Sophie Cornelius Media

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

SLIDE 2

Language:

Young people are most associated with talking in colloquialism’s to make themselves different from adults. As my magazine targets young people from the age of 15 to 25 who are of a middle social group, the use of mild colloquialisms create a conversational, equal relationship without alienating any readers.

The informal and conversational tone of my magazine helps build a relationship between the reader and the magazine and gives them equal status. In my magazine I did not want the audience to feel like what they were reading was too formal, so I decided to make it informal to make the magazine seem friendly.

Images:

My target audience of young people are supposedly impressed by appearance and they admire peoples’ abilities to look good. Because my magazine is aimed at males and female, the model needs to be able to attract both. Boys would want to go out with her and girls would want to be her and know how she looks that good.

The fact that my model is all also in the target age group creates a sense of escapism as the readers feel they could achieve the same things. It makes things to the reader seem more accessible and it also makes think that it is more achievable to be them and look like them. It also makes them feel associated with the artist.

I have edited the images in my magazine, making the models skin look perfect. This brings me back to the idea that young people, which is my target audience, idolise good looking celebrities and the importance put on looks and the time that is spent on looking as good as them. I have done this to almost all of my images because I wanted to continue this idea throughout the whole magazine, it would not make sense to have only one photo edited.

I have made sure that in my magazine both genders, male and female, artists are represented so that neither gender is dominate. Therefore my audience would have a good mixture of male and females.

Colours:

The colours red, white and black are associated with the pop/rock genre and are seen as the colour scheme in many music magazines, album covers or on merchandise. This makes the magazine attractive to my target audience seeing as the audience that I am looking at would feel more attracted to things that that already read and are used to.

The red has connotations of danger. Young people find this sort of idea appealing to their lifestyle. Also the colour red also has connotations to flirtatiousness which on some of the female models attract male readers because they feel more attracted to a woman who is in red.

I feel that there is a good mixture of male and female colours so therefore my reader does not feel like they are reading a one gender magazine.

Content:

I chose the different articles according to the results of my questionnaire. I discovered that teenagers are most interested in artists interviews, gig reviews and music news and so these type of articles are featured.

Young people tend to get bored and disinterested when confronted with too much writing. In my DPS, I made sure I had the majority of the spread images and the text in easy to read blocks.

The article asks the artist the sort of questions that would interest a young person such as band information and the relationship between the members.

Font:

The masthead font shows rebellion and strength because it is very solid and bold on the page. This suggests fun and rebellion.

The fonts I used were very bold and strong fonts because I did not want them to be plain and ordinary. This represents my target audience as they contrast with the traditional plain fonts that may be used in certain magazines.

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

SLIDE 3

I feel that Bauer media would not be the media institution to distribute my magazine because I feel that there are too many brands under the same institution and all the brads are very similar, I feel that my particular magazine does not fill the same curriculum that are in the bauer media magazines. Also I think that my magazine has a very particular audience and I feel that bauer media does not just target one particular audience it targets many.

I think that emap targets a much older audience which would not work for my magazine because it targets a specific audience of young people, therefore it will not understand the need of the younger audience because it is not used to it. It also has no experience with music magazines which would not work because it would not know how to market a music magazine which is what my magazine is.

I think that the global institution that I choose would have to be IPC media due to it catering for the same target audience that my magazine looks for. And it has experience with similar types of magazines. What I think would help my magazine would be that this media institution are in charge of magazines that are well known and very well advertised. That is why I would go for IPC media.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

SLIDE 4

Older people tend to feel that popular music is only really aimed at young people and this is true as they are the main consumers. With every new generation that is born there comes a new music trend, a new generation of music. The current pop/rock music scene is aimed at young people, with many of the bands being young themselves and openly part of the pop and rock culture.

My class range is expressive of the people who stereotypically listen to pop and rock music and buy that particular type of magazine. I feel that upper classes would stereotypically not listen to pop and rock music.

Pop/Rock music is not gender defined and appeals to a wide audience unlike, for example rap which is mainly associated with a male audience. I didn’t want my magazine to only appeal to a certain gender because then that limits the consumption of the magazine because it cuts out a huge group of people.

