Front cover:
Contents page:
Main task:
Front cover:
Contents page:
Double page spread:
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Preliminary and Main Task
Preliminary task:
Front cover:
Contents page:
Main task:
Front cover:
Contents page:
Double page spread:
Front cover:
Contents page:
Main task:
Front cover:
Contents page:
Double page spread:
Friday, 1 May 2015
Evaluation 7
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to it from the full product?
(continuation of final slide): I've actually had greater control over text-based content on Photoshop so I'll be using InDesign to a lesser extent, depending on what type of content I may have to produce in the future.
Overall, I feel that I've come a very long way in the one month that I've had to produce my magazine, technologically speaking.
(for some reason it won't upload the final bit of text onto the presentation)
(continuation of final slide): I've actually had greater control over text-based content on Photoshop so I'll be using InDesign to a lesser extent, depending on what type of content I may have to produce in the future.
Overall, I feel that I've come a very long way in the one month that I've had to produce my magazine, technologically speaking.
(for some reason it won't upload the final bit of text onto the presentation)
Evaluation 5
How did you attract/address your audience?
I am able to attract the reader's attention with the big and noticeable font which is a constant throughout the entire cover.
With regards to my target audience, I tried to use the contrasting colours of black and white to bring a lot of attention and a sense of importance to 'My Chemical Romance', which is an extremely well known rock band that has now disbanded. Any news about the inactive band is sure to grab the audience's attention, and I felt that it was the most important piece of news which is why I placed more focus on it.
I also made a cover line about another band, 'Three Days Grace'. I was able to have some fun with the band's name, and made a rhyme with it, so it should be catchy and make the reader interested.
At the bottom I have placed 'steal her look' which is a reference to a recent meme that is commonly seen on social networking sites such as Tumblr and Twitter, the former having a heavy number of teenage users, which helps to appeal to my target audience which are in the teenage/young adult age range.
The free posters notification in the top left also attracts the audience, even people outside of my target audience since it's just human nature to want to have things.
The masthead has the word 'vex' which is a term used to define some negative emotions, and I felt that it would be a good word to use as my masthead since my target audience are stereotypically represented in the media to be quite negative and pessimistic overall (e.g. goths, emos). 'Nation' refers to how there is an extremely large rock music fanbase, and how the music has become influential enough to create its own subcultures globally.
The model himself is looking into the camera/reader, which directly addresses the reader and makes the audience feel more involved with the magazine.
Using information from my survey results, I decided the price of my magazine to be £2.99 because the average price that the respondents said they would pay for a magazine was £2-£2.99, and a few more respondents saying that they're willing to pay £3 and more, which is why I made the prices close to £3.
The contents page can capture attention with how the paper is black. In the other version of my contents page where I tried it with white paper, it looked to me like there was less content than there actually was, so using black paper should make it look like there's more content and keep the reader interested. Once again, I'm using colours to reach out to my audience where they enjoy the colour black. The use of wob (white on black) makes it easier for the text to be seen and therefore makes easier to be read.
From my survey results, I found that blue was the most favoured colour among the respondents, so I had to incorporate the colour blue into my contents page, but since my contents page is pretty plain, there wasn't much opportunity to do so. I used the semicircle for aesthetic purposes but also as an opportunity to incorporate the colour blue.
I think that I did a good job of producing content for my double page spread. I tried to use a variety of colours to make the double page spread eye-catching and very easy to read. I have also got an even distribution of colours on each side of the double page spread which should help out. The pattern-like layout of the far right questions gives it a solid look and the yellow helps it to further stand out from the rest of the double page spread.
I also added drop caps to indicate where the text starts, and it follows the norms and conventions of double page spreads.
I think the picture will grab a lot of attention with the model's position and how he is holding a weapon. This also fits in with the stereotype of rock-based social groups being delinquents and being dangerous, as he is holding a dangerous weapon that can be seen on members of the represented social groups within the media.
