To create my final front cover, contents page and double page spread, I had to look at different magazines and how they used certain conventions with their magazine. I then went on to compare these conventions with these magazines to see how mine could relate to the professional magazines.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine does not conform to the generic types of music magazine in or close to my genre as mine focuses more on the new artists in the music industry. The magazine I have created looks towards the stereotype of typical teenage acoustic music including artists who are generally not internationally or even nationally known. This reflects the modern teenager today as they continue to bring the unknown into the limelight. This can become a marketing technique for the artist as teenagers are very much an important part of the music industry as they tend to use the Internet more, with sites such as Myspace and Youtube, and they tend to introduce a new artist to their friends via Facebook, file sharing and other sites. It then becomes a ‘word of mouth’ as more and more people start to file share and talk about a particular artist they’ve heard about. Soon after, their song is being played on the radio and they’ve become a huge star. My magazine focuses towards the demographic age group of 15-24 as this target audience generally are the ones to seek out and find the new, up and coming artists in this genre and that’s what my magazine aims to focus on, the new and exciting artists that will make a big impact in the music industry. It is suited to both male and female audiences but leans more towards females as this genre of music is mainly female orientated in its listening because of the type of music that this genre is. You tend to find more females listening to Ed Sheeran and Lana Del Ray because of the soft soothing acoustic music they create and females tend to understand and relate to this type of music and the meanings behind the lyrics that the artists have written than males. The socio-economic groups which my magazine generally targets is the areas of C1 (Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional), C2 (semi-skilled manual workers), D (Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers) and E (Casual labourers, unemployed and state pensioners) as these people will tend to read a magazine like this and be interested in a music magazine like this. Many students will fall in to the lower demographic categories and so I also had to price my magazine accordingly as students in the lower demographic categories of D and E don’t have that much disposable income to spend on a weekly magazine. The psychographic group I am targeting is the groups who are inner and outer-directed, the ones who are not only belongers, emulators and achievers but are also experimental, socially conscious and i-am-me orientated. This is because I want to achieve a wider readership and I think my magazine can cater for the integrated people.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The media institution who might consider publishing my magazine could be Conde Nast because of the fact that they do not currently publish a music magazine of any sort. My magazine could be its first music magazine in its repertoire and may bring a new target audience to Conde Nast publishing, which could be crucial in competition with other publishing companies especially the two other major publishing companies – Bauer Media and IPC Media who publish music magazines. I wouldn’t have chosen IPC Media because it publishes NME magazine and their style and genre of music is quite similar to the genre of my magazine. Having two magazines of similar genres might still sell and might have been beneficial for my magazine as the publishing company would already have the readership and the knowledge of how to market my magazine however it may cause competition within the company and therefore one of the magazines may have to be discarded and because my magazine would be the newest to the company it may be mine left to find another company, or worse, discontinued forever.
Bauer Media is the other major publisher I could have chosen, however I found out through research that they already have more than 3 successful music magazines in their repertoire and for mine to be added to the mix, however different in genre, may cause competition within the company again, just like the issue with IPC Media. The publishers expertise used in the music magazine field may have been helpful to get the right kind of marketing and publishing for my magazine, however I feel that my magazine and the publishing company of Conde Nast would benefit better being published by Conde Nast.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my music magazine was and still is the demographic age range of 15-24, however the demographic categories were originally C2, D and E. However after making my magazine and collecting feedback, I feel that I could also target the C1 category too. This is because, not only do I want to target a wider audience but I also included the fact that these types of people will have more disposable income to spend on a weekly music magazine like mine than the lower demographic categories that could maybe only afford the magazine now and again when they had spare income. This age range for my target audience also means that my music can be downloaded and listened to on portable devices as the younger generation tend to download music from sites such as iTunes than buy a CD from the shops. With the demographic groups I am targeting as well, downloading is a cheaper way to access and listen to music and so with the little disposable income they have, they would probably revert to downloading than buying a hard copy of an album or single. Many of the artists featured in my magazine would also post their singles or EP's on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as these would generate a lot more interest and be quickly spread with the millions of people who log onto these sites each day sharing and downloading these songs. As this magazine’s genre is acoustic indie, the target audience would be predominantly females as mentioned before because they generally listen to this type of music rather than males. I started off with the aim of targeting the inner-directed psychographic group as these people would be the people who may be more interested in my genre of music as my genre is popular at festivals.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience by making my product affordable for the lower demographic categories of D and E, which include students, so that they can purchase the magazine even with the low disposable income they may have. Addressing the demographic categories of C1 and C2 attracts subscriptions as they do have the disposable income to spend on the magazine and if the content is right and professional then they will want to buy it and hopefully subscribe for it. This method of attracting the audience has subscription weekly followers who have the disposable income and the people who may only afford to be able to buy the music magazine at odd times, creating a good mix of readership. The psychographic group I am targeting, with it being inner and outer-directed, will attract a range of audiences to my magazine in a range of demographic categories. Pricing my magazine at £2.10 allows people in the lower demographic categories of D and E to purchase the magazine because it is affordable and it also allows the demographic categories of C1 and C2 to purchase the magazine because it is little money out of their pockets. The price is near enough the price that any of the demographic categories can afford. When I asked my target audience ‘do you think the magazine is reasonably priced based on its contents?’ the overriding answer was ‘yes’, showing that my magazine is a good price. With the current and up and coming artists featured in my magazine, many of my target audience would want to feel part of the ‘scene’ and feel like they know who these artists are. My magazine allows the audience to have this knowledge and be the first to know of the new artists about to break through into the music scene. This knowledge is very important to the new generation as it allows them to show their knowledge off to their friends and family and feel like they are ‘in with the crowd’. This is what my magazine hopes to attract – people looking for knowledge of the latest artists meaning that my magazine will get the readership it needs. Along with this attraction, the splash itself will attract the audience as the font styles and simple but effective colour scheme portrays an indie feel as my audience feedback shows. When asked ‘What genre of music would you say this magazine is?’ all of the answers were ‘indie’. This shows that my magazine achieves the genre it was meant to be.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
At the beginning of the course I had never used Photoshop and so to start using it was a daunting task. I think the preliminary task where we had to produce a college magazine helped to develop my skills and understanding of how to use Photoshop and helped me enormously when it came to producing my music magazine as I had gained the basic skills to start work on it. The first thing I learnt to use, and learnt to use effectively, was the quick selection tool. As the images were the most important thing of the college and the music magazines, this tool was vital and was the first tool I could use with confidence. The second tool which helped me tremendously was the blur tool. This helped to smooth out any rough edges after I had used the quick selection tool and make the image appear smoother and like it fit within the context of page. My first use of these tools together was on my college magazine. As you can see from the image it was semi-successful, however since this production of the magazine, I have honed my technical skills and produced a better image for the front cover. For my final front cover I used the polygonal lasso tool as this cut around the image better than the quick selection tool and created a smoother outline. I used the polygonal lasso tool for the relatively straight parts around my model such as each side if her torso and parts of her arms, and the magnetic lasso tool for the curved parts such as her head, shoulders and hands, therefore reducing the overuse of the blur tool and creating a better, more professional outcome. The transform scale tool has been a massive help in making sure my text, images and shapes are the right size and fit on the page together.
