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

Above is my preliminary task, my school magazine front cover, and my REAL music magazine front cover. As you can see, There is a lot of difference between the two, mainly the fact that I used a lot more codes and conventions on my Main Task. The school mag front cover doesn’t really show much information; it just shows the masthead, date and a full page photo. My Music magazine shows a masthead, puffs, plugs, main headline, main feature photo, including other codes and conventions. Before I began to design my music magazine, I had looked at other music magazines to have an idea of what the reader expects when they are reading the magazine.  

I realised that my Preliminary magazine front cover was far too empty. It had a lot of space which could have been used. The colours were not very eye catching either, for example, the sky was blue and so was the school logo, which means that it did not catch the viewer’s eye. On my music magazine, I used simple colours which stand out such as Black, white and reds.

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

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

The first technology I used when I started the coursework is the internet. I had to research a school magazine, so I used the internet to find a school magazine front cover. I then used Microsoft Word to copy and paste a picture of the front cover in order to add notes and analyse the semiotics.

The next thing I used was a blog to present my coursework so that the teacher could see it online. I used www.blogspot.com which is a free blogging site. It’s good for presenting my work because it allowed me to add labels showing the different sections of the coursework.  The blog allows me show the work as It progresses because each posts is shown after the other.

When I had to do the preliminary task, I had to create a school magazine. For this, I had to use a digital camera to take some photos for the front cover.  I was familiar with the camera functions as i do photography, which helped me to get some good quality photographs.

Then when I had the photos I had taken, we had to edit them a bit to enhance them. To edit the photos I took, I used Adobe Photoshop Elements. This software is good for photo editing because it allows the user to enhance colour and add different effects to the photo.

I used Corel Draw to create my media text. Corel Draw is a graphics software used in the magazine industry. At first I found it difficult to use because it was my first time. But I got used to it eventually. Corel Draw is mainly text based because it is used to create media texts. It allows me to create a page with the dimensions of my choice. In this case I use A4 for my front cover and contents page, and A3 for my double page spread.

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

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

I think that IPC (http://www.ipcmedia.com/) would distribute my magazine because they only publish one other music magazine.  My magazine is also generally aimed at both sexes, which is the same as most of the magazines published by IPC, this would increase the circulation. 

My magazine fits with the overall IPC brand catalogue because there is also another music magazine on there. However, my magazine is different to NME as it looks at solo artists, which shows more in depth news about solo artists than other music magazines.

Magazines make their money not just by selling it, but by advertisers. Companies pay the emagazines to advertise their products, and some of the profit made goes to the magazine producers.  To work out how my magazine would make it’s money, I had to produce a rate card.

Rate Card for music magazine
Age: 16-25
60% male readers, 40% Female readers
Magazine Price: £2.50
Monthly magazine
Circulation: 35,000
Cost per full page ad
£7,500
Total adverts
25


Total circulation profit
£87,000


Total Profit from advertisers
£187,500
My magazine would make £87,000 from the circulation per month, as well as £187,500 from it’s advertisers.

My magazine is not aimed at a very large audience, nor a small one, it is somewhere in the middle. The magazines with most audiences are usually the TV listings magazines, which are published mostly by IPC, which could be a problem when it comes to audience size. 

If I chose a different publisher for my magazine, it could create competition with IPC in the sales of their music magazines, however, IPC is the best distributor for me because the others concentrate on mostly either Mens magazines, or Female magazines. My music magazine is aimed at mostly both sexes.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation is the way we communicate using signs and symbols. All representations are always untrue when compared to the real thing. This is because the representation goes through a process of mediation.

My magazine is representing solo musicians aged 16 – 25 in the UK. When encoding my media text. I had to think about my target audience and what they expect to see on the magazine. So I had to thin about what sort of pictures to use, and what sort of language.  I had to do this so that the audience knew that the magazine was about Solo Artists in the UK.

I had to create a positive representation of these Solo artists, so that the audience enjoyed reading the text. To do this, I put in appropriate pictures such as the one on the front cover of the main Feature artists playing the guitar. The clothes he is wearing match the style of music the magazine is about.

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

Genre is a category of a media product, which the audience can recognize due to key elements being repeated such as layout, narrative, content ect..

My magazine is about music, so I had to use certain elements which are found in other music magazines.  These elements are things like masthead, main feature photo, main themes and topics in the magazine. The first thing I thought of was Themes. Obviously I knew what Genre my magazine was, but I had to think of what elements I would use so that the audience could easily recognize what the genre of the magazine is.

