Preliminary magazine cover

Preliminary magazine content

EVALUATION 7 'Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?'

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




Going back through my preliminary work I have greatly improved in what I have produced. First of all the camera shots and mise en scene in my photos are a much higher standard that  are in a different league when compared to my preliminaries, I put this down to the location we used and to a better camera used and camera skills. There is also an obvious improvement in the models since I researched my target audience I used clothes which fitted the demographic better, when I took the previous photos it was whatever clothes they were wearing on the day. However on the front cover of my final product I have my model’s styled in a specific way eg a vintage brown jacket from a charity shop, skater hoodies and DcMartisns to make it relatable to the genera and audience so that my magazine is unusual and embodies the theme of music and fashion, which would attract more readers/customers to read my magazine and to Bauer. The difference in style is due to my holes in my research when creating my preliminary and only going with my gut instinct, taking the  images on plain white background caused me to have to use the wand/lasso tool to cut out the model and awkwardly place it upon my magazine, however contrary to this when I took the images for the real project I used a natural background so that the centerpiece was a nice piece of photography and that it didn't need to be a Frankenstein jumble of images and background, my camera skills also improved and I used more long shots and used the natural light to my advantage whilst as before the artificial lights caused glare, the close ups looked forced, but mainly I was only able to fit in 1 model.

During the preliminary work I felt that my type faces where dreadful since they where the base Photoshop fonts and where not inspired by any other conventions, however this did help me learn for my final product that knowing which fonts are more professional and appropriate this allowed me to make my final product as professional and higher quality as I could. However on my final product I researched what other magazine conventions where appropriate and could let this inspire me, such as developing the clash lay out for the inside and the vice layout for the cover whilst utilizing a similar font to the vintage kerrang!’s. I browsed fonts to see which would suite me on a website called DaFont and then downloaded the font on to the Mac so I could utilize it in lesson. From this I understand the hardship and importance of research and development to allow you to understand what is best for your creation eg which fonts are appropriate and  suitable for my products. The organization and placing of the text on my pages is completely different, I did however try to keep it minimalist yet I put the masthead all the way across the top of the page which I found I disliked which caused me to use a different layout of mast head and decided not use scattered boxes since I didn't think it sat on the page very neatly. I Directly measured the conventions of Clash for the purposes of orientation and left a white boarder along the edge of the image so it doesn’t take any concentration away from the main image or text .

The design of my preliminary contents to final content page also shows a lot of improvement. When producing my preliminary I did not consider how many pages a magazine averagely has and only randomly pointed out a few pages, whilst after research I found that the content in which I wanted to use was a similar convention that would  list all the pages in the magazine and there for it goes up to about 140+. The layout design of my preliminary magazine is also very poor, since I was just coming accustom to Photoshop on the Mac and also had little knowledge on the layout of content pages especially a school magazine, during my research I found that clash content was very simple and very effective yet I felt like I should add images to that page so that it didn't have lots of negative space.

The preliminary magazines was great to do, to accustom one's self to the technology and help develop the skills I needed, it also helps boost photography skills. which are  all important to get a grasp of before creating the real media product which then can be sculpted along side the all important research which would allow anyone from all backgrounds produce a good final media product.

EVALUATION 6 'What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?'

                                                             ^EVALUATION 6^

EVALUATION 5 'How did you attract/address your audience?'

EVALUATION 4 'Who would be the audience for your media product?'

         

EVALUATION 3 'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

Printing and publishing is usually ran by large company,  there are many of these Meredith, ICP and Time inc to name a few these companies create media for a public audience, Bauer is a European media group known for its music publications, the most well known being Mojo the classic rock magazine, Kerrang  the wacky magazine focusing on alt and heavy rock/metal and Q the  said to be “UK biggest magazine” featuring a vast genera of modern and old These magazines are not fully mainstream; they can be purchased in a variety of stores since they wanted to reach a large audience . Bauer would be appropriate because of its mass amount of popular publications. However magazines like Kerrang and Mojo are usually have clustered and busy covers and contents yet I made a more artsy minimalist magazine yet tried to also have a short catchy name, however these 2 magazines are aimed at a similar age range and to wards people who wouldn’t be considered main stream yet are still different tastes to the music to the music that would feature  ‘Stash’,

 Kerrang Mojo and Q  also feature many adverts which may also be target at my indented audience so the same advertising deal Bauer have can still successfully work, out of the many publishing companies  Bauer would be the most lightly to  publish “Stash” because of its other magazines . the experience from this successful and experienced company would benefit me allot, however they might be to similar and they might not want to publish it however the is a gap in Bauer printing market.

EVALUATION 2 'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

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

DRAFT ev 7

Going back through my preliminary work I have greatly improved in what I have produced. First of all the camera shots and mise en scene in my photos are a much higher standard and are in a different league when compared to my preliminaries, I put this down to the location we used and better camera and camera skills. The is also an obvious improve meant in the models since when I researched my target audience I used clothe which fitted it better when I took the previous photos it was what ever cloth they where wearing on the day. However on the front cover of my final product I have my model’s styled in a specific way eg a vintage brown jacket from a charity shop skater hoodies and DocMartisns to make it relatable to the  genre and audience so that my magazine is unusual and embodies the theme of music and fashion, to attract more readers/customers to read my magazine and to Bauer. The difference in style is dew to my holes in my research when creating my preliminary and only going with my gut instinct the, and taking the  images on plain white background caused me to have to use the wand/lasso tool to cut out the model and awkwardly place it upon my magazine, however contrary to this when I took the images for the real project I used a natural background so that the centerpiece was a nice piece of photography and that it didn't need to be a Frankenstein jumble of images and background, my camera skills also improved and i used more long shots and used the natural light to my advantage whilst as before the artificial lights caused glare and the close ups looked forced and only where able to fit 1 model.

During the preliminary work I felt that my type faces where dreadful since they where the base Photoshop fonts and where not inspired by any other conventions , however this did help me learn toward my final product that knowing which fonts are more professional and appropriate which allowed me to make my final product as professional and higher quality as I could. However on my final product I researched what other magazine conventions and could let this inspire me such as developing the clash lay out for the inside and the vice layout for the cover whilst utilizing a similar font to the vintage kerrang!’s, I browsed fonts to see which would suite me on a website called DaFont and then download the font on the Mac so I could utilize it in lesson. From this I under stand the hardship and importance of research and development to allow you to under stand what is best for your creation eg which fonts are appropriate and  suitable for my products. The organization and placing of the text on my pages is completely different, I did however try to keep it minimalist yet I Put the masthead all the way across the top of the page witch I found I disliked and used a different layout of mast head and decided not use scattered boxes since I dint think it sat on the page very neatly ,I Directly measured the conventions of Clash for the purposes of orientate and left a white boarder along the edge of the image so it doesn’t take any concentration away from the main image or text .

The design of my preliminary contents to final content page also shows allot of improvement. When producing my preliminary I did not consider how many pages a magazine averagely has and only randomly pointed out a few pages whilst after research I found that the content id which to uses a similar convention to lists all the pages and it go's up to about 140+, the layout design of my preliminary magazine is also very poor, since i was just coming accustom to Photoshop on the Mac and also had little knowledge on the layout of content pages especially a school magazine, during my research I found that clash content was very simple and very effective yet I felt like I should ad images to the page so that it didn't have lots of negative space.

The preliminary magazines was great to do to accustom ones self to the technology and help developed them skills it also helps boost photography skills, which are  all important to get a grasp of before the real media product which then can be sculpted along side the all important research which allows any one from all backgrounds produce a good final media product.

DRAFT ev 6

Photoshop: this was essential and was installed college Mac I used this to create the majority of my media product/magazine. I learnt  allot about Photoshop in GCSE Media  learning about editing and manipulating images to suite what I want,  this was a great skill for this year and through out the cores I developed theses skills even more all 3 of the pages (cover, content and double page) were created using Photoshop CS6 and CC2017 ( a trial I used at home), most of may pages where consistent of many many layers which all come together to form one piece (the double page had the most since it needed allot of white bars to highlight each row of text and there was allot of images and borders), whilst toiling with the soft where I found my self quickly getting once more adjusted to the program  even with my  limited experience I still managed to learn of some features and tools I previously did not

Camera: A Canon 40D with a Helios 44m-2 58mm lens in Soviet Russia was used for all my photography, however for the preliminaries I used a much more available Nikon D3200 camera and the simper location of a artificial lighted white walled studio,  which I found was lacking in a certain feel connected with my genera and didn't capture natural light as well as I wanted so I used the Canon for my real piece, this allowed me to use a high quality image which did not need that much contrast/saturation editing (since the camera shots where just right and did not need tweaking) and they also did not loose any quality when they where enlarged and exported, the use of the out side and the old lenses allowed a natural and yet professional standard  of image, which met the need of the specification and also the needs of my target audience/demographic. 

Online sites and programs: I used a variety of different online resources and web pages when creating my research and final product, I mainly used blogger to create my coursework blog and keep up to date by checking teacher blogs for deadline dates, this mainly allowed me to post allot about research, it also helped me plan out my next steps by re reading my research and inspecting audience needs. I also used many websites to research such as Google, UrbanDictionary and Thesaurus.comI also used Da Font to download more specialized type faces that would fit better with the theme and on the page, UK Tribes a channel 4 web site which categorizes youth culture (I disagree with it but helpful none the less) which is where I did the main research for my target audience there likes and dislikes ect I first looked at all the categories and took some from each section which I thought would enjoy my magazine I then condensed the target audience into the more simply understood ‘young alts’ and ‘scensters’  which where the embodiment of my audience . I also used the Mac office word and PowerPoint (yet also used Microsoft at home) to insert and type up most of my research and also to clearly see the article I wrote before I split it up and formed it on to my double page, I also typed most of all my blog posts into these programs before posting to ensure all spelling was checked, I then used scribd to insert the word documents on to my blog by uploaded them onto my blogger by embedding them to a post. Animoto was used  to create videos on my blog  such as my pitch about my magazine which coincided with the uses of Google forms to get feed back about my magazine from my audience. For transport I used Drop Box and the Drive to allow photos to be used on any computer (I also used a USB),  for some of my evaluations I used Prezie and the voice recorder on my Samsung j5 Phone.    

DRAFT ev 5

I attracted my audience in many  ways. I did this through my researching and planning regarding their  interests from the start.

My colour scheme is simple and neutral the reoccurring colour is a light green this running theme of my magazine keeps it bright and engaging to attract readers, the offbeat colour can also connote the theme of music and convey that it is not mainstream. On a Google Forms survey I found that only ¼ of the responses where from females therefore I aimed it at a male audience yet is still easily enjoyable for both sexes., 100% of the answers where by people who where atlases aged over 15  (however my age bracket in the question was vague since it was 15-19 so the majority of answers where probably from people who where 17 and above) my target audience is 16-24 and wouldn't really suite any other ages since the majority of the bands featured can be explicit and people who are above 24 don't have allot of time to read or listed to music. The model used, images used and stance are specifically chosen to engaged my target audience and creating a product that readers will look for with innovative and eye catching content. The photos were taken on a 40D Canon with a Helios 44m-2 58mm lens. I tried to balance the focus to intake a large view whilst also using rapid fire to sort through many different shots and slight position movement of the models, I didn't change the photos that much after they had been taken since the light on the 2 days of shooting had been adequate and I wanted a raw vintage feel to my magazine and not obviously over exposed or high saturation shots that where obviously tampered with and less natural . I considered a fish eye lens yet after borrowing one and trying a few test shot I found whilst it would allow for a large field of view so the 3 models could spread out more it appeared stretched and unnatural which may of detoured my audience. The cloths worn by the models where also planned out even though the models used usually dressed in a similar manor I wanted them to carry a cross a stronger image my audience could identify with, and allowing  the clothes to fit and embody the genre of my music magazine is specific too. I achieved this by making my models wear enforced stereotypical clothes related with youth culture and a vintage and punk grunge genre, like skating hoody's, Converse All-stars, flannel shirts and Doc Martens (giving some what of a 90’s feel). I do however feel the problem with it being monthly and only featuring one picture on the front may some months not appeal to my wider audience such as if it featured a very small local band or an all female band (which the viewer may not like or feel it is not aimed at them) this would cause each issue to be different and that is good y however since the cover is the first thing seen by a possible reader having images that are hit and miss each month could loose sales.

My images is also very specific to my audience it appears very urban and grunge like yet still holds some band camaraderie and positioning so that it doesn't look like a rap group but in-fact a alternative ‘emo’ style of band. Images inside the magazine have a border on them to continue my green theme and for them to stand out so it is more focused on the artist as my audience would want. A white boarder is used on my main cover to present my image better and allowing room for side information , however the title is coming out of the border and is connecting it to the image and the negative space connoting how the magazine crosses the boundary of artist to consumer. Having a fairly minimal cover in a genera that is liked to being full on and noisy challenges the conventions of the big magazines like MOJO, Q,  and Kerrang! which rely on using primarily studio lit backgrounds (which makes it look unnatural and manufactured) yet I wanted my band to seem humble and relatable, yet also fairly sleek and clean cut since it is a clam minimal cover and not a mad hodgepodge of artists . The way this was achieved by shooting outside and utilizing a graffiti wall to use as a scenic background apposed to a black studio (however it had to be peak afternoon and spread over 2 weeks to combat the problems of no lamps) and then not editing the photos that much and then arraigning a few lines of text a barcode and a title on a page in fashion which didn't look busy yet not empty and also emitting the same feel of the genera and not papering to pop this was close to the line yet was pulled of with moderate success. I think this will bode well with the audience since many of my target audience will know the struggles and quality of the photography and also identify with the cloth and the fact that it is sophisticated and readable whilst still focusing on alternative music, opposed to Kerrang! Magazine which can some times feature some what similar (very loosely similar, yet possibly appear the same to an outsider of the genera) music yet comes at it from a loud clustered aggressive angel which can please there fans of heavy metal yet my audience would be more appreciative of a calmer magazine.
Over the  course  of creation many photos where taken and there for a myriad of drafts where produced they started of all looking different and then where fine tuned into the final designed made specifically for my audience .