Evaluation Final

Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines) After looking at and comparing many different hip hop magazine designs I have based my magazine design on the style chosen by Vibe, XXL and Hip Hop magazine. I liked these magazine designs because of their simple rule of 3 colour scheme. I think this simplistic design makes the magazine look stylish and expensive which suits the lifestyle of the artists, therefore making it a suitable colour scheme for my Hip Hop magazine.

On my cover page I didnt use a banner which is common on magazine covers. I chose not to include a banner because I felt that it ruined the sleek, simple look of the magazine cover. It took attention away from the main article and image, and as it is a first issue magazine it was important also that attention was drawn to the mast head. Whereas most magazines would layer their magazine cover in a way that the main image was the focus of the page, I layered mine in a way so that the mat head was the top layer, catching the reader s eye. I felt that it was important to achieve this because it is a first issue magazine so it wouldnt stand out against other magazines if it conformed to all of the popular designs. So by making the mast head stand out more I hope that it is more eye catching than other magazines on the shelf. Magazines commonly comply to the rule of three. On my cover I decided that the main part of it would conform to this rule other than the mast head. I stuck to the black, white and grey theme with my background, image and text. The mast head is a different colour. This makes it stand out from the rest of the page. I felt that it was important to have a stand out

title because of it being a first issue magazine it needed to make a real impact when it is on the shelf. Evaluation 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
On the cover of my magazine I have an image of a well-established Hip Hop artist who is wearing very simple clothing. Only the plain black shirt can be seen. This is used to present the artist as a distinctive person who sees himself highly so people recognise his success. This is common with Hip Hop artists such as Kanye West, Jay-Z and Big Dee himself. My audience of people aged 16 25 would see my artist as a role model, and would look up to him because of his success and wealth. This would mean that that target group would buy the magazine. Similarities and Differences

Both of the artists on these covers are Afro-American ethnicity which as a stereotype makes them recognisable as Hip Hop artists. Both are very successful male Hip Hop artists producing a similar sound of music. The facial expressions that both artists are pulling are similar, you can see that the artists are vain in the fact that they know they are iconic people and have been very successful. The style of the magazine is the same in the fact that they both have large Mast heads, with coloured text making it stand out. Both of the magazines have a very stripped down, bare grey background making the image of the artist and the rest of the page stand out. The only difference between these two pages is that the VIBE magazine features more text on the cover. On my magazine cover I chose to have a lot less text than VIBE because I felt that too much text would draw the attention away from the main artist.

Evaluation 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
An appropriate company for my magazine to be published and distributed by would be the Bauer Media Group. They currently operate in 15 different countries so distribute to a very wide market.

It owns the rights to magazines such as FHM, Kerrang, Q and MOJO, as well as owning the rights to music channel 4Music. Most of these magazines that they produce and distribute as well as the music channel are all aimed at the same target age group as my magazine meaning that they have very good knowledge and are experienced on what attracts this target age group. They dont currently publish a magazine similar to the Galaxy magazine which means that my magazine would be a good opportunity for them to expand their business to other areas of magazine and music. Because they produce a large amount of very credible and well known magazines they are a trusted company so if I used them as my distributor people would trust that my magazine would be the same quality standard as the rest of their magazines meaning that people would be more likely to buy my magazine.

Evaluation 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience for my magazine would be teens, 16, to young adults, 25. I feel that this is a good age group to target because they have the most free time out of any age range after being a child. They dont have many financial commitments which mean they have more money to spend on things such as magazines making a good market for my magazine. They would be mainly townie type people. They are mainstream and follow fashion and music trends to fit in. People who could fit in and around this group are sports junkies, and casual people. This means that a large majority of the age group I am targeting would suit this magazine as when you turn into a teenager you are very concerned about fitting in and following the trends. They would shop in any shop that is trendy at the time, and wear any popular brand that everyone seems to be wearing. That would be things like Nike and Stussy. They listen to any music that is popular at the time, whatever genre it is. Hip Hop is always a very popular genre as people feel that they can create an image for themselves depending on what music they listen to. Artists like A$AP Rocky are very mainstream and popular at the minute and that would attract these townie type people to read my magazine. Gregor is a 17 year old boy from Leicester who is currently taking his first year of A levels studying Media, PE, Science in Society and Maths. He listens to a very wide variety of music and appreciates all different genres. He has an interest in Hip Hop music and listens particularly to Kanye West, Jay-Z, Eminem and other successful Hip Hop artists. He is always interested in the latest music from the Hip Hop scene and stays up to date with new music by checking online and searching through iTunes. He doesnt get much time to stop and read a lot about artists because he is always busy with coursework or going out with his friends. He says that whenever he gets time he likes to look into upcoming artists and find new music whether it be from the Hip Hop genre or any other. Gregor is the type of person who would buy my magazine. He fits into the right age group, he has a busy life which means that he wouldnt have much time to sit and read a huge article. My magazine is designed in a way that would attract him because the articles are kept short and interesting to attract people like Gregor. He has an interest in Hip Hop music so would enjoy reading a magazine and looking through the pictures of the artists.

