Evaluation

Question one;
My magazine uses conventions of real media products for the genre of the magazine by using stereotypically R'n'B colours such as black, white and grey. I used a magazine called XXL and Q magazine to help develop my front cover by looking at its layout and the colours in which it used. I also challenged the general conventions of an R'n'B magazine by not having a 'Black' artist on the front cover an introducing other music types into it. Instead of the normal conventions I used a girl group who had recently being recognised for the influential sound and for bringing ‘different sounds’ into the world of music. This challenges the conventions of real media products as usually on the magazine they are males and of an ethnic background. The text I have used on the magazine also develops the conventions as it is predominantly bold, like what XXL has and so fits its genre well. Other conventions what a real magazine has which I have uploaded on to mine include a bar code in the bottom corner, issue number and price, sell lines down the side of the magazine which tell the audience what is in the magazine and the masthead being at the top of the page so that in a shop it could be seen over the top of other magazines.

Question two;
My media product represents a particular social group by again the general colours in which have being used, for example Black and white connote that they are perhaps a little bit into 'crime' and the fonts portray that they are perhaps 'hard' as the font is quite blunt and the language that has being used within the magazine for example the language used is quite blunt and perhaps slangy. I think my magazine does give off a pretty stereotypical view of what a R'n'B should be like, even thought the front cover image challenges this convention. The magazine also gives the representation that people who listen to R'n'B know all about it and should live the 'high' life and perhaps have lots of fun. I think that the pictures included in the magazine give representations of an ideal self and make girls want to look like those and the front and the male audience see them as there ideal partner.

Question three;
I think that the type of company that might distribute my magazine would be a conglomerate company. I think this because R'n'B music is quite popular within the aimed age audience and so they would have lots of customers and need a bigger company to be able to get bigger artists and the money to make the actual magazine itself. I think that the circulation of the magazine would actually be quite big and the ways that the public could access the magazine would be pretty widely cross media, as the magazine would have its own radio station and the internet would play a big part in advertising the magazine. The website would allow people to read all the magazine reviews online, keep up to date with the latest news and watch music videos. The magazine could be promoted on bill-boards around town centre's and places where a lot of young people like to hang out for example 'cinema screens', also the Internet could play a huge part in promoting the magazine as we could put an advert on Facebook for example, where a lot of people tend to socialise and share pictures. I think that the kind of shops that the magazine would be sold in would be WHSmiths and just everyday newsagents.

Question four;
The audience for my media product would be both males and females of an age roughly 16-24 years old. They are into there music especially R'n'B, they tend to go out a lot with friends weather it be out down town at night or just chilling at the cinema's etc. They have a very casual everyday style and tend to wear designer brands. At the top of the page is a reader profile of what I think that the reader of the magazine would like.

Question five;
I think that my magazine uses a peer to peer mode of address and talks to the audience as if it were a friend, however it does use a teacher to pupil mode of address as it gives information about the magazine to the audience and so therefore is teaching, even though it is teaching it still puts it across in a friendly type of way due to the way the pictures are placed, the lexis used and the colours used. These all give connotations of the magazine which also speaks to the audience. For example an example of peer to peer lexis would be, during the interview the word ‘pricks’ is used, this connotes that the audience swear and that the type of people reading the magazine use words like this and so it is peer to peer mode of address, because the magazine is on the same level as them.

Question six;
I have learnt a lot about different technologies and software whilst conducting this product including Photoshop elements, Quark and the online blogger. I had never used either Photoshop or Quark ever before I started to make my magazine so at first I thought it was quite difficult and it took me quite a while in order to get used to it. I learnt how to use tools such as the crop tool and the magic wand tool which allows you to cut images out in Photoshop and also the red eye tool which is helpful as lots of the pictures I took for my magazine had red eye’s and with out Photoshop I wouldn’t have being able to use them. The spot corrector also is a very helpful tool and makes the people in the pictures look even more perfect and so enforcing the ‘ideal self’ to the audience. I think that when I got to use Photoshop it was pretty easy and was overall strength in creating the magazine frontcover. I also used Quark to produce my magazine and I have never used this software before either, I think that it was really hard to get used to and that it was not very easy to use once I did know what to do. It is difficult to upload pictures onto Quark and for a magazine which has lots of pictures it created lots of different problems, especially with the sizing of the pictures. I think if I could do the magazine again I would prefer to use Photoshop for my double page spread and contents page instead of Quark. I also used Blogger to put all my work on and I found this pretty easy to use and it was quick and easy.

Question seven;
Looking back at my preliminary task I think that I have learnt a lot from use of the software to how a magazine company works. In terms of software I have learnt how to use Photoshop and Quark a lot better than before as I am know pretty used to using the software, for example cutting people out of pictures and placing them on other ones was a lot easier for my real magazine compare to my preliminary task. I think my knowledge of magazine conventions has also increased as I now know what every music magazine has, barcode, masthead etc and also what a music magazine should look like in terms of the pictures used and the type of language that it contains. I know how music companies get there magazine to there audience using cross media like both internet and billboards and how companies work that produce music magazine such as Bauer. I think that the planning and drafting of the music magazine was not really important in helping me with my final magazine as I hand drew my draft and so only had a rough outline of where things would go. I think that for the music magazine I had a rough idea what I wanted it to look like in my head with the help from other magazines such as Q and XXL, and so I drew my drafts based on that and copied that to my actual magazine. I did change a few things from my draft however, such as the layout of the pictures on my double page spread. The importance of the feedback from others was very important in the decision of me picking my magazine name and the conventions. I put a poll on my blog where I could get friends to vote for there favourite and some of them commented on my actual blog leaving feedback and saying which was there favourite. I took there ideas into consideration when making my decision as if an audience thought that ‘Base’ was the most eye catching for example then a lot more people would think the same therefore making it more successful. Overall I think I have learnt a lot looking back from my final magazine to my preliminary, both about software and music magazines.