Magazine Evaluation Questions

Question 1

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

My magazine was hard to make mainly because there wasn’t many magazines that specified in the genre I choose to base my magazine off of. The title was a unique font I used; the first thing I wanted the audience to see was this font. Most fonts are basic if you look at Mojos compared to my font it’s a standard 2d font with not much to keep it that appealing to the reader. The font was supposed to be abstract, but have a technological feel to it. When you look at the words LINK your brain has to try and read what it says, and if your fan of the magazine instantly you know what the name is just like a brand name.

If the magazine is interpreted using mise en scene, the layout of the front page, contents and double page spread all try to portray the essence of a gamer and movie buff much like an average magazine attempts to portray the musician in the best light known to him. The front picture shows our musician on a laptop a decadent machine of today’s technology, with ear phones and teenaged styled clothing. The positioning on the front page is much like most front pages of any magazine. You have an image of the musician who’s being featured, and you have subtitles on the sides to explain the most intriguing features in the magazine this being in my magazine an interview with the musician on the front.

The images used in my magazine are similar to how any other magazine would have their images, they relate to the artist. However my images (mainly on the contents page scrolling down the right of the page) are all from games which have had famous songs that have reach internet fame across the web. They are renowned for having memorable, and inspirational music by famous artists as well. This is how a music magazine would display images of a music artist on their pages.

On the front page there is a lot taken from music magazines, popular in music magazines in colour coordination. On my front page it has a particular colour scheme followed by Black – White – Black – White under the subtitles. I used different styled fonts for each subtitle and description below the subtitle as well, this developed onto my adaption of what most music magazines use on their front page.

The layout of my double page spread was very skilful. It was intended to be very plain and have writing placed about in an array of different sized writing all of which were the same font of course. The questions were styled like a pixel font and the answers like a standard font, this was to set again a digital feel to enhance the mood of the magazine. It develops on traditional fonts and it styled particularly to my magazine only. The picture of the artist is taking up about 3/5 of the page giving him the perfect room to be seen, this is like a lot of double page spreads on magazines. An artist relating to the page is seen taking up a lot of room and there is text surrounding him in one place explaining what they’ve recently achieved. My double page was about this artist in an interview and the background was plain white, it was to mimic a lot of magazines but keep an original style the questions and answers are all spaced apart.

My Contents page had an impressive selection of pictures, background effects, fonts and colour scheme. It was designed to be cluttered like a lot of pages are, have not much room left spared, using pixel art blocks I made bullet point looking measurements, and had a unique selection of colours to follow. The colour scheme was black, white, green, and yellow. Green and yellow were only to support the really interesting features. The title for the contents page simply being ‘contents’ was placed slightly off the side for an affect, to appear abstract and unique. The audience already knows what the page is by the style and the title doesn’t need to be in the picture so its just adding to something that’s not really there. On a lot of front pages magazines often have an Artist or image blocking part of the title, so in a way this is similar to that and it works very effectively as it goes against the normal routine.

The people I used in this magazine were mainly people of my age group, people who would read this magazine who would respond and be able to appeal to the right audience. Much like a normal magazine I developed this by adding what I believe interests the social group aimed towards this magazine. Things like technology and artistic style would suit them, I choose people who would suit this ideal and would respond to the style I wanted to portray.

The background images I used were simple but very affective, a lot of the time they were blurred so that they were too eye catching, this was so that the reader wouldn’t find too much going on at one time on the page. There wasn’t too many things to be confused or to stare at. On the double page spread I removed the background entirely to give the effect of space, and make the reader feel open with the writing and not rushed and cramped into a tight page. The outcome was effective. On the contents page the background image was kept sharp but blurred at the bottom. I decided to add other images to this background to go on the foreground after researching magazine contents pages and seeing the style they were presented in.

The last element that I really took seriously was the colour scheme, since our eyes find anything more than 3 colours hard to identify I made it my objective to limit colours to 2 basic colours, then have 1 or 2 serious colours that caused one part of the magazine to stick out to the reader. The colour scheme worked effectively well and allowed me to progress further into styling the colours more, on certain pages I obviously didn’t stick to the scheme mainly due to the images added as they were bright and colourful.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine since it’s a unique magazine contains a unique stereotype. There’s no real definition of nickname for this stereotype one could call them a gamer or a movie buff, but this stereotype would relate to the music involved in that style of Media not just the media itself. My magazine shows a gamer on the front cover listening to music with his hands placed on the keyboard of a laptop. Laptops are very popular with families that share and often listen to music on them so this instantly would be a recognised as a music item with the reader. The stereotype on the front cover is portrayed to be focused and relaxed, wearing casual clothing and having a natural pose. This establishes on the front cover that this particular social group is relaxed, calm and enjoys what they do.

