My evaluation of my student magazine

Evaluation of my Music magazine

In what way does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The key ingredients for a magazine cover are; a variety or bright or interesting pictures that attract attention, bold titles that stand out from the images to inform a potential reader about the content of the magazine and any offers or special articles inside. There should also be a price and date of the magazine issue stated. A typical contents page contains brief summaries of the various articles and stories inside the magazine along with more images to compliment them.

My front cover used all of the correct methods including an interesting pair of images and bold titles; however I think that I could have used some more images on the front page to make it a little more interesting. The audience feedback I have had about this page generally says that the image is very good and likely to gain interest. However I think that I should have tried to have taken another photo of both people in the same place at the same time to make it look much better and more realistic.

My contents page features two main images that are relevant to the big stories in the magazine. I have used less text than I did for my previous magazine this is because I decided to sum up each article but without a huge amount of text that would bore readers. This is more effective than using large amounts of text as it would make the magazine seem very wordy and boring.

My double page spread was a little challenging as I had to find an image that would suit a two page article so I decided to do an interview with a friend, and took a photo that would span two pages.

Front cover                                                                                               Contents page

Double page spread

  

How does my product represent particular social groups?  

I think that I have represented the student social group as all the photos used are of students around college and are very similar to those found in a typical music magazine, therefore I think that they will appeal more to them. The language used in my two pages is very casual and in the same style student’s use, this is another reason why I think I have represented the student social group. As for the ratio of text to images I would say that it is less on the contents and the front page which works better as these pages are designed to attract readers, this is one example of what I have done differently to my preliminary task.

 However there is more text on my double page spread as this is one of the main articles featured in my magazine. Audience feedback tells me that my pages are very good with a lot of colour and good images; however my double page received the most praise as it contained an interview with some humorous questions included.

What kind of media institution might distribute my media product?

An institution that is likely to distribute my media product would be either a music company aimed at students or a university or college as they will have the highest number of my target audience and would benefit from selling the magazine as they would make a large amount of money form selling it to their students, and also the students would be able to get all the latest

Who would be the audience for my media product?

I think my audience would most definitely be students ranging from first year sixth formers to university students, aged 16-21, this is because the magazine is all about music with various genres on offer; this makes it appeal to pretty much all students as they all enjoy music to the full.

How did I attract/address my audience?

I have tried to attract a potential reader by using a wide array of colourful titles and artistic images, audience feedback showed that this was effective as the colours I chose were eye-catching and the images are artistic and exactly the sort you would find in a music magazine. Another way I have tried to attract attention is by using student language in the pages, this will hopefully attract more of my target audience as they will be more comfortable reading text written by another student.

    

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

In making this magazine I have used many programs and new websites and so I have gained new skills and knowledge in how to use them to my advantage.  One of the programs I had never used or even heard of before was Gimp- 2.6.  I used this to change several photos I had taken for my magazine font cover, contents page and especially the double page spread.  In this case I learnt how to develop a photo to what I wanted using a variety of tools and then how to add it to the magazine front cover and then upload the finished front cover to my blog.

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

I feel that I have learnt a great deal more on how to make my pages look more realistic, in order to do this I had to research into how real music magazines like Kerrang! Or Q set out their pages. I noticed that they feature more than once image on double page spreads this makes it more visually pleasing to the reader, another element I researched was how to create better looking titles on a computer. This involved several failed attempts on Gimp – 2.6, however eventually I managed to create three very realistic pages.