Contents Page Paper draft

Contents Page Analysis

Contents Page Analysis
Originally uploaded by EmilyBall93

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

Below are the final and the planning versions of my magazine cover and magazine contents page. I believe that the final music magazine ones are a great deal better than the ones I did for my preliminary planning task. I feel that my photoshop skills did develop quite a bit even though I already had used photoshop quite a bit. During the Preliminary task I decided to keep the background of the image that I used on the front cover, this is because I didn't feel that confident with removing the background to a good standard. When I got around to the final product I did feel confident enough to do this as I have learnt an easier way to do it than what I did beforehand.  I feel that this has made the cover look more effective. Also when it came to making the final products I had learnt to use the clone stamp tool and was able to remove and parts of the image that I didn't want, for example marks in the guitar that I didn't want to be there. Another tool that I used during the process of making my final products was the levels tool. When making my preliminary tasks I just used the brightness/contrast tool. I feel using the 'levels' tool looks much better than using the brightness/contrast one. Another development that I made inbetween producing the products for my preliminary task and my final task was to use layers much more. In the preliminary task I found myself forgetting to put things on different layers so that when I wanted to change something that whole layer would change and not the part I wanted. By the time I came to produce my final product I was putting everything onto seperate layers which made things much easier. I also learnt how to use the 'link layers' feature which enabled me to move more than one layer at a time. Another photoshop feature that I used a lot whilst producing my final magazine pages that I didn't use at all when producing the preliminary ones was the Paragraph and Character windows. These allowed me to have much more control of the text. On my preliminary task products if I wanted the text to be closer together I would put each line on a seperate layer and move the layers closer to each other. Discovering the character and paragraph windows allowed me to reduce the spacing between lines and characters in a much more simple and less time consuming way. My final products use the blending option 'drop shadow' a lot, which I did know how to do during the stages of my preliminary task I just didn't think to use it. I feel that using the drop shadow option on things such as text adds a better look to it.

I feel that overall I was much more confident and adventurous in using photoshop when producing my final products. For the title of my Music magazine cover I didn't just use a simple font in block colour like I did on my preliminary task. I added some red to the title which I feel makes it look more 'grungey'. To get this effect I experimented with different brush shapes and used the paintbrush tool to cover the text layer of the title slightly. Once I had used the brush to go over the title I blurred the layer to get the desired effect. The brush tool that I ended up using was one of a leaf. To get rid of any colour that went off the edges of the title I clicked the text layer and selected the area around the text, then I clicked on the blurred brush layer and cut the excess colouring away, still having the area outside the text selected. During my preliminar task I would never have thought to do something like this and no way would I have been able to figure out how to get the desired effect on my own.

Covers, Planning (Left) & Final (Right)

Contents Pages, Planning (Left) & Final (Right)

When producing my final products I was more aware of how other magazines were layed out so I was able to choose a layout for mine that would be most appealing and effective. I also researched alot for my final products, something that I did not do for my preliminary task so I knew more about magazines an the genre that my magazine would be focussing on and the target audience that it was aimed at.

There were also differences in my planning and reserchig for both the preliminary products and my final products. There was a great deal more planning and research for my final products. For the preliminary task I looked at other college magazine covers and analysed one pre-existing cover on Flickr. For the final products I analysed 4 pre-existing magazine covers as well as looking at a number of covers. For the contents page of the preliminary task I did no research or analysing. Before I produced my final products I put together rough drafts so I had an idea of what I wanted my pages to look like. I didn't do anything like this with the preliminary task. I also did a great deal more research into the target audience of my final products than compared to the research I did for my preliminary task. During my preliminary task I did little to none research. I made questionnaires as part of the research for my my final tasks and got a number of people to fill  it out.

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

Throughout the progress of producing my magazine I used a number of different programs/technologies. The following is a list of the programmes and sites that I used throughout the project.

