more lighter in the final design because I couldn't see the photos very well on the preliminary task. I have improved my final designs by changing the layout and font to see what looks the most effective and realistic.

Evaluation 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing my product?

Evaluation 5: What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

When creating any sort of media product, there is always the tough decision of deciding whether to aim towards a mass audience or a niche target audience.

• "The mass market is a general business term describing the largest group of consumers for a specified industry product.
• "A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing. So the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. It is also a small market segment."

As my magazine is based on the pop genre,therefore I decided to go with a mass audience as pop is a big genre compared to something like country music. I researched many different pop magazines and there publishing houses. I made a post earlier on before making my magazine about 'Media Institutions'  but never chose a publisher. 

I have narrowed it down to two different publishing houses, 'Bauer Media' or 'IPC Media' which both sell mainstream music magazines.Bauer Media concentrates on publishing magazines and on radio. I is one of the most successful companies in the worlds and is European based company. They own magazines like 'Q', 'Kerrang' and 'MOJO' which are popular all over the world. The company does this by having offices around the UK to sell popular UK magazines and air radio shows. They also have a Bauer group in the USA and this makes there radio and magazine products have a wider audience as they are available in 16 countries. Bauer publishes 'woman's weekly', 'Take a break', 'Eat in' and Puzzle magazines. This hows they offer a variety of different types of magazines,not just music.

IPC Media is a British Magazine Company  and have three divisions of magazines. The first section is targeted towards woman which include magazines like 'Now and 'Pick me up'. Then the second section is more specific and is aimed at up market (upper class ABC1) which include 'Ideal Home' and 'Look' and these magazines are very popular. The last division is targeted to men which are magazines like 'Country Life' and 'Rugby World'. All the magazines owned by IPC are available on every platform e.g. mobile, tablet and print which widens their audience.They own 'NME' a very famous rock/pop music magazine and now is available to read online which brings in money which is a clever idea. IPC are not afraid to branch off into different music genres such as 'Hip Hop' and 'Brit pop' which are not as mainstream.

 In conclusion I have decided it use IPC media company a my publishing house because they concentrate on just magazines making my magazine more likely to become popular. As My magazine is UK based it wouldn't make sense to use a company which isn't founded in the UK but IPC was founded in London. IPC company own some of the most popular magazines for woman, men and music. They offer different types of magazines at different prices to attract all social groups.Bauer media company do not concentrate on magazines in music which isn't good for my pop magazine as I need to be in the same publishing house as other popular music magazines. As IPC offer their magazines on all platforms it opens my magazines audience making it accessible to everyone. 

Evaluation 4: How does my media product represent particular social groups?

What is a social group?
It is a group of people who share some social relation such as age, gender, class and interests.

My media product represents a certain audience, which is the teenage age group 13-20 years old. After researching about pop magazines I decided to concentrate on a certain gender which is female as I chose the colour scheme of pink and purple because it was the most popular choice from my questionnaire. I trusted my questionnaires choices as I surveyed the typical people who would read my magazine. I included interests that is more biased to girls such as Miley Cyrus, BBC Music Awards and the Victoria Secret Show. These are interests that would persuade my target audience to buy and read my magazine because young people like to know what is popular at the moment and pop magazines give that to the audience. I tried making my magazine suitable to my audience therefore I wrote my interview more casually to get to know my singer and this would only happen in a pop magazine. As my magazine is aimed towards teens I didn't make the any of the writing complicated to read so I wrote it just with basic words so they can understand.

 I don't think the older audience would enjoy reading my magazine as it could come across as childish and cheesy. On my front cover I used my sister who is 14 years old and she fits my target audience very well as she like pop music and keeping on trend. Beth looks young and can relate to the target audience because she has similar interests. She can be an inspiration for the audience for her fashion and makeup look. There isn't a particular ethnicity barrier but in my magazine all the photos are of white Caucasian people and I didn't think about this when making my magazine but if I was to improve my magazine I would try include different ethnicity to create a wider audience. By choosing a young model it can portray that my singer will be an upcoming star and have a future in the pop industry. I decided to make my magazine on the cheaper side at £2.99 so both classes ABC1 and CD2E meaning upper class to middle class and lower middle class to working class. This makes my magazine accessible to nearly everyone making it have a larger audience. I've tried to make my magazine an escape route from reality for teens. I also don't want to advertise the bad influence in pop music like celebrities lives and bad trends because I don't want my magazine to inspire people in a bad way I wanted to just include positive ideas.

'Top of the Pop's' magazine is a good influence to young teenagers because they don't show bad humors and gossip which is inappropriate. 'Billboard' magazine is for a slightly older audience and I prefer the simpler presentation and layout of the magazine. I used this as inspiration because I placed the writing in similar places.

 
 

Evaluation 3: How did you attract/address my audience?

How does my Front Cover appeal to my target audience?


How does my Contents Page appeal to my target audience?


How does my Double Page Spread appeal to my target audience?

Evaluation 2: Who would be the audience for my media product?

Evaluation 1: In what way does my media magazine use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media magazine?

Evaluation1 media from katytierney

Final Design of My Double Page Spread

Double Page Spread Analysis

I started by making an A3 sized page in the colour pink to match my front cover and contents page. I made this on 'Pixlr' using the collage option and making both of the pages the same colour pink.

