2. I chose to make a pop music magazine for my media product
and the conventions of these are as follows:
The masthead will always stand out and will have a relation to music:
I believe that my magazine follows this convention to some extent because
although my masthead stands out by making use of the bold colour pink, the
title of my magazine isn’t related to music at all.
The cover lines will have some connection to the featured artists of the
magazine:
I believe that my magazine completely follows this convention because my
featured artist is the fictional Lucy Westwood and the cover line that goes with
it is ‘Lucy Westwood talks the Brit Awards, albums and fame!’
The background image will show a band or artist who will please the
magazine’s target audience:
The artist featured on my front cover and double page spread, was intended to
be a less well known pop artist who is recording their first album and starting
to become famous. I believe this will please my target audience of teenage
girls because they very often like to keep up with the biography of rising stars.
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
3. The colour scheme will relate to the gender of the target audience which
will be continued throughout the magazine:
My colour scheme consisted of pink and black, along with splashes of blue and purple.
I believed that pink and purple would relate to my target audience of teenage
girls, because stereotypically, these are colours that girls like.
The title of the magazine is repeated on the contents page along with the
date to prove it’s the latest issue:
I haven’t repeated my magazine title or the date on my contents page. However I did
include the issue number on my front page as I thought this would be more
appropriate and indicate to my audience that it was the latest issue to encourage
them to buy it.
The contents page will include a variety of numbers with subheadings
underneath to give a clear idea of what’s inside:
My contents page included various page numbers along with a catchy phrase to
encourage the audience to read the article.
The image will be of a band or artist of the same genre of the magazine:
The main image on my front cover is of fictional pop artist Lucy Westwood who the
magazine is interviewing, which is also of a pop genre. The secondary image is of Liv
Daniels, who I created as another pop artist who is working on a music video.
The double page spread will feature a well-known band or artist, who also
usually appears on the front cover:
My double page spread again features Lucy Westwood, who isn’t as well-known as
other pop artists at the moment because she has just started her career. She also
appears on the front cover as the central image.
4. My magazine represents particular social groups such as
teenage girls as being fun loving, interested in gossip and
care-free.
To represent them in this way, I used colours such as pink and
purple in my magazine because these are generally
stereotyped as being fun colours, reflecting the supposed
personalities of the social groups I was targeting.
HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
5. A publishing company would distribute my product such as Egmont. Even though
they focus more on children’s books, I believe that this would be a good company to
publish my magazine because it already publishes a successful pop music
magazine, We Love Pop.
However, because Egmont already has a well established magazine with a similar
target audience to my magazine, it could be difficult to break into the market under
the same company.
This means that it could be more sensible to have IPC Media publish my magazine
because it creates content for multiple platforms across
print, online, mobile, tablets and events. Across these platforms, it categorizes its
content under the following headings:
Country Pursuits & Equestrian
Fashion & Beauty
Home Interest
Lifestyle
Sport & Leisure
Teen
Women’s Weekly
Young Men & Music
The teen category has only one magazine so IPC Media could potentially be a good
company to publish my magazine. However, it faces the same issue as Egmont does
because this magazine is also aimed at teenage girls.
WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT
DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?
6. To select my target audience I looked at other music
magazines focusing on pop. Because many of them featured
female artists or male artists stereotypically popular with
teenage girls, I decided that because I wanted to make a pop
magazine, then teenage girls would be the best target
audience.
Teenage girls are stereotypically interested in pop music and
this stereotype can also be extended to an interest in fashion
and celebrity gossip, which are both conventions of music
magazines aimed at teenage girls. Because my magazine
would also include articles on both of these, this is an
additional reason for choosing this target audience.
WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?
7. This issue of ‘Billboard’, an American music
magazine, features Justin Bieber, a Canadian
singer popular amongst teenage girls
This issue of ‘Top of the Pops’, a music magazine
published by Immediate Media Company, features Cher
Lloyd, an English singer -songwriter who became famous
after finishing fourth on the seventh series of ‘The X
Factor’
MAGAZINE EXAMPLES
8. This issue of ‘We Love Pop’, a music magazine
published by Egmont, features Cheryl Cole, an
English recording artist who embarked on a solo
career after splitting from girl group Girls Aloud
This issue of Blender, an American music
magazine, features Taylor Swift, an
American country -pop singer-songwriter
MAGAZINE EXAMPLES
9. Because my audience was teenage girls, I used pink on the
front cover to attract their attention. I did this because
stereotypically, teenage girls like this colour.
Additionally, I used a direct form of address by positioning my
front cover artist, Lucy Westwood, so that she was looking
directly at the audience. This breaks the fourth wall and
makes the reader feel as though the artist is looking at
them, building a connection.
HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR
AUDIENCE?
10. I have learnt how to use Adobe Photoshop, which is an image-
editing software which can drastically change an image. I
used it to edit out the background of my images, but nothing
else because I felt the images looked good without any
additional editing.
I also learnt how to use Adobe Fireworks, which is a vector
and vector graphics editor. I used this to construct the pages
of my magazine, because I felt it would be simpler than using
Photoshop.
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES
FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS
PRODUCT?
11. I feel that I have learnt more in depth about the conventions
of magazines in general because I was unsure of where to
position certain things on my school magazine (my
preliminary task).
I also feel that I have learnt more about backgrounds and
what suits certain genres – looking back I realize that using a
brick wall as a background didn’t look good for my school
magazine.
Additionally, I feel that I have learnt more about clothing
because although my model looked good in the clothes for my
school magazine, I realize now that they didn’t fit in with the
genre.
LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE
PROGRESSION FROM IT TO FULL PRODUCT?