• Photoshop - I used this programme to produce magazine cover, contents page and double page spread. It is an editing programme which allowed you to produce images by usinga variety of different tools. I was already quite used to using photoshop when I started this project and I knew most of the basics. Like layers, adjustments etc. One thing that I did learn whilst making my magazine pages was how to cut out a person from a photograph more easily, and so that they looked better.
• Blogger - Blogger is an online site which allows you to post things to the internet. I used blogger to document my project as I went along. Posting the planning, photos, final products and the evaluation. This site will allow the work to be seen altogether in one place, which is an advantage of using a site like blogger. One disadvantage I found with using Blogger is that the layout doesn't really look good, and the posts to me look like a mess.
• Flickr - I used Flickr to produce analyisis' of existing magazine pages. It enabled me to upload photographs to the site and then add notes to the photographs analysing what they pointed at. This is an effective way of producing an analysis because it is easy to see what I'm talking about. If I had just produced a written analysis on Word I would have had to describe what I was talking about in more detail. The option of the note tool on Flickr made this not necessary. Before using Flickr for this project I thought Flickr was just a site for uploading photograhs and displaying them. I have learnt that you can a lot more on it that I originally though.
•  Microsoft Word - I produced my double page spread article on this programme. I was then able to copy the text from the Word document into the photoshop document when it was necessary.

Here is a screencap of photoshop to show the tools and everything that I had to work with whilst producing my magazine pages:

Another piece of technology that I used to complete my magazine pages was a Digital Camera. It was a Sony Cybershot. I used the camera to take the photographs for my magazine pages. When taking the photographs I considered the angles that would work best in my magazine and if I knew that I would need t cut part of a photograph, for example the main photograph on the front cover, I took it against a blank background to allow me to do this more easily. I took the photographs for the girl band 'Hey You' against a blank pale background as well as this would allow me to contrast the people in the photo against the wall a lot. Other things that I focussed on using the camera were the angle that I took the photographs from and the shot distance. The longest shot distance that I took from was the photo for my double page spread with the person leaning up against the wall. I took this from such a long shot because I wanted to be able to create the effect that he would be leaning aganst the middle of the page, and I felt this would work best if you could see the whole body. Below is a picture of the camera model that I used.

Another piece of technology that I used was the memory card that went in the camera. I didn't just use it as a memor card for the camera I also transferred my photoshop documents of the magazine pages to it so that I could work on them at home on photoshop. I also used a Dell pc and a HP pavillion laptop throughout the project, these are technologies too.

I feel that the majority of the technology that I used was a good choice. However I would have preferred to write analyses in a more traditional style than on Flickr because I prefer to be able to see the writing on a page than having to go onto to the Flickr photo and hover over each section to see the analysis. I also am not keen on using Blogger for the blog because I feel that the layout of it doesn't look very good. If I had been allowed to change the template/html I probably would have liked the look of the blog, but using just the simple Blogger template I don't really like how it looks. I feel that using photoshop to create my magazine pages was good and that using it made me able to make the magazine pages look to a high standard.

How did you attract/address your audience?



My Final Products

I feel that my magazine speaks in the language of my target audience quite well. The languge I have used is quite informal which is more appropriate than formal for my target audiences age range. In the double page spread article the article has a chatty feel to it as it is an interview. The questions aren't just set questions, they take into account the answers that 'Sayer' has given. I would say the overall voice my magazine has is that of a good friend, or perhaps a friend but who you are not really really close to. I say this because even thouh the magazines text reads informally it isn't how you would talk to a really close friend.  The language used is quite modern. I have used words like "fresh" to say new and "chat" instead of talk. Use of words like these also fit with the age of the target audience. I feel that the colour scheme of my magazine also speaks to the target audience because the colours aren't bright. The majority of colour that I have used is a deep shade of red. If I has used a bright red the magazine would look more 'friendly' and I feel that for my magazine genre a darker colour would be more appropriate. The masthead is in black text but I have added red to it in a way which makes it look slightly tarnished which again fits with the music genre of my magazine. Another thing that I feel speaks to the target audience I decided on would be the coverlines. The bands that I have mentioned on the cover would all be bands that people who listen to the alternative genre would like and most likely will have heard of. I have included a lot of band names on the cover so that it is obvious what genre of music my magazine is for.  The picture on the cover of the magazine is somebody playing a guitar which makes it obvious that the magazine is a music magazine so if someone from my target audience saw my cover on stand they would automatically know that it is a music magazine, so it would speak to them in that way.