At the beginning of the course I had never used Photoshop and so to start using it was a daunting task. I think the preliminary task where we had to produce a college magazine helped to develop my skills and understanding of how to use Photoshop and helped me enormously when it came to producing my music magazine as I had gained the basic skills to start work on it. The first thing I learnt to use, and learnt to use effectively, was the quick selection tool. As the images were the most important thing of the college and the music magazines, this tool was vital and was the first tool I could use with confidence. The second tool which helped me tremendously was the blur tool. This helped to smooth out any rough edges after I had used the quick selection tool and make the image appear smoother and like it fit within the context of page. My first use of these tools together was on my college magazine. As you can see from the image it was semi-successful, however since this production of the magazine, I have honed my technical skills and produced a better image for the front cover. For my final front cover I used the polygonal lasso tool as this cut around the image better than the quick selection tool and created a smoother outline. I used the polygonal lasso tool for the relatively straight parts around my model such as each side if her torso and parts of her arms, and the magnetic lasso tool for the curved parts such as her head, shoulders and hands, therefore reducing the overuse of the blur tool and creating a better, more professional outcome. The transform scale tool has been a massive help in making sure my text, images and shapes are the right size and fit on the page together.
To follow the specification of a medium close up image I had to use the transform scale tool to fit the image on the page and make sure it was the right size to fit with what was required. The character tool used for font and layout related issues also helped me enormously to choose the right font for my front cover. For my first draft of my music magazine, all my fonts were used from the character toolbar and become over bearing as all the sell lines were the same colour and font, with the same size and too many sell lines overall. This draft was when I was first getting to grips with the character toolbar and so I maybe didn’t explore what this tool could do in terms of creating variation for my front cover.
For my second draft I had to rectify this as I needed some variation with my font, font size and colour. On my first draft I did however use the spot fix tool to create a smoother finish on the artists face. I feel the spot fix tool worked really well however I didn’t really need it for my second and final drafts as the artist’s faces didn’t really need working on. For my second draft I still used the quick selection tool as I still hadn’t been introduced to the lasso tool just yet so the image was still a little rough around the edges as I didn’t want to overuse the blur tool too much as this wouldn’t create a professional finish to the image. The use of the quick selection tool for the fonts however was useful as the fonts are used were from a website which I could generate my text from and then use on my front cover, copyright free. Once I had generated my text I could then use the quick selection tool to cut around the letters and words and incorporate them on my front cover. These fonts therefore had variety compared to my first draft
For my final front cover design, the use of the lasso tool (which I discovered after a great exploration of Photoshop), transform scale, the blur tool, the character toolbar and the many other tools helped to create a front cover which by far had improved from the preliminary college magazine and the first draft because of the mass of skills I had learnt from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I then carried these skills across to do my contents page and double page spread. With my contents page I relied heavily on the character toolbar as it consisted mainly of the articles featured in the magazine. This along with my double page spread created my final magazine. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
At the beginning of the college year I had to produce a college magazine for the preliminary task. As this was a fairly new subject to me I hadn’t quite gotten to grips with the technology used like Photoshop and so had to learn to use these when making my college magazine. When comparing my college magazine to my finished music magazine. You can see that the image is definitely better on the music magazine than the college magazine because of the use of the lasso tool to cut out the background of the image on the music magazine. This lasso tool was only discovered towards the end of the college year and therefore I only used the quick selection tool when cutting out my image on the college magazine. The image is also clearer on the college magazine and bigger after using the scale transform tool. I think the use of the simple white background attracts the audience more towards the image and the sell lines on the page in the music magazine rather than on the college magazine where the image has been placed on another image of the college. This, I think, detracts away from the sell lines on the page and therefore doesn’t really make the magazine stand out in any way. The sell lines themselves on the college magazine are large with lots of writing which may put off some potential buyers as a front cover should just tell you snippets of information that can be found in the magazine. This is why on my music magazine I have only used the artists name as sell lines so the audience can look at who is features in the magazine and decide on the artists whether they want to buy a copy or not. This shows how my magazine is purely about the music and dedication of the artists and their lyrics and nothing else. 