How did you attract/address your audience?

SLIDE 5

Front cover:

For the front cover, I feel that I have attracted/ addressed my audience by having direct eye contact with the reader because my model is looking straight into the camera which would be the readers’ eyes when they are looking at the magazine. Having done this it connects the two and attracts the readers to the magazine I feel.

I decided to use the rule of thirds for my front cover to stick to other conventions of magazines so things are not foreign to the reader. Having the model taking up two thirds of the page it makes the page photographically pleasing to the eye and also makes her the most dominant and main think in the page. The cover artist is often the main reason as to why people would buy the magazine because it may be their favorite artist.

My cover lines are on both the left and right side of the page because when they magazines are shelved in a store the reader will see only a couple of the cover lines and then hopefully that will attract them to read more and look closer at the magazine and pick it up to buy it. I did not want to give too much away on only one side of the front cover so I decided to put them on both.

Having a rhetorical question on the main cover line makes the audience want to know more about that particular article. It also creates a more gossip feel which everyone loves. This will also attract fans of the band as well.

By speaking to the reader casually, you put yourselves on the same level as them and it also creates a relationship with the reader. This attracts readers as they feel more involved and you also avoid the issue of talking down to a reader which sometimes happens with particular magazines.

The fonts are in keeping with the style of the magazine and are therefore attractive to the reader. My fonts are strong and bold to stand out to the reader and grab the attention of my target audience.

The models are dressed fashionably in clothes associated with the genre of the magazine, which attracts readers as they want to see the celebrities that they admire and idolize looking good. Also my model is dressed in quite dark clothing to make her stand out on the page because that is the most eye catching thing that would be on the page.

SLIDE 6

Double page spread:

Following codes and conventions is a good thing to do for this because it makes the page less foreign to readers who read a lot of music magazines. I have made the magazine look professional and attractive, meaning it is more likely to be read.

Large image will attract a younger audience because it means that there is less writing and younger people these days don’t read as much they like to look at pictures instead so having a picture that takes up a lot of the double page spread is better for my target audience. Young people stereotypically value appearance highly and are very likely to lose concentration if there is too much text on the page. I didn’t want my reader to feel overwhelmed.

Colloquial, uncensored, direct address and conversational language all helps with building a relationship with the reader and making them feel relaxed and comforted when reading the magazine. It seems more conversational and friendly which will attract more people because they would feel much for comfortable reading a magazine article that is on the same level as they are on. Using language that is similar to how my target audience talks makes it more enjoyable for them to read and understand.

The colour scheme is very basic and is consistent throughout the whole of the magazine this creates a brand identity. The red black and white are very satisfying to the eye and goes with the theme of the magazine which is really important to the reader. The colours are associated with rock and pop music and are liked by my target audience.

The articles cover the sort of information a teenage fan would find appealing such as band info and gossip. Gossip is very important in a magazine because young teenagers really love reading about what goes on in their favourite celebrities life.

SLIDE 7

Table of content:

I have used articles that I think would appeal to my target audience such as interviews, news and reviews. This includes gossip from the artist because they will say exclusive things in the articles. My target audiences’ favourite thing about magazines would be the gossip with their favourite artist.

Each of the articles has a short and snappy name to interest the reader and so there is not too much writing which is good for my target audience of young people due to them having a short attention span and not liking a lot of writing. I chose to have many images with the writing to keep the audience engaged.

I have used brightness and contrast editing on the images so they look more interesting. This technique is associated with my target audience who often use it themselves to edit the photos they post on social networking sites, this is good because it is what they are used to and what they know. It makes looking like their favourite artists more achievable.

All the images I have used are of well dressed young people, who are both male and female to attract both genders. This attracts my audience as they feel they can achieve what the artists featured have achieved because they are the same age and have the same style as many of the readers. Have a mixture of male and female models which makes sure that I am appealing to my entire target audience.