Another part of my magazine that I feel would speak to the target audience is the layout of the pages. The way they are designed looks quite modern and the information included on the page would be of interest to the people belonging to the group of people that I am targeting at. The age range that I am targetting is late teens to early twenties and I feel that the modern feel of the pages will appeal to that age group. The information and questions that I have put on the double page spread would also speak to the target audience as I feel that what I have chosen to write would be something that they are interested in. Seeing as my target audience includes both female I tried to include bands which include members of both sexes or all male bands and all female bands. Florence + the Machine, despite the name sounding like a group, is a solo female singer so I uncluded her name on the cover to show that the magazine covers both sex music artists. All Time Low are an all male band. I also included male bands with female frontwomen. For example, Automatic Loveletter, Paramore and The Pretty Reckless. I thought it would be a good idea to include bands like these on the cover as they would help attract a female audience.  

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The above picture is an image with pictures of people who could be considered representative of the target audience of my magazine. The age range i'm targeting with my magazine is late teens to early twenties males and females. The psychographic for the target audience would be people who listen to music a great deal and who would say music is a very big part of their life. They're the kind of people who go to gigs a lot and hang around after for ages for the oppurtunity to meet the band. They know all the lyrics to their favourite bands songs and have lots of band merchandise and posters. They arrive to gigs a couple of hours before the doors open so they can get to the front, and they always have standing tickets.

The music tastes of the target audience are bands like Paramore, My Chemical Romance and also Blink 182. The music taste is quite broad because the genre of music the magazine caters to is Alternative and a lot of different sounding bands would be considered as this genre.

The shopping habits of the target audience would be CDs, gigs tickets, band merchandise and also DVDs. The films they would be into would be horror/sci-fi/fantasy. However they could also be into other films.

A stereotypical view of the target audience would be that they are quite weird. Emos/Goths etc would be considered part of the target audience.

The target audience doesn't really fit into any of the categories like ABC1s because they're at an age where they do not have their own income.

I feel that these types of people would buy my magazine because it would include things they are interested. They don't only listen to music, they like to connect with the band, so interviews and factfiles would allow them to do this. They are also very passionate about the music they like so reviews and similar materials would allow them to see what other people think of their favourite bands music. Also as they attend a lot of gigs, the gig sections and festivals section of my magazine would be very interesting to them. My magazine would also include posters so they could stick the posters up to show their love for the favourite artists/bands.

The products that would be advertised in my magazine would be CDs, DVDs, musical instruments, gig tickets and band merchandise. All of these products would be very appealing to the target audiece that my magazine is focussed on.

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

I feel that the publishers that would publish my magazine would be more likely to be medium/small companies. For example the publisher of the magazine Rock Sound is a small one and I feel that my magazine would benefit from a smaller publishing company as it would make the magazine more 'underground' and this would work well will the target audience I have chosen. However, going for a smaller company would mean a smaller distribution scale which would impact the amount of copies sold.

Taking this into consideration I thought about going with the publisher Bauer, but researching I discovered that Bauer already publish Kerrang! which is a magazine that is similar to mine. So it wouldn't really be a good idea to go with Bauer. IPC are Bauer's biggest rival in the UK so it would probably be more approprate to go with them and eventhough they already publish NME, that magazine is very different to my magazine and it would allow IPC to go up against Bauer more successfully if they have a magazin that would rival one of Bauers a lot. An upside of going with a publisher like IPC would be that the magazine would be distributed on a very large scale which would result in high sales. However a disadvantage would be that I might lose some of the editorial independance as IPC are such a large company they might want to control what goes into the magazine. They would probably want to put a great deal of adverts into the magazine and this would take away from the music feel. IPC would however have the money to allow my magazine to expand online and also perhaps podcasts could be produced to go along with the magazine and these could be available to download on iTunes. The distributor of IPC magazines is MarketForce, and as my magazine would also need a distributor I feel that MarkerForce would be a good one to use, which supports the choice to use IPC. "We pride ourselves on our ability to get the basics right. But more importantly, we believe in creating added value for you, innovating at retail and getting your products to market effectively." is a quote taken directly from the MarketForce website. To me everything in this quote sums up what you would want a distributor to be so I would gladly go with using MarketForce as the distributor of my magazine. I would prefer to go with self-publishing but I feel that would not be the practical option and would be less likely to lead to a successful magazine.