In terms of language, I originally thought that I would have to be informal, but social media sites have shown me that a lot of teenagers/young adults (target audience age range for the magazine) and not actually as ignorant as the mass media portrays. Their age range's stereotypes of illiteracy stems from how the introduction of social media sites have introduced an online exclusive language where words are shortened (e.g. your/you're = ur, what you up to = wuu2), but this type of text is sometimes forced. For example, Twitter has a 140 character limit per tweet, which may mean that the person is forced to shorten their words to fit their statement into the 140 character limit. Nevertheless, people within this age range have shown on numerous occasions that they are actually intelligent, especially when making a rant or expressing negative emotions, and these negative emotions are also usually associated with the social groups being represented by my magazine.
With regards to my target audience, I tried to use the contrasting colours of black and white to bring a lot of attention and a sense of importance to 'My Chemical Romance', which is an extremely well known rock band that has now disbanded. Any news about the inactive band is sure to grab the audience's attention, and I felt that it was the most important piece of news which is why I placed more focus on it.
I also made a cover line about another band, 'Three Days Grace'. I was able to have some fun with the band's name, and made a rhyme with it, so it should be catchy and make the reader interested.
At the bottom I have placed 'steal her look' which is a reference to a recent meme that is commonly seen on social networking sites such as Tumblr and Twitter, the former having a heavy number of teenage users, which helps to appeal to my target audience which are in the teenage/young adult age range.
The free posters notification in the top left also attracts the audience, even people outside of my target audience since it's just human nature to want to have things.
The masthead has the word 'vex' which is a term used to define some negative emotions, and I felt that it would be a good word to use as my masthead since my target audience are stereotypically represented in the media to be quite negative and pessimistic overall (e.g. goths, emos). 'Nation' refers to how there is an extremely large rock music fanbase, and how the music has become influential enough to create its own subcultures globally.
The model himself is looking into the camera/reader, which directly addresses the reader and makes the audience feel more involved with the magazine.
Using information from my survey results, I decided the price of my magazine to be £2.99 because the average price that the respondents said they would pay for a magazine was £2-£2.99, and a few more respondents saying that they're willing to pay £3 and more, which is why I made the prices close to £3.
From my survey results, I found that blue was the most favoured colour among the respondents, so I had to incorporate the colour blue into my contents page, but since my contents page is pretty plain, there wasn't much opportunity to do so. I used the semicircle for aesthetic purposes but also as an opportunity to incorporate the colour blue.
I also added drop caps to indicate where the text starts, and it follows the norms and conventions of double page spreads.
I think the picture will grab a lot of attention with the model's position and how he is holding a weapon. This also fits in with the stereotype of rock-based social groups being delinquents and being dangerous, as he is holding a dangerous weapon that can be seen on members of the represented social groups within the media.
In terms of language, I originally thought that I would have to be informal, but social media sites have shown me that a lot of teenagers/young adults (target audience age range for the magazine) and not actually as ignorant as the mass media portrays. Their age range's stereotypes of illiteracy stems from how the introduction of social media sites have introduced an online exclusive language where words are shortened (e.g. your/you're = ur, what you up to = wuu2), but this type of text is sometimes forced. For example, Twitter has a 140 character limit per tweet, which may mean that the person is forced to shorten their words to fit their statement into the 140 character limit. Nevertheless, people within this age range have shown on numerous occasions that they are actually intelligent, especially when making a rant or expressing negative emotions, and these negative emotions are also usually associated with the social groups being represented by my magazine.
Evaluation 4
Who would be the audience for your media product?
I tried to use models with the same sense of fashion as my target audience, which I think I succeeded in. My target audience place an emphasis on the colour black, which I also placed an emphasis in when making my magazine. The types of clothing I showed off could represent different age groups, as the front cover model wears a trenchcoat which is usually worn by older people, while my double page spread model is wearing much more casual clothes which is worn by younger people. My contents page model wears a leather jacket which is a common piece of clothing among the rock-based communities.
One of the main things about Kerrang is that they try to spread government messages which fits in with the ideology about being aware of social issues and social change. I tried to do this to an extent, and tried to give a message although to a lesser extent to Kerrang. It is especially important for younger people to be aware of social issues since they are basically society's future, and they need to know how to make things right.
I tried to use models with the same sense of fashion as my target audience, which I think I succeeded in. My target audience place an emphasis on the colour black, which I also placed an emphasis in when making my magazine. The types of clothing I showed off could represent different age groups, as the front cover model wears a trenchcoat which is usually worn by older people, while my double page spread model is wearing much more casual clothes which is worn by younger people. My contents page model wears a leather jacket which is a common piece of clothing among the rock-based communities.
