Evaluation

Evaluation

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

I think for a music magazine to work it needs to include quite a few things. One of them being a interesting magazine name with a good font, I think this is important as its on the front on the magazine and that’s what your reader will see first so you want to make it as eye-catching as you can. Also I feel a well thought out and well photographed image is needed, the front cover is the most important part of a magazine as it’s the first thing you see, and you want it to be good as it’s persuading your audience to buy it. I think I have done this well in my magazine as a lot of audience feedback helped me to incorporate what people thought looked best.

Doing a general audience questionnaire really helped me to decide what the magazine needed to be like, as it allowed people to answer the questions and give me an idea of what people want to see in a music magazine. Determining what font I wanted to use for my masthead wasn’t hard a picked font I thought would work the best on a rock magazine and then from there is was taking the feedback and minimising the fonts down to one people seemed to like the best. When it came to taking the photos, I took quite a lot because I wasn’t sure what would work best on the cover and it also had to go with a rocky sort of theme. I think I have pushed the boundaries by researching colours and fonts and putting a lot of time into making it as great as it can be.

 • How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The magazine will represents young artists who like rock and heavy metal, and I think that I have represented them in the magazine using quite a few techniques. The pictures I took are all of teenagers and my use of language talks in the context that a teenager would understand. Also I feel there is a good ratio between pictures and text for every image there is text to go with it. I know that the people who answered my questionnaire were teenagers, so I think in their preference they would want something aimed in their age range.

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

I think magazines like Kerrang! Have already created this type of magazine in the market, as I know a lot of teenagers like these sorts of magazines so studying Kerrang! Helped me understand what teenagers and young adults would want out of a magazine. I think that companies would want to distribute my magazine because it’s cheap and you get a lot for your money, and because teenagers don’t have a lot of money it will bring in a lot of profit, it also includes freebies and a lot of information on the rock music.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My audience would be teenagers and young adults, ranging between the ages of 16-20 and it would be for any gender with an interest in rock music. The artists also range between those ages and are of any gender so the readers can relate to them.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I think the main key of attracted my audience was taking a really good image for the front cover and shape everything around that, a really good edgy picture is what grabs your attention, the picture itself is of young people who my audience could relate to. Wording is also very important on a front cover words like Exclusive! In a bold font are really eye-catching. I also gave the magazine a name that states very clearly what its about “Definition Rock” so automatically you know what its about and I chose a font that looked like it should be on a rock magazine, it was big and bold and it looked like something you would find on a concert poster etc. Other fonts I have used on the front cover look really rocky and they also look slightly cartoony and young, which helps a lot for the age group im appealing to (teenagers/young adults).

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

The program I used to construct the magazine itself was one called Serif, which is excellent for what I wanted to do; it was really easy and simple to do and I think I created some good pages front it. The only problem I had with it was changing it to a JPG file, it took a lot of time and I hadn’t prepared myself for that, so if I were to do this task again I would probably give myself more time to covert the file. But when I was creating layouts and drafts I using Microsoft publisher which Is good for creating a basic layout, I didn’t have any problems with it, and I was able to do that quite quickly and efficiently. When I took the images I used a digital camera, which was quick and let me take a lot of photos, I then edited the ones I needed to edit on gimp. This isn’t one of my favourite programs to use it takes a while to get used to and it can be very confusing, the finished picture is always good but it takes a while to get to that point.

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

I think I have learnt what programs are useful when creating a magazine, programs like Gimp I probably wouldn’t use again. Also I know what part of the action plan I should of spent more time on, I should I have left more time to present my final pages on Blogger, but I am happy with the general result.