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

These are the ways in which my media uses the codes and conventions a music magazine. I recorded the audio of these video's in the radio production suite using Adobe Audition.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Many examples of the social group represented in my media product are featured on youtube. Below is several examples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X-InF5tub0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?UPb0C2wVjQm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlskboOROkk

Question 3: What kind of media institution may distribute your product and why?

http://www.ipcmedia.com/

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 5: How did you Address/attract the audience?

To address and attract the audience, I used many different techniques in the production on my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread.

Feature Article:

Contents Page:
Front Cover:

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel ou have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that I have learnt alot about the different software used in progression from the preliminary excercis to the full product. I now am able to succesfully use an adequate amount of tools on each of the different software.

These are some articles which I researched to gain knowledge of writing skills:

http://www.prefixmag.com/features/arctic-monkeys/arent-fooling-around-part-1-of-2/12565


http://www.spin.com/articles/kings-of-leon-bigger-we-wanted-to-be

Editing images

I edited this image to make it look more proffesional on my feature article.

Editing

I edited my standfirst text to a different colour as I did not think it stood out enough in between the main title and the body text.

Editing

I edited my puff to make it stand out more. I made it so that the 'win' part was the biggest to sttract the audience. I also added a glow effect around the outside to make it stand out from the page more. I made the title font sans serif to help it stand out.

I also edited the main feature title using an inner and outer glow in order for it to stand out from all the other features further.

Work in progress: adding text effects

Work in progress: Editing Text

Work in progress: Designing a puff

Work in progress: Designing titles

Work in progress: changing texts and images

Work in progress: Changing my contents page - deleting editors letter

Images: Not used

This image was used on my contents page to represent a band 'Low Shoulder' but I decided that it did not work and replaced it.

Images: used on contents page

Images: Not used

This was going to be used on my feature article but in the end I decided not to.

Images: used on feature article

Images: used on contents page

Images: Not used

Was originally on contents page

Images: Not used

Images: Not used

Images: used on contents page

Images: used on contents page

Images: Not used

Images: Front cover image

Images: Not used

Images: Not used

Images: Not used

Images : Not used

For my front cover image I took around 150 pictures in total.

Publication Plan

Title: Pause

Positioning Statement: There's nothing like music.

Price: £2.80

Publication Frequency: Monthly
Distribution: Music stores, newsagents, supermarkets and train stations

Rationale: Pause magazine will be based mainly upon gig reports, upcoming concerts and exclusive artist interviews.

Regular content:

10 concerts you must see
a month with...
pause on the radio
pause forum
express it
get to know pause
opininon

Feature Articles:

Kings of Leon highway hit
Metro station kick it off
The rising of Bloc Party
The Kooks get creative
Getting started
Cage The Elephant
Florence and the machine fire
Unsigned

Front Cover Artists:

- The script
- Coldplay
- Radiohead
- Mike Mckay
- The Afters

Housestyle:

Coverlines: Garamond Pro
Headlines: Impact
Standfirst: Impact 11pt
Feature first paragraph: Times New Roman drop capital 5 lines down
Body text: Times New Roman 11pt
Colour Scheme: Red, white and black

Sketches: Feature Article

Sketches: Contents Page

Sketch: Front Cover

Questionnaire Results

Questionnaire Results




How much money would you spend on a music magazine?

Conclusion: Usually people say that music magazines are very over priced however they still pay whatever the price is. By asking this question I was able to evaluate a suitable price which can be the cost of my magazine. Therefore it will not be to overpriced but it will still be at a reasonable price.
How often do you buy music magazines?

Conclusion: because most people buy music magazines monthly therefore I will know not to make the frequency of my publication monthly as i initially would have went with

What is your least favourite thing about music magazines?

Conclusion: In this question I found the main things that people dislike about music magazines which would help me to think carefully about what I should not be including a lot of in my music magazine. What is your favourite thing about music magazines?

Conclusion: By asking this question it would give me an idea of what type of article I should produce and also gave me a clue as to what article titles I could include on the contents page and for articles on the front cover.

What is your favourite colour?

Conclusion: I asked this question as it would help me make my decision of what colours I should use as a theme for my magazine Who is your favourite band or singer?

Conclusion: This question was to give me some ideas as to what feature articles I could use on my front cover and contents page Are You male or female ?

Conclusion: I asked this question because if there were not an equal amount of male and female answers and the majority were males by having done this it could make my results biased to females as the male decision is overruling the female decision.

AUDIO RECORDING OF SOME QUESTIONS

Codes and conventions of a music magazine

There are many codes and conventions to a music magazine. Codes and conventions are the unwritten rules that should apply to different magazines in a different genre. These are the most typical for a music magazine:

- Title in the left hand corner
- barcode in the bottom right hand corner
- image of a band or singer onthe front
- bold fonts
- minimum colour scheme containing around three
- short sub-headings
- release date
- strap line across top or bottom
- lots of puff for example: free posters
- usually dark colours such as black and red
- usually a sloganunderneath magazine title
- large magazine title
- magazine title is usually one word only

Magazine cover and contents

Evaluation of school magazine and contents page

I was asked to create a school magazine cover and contents page. In this task I was to take my own photographs on location of the school, and then to produce them into a magazine cover and contents page using Adobe photoshop and QuarkXPress. I found these programmes very useful and easy to use given the task that I had been set.


The usual codes and conventions of a school magazine are that; they usually contain a picture of a pupil on the front or a sports team, they are very easy to read as they are targeted at age groups from year 7 to year 13, they are also very colourful to attract the reader, the contents page contains many different pictures so that this will also attract the reader. In my magazine product I followed closely all of these codes and conventions so that my school magazine would look proffesional and realistic.


To make my front cover image of the school magazines a used a new media software Adobe Photoshop CS3. This software allows you to edit your image , crop it , edit texts, change image details and add many effects to different images. Photoshop was useful in making my magazine cover as I was able to use all of these tools to make my magazine cover look more professional and like a real school magazine. It also allowed my magazine to look more intersting for the effects that i could add onto my fonts and images.A weekness with Adobe Photoshop was that you cannot create columns which would mean that to make a contents page would be very difficult. However, it was very useful for my front cover because of how easy the software is to use and all the available tools which made it more interesting.


Another new media software that i used was QuarkXPress. I found this software more difficult as I had not previously used it. However, this programme was easy to learn and was much easier than photoshop for creating a contents page as it had built in columns which photoshop did not. A disadvantage with this software was because of the images that I had taken. QuarkXPress does not allow you to resize images properly without changing the image dimensions. I overcame this problem by adjusting my images so that they could still fit in the given area and look similar to how they did in the first place.


To conclude, in making this school magazine i have developed my skills and knowledge of using both of these new media software. I have also learnt more about the codes and conventions of a school magazine and can see how different they are to the likes of a music magazine. If i was to do this again, I would like to further develop my skills and knowledge on both of the software's to make my magazine look more advanced.

Preliminary Excercise