7. Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task (The School Magazine Task), What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In the Progression From It To The Full Product?

Fonts
As you can see from my preliminary task I have used more of a variety of font sizes in my final task. This adds more interest to the pages. I have also branched out and searched to use more professional looking fonts rather than fonts you would find on Microsoft Word... I found these fonts on a typeface downloading site name 'dafont'. These typefaces give a better appearance to my final magazine pages. I also feel my fonts have been arranged better on the pages, as they look more aligned and arranged better.

Mode of Address
The cover lines and contents in my final task; when comparing them to my preliminary task, are far more detailed which help attract my audience more as it gives more of a detail into the content. Even though  my preliminary task and my final production task had different ideologies behind them ( the ideology of 'REWIND' being to deliver music news to young people and the ideology of 'CLIQUE' to inform sixth form students of school news) I feel it is more effective to have a short but more descriptive description in contents pages and cover lines to act as a lure. Even though in my preliminary task I really liked the original idea to have the page references in clock numbers, I feel that, looking back, this may be unclear to the audience what the page references are and requires them to think when both of my young readerships in both tasks have a short attention span so would prefer a clear, conventional way of presenting page references, which I took on board. The use of sections also gives a clear way of presenting a casual way of speaking to the audience. From my preliminary task, I have still opted for a casual language, with no slang.
Layout
From my preliminary task I learnt that I need to follow flatplans I make, which I did so in my final task. This saves time and allowed me to plan images and a really effective layout which was successful. This was as I could use the space of the page effectively whether I wanted a look of visual clutter or white space. Using photoshop in my final task allowed me to have a better more professional look with the whole, overall pages but especially helped me with the layout. I also did far more planning and looking at real products, which allowed me to relate more to real media products.

Photography
A big improvement I made since my preliminary task was my use of lighting. For my preliminary task I did not consider the importance of lighting, but for my real task I used a real professional lighting setup and a better camera so the images did not have pixels shown ineffectively. I also used natural lighting which was successful as it was at a time of the day where photographs would be successful and could be taken without a flash - which was not successful as you can see from the image of books on my preliminary cover page. I learnt about the rule of thirds, which I used in my final task to attract the eye to the point of interest, I did not do this in my preliminary task. I feel my images were appropriate in both tasks, but in my final task they act more as lures and are more meaningful as they can anchor with specific contents. In my mise-en-scene, I kept that I used the house colours of my magazine in the clothing to add a set theme to the magazines. I learnt how to edit photos by using more than the cropping, contrast, brightness changes in my photo editing. When cutting out the clock in my preliminary task, I had to crop around the edges using a less advanced programme called 'Serif', which was very time consuming and still was not perfectly cut around in the end so I decided to use Photoshop.  I learnt how to use the hue and saturation tools on photoshop which allow me to change the colour of objects by selecting the edges with the lasso tool and selecting a colour ( phone box). I also learnt how to use the lasso tool to cut out objects and put them on a different background, like a did in my album cover in my final contents page. This editing I used to add more interest to the photographs used, as my preliminary task photos lacked editing.
Overall my preliminary task helped me to practice using technology and make decisions about what changes I should make to planning, technology used and  photos taken 

6.What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

6. What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product? on Prezi

5. How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

In order to assure my music magazine would please my target audience, I did some market reasearch to find out what there views were on what they want to see in a music magazine. I conducted a survey using 'Survey Monkey' and put it on 'Facebook' so my target audience would take it I also conducted a questionnaire. This allowed my to see which colours, prices, genres, models, poses, language etc, were prefered so that I could cater for their needs.
To create a magazine you need to know your target market back to front in order to sell, so I created a reader profile showing what my ideal readers tastes are and the majority of gender and average age etc.
After I made a draft of my features page, I presented it to a small focus group of my target market to see if what I was creating from past market research was pleasing for my target audience. I was then given feedback in order to improve my features page. This was useful as my potential readers could give me their opinion and I could learn from this.
I feel the unique selling point of my magazine is that it is well priced, has a variety of genres and uses a unique house style consisting of more bright house colours of blue and red, and steering away from the classic, red and black music magazine house colours; this makes it appeal more appeal to a . I think my magazine is similar to 'Q' magazine, but uses a mode of address that is more suited to a younger audience, has a cheaper price so is suited to a younger audience making it individual in the market.

