Overall I believe my final media product as a whole (cover, contents page and double page spread) were all a success in many ways.
My media product uses standard and necessary conventions of real media projects similar to itself. Such as; the layout, colour schemes, articles, and striking images. However I developed the basic layout of a young person’s magazine by, creating a unique, black and white front cover and contents page. I.e. everything is black and white, apart from the images of the young "celebrity stars". This is a subtle underlying message, that these stars are "the next big thing" or emphasises on how successful and important they are. The black and white colour scheme also conotates that the magazine is targeted at middle class young people. Finally as the black and white colour scheme is unique, it would simply stand out more on a shop shelf, and be more appealing to the eye, resulting in my magazine hopefully being more successful.
My media product represents my chosen particular social group (teenagers- mainly girls, interested in a mixture of hip-hop, r’n’b and pop) in a variety of ways. It does this through the striking images of “young” “attractive” people, bold oversized fonts, and particularly through the article titles. When deciding to buy a magazine, it is common knowledge that when judging on the cover alone, you take into account the main image and articles surrounding it. Therefore these components are crucial to “get right”, for a magazine to be a success i.e. sell well.
So when it came to choosing article titles I ensured I included names that would reflect the genre of my magazine i.e. Kanye West and Ne-Yo, also mentioning things such as myspace and the MTV awards, as these not only target my audience, but give an insight of the interesting content of my magazine.
Using the website www.ipcmedia.com/brands I found it particularly easy to research the existing music magazines not only in competition with mine, but to see average prices etc. For instance “Guitar and Bass” is sold monthly and costs £3.95, “NME” is sold weekly and costs £2.20, “Uncut” is sold monthly and costs “4.30”. All these facts and figures helped me further incorporate how much I would sell my magazine for etc.
The distribution of my media product would obviously be in shops, super markets, newsagents etc. as this is simply where the majority of magazines are bought/sold. However my media product could be advertised at concerts, particularly of the artists that appear in my magazine. This would endorse not only my magazine, but the artist in conjunction.
The majority of my target audience for my media product is teenage girls, with exceptions within age/gender. Also from my research I found that my target audience were mainly interested in a mixture of hip-hop, r’n’b and pop, therefore I tried to in corporate all three into my magazine. I addressed my audience with a questionnaire; asking questions about themselves, their interests and, specific details such as how much they prefer to spend on a magazine. All of the questions helped me to design my magazine, and gave me insight into what to include/not include.
Considering before constructing my product I had never used Photoshop before(!) I have learnt a lot! I.e. How to; create a new publication, insert photo's, add layers, work on the layers, deleting layers etc. I also learnt how to edit images within great detail i.e. changing the auto levels, colours and contrasts, cropping pictures, changing the filter of a picture e.g. "diffuse glow".
I also learnt how to download fonts from the internet using a website called www.dafont.com this was extremely helpful as there are thousands of fonts to choose from, for the specific brief that you may have.
Overall the feedback from my product was very positive, I noted some of the comments; "Very eye catching and bold! I want to read it!" - Rebekah Masters. "It looks very professional, and I like how its in greyscale." - Ross Nish. "The interview is really funny!! but the page looks abit plain." - Adam Magaughey. I took into account this particular comment, and added more detail to my double page spread, e.g an original orange border, and detailed lines under fonts, however I didn't want to over complex the pages, so I kept things "simple and sophisticated."
My preliminary definitely helped me to improve my final product, as when referring to it, you can clearly see what works and what doesn’t. Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel I have developed my designing skills immensely, and worked hard to create a more genuine/realistic magazine cover. Especially when cutting out a picture as I did an appalling job on my preliminary(!)
I have now learnt that using the “diffuse glow” tool, (and as my pictures were taken on a basic white background) the result was very effective, and I was particularly pleased with how the images turned out. I have also learnt since my preliminary that using necessary codes and conventions doesn’t immediately make a magazine credible/realistic. The design and intricate details of a magazine cover I feel are the most important in ensuring it to be a success.