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

SLIDE 8

Cloning tool, Spot Healer and Gaussian blur to perfect skin:

I wanted to perfect the skin of the model I was using for my double page spread because the image was so big it would pick out any imperfections. I first used the spot healer brush to remove any spots and blemishes on the face. This brush sources the area around the spot in order remove it, it blends in the colour with the colour around the area you want to get rid of. To maximize the coverage I also used the clone stamp tool for other areas like the upper lip, this allowed me to pick a source point and paste that onto a different area of the image. I sourced the skin just above the spot then painted it on top, meaning it blended in perfectly. In order to make her skin completely flawless and to give that airbrushed feel that you see in all magazines, I used a slight Gaussian Blur which, as the name suggests, blurs the image and smoothes out the surface of the face and neck. I did this on a layer above the image and then rubbed out the areas that weren’t her skin. I did this on different layers so that I would not interfere with the original image that I had.

Lasso tool to cut around images. Type tool to add text:

I decided I didn’t like the background colour of my cover image because it was an off white and I wanted the background to be pure white, therefore I used the lasso tool to cut around the model so that I could paste her onto a white background. To make this process a lot easier and a lot neater I used the magnetic lasso tool which clings to the lines at the edge of what you are cutting out. Once I had successfully gone round the outline of the image, it became a selection I could drag out of the image and place on my new background which was plain white . In order to create the masthead, I used the type tool which allows you to add text to your images. I downloaded a font from the website www.dafont.com because I wanted a unique font that other people would not have used before.

Brightness and Contrast makes the images interesting and clearer:

To make my contents page images more interesting I used brightness and contrast. This does exactly what it says, it creates extreme levels of brightness and contrast. As well as creating a nice affect, it makes the image clearer as it removes shadow and picks out the colours in the image and makes them a lot brighter and more defined.

Hue and Saturation tints the image:

On my front cover and some images on my table of content, I have adjusted the hue and saturation, which tints the images colours.

SLIDE 9

Blogger is a website that allows you to create your own blog and I used it to store my work for my AS media studies. It is useful seeing as it is a free sharing site that anyone can access and use, regardless of whether they are a member of the site.

I edited my blog to make it more attractive. For my own pleasure when viewing my blog, I decided to make the background look a lot more feminine. I kept the colour of my writing black so it stood out on the page. I did all of this on the blog setting to make it more individual and unique.

I have learnt how to transport my work as jpegs and add them to posts by uploading them.

SLIDE 10

However, when I used power points, I had to use slide boom which is a site that turns them into html files and then you can embed them into the post on your blog.

Using blogger also allowed me to follow my other class mates and see what work they were producing. When I log into blogger, I am shown a news feed of recent activity on all the blogs I follow which allowed me to see what different sorts of work was being produced in my class. I could also follow my teachers’ blog which kept me up to date on what I should be doing and if I was doing what was correct. It created an archive of information and inspiration for my own work.

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

SLIDE 11

Since completing my preliminary task of creating a school magazine, I have done much more research into the conventions of magazines which I have applied, making my music magazine look much more realistic.

I also did research into my target audience and created a questionnaire before starting to make my music magazine to see what the people who would be buying my magazine would want in there. It gave me a clearer picture of what the reader would want to read in a music magazine.

I feel that I have improved so much from my school magazine Photoshop work to my music magazine work, due to me not even being able to use Photoshop before starting the first task. Having advanced in my skills since making the school magazine I feel that it has allowed me to create a more sophisticated, professional and sophisticated magazine.

I feel that no I know a lot more about fonts and how to download different ones. I also feel that I have learnt about how the way a font looks will attract different audiences. It is important to chose a font which goes with your target audience. It makes your product more unique and individual, as well as more attractive.

I felt that the first brief we were given in class was quite restricting in what we could do, as it had to be for a school magazine which limits your photos and content. Therefore I didn’t have as much creative freedom to do as I pleased and what I wanted to do I also felt that this narrowed my audience for the magazine. However, the music magazine project meant I could choose from a wider selection of different styles and be more creative in my design.

This whole project has taught me to approach each project individually and dissect it bit by bit to understand my task fully, taking note of the subject and audience.

I have realized how important feedback is for your designs and redrafts due to other people being your audience and them seeing what is best and what looks the most appealing and attractive. I feel that other people pick up on points much better than I would.

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