Thursday 21 April 2016

Note to moderator

Over the period of this work i have learnt a lot about how magazines are produced and the amount of effort that has to go into it, such as how much research and planning is needed. I feel that my overall Photoshop skills have developed a lot and i now understand how important it is to understand your target audience. Thank you for taking the time to look at my work and i hope you enjoy it.

Friday 15 April 2016

Evaluation question 7

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

























The three images at the top are the covers from my preliminary (school magazine cover), my music magazine draft cover and my final music magazine cover. You can see the development from my prelim being very minimalistic through my two music magazine covers being quite busy and full of colour. Just by adding coloured boxes around some of the text can make a large difference in making that text stand out and crating a more busy look. As you can see, i have kept a line of text/banner at the bottom of all these magazine covers. The development to the draft cover shows the significance of adding a coloured box which is highlighting the text and i have made another improvement to the banner at the bottom by finding the correct colours that outline the banner and fit within the colour scheme. Sticking to a colour scheme and finding the correct one to attract my audience is also something i have learnt from my preliminary task to now. As you can see, my preliminary magazine is very dull, it used a black and white colour pallet and the only colour comes from one object in the picture. As the magazine was aimed at students, the colour pallet doesn't attract the target audience at all because the magazine comes across very formal. Then in my draft, i chose a more colourful pallet which would attract my audience but i didn't use it very well, for example, the blue banner at the bottom would've looked better yellow as blue doesn't appear anywhere else on the cover. Finally, on my final cover, i think i used a very appropriate and correct colour pallet throughout, I only used 4 colours to keep it simple, all of which compliment each other and help each other stand out.

I have learnt how much images contribute to making an attractive magazine for a specific target audience. For example, my preliminary wouldn't appeal to many people in my target audience because it only contains one image which is the cover image. Students would appeal more to a magazine with many images and less text. I decided to have examples of the posters within my magazine on the cover, that way the audience knows what too expect inside and means there will not be as much text on the inside which is what a younger audience likes. In terms of the quality of the images themselves, i think i have improved a lot. On my preliminary magazine i did not use any lighting to light my model which made the image quite dull. By the time i created my final music magazine, i knew how to properly light my model and how to arrange the lights to highlight any features i wanted to highlight on them. My use of camera angles has increased as i used a range of shots such as mid shot and long shot on my draft and final magazine, but just used mid shots on my preliminary. While doing test shots for my magazine, i got my models do do a large variety of poses such as, serious, silly and doing something to engage with the audience such as singing. You can see some of these examples at the bottom of this page. Using other images which are not posters shows the audience who else to expect inside without having to use any text and adding too much information on the cover. As well as needing images on the cover, text will also be needed to give a snippet into the stories inside the magazine. On my preliminary i put 3 cover lines onto the cover to show what was inside, on my draft i didn't put much text to see if it would be just as good with out text. However, after that i released that in order to attract an audience, you need to get the engaged using gripping cover lines which will attract the reader and make them want too read it.

I feels as though throughout this process my Photoshop skills have developed and i have learnt a lot more about this. I have learnt how to arrange layers in the best way possible to bring forward the right layers and how to crop and rearrange images. When working with my target audience i found out that the more layers the better and how to add more layers but keeping it look straight forward. My final cover contains about 60 layers but looks like there is only about 20. On my contents page i learnt how to align my text to make it look neater as well as it creating more space. Overall the thing i have improved on greatly is the layout of all my pages. At the bottom you can see my old double page spread and my new one. I found out from this how effective columns can be. 












Evaluation question 6




Evaluation question 5.

Evaluation question 4

 Who would be the audience for your media product?


To find the target audience i was going for i used a website called 'UK' tribes'. This website outlined my target audience as 'ALTs' which i wrote about in my audience profile. The music my audience listens to is rock/metal/alternative which is a very wide range. Because of the wide range of music it comes with a wide age range, about 16-60. This is because the 'alternative' groups are more younger people who are new to the scene, where as the rock groups are more for the older ages as this was abut when they where young themselves. As this age range is too wide for a magazine, i needed to get a more specific target audience. I decided to go for the younger audience because i feels that they can connect more with the artists of new or young bands, they are more likely to be interested in concerts and are more likely to purchase a magazine in general. The age range that my magazine is now aimed at is 14-25. This magazine is largely based on lively people who enjoy going to concerts and festivals- considering my magazine is based on a music festival. I decided to stop the age range at 25 because many people over that age will be more interested the bands they listened to when they where younger and maybe less interested in new bands, whereas younger people have their own generation of new music as it has changed a lot even though it still falls under the same music category. Younger people may also still be interested in some of the older bands through there parents. The genre of my music and magazine within is rock/alternative, this means the magazine will focus on the characters within the crowd which like to get inspiration of the clothing they wear, their hair styles they choose or just the way they act and their personality. Although there are many rock magazines out here such as 'rocksound', my magazine focuses on the download festival and only the bands that have played there in the past year or upcoming year. This lets the audience know who to expect in the new year and why they should go see them at the festival. My chosen price is £3.99 which i think is a reasonable price for a monthly magazine. I did market research and the majority of people from my target audience said they would definitely willing to spend this price on a festival magazine.

The following two audience profiles, which fit in with a lot of my target audience research and are both potential consumers of my new basics magazine. I also asked the two individuals a few questions regarding my new magazine. Such as "Would you be willing to purchase a new magazine which enters the music magazine market?", "How much would you be willing to spend on a music magazine?", "What are your favorite artists".



Name: Isobel Moulding 

Age: 17

Interests: Music festivals/ gigs/concerts, rock/alternative music.


Favourite brands/ shops: Voodoo, Quirk, H&M and blue banana.



Magazines followed: NME

Favourite artists: Hollywood Undead, paramore, Pierce the veil and suicide silence.


Profession/ occupation: Isobel is currently studying in year 12 and will be taking her AS'.


Would you be willing to purchase a new magazine that enters the music magazine market? "Yes i would definitely give it a try if it was different and includes artists and features I would be interested in".

How much would you be willing to spend on a music magazine? "I would be willing to spend around £5 for a new magazine if it was monthly and about £3 if its weekly as its upcoming and im not too sure if I would like 

it".

What artists would you like to be featured within the magazine? "I would love to see any of my favorite bands in the magazine as well as new bands because i love finding new people to listen to."





Name: Callum Bird

Age: 17

Interests: Music festivals/ gigs/concerts, rock/alternative music.


Favourite brands/ shops: 



Magazines followed: NME, Kerrang and rocksound


Favourite artists: Tonight alive, Pvris, Bullet for my valentine and Zebrahead


Profession/ occupation: Callum is currently a year 13 student taking an A level in mechanics.


Would you be willing to purchase a new magazine that enters the music magazine market? "Yeah, i love to hear abound new and old bands. I go to a lot of concerts as well so i like to hear about new ones coming up".

How much would you be willing to spend on a music magazine? "The magazines i currently buy are around £2.99, but they are weekly. So for a monthly magazine i think id pay about £4
".

What artists would you like to be featured within the magazine? "I really don't mind. I love so many different bands and music types within this genera that i'm up for anything."