 I created my double page spread on 'Pic Monkey as I thought it was straight forward to use compared to other websites. Then I started on the left hand side where I was going to write most of the interview. I used the same font family from the the front cover and contents page as it makes it look like a more realistic magazine. The title of the interview was quite long as I was introducing Beth and this helps the reader understand what the interview is about. I used the font 'Lobster Two' for most of the title then for the name I used 'Budmo Jiggler' because the letters looked like spotlights and makes her name stand out for the reader. I used a dark purple for most of the title because I thought black was too harsh for the colour scheme. I used a bright pink for 'Beth Tierney' as it was eye catching. In the top left hand corner I added a selection of love hearts in different shades of pink and different sizes because on my front cover and contents page I added hearts and I want the magazine pages to look similar and realistic. Under the title I added different colour rectangles to make the background more interesting. But before I added all the other text I made the rectangles fade into each other so the text was readable the i liked this effect more.

Next I added the interview and I asked 8 questions about her experience performing at the BBC Music Awards. I used a font that looked like someones hand writing for the questions which was called 'Amatic small caps' and used the same colour font as the title. For the answer I changed the font and colour to show a clear different between the question and answer, therefore the reader can see it clearly. I used the 'Lobster Two' as it is a very girly font but used a hot pink colour so it stands out and doesn't merge into the background. I used a font size of 25 for my questions and size 20 for my answer but it isn't an obvious size difference. I used the same font and colour for all the questions and answers to make the interview flow. If I used different coloured font for each question and answer on this page it would look too busy. In the photo below you can see i added 3 more hearts on the other side of the left hand side because I thought that part looked a bit bare.

Next I went on to design the right hand side and started by adding a few faded rectangles to the background like the other side. I then went on to finish the interview and added one more column with two questions in it with the same font and colour as the other side. In between the questions I added a large quote from the interview because when researching pop magazine double page spreads this was very popular. I chose the quotation 'Still can't believe so many people liked my video!' as it makes the reader look at it and want to read the whole interview and understand why she said this. I used the same font as the other answers but changed the size to be bigger and used the same colour as 'Beth Tierney' on the title. The quotation marks are in red and larger than usual because this was used in popular pop magazines e.g. 'Top of the Pop's'. I added a pale pink rectangular shape behind the quote to make it stand out and easy to read. Next I used 4 photos of Beth with a Polaroid frame around it because its on trend right now. I made 3 of the photos go down the right hand side of the page and then the 4th photo under the text to fill the gap. On each of the photo frames i added the same small pink heart to make it look girly and fit my pop theme. In the bottom left corner I a small selection of hearts like the other side to decorate the page and make it more interesting. In the bottom right corner I overlapped two pink flower to look like a stamp/sticker and wrote on top of it 'More about Beth on the next page!' because from my research most magazines add this as it catches the readers attention. 

Overall I think the double page spread looks effective as it has the same colour scheme as the rest of the magazine which is important for the pop genre. Pop magazines have a lot of decorations e.g. stars, hearts, stickers and stamps to entice the reader so I added hearts to capture the look of a girly pop magazine.

Double page Spread-Interview

I chose to interview Beth (my singer) because I researched pop magazines for the same target audience. I found out that they either interview or write an article about the singer or band. I felt like an interview is more accurate as the magazine is talking to the person/people themselves and you get a real answer instead of an article just telling you facts about them. 
Here are some examples of interviews with big pop stars: 

• This example is from 'Top of the Pop's' magazine and is an interview with a band called 'Union J' and I love the colour choice and the font family used on this double page spread. I got inspiration from this and used a similar layout of the text. I like the way the question is in one colour and the answer is another because this makes the writing stand out. As my target audience are young teens I need the text to be clear so it's to read. I like the colour squares behind the writing as it makes you want to read it and is very eye catching. However I would make them overlap and fade in to each other because it makes it look more interesting and abstract. In the bottom right corner it says 'More Union J over the page' and i think this entices the reader to read on and I used this in my double page spread. I like how the interviewer asks more casual questions because then you can get to know the person/people.

• This example is from 'We love Pop' magazine and is an interview with 'Justin Bieber' and I got inspired by the left side of double page spread. I like the arrangement of pictures because it looks like a photo booth strip and looks very retro. I added a Polaroid frame around my four photos because at the moment this is very popular and pop magazines stay up to date with all the trends. The same as the last example they have coloured squares but are overlapped at different angles.

• This is another example where i took a certain feature from this magazine and it was an inspiration for my own double page spread. The inspiration I took was the chose of photos and in the bottom right corner the magazine used a Polaroid frame which shows a fun vibe and shows they are on trend. I like the variation in text colour as it looks effective and would look boring in the same colour.

 

• Here is another example from a pop magazine and the reason I have shown different examples is I don't want to just copy a magazine double page spread. Instead I'm taking different aspects from pop magazines and combining them together. The feature I like from this example is the layout of the double page spread, in particular the text arrangement. The text is in three columns and I think this makes it easier to read because all the text is together and not spread out. I had two columns on the left hand side and another column on the right hand side. and again I like the change in colour between the question and answer.