Evaluation 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

My target audience is teens to young adults, age 16-25. I have designed my magazine in a way that I feel will attract this age group. I am looking to attract mainly a male audience for my magazine and I have attempted to attract this group by using appropriate images and simple text. The images that I have used throughout the three different sections of my magazine are all of the artist Big Dee. He is an inspirational artist because he is young and successful, my readers would be of similar age to this artist so they would read through the magazine and see him and that would attract them to the magazine. The target market that I was aiming my magazine at arent typically interested in reading large amounts of text. Most of my target market would buy a magazine to look at the pictures rather than the text so I have kept the amount of text in my magazine to a minimum. I did this by not having over 2000 words in my double page spread, I felt that if I included too much text my target market would get bored of this magazine therefore not buying it again. Although my magazine looks sleek and up market, I have chosen to use informal speech/ text in my articles. I feel that this would suit the target market better than using more formal language because they are at the age group where they are very casual. A formal magazine would quickly become boring to someone in my target age group and that would mean they wouldnt buy the magazine so I felt that it was important to appeal to the target market by speaking in a format that keep them interested. The artists in my magazine are mainly very successful, inspirational people who you can look up to. I feel that that would attract my target audience because they are at the age where they are making a lot of decisions in life and it is important for them to have someone to look up to. So they would see this magazine with a lot a familiar names of very successful people. My magazine promotes the glamorous lifestyle these artists live so my target audience would be attracted to this.

Evaluation 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Photoshop - I have used this software to create my preliminary and final magazine. All of my pages were made using Photoshop. I feel that it was the most appropriate software for the job because it allows you to layer each element of the page, making it very easy to make certain pieces of the page stand out. I also used it to edit all of my photos. It allowed me to very accurately cut out my artist from the background of the photo-shoot. This was a very useful feature because it meant that my magazine had a very professional, sharp looking image on each page. I had never used this piece of software before so at the start I found it quite a challenging piece of software to use. I found that I was very slow using it and that my quality of work wasnt very good. This was because I didnt know all the features and functions of the programme. Once I had got used to using the programme and had learnt all of the different functions I was able to produce a piece that was of a much higher, more professional quality. Camera - The camera that I used for my photo-shoot was very useful because it was very simple. I have very little photography knowledge or experience so having a very simple to use camera made it a lot easier for me to get professional, good quality images. The auto focus and brightness sensor on

the camera meant that I just had to take the image and not worry too much about the more technical features behind the picture. Computer - When using Photoshop I used a Mac Book. I chose to use this device rather than another similar computer or laptop because it is a lot better quality; it produces a much sharper looking, better quality image than any other computer. It is also a lot faster which meant that the Photoshop programme ran a lot smoother than it would on another computer. Internet Using the internet was a vital part of my research and planning of my magazine. I used browsers such as Google to search for magazine examples which helped me to design my own. Microsoft Word I used this when writing my double page article. It has a spell check function which I found useful so that I made no spelling errors in my article as that would make it look unprofessional. It also has a spell check function which helped me to write the correct amount for the article. Without the word count I feel that my article would have been too short. Scribd This is an online publishing programme. It allowed me to upload my word documents onto my blog in a more professional, reader friendly way. I used it to For the rest of the project I used a normal computer using Windows 7. The Windows 7 software is very useful because it allows you to open 2 documents next to each other. This made it very easy when completing research task to be able to put the two pages next to each other and be able to make notes on one document whilst looking at the information on the other page.

Evaluation 7: Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back to my preliminary task I can see that I have learnt a lot about the layout of a magazine cover. Most clearly I have learnt about layering. I had no idea about this when I did the preliminary task so as you can see it is all on layer, meaning that nothing on the page particularly stands out or grabs the reader attention. This wouldnt be good when trying to market and sell this magazine

because people just wouldnt be interested in it as other similar magazines would be more attractive. Learning the proper way to use Photoshop made it a lot easier for me to a achieve this. I learnt about the layering function on Photoshop which meant that I could put different elements in the page on top of others making them stand out. The proper use of this technology was one way that I improved my final magazine from my preliminary. After learning about layering and trying a few different designs I created my final cover. It is layered in a way so that specific parts of the page stand out more than others. I also learnt about positioning, I have positioned all of the pieces on the page so nothing obstructs the mast head. It was important for this magazine that the mast head was very visible as it is a first issue magazine. Another way that I improved my magazine was by doing a lot of research. When I did my preliminary magazine I had no previous knowledge of magazines and had no real idea of what potential readers looked for in a magazine. I used websites such as uk tribes to find appropriate audiences for my magazine. One more design feature that I learnt about is the rule of three colour scheme. This is the rule by which the vast majority of magazines comply to. I decided to use a very basic rule of three being black, grey and white to create a clean and expensive finish to my magazine. On my preliminary cover I didnt use this rule of three because I wasnt aware of it. Using four colours. This meant that the reader didnt know where to look, making it look less professional and messier than my final piece. Another improvement I made from my preliminary magazine was my choice of image. On my preliminary magazine I didnt have a proper image. I only had a silhouette. This made the magazine look unprofessional and cheap. This showed that the magazine was unfinished and that wouldnt sell or attract a market. This was improved in my final magazine because I had a photo-shoot with my artist and chose an image that was appropriate for the purpose. The images that I chose were all taken by me, they were edited to remove any blemishes and the colours and exposures were altered to create an image that really fit with the design of my magazine. This gave the magazine a slick and expensive look. Having a professional looking image meant that my target market would be attracted to this magazine.