My Media Blog

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

The conventions of a music magazine are: masthead, background picture, cover lines, pictures and captions, price, website and cover stories. My music magazine has all of these things, but I think the black and white image I have used on my front cover challenges the conventions of a real media product, I think this because usually magazines would use bright and colourful pictures in order to draw people in and make people buy their magazine. Although I have done this I still think it would stand out on the shelf next to other magazines because it really makes the yellow stand out against the black and white brick wall. The key things that should be included on a contents page are page numbers, stories, pictures that relate to stories, editors note and a masthead.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine is mainly aimed at teenagers of young adults that are into indie and rock music. By using the colours I have used I think it gives the viewer an idea of the genre straight away, as you wouldn’t look at it and think it was an electro or pop magazine. The acoustic guitar on the front cover also helps with the genre, as it wouldn’t be a heavy metal magazine because they would use electric and bass guitars. The picture on the double page spread is very indie, it looks very relaxed and calm and this instantly shows the viewer that it is about a chilled out artist and tells them if that’s the kind of thing they would be interested in reading. Relying on audience feedback no-one said that they would prefer a coloured front cover picture, so this is another reason I think that the black and white image works well.

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

I think Bauer would publish and distribute my magazine, as it is a similar genre to Q and Kerrang! Also the front cover is based on the style of Q and Kerrang, as the background image is simple but then the cover lines or bold and bright like Kerrang. I would expect Audio Magazine to be sold in the obvious music stores, such as HMV but would also expect to see it in large new agents as it would appeal to quite a lot of music magazine readers.

I think my magazine would give Bauer a middle type of magazine between Q and Kerrang, and I think a lot of people that read these magazines would be interested in reading Audio magazine because it has qualities of both Q and Kerrang.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think my magazine would be aimed at teenagers or young adults that are involved in the indie genre of music. I don’t think it would have a gender as people have different preferences to their music tastes but I think its aimed mainly at the male audience due to the cover and double page spread images. In my treatment sheet I mentioned that the majority of people buying the magazine would be people who attend festivals and I think that this is still the case because of the type of articles that are included.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I think that as it is nearing the summer the festival articles will be the ones that sell this magazine, but also there are interviews and competitions advertised on the front cover which would draw people in. I think that my magazine is busy but not over whelming, as there is only one image on the cover instead of having a main one and lots of little ones relating to the cover lines. I think the black and white picture really make the yellow mast head and cover lines stand out and generally makes the magazine look eye catching and in your face without being too overwhelming and busy. My audience feedback showed that people preferred the yellow on black and white rather than the red; I think this is because the red makes the magazine look generally darker.

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

I have used Photoshop to do all of my pages and it has increased my knowledge on using layers as there are a lot of layers included in all of the pages. I edited all of my pictures using Photoshop and took all of my photos using a digital camera.

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

I think that music magazine is a big improvement compared to my student magazine; I have learnt to put text on the magazine without boxes around it. I used fonts from dafont.com and I made sure they were bold enough to stand out against the black and white background without boxes, as I think that my student magazine looks unprofessional because of this. On my music magazine I have also overlaid my title so that the background image was behind the mast head, whereas on my student magazine my masthead was just on a plain white background. I think the reason my music magazine is so much better than my student magazine because I used Photoshop rather than publisher to create it.