1. Evaluation Of My Music Magazine. Sam Titmarsh

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I have been trying to make my magazine as authentic as possible by have similar features and conventions of a real magazine. The use of images throughout the magazine is to some quality, they are clear to understand of what its trying to represent, e.g. bands and band members. The use of text used such as the masthead and article fonts are similar to what you may see in any music magazine, with lack of knowledge on developing a music magazine the fonts and text aren’t an equal quality but isn’t too bad in any aspect, it doesn’t look unprofessional but isn't of the best quality. The colour scheme is clear what its trying to follow, black and white with the minuet use of other colour, generally used in images. This may be different for most magazines but using the fact of having a colour scheme has some similarity to media products.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My music magazine is only really represented for one particular social group, for people who pay interest in the music industry and have a certain particular interest in the genre of rock, where as people of a different genre interest would not pay as much attention as they would of their favourite which they may follow. All contents have a certain way of attracting the certain social groups or interest of customers.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The closest media product that could be related in media institution and distribution would be the NME magazine considering it favours in advertising and selling music of the same qualities as mine does. Therefore, an appropriate publisher for my magazine would be IPC Media. They publish similar magazines as to my product, magazines that are modern and display similar genres of music such as NME magazine. IPC Media have a tradition in distributing successful and popular magazines. By having my product distributed by the same company is showing how my product is popular and successful. I feel my magazine could be published by IPC Media because it follows a similar professional look to the magazines that are distributed. The styling and format of the magazines are very similar between my product and NME, they cover similar genre’s of artists as well. I therefore feel that IPC Media is the perfect distributer for my magazine product. I would also consider free online distribution as this may be a good way to promote interest in the magazine to begin with. The Internet targets a similar demographic to my target audience so therefore I would be attracting an appropriate audience and interest would hopefully be generated. If this was successful, I could then look to charge for subscription or pay-per-view online as well as selling in shop retailers.

5. Who would be the audience for your media product? The music magazine is generally designed at a specific favouritism in genre and age groups, I have produced a Rock music magazine named under “Rockafella” which would be only aimed at people who have a particular interest in this media product, age is vital too as it has modern up beat interests inside, not only must you have a knowledge and interest in this type of music, people will have to be aware of the music and common things that appear to bands and their music. So the age range for my magazine would potentially be 16 years +.

6. How did you attract/address your audience? I attracted my audience by using what you may see on a monthly magazine with similar conventions, such as a large image on the front cover representing the main article within the magazine to attract certain audiences who have an interest in the band members and their music. Colours are what you may compare with a certain audience in a music article, without a certain colour scheme it wouldn’t help the presentation therefore making it less likely to attract my audience. Striking text, such as the masthead should stick out and catch the customers/audiences eyes so it makes them interested in the article.

7. Audience Feedback. In order to establish the success of my magazine I carried out a questionnaire, asking twenty people in total. 15 people said the masthead was memorable and helped define the magazine. 12 people thought the colours were used in the right way and somewhat attractive. 18 people thought the content was enough and appropriate for the genre. 17 people thought it was great success. afrench@elycollege.co.uk

8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? The two pieces of software I used throughout producing my magazine is Publisher and Macro Media Fireworks. Publisher was making the magazine itself, it was good software to use as it made it clear what would be better on the page for images, text and colour. The development of these features are key to making my magazine authentic meaning, the text I have chosen specifically helps brand the professional look, colours too also compensate for this. If the colours that were chosen not correspondent to the target audience or house style, it would then look unprofessional to the audience. Images are edited in Macro Media Fireworks, this software was used massively to help remove unneeded parts of the image, such as the background behind the required image.

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Almost everything has been changed, things such as images, layout, text, fonts, and colour scheme. I have learnt that it didn’t look like a professional piece of work it originally started as but applying different features soon made it look a whole lot better. Editing images were needed so the background could fit round the image and back it stand out. The colour scheme also needed improvements as originally the colours were not of a great choice or standard. Black and white became my final colour scheme for my music magazine and certainly fulfils what is needed.