Who would be the audience for my media product?

I have aimed my magazine ‘Rave’ at Teenagers who are interested in a range of different genres, such as electronica, rock, dance, hip hop and drum n base. My magazine focuses on a selection of genres in hope of attracting more buyers. Before designing my magazine I carried out pre – production audience research. In response to this I chose to design my magazine for teenagers between the ages of 16 to 18 year olds as research showed me that 40% of the current music magazine readers are of that age.

How did I attract them?

To attract my target market group to my magazine I had think about two main elements, what contents it included and how the magazine is presented.

To see what I should include in my magazine I asked the following questions in my questionnaire:

What is your favourite band or artist? People are more likely to buy the magazine if it includes someone they like or recognise which they can relate to. From this I found that my target audience like a range of different genres so I decided not to just focus on the one so I get a wider audience.

Where do you listen to your music? How to you listen to your music? By knowing this I can talk about music forms relevant to them. For example if they listen to live music at concerts, I can give information of up and coming gigs and festivals and how to get tickets. Also it is no use in giving information about CD charts when they are more likely to buy/download MP3s. My results show that the majority of my target market enjoys listening to music at home either on MP3 players or computers.

What do you want from the music magazine? The results show that the TGