Brief

Candidate Name: Neil Toner
Candidate Number: 8358
Centre Number: 71615
Preliminary Task: Using DTP and an image manipulation program to produce the front page of a school magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in Medium Close-Up plus some appropriately laid out text and masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.
Main Task: The Cover Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread of a new music magazine.

Finished Products

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

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

 

Evaluation 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is question 5 for my evaluation, I used windows movie maker:

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

Evaluation 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For any magazines it is essential to have the perfect amount of media convergence. Meaning that when it comes to social media sites, apps, games etc. the correct media institution is essential. Considering the genre of my magazine and the overall look of the magazine I believe the correct media institution is vital for production and distribution.

My magazine is reasonably priced considering I have a target audience of a young age. It is crucial that the magazine is viewed as a fair ‘worth it’ magazine. In my opinion I think stores such as HMV and WHSmith would distribute my magazine due to its genre.

There are three media institution that I have previously looked at:

•      EMAP
•      Bauer
•       IPC

EMAP

They would not be suitable in the distribution of my magazine because they are more of a business-to-business sort of institution. This means they specialize in business related magazines and the organization of the conferences that take place within the business world. It is clear that they do not distribute any kind of music magazine. Their magazines include ‘Construction News’ and ‘Drapers’ two of which are clearly not in the same genre of magazine of mine. This is why EMAP would not distribute my media product.

Bauer

Bauer media are basically the biggest and most popular institution in the word in terms of media convergence and big name brands. It is clear that Bauer would be first choice for almost any music magazine considering they work with Kerrang and all the major Radio stations, as well as TV music stations. Bauer are responsible for the production of over 300 magazines in 15 countries, this means more audience and more popularity. In my opinion Bauer would be the best institution for my magazine as they specialize in the music industry.

IPC

A.K.A Time inc. They are famous for being Britain’s leading publisher in print and digital copies for magazines. They also have a great variety of media convergence and work with many other magazine companies in terms of distribution. NME for example, they ae very similar to my own magazine in terms of Genre and forms and conventions. Although being widely known in the UK IPC would not be the best institution for my magazine because due to their location it would give me a very Niche audience.

Evaluation 2:The images How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The images above are taken from my magazine and Kerrang(left). I believe Kerrang represent similar social groups as my magazine does so I chose to comment on these two photos.

Posture
In terms of posture the images are fairly different. In my image the model is very straight and upright, his head is aligned with his body to create a very straight and narrow posture. This gives a sense of seriousness and directly addresses the audience. The image from Kerrang however the guy is hunch with his hands in his pockets and his head slightly titled which isn't very serious, he us more casual and confident. This is expected considering Kerrang can be confident as they are already famous where as mine being a new magazine I thought it was important to make a good first impression.
Clothing
The clothing is pretty similar, especially when focusing on colours although picking up on my last point it is very clear that by wearing a casual t-shirt with his tattoos showing Kerrang's model needs little effort as they are already established famous. In my image however the model is wearing a leather jacket and white shirt along with a red bandana. This is a very elaborate attempt to try and connect to the indie-rock side of things.
Shot Type/ Angle
Now this is where the images start to look more alike. Both images were shot as mid shots which was to let the audience see exactly the artist in their full glory. Both shots are highlighting the artists and show the artists looking directly at the camera for a sense of power, now here is where they differentiate; In my image the shot is at eye level setting a sense of equality between the reader and artist whereas in Kerrang's image the artists is shot looking down upon the reader. This gives a sense of power to the artist over the reader.

Now in terms of representing social groups I think my magazine does so fairly. The women shot in the magazine are going head to head and it gives the 2 women a sense of power whereas most magazines rarely even feature women.  As my target audience is aged between 15-25, my readers will tend to be pupils in school, students in university or young professionals so with this in mind, by using the grade definitions I can see that my music magazine will appeal to those in categories B, C1 and C2. On top of that the colour scheme employed throughout the magazine and indeed the house style also help to represent and target particular social groups and target my audience. I used a rang of colours including red and blue. These colours are the 2 most basic colours and can be associated with women and men therefore I am constructing a representation on social groups.

Evaluation 1

This is question 1 for my evaluation. Here I needed to discuss how my magazine develops or shares forms and conventions of real media products. I used Prezi for this presentation as it would be a better layout to present data in such a bulk way.

Re-Drafts

This is my re-draft for Magazine cover, I completed this on Photoshop. I tried to maintain a house style across all products as challenging as that proved to be. 

My contents pages and double page spreads were both created on InDesign. As previously stated I attempted to create the best house style that I could.

Re- Drafts

Double Page Spread Construction

Content Construction

For my content re-draft I included a review section. Which was based upon a concert I went to so I also edited and used an image I took while attending the concert.

The first thing I done in my re-draft was making the decision to use 2 portrait pages instead of 1 landscape page.

Then I began to add everything from the previous draft onto the second page.

Cover Construction

When fixing up my Cover I decided to convert to Photoshop as it would be easier to move all the features added around. At first I decided to fix up my barcode and create a new one using an online barcode generator.

Next I wanted to follow shared conventions of all magazines, especially Q magazine. Which is why I added the plus sign, however I had to paint this red.

The image I used is the image below which was edited on Photoshop, the reason I did not screen shot this was because I only edited the brightness.

The icons below were all downloaded of the internet and re-sized to be placed next to the barcode. This is also follow typical codes and conventions used by other magazines all over the world. These are used to advertise the social media used by the magazine.

At first I planned to use standard fonts in Photoshop although after further research on other magazines I noticed that the main artist's name has to stand out so I visited Dafonts.com and got the font below.

New Drafts Ideas

I have come up with a couple of ideas for my re-drafts of all my music magazine products. These ideas were based upon audience feedback and extensive research I done on other media products.             

Cover:

• I am considering adding a Skyline based upon feedback from my teacher who suggested it would help the magazine follow codes and conventions of other media products.
• The barcode needs to be smaller and less pixelated, the barcode should never be more than around 3-5% of the whole page.
• I need to add more cover lines as my Cover looks a little dull which is a major disadvantage when creating a magazine as the cover will be the selling point or the first thing anyone will see in relation.
• After looking at other magazines I have decided to change my font to better suit the indie rock genre conveyed by the magazine. Especially for the main cover line where the artist is featured(name).
• The image itself needs to be replaced as the image used is very dull and the black and white does not help to add excitement or vibrant colour to the magazines cover.
• Add the very popular '+'

Content:

• The layout itself needs to be better in general as there is too much white space and the two pages are lacking.
• In regards to the font I plan to apply the same rule as mentioned above for the cover.
• Block letters seem to be a very commonly used font style or word style in contents page, I myself like the look of this.
• Add the same slogan from the cover under the title 'contents' to build a better house style and of course a more distinguishable overall look.
• More stories under the 'regulars' section and change the stories under the 'features' section to artist names only and a blurb about that artist or article.
• Consider adding a thumbnail of the cover.

Double Page Spread:
Single Page(intro page);

• Image that relates better to article and an overall better look image as the photo does not cover the full body of the model etc.
• When changing the front cover font also change the font on the single page for 'Kai Gunner' to convey my house style further.
• Depending on the images I previously took I will attempt to convert the single page into a full page image
• Another possibility would be to do four pages of a double page spread.

Spread(the double page);

•  The changes made for the spread will all depend on the changes made to the single page.

Double Page Spread

This was the outcome for my first draft, being the first draft I knew there would be lots of changes and tweeks to make on this. I will now get feedback on my DPS from a fellow classmate to know which changes to make.

DPS construction (first draft)

Creating my Double Page Spread was difficult, therefore I knew a tutorial or some sort of help was required, therefore I decided to watch videos on Youtube to help me learn the basics of creating the Double Page Spread.

This video was particularly helpful as it was very helpful in getting started and covered even more than the basics.

Secondly I started to write up my article that I was going to feature. This wasn't too challenging as I was used to this style of writing in english.

The style of article I decided upon was an interview based on a series of questions. These questions were all music related whilst trying to grasp the readers attention.

Then I went on to create the magazines itself: I started with the facing pages and 3 columns to match the shared conventions of all magazines. 

 Secondly I added my images directly from my documents. I aligned these images the way I wanted them, this made it easy to know the direction of my font and where I had to place.

 Lastly I decided a title page would add a better appearance to my Double Page Spread and act as an introduction the main thing.