This is my front cover of the music magazine. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv8S_gRK7X4zi2xEpSu0cwJNMeklgS1VHkWx4xnwRnEsyv-VhZR97hQsdBVLS9YlgvVPtA3cmaAY_w3H2rHi5GlfnBe04Onxqxg-OL8Fu0AeY8irm6Q6Yx0ZMwoNSaG5dIE7cyWxPd3eqp/s1600/music+mag+front+cover.jpg
 I have looked at other music magazines to have an idea of the codes and conventions to use. The other music magazines usually have a Main headline, with a photo linked to the main feature.

I have also thought about the language I was going to use. The name of the magazine took some time to think, I wanted the audience to be able to tell what genre the magazine was by looking at the name of the magazine. The name ‘Solo Monthly’ gives the audience the idea that the magazine is about music. The text below the masthead anchors the meaning of the name of the magazine, to make it obvious what it is about. The use of images also supports the Genre of the magazine. The audience would recognize straight away the genre just by looking at the photos. This is intertextuality because the audience has seen this before In other music magazines.

When i looked back at the music magazine i researched before i started, i was checking to see if i conformed with the standard music magazine codes and conventions. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrshT4uRlcFJZODmQx-2Z0B6LQEhKrFMd_hmfsyywx0OD8FHot0ybj1cararZQPu8uhe4OV9oDbCdBUznuU-cP6GeZZYt3QnJSHU5uqnFuAQpMig5tLeYq28Ow7Z0cceTrwHWj406Phv0T/s1600/NME+for+blog.jpg 
This is an analysis i did of the NME magazine front cover.

When i look at that magazine, i see a very large feature photo, with some text over it. when i look back at my front cover, i noticed that i have done the same thing. However, my photo isn't as large as it is on the NME front cover. My image is about half the size, but i filled up the remaining space with some text.
Also, some music magazines generally tend to stick to one large photo and thats it. But my front cover has a large photo and a smaller one, because the artist shown in the photo isn't famous enough to be easily recognised.

To summarise, I have used a selection of codes and conventions, including certain elements, for he audience to recognise the Genre of the magazine. I used things suchs as photos with people playing instruments, certain language to do with music and the content i used, such as the interview in the double page spread.

How did you attract/address you audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

When I made my magazine, I had thought about the way I would communicate with the audience. This would be done by using semiotics. I attracted the audience by using magazine codes and conventions. These are techniques used to engage the audience and ‘hook’ them. I used things such as mastheads, photos, puff and plugs and straplines. 

My magazine is aimed at people in the age range of 16-25. The audience would obviously have a taste in the type of music my magazine is about. So I had to communicate with them in a way they would understand. For example, in the front cover of the magazine, I have put “Blunt’s new album”. I didn’t include the full name of the artist, because I know that the audience is familiar with the person and so they would know what I am talking about.  On my double page spread, part of the interview talks about skateboarding, which is a familiar hobby amongst people who listen to the genre of music.  

Question 1- Who would be the audience for your media product?

In order to have an idea of what the target audience for my magazine would be, I had to create an imaginary entity. This is what an ideal reader for the magazine would be. After I created my first draft of the front cover, I created a questionnaire so that people in my class could look at my front cover and determine the lifestyle of the target audience.  My questions were http://miguel-pilgrim.blogspot.com/2010/11/audiences-response-to-imaginery-entity.html

I chose 3 people from my class to look at my front cover and answer the questions according to what they see. According the answers I can then make some changes to my magazine front cover, and change they way the front cover is decoded by the reader.  On of my questions was what percentage of the audience would be male/female. The answers were slightly different, however, they were pretty close to being the same. My magazine was to be aimed at 60% male and 40& female. So from looking at my answers I can tell that the audience has decoded the magazine the way Intended them to.

The next question was what the ideal reader’s favourite music genre was. The answers to this question were slightly varied, some people said Drum and Bass, which is defiantly not what I was looking for. The person clearly decoded the magazine in the wrong way. However, other people answered acoustic or Rock/indie. These were the preferred answers. So from these answers I knew that most of the readers had decoded the magazine front cover the way I encoded it.

In the question about favourite and/ artist, most people answered Brandon Flowers. My magazine is to be aimed at people interested in Solo Artists, such as Brandon Flowers. So I know that from the answers I can tell that the audience can decode the magazine the way I encoded it.

One of my questions however, got completely different and surprising results. The question about what the favourite interests of the reader are. Only one person decoded music as one of the interests. Other people answered Tennis, swimming and rugby, which aren’t really relevant to the magazine or the imaginary entity. Although the ideal reader may be interested in more than one activity, the main one I expected was to be music. these answers made me think about my magazine and how the audience decoded it. I had to change it a bit so that the audience decoded it the way I intended them to.

http://miguel-pilgrim.blogspot.com/2010/10/music-magazine-rate-card.html <-- Rate Card