This is my magazine the one on the left, and on the right is a musician on a Mojo magazine, the difference in these is in mine hes younger, more upto date, brighter colours and he gives the impression of a new social group of a younger age. The figure from the Mojo magazine is that of a man who represents a different social group one of an older age that isn’t adapted with technology and prefers this style over the new generations. In my magazine, there are only two social groups, movie fans and gamers. The magazine depicts two different images of the person on the front cover playing video games whilst listening to the music, but the whole magazine isn’t just for that purpose its supposed to represent a missing layer in the magazine industry for those who want hear more than just rock and rap. That is why it represents a newer generation of social groups, and this magazine represents them using typical things such as digital styled fonts, abstract colour schemes and retro styled gaming themes.

Question 3
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

My magazine would be hard for someone to distribute, mainly because of its obscure genre. I wouldn’t suggest a gaming magazine or a move magazine because although their similar there goals are different. I did stumble across ‘WorldWide Magazine Distribution LTD’ on the web, and it appears they distribute a lot of magazines, not just music. This would appear great as it appeals to the United Kingdom and would be a unique place to start, as research shows there are no magazines that resemble my magazine genre so it would fill a hole in the market and this distributer would gain from that as they have no magazine similar to my genre or target audience. Not only would this help. It’d reach all around the UK as well so my magazine would get a lot of publicity.

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audiences for my magazine are typically relaxed gamers, or movie buffs. Perhaps even internet surfers. They are either female or male and enjoy the sensation of music from inspirational films and video games.

This is Becky; she’s a female gamer and movie lover. She’s 17 lives in a small village and has a lot going on in her life, she goes to Sixth Form and partakes in card games, relaxes with sports such as scuba diving and enjoys a variety of music types. Becky spends most her time playing games, as she lives in a village with little else to do this is one of her favorite past times and she loves being able to listen to music. Becky doesn’t have a collection of music from games but does find a great deal of tracks and songs that she finds shock and awe; typically she’s an average gamer.

Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

I went to the effort of asking different friends and students from my Sixth Form their opinion of the best way to address someone in a magazine, most people liked a relaxed and not to formal approach of being polite but informative. The way I tried to implement this was as follows.

Compared to other music magazines, this is similar stance to some but mainly a unique one as alot of editors tend to keep to thier opinions when writing a magazine I wanted a completely unbiast apporach to this interview, give credit where it deserved and not slander an artist standing. By addressing the audience as educated and non formal I feel the effect that came out was useful and productive in my magazine as it worked well.

Question 6

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

Well all of my work went like this. I'd take photos using a Canon camera, other times I had to use a Dazzle DVC 170 to take in-game or in-move screenshots.

then I'd see which photos would be worth using and select the best looking photos. I'd then open these photos using Photoshop CS3,

then when I was done I would save them in a JPEG file so that they could be uploaded to my media blog at blogspot.

The technology I used to create these magazine pages and edit them was Photoshop CS3, the software allows for advanced editing and cutting of images and allows you to create realistic magazine pages with believable effects. I obviously used props, and the laptop seen on the front page and double spread was my laptop to write up all this work and edit it. Here is a screenshot of me whilst I was editing one of my prototype front page pieces. I’ve learnt how to extensively edit with Photoshop being able to add in and sculpt images using effects and tools. For example I used the effect ‘wind’ on the title in this shot, making it seem rusty and beaten but later removed it because I didn’t like how it obstructed slightly.

Question 7 (School Magazine Comparison)

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

When I first made the school magazine it was with Microsoft Publisher, and it was rather pathetic. It was tacky, and looked ridiculous compared to a real magazine, the image was badly used and the subtitles were poorly edited. When compared to my front page you can tell the difference is quite drastic.

As you can tell from these two different magazine contents and front pages, they are majorly different. The school magazine compared to the fully edited Photoshoped version of the LINK magazine is poor. The use of Photoshop really helped make the magazine stand on its own as a major magazine, I've learnt from the school magazine how to make a proper magazine front page and contents. Using skills such as simple things like lighting and how to make the colours not clash, along with a detailed colour scheme really helped to establish the magazine. The school magazine lacked a lot of this, being plain and dull. With this I learnt that the front page has to be an instant eye catcher, to stand out amongst other magazines. In order to make it stand out I had to learn a lot about Photoshop and how it worked, so I spent time watching tutorials on the internet about how to use Photoshop. Now I can use special effects, make backgrounds transparent, blur, and even make the image glow or dark.

In Conclusion I've overall got a lot more experience in Photoshop and how to edit and create professional images so much I can now make professional magazines. I managed to download new fonts, new tools, and even create spectacular scenes with some basic images.