One of the main things about Kerrang is that they try to spread government messages which fits in with the ideology about being aware of social issues and social change. I tried to do this to an extent, and tried to give a message although to a lesser extent to Kerrang. It is especially important for younger people to be aware of social issues since they are basically society's future, and they need to know how to make things right.
Evaluation 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I think that I've done somewhat well in trying to represent the social group/audience of my magazine. My magazine is a rock music genre magazine and my questionnaire has shown that the majority of teenagers/young adults enjoy rock music over any other music genre.
It was easy for me to appeal to my audience due to the large stereotypes attached to rock fans within the media, and most of these stereotypes are true. For example, they wear all black and some are eccentric or considered strange in society.
I feel that my main front cover model is an excellent representation of rock fans. A lot of male rock stars have long hair, just like he does. They also obviously wear black a lot, just like he's wearing completely all black except for his claws, but the claws can also represent his eccentricity. Knowing this person personally, I can say that he's definitely received from strange looks from random members of the public for the way he dresses (trenchcoat) and his claws also attract a lot of attention.
On a deeper level, his claws represents the power that the magazine's social groups receive from all the negative representation they get. The social groups associated with rock (e.g. punks, goths) are all considered delinquent for the way they dress and act, and this causes society to fear them. The negative beliefs that we should fear these "delinquents" is taken advantage of in this picture as the model stands so confidently and unshaken by society's views.
He also wears accessories that is seen usually on the represented social groups. Punks especially wear spiked bracelets and chains just as well as goths do.
My double page spread model also represents my magazine's representative social groups as well. He dresses very casually like most rock fans do, in contrast to the previous model who wore a trenchcoat, perhaps appealing to the older audiences as a few rock icons are aged and tend to dress the same way as him. This model represents the younger audiences instead with his casual dress sense. His hairstyle is one of the very stereotypical hairstyles of rockers, fitting in without how the majority of them if not all of them have long hair.
This can link to a more sociological perspective in that he's going against society's views of masculine and feminine. Typically, boys are "supposed" to have short hair and girls are "supposed" to have long hair. In a rock-based society, almost everyone has long hair, which suggests that this is a more equal society. This is also supported by how the media shows different types of rockers who can appear different from each other, but the great thing is that they all still share the same beliefs.
Looking at the setting for the double page spread picture, there are a few pieces of art which links to how a lot of people in the representative social groups are artistic in a sense other than musical.
Once again, the model is holding a weapon which represents power, which I explained the importance of power earlier.
In my contents page, there is a feature talking about empowerment and I did this intentionally because while rockers are portrayed to be delinquents and dangers to society, they are also frequently represented to be very philosophical. With regards to my survey results, teenagers/young adults are the majority in the rock music fandom and with the many social media sites on the internet today, we are able to see that a lot of them are actually quite educated in social issues and have been shown to have a desire for social change and equality. This section of the contents page was focused on specifically on the feminist sociological perspective as even today, certain topics about women are still considered taboo. This is also still appropriate given that there are more girls in the rock fandom than boys, and this is also supported by how there were more females than males in my survey results. There are also more female social justice warriors than males, and this is evident on social media sites, specifically Tumblr and Twitter. The media also represents more females than males as punks, goths, or any other rock-based social group.
Once again, the model is holding a weapon which represents power, which I explained the importance of power earlier.
In my contents page, there is a feature talking about empowerment and I did this intentionally because while rockers are portrayed to be delinquents and dangers to society, they are also frequently represented to be very philosophical. With regards to my survey results, teenagers/young adults are the majority in the rock music fandom and with the many social media sites on the internet today, we are able to see that a lot of them are actually quite educated in social issues and have been shown to have a desire for social change and equality. This section of the contents page was focused on specifically on the feminist sociological perspective as even today, certain topics about women are still considered taboo. This is also still appropriate given that there are more girls in the rock fandom than boys, and this is also supported by how there were more females than males in my survey results. There are also more female social justice warriors than males, and this is evident on social media sites, specifically Tumblr and Twitter. The media also represents more females than males as punks, goths, or any other rock-based social group.
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