4.Who Would Be The Target Audience For Your Media Product?

4.Who Would Be The Target Audience For Your Media Product? on Prezi

3. What Kind of Media Instituation Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

2. How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Cover Page

Contents Page

Features Page

Front Page Cover Flatplan

Research for my Slogan

I have researched slogans for music magazines in order to decide on a slogan for my music magazine. I have noticed that these slogans are all featured on the cover of the music magazine either above or below the masthead and sometimes as a skyline. Most of these slogans are in black and white so it doesn't draw too much attention away from the masthead, as that needs the most attention on a music magazine cover. All of these slogans are catchy in many different ways; from the use of repetition, alliteration and the shortness of them. Personal terms such as 'your' in 'Blender's slogan 'YOUR MUSIC BUDDY' make the magazine seem personal and like it was made for you. Hyperboles have been used in some of these slogans for example 'THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO MUSIC' - the word ultimate exaggerates the slogan and makes the magazine look very appealing. Sometimes exclamations have been used to make the magazine seem more exciting. In most of the slogans words relating to music have been used to give an indication of the ideology of the magazine and what it may have to offer. Sometimes when names of the magazine name is made up of letters, what they stand for is featured in the slogan for example with 'NME' and 'AP'.

From this research I have created my slogan, which will be featured in the skyline of my cover spread.

I have used an exclamation to make the magazine appear more excited to read, a hyperbole to exaggerate the good content of the magazine through the word 'best' and I have used capital letters in a sans serif typeface which I noticed all the other slogans had in common, therefore making this successful. I have also used just black and white as this was also popular among the other slogans. I have used the name of my magazine to gain a true brand identity through the name.

Analysis of Forms and Conventions of a Music Magazine Cover

Photography for Cover Page

More Contents Page Photography

Live Music Event Photography

Photography For Contents Page

Focus Group Feedback for Features Page

After my features page pitch to the target audience, I asked  them to feedback to see what is successful in my features page from a scale of 1-5.
 5 = I like it a lot
1 = It doesn't work
With feedback on my style and layout the majority gave a 5, so this has been successful as my audience has favoured this. So when making improvements I need to keep the layout and styling features of the same style so that my features page continues to please and attract my audience.
With using the forms and conventions of a  features page my range of feedback ratings was from 3-5, to improve this I think i shall add more pull quotes, a summary of the article and a page lead, so that my features page follows conventions of a features page even more so.
My accurate language style and mode of address also gained between 3-5, but the majority, 5. It was also commented that my target audience comes through formally, which is what I was aiming for, so that the magazine can cater for all classes. I could improve the mode of address and language style by making the text feel more personal by adding a page lead to introduce the artist and the article in a manner to the reader feels more comfortable and at home. I will also do this by adding an artist signature and more pull quotes so that the reader can feel they know the artist so my magazine can establish a loyal readership. I can improve the language style by adding more exclamations to make the article seem more upbeat and exciting, so the reader will be more interested to read on.
I asked the audience to rate my use of camera angles and shot distances, these gained mostly a score of 5 and i feel the look a positioning of the images have been successful so i will make no further improvements with artwork.
I gained mostly a score of 4 for the category asking to judge the variety of fonts and text size. In the pull quotes I am going to add to amend my features page, I will include more of a variety of text sizes but no more different typefaces, as i feel that this will make the page lose its style which was praised by the focus group and add visual clutter, giving a very busy look to the page, which is not the brand identity style of the magazine.
The use of mise-en-scene gained all scores of 5 and one 4, I feel this was successful as I used props such as the guitar and stool and decided what the artist would be wearing to add to the style of the music, which came across obvious to the focus group that it was acoustic. When working on the computer making my features page, the lighting looked good, but printed out, the main image looks very dark against the black background, so I think i shall improve this by adjusting the brightness of the image so it appears more striking.

Features Page Pitch to an Audience

Features page pitch to an audience

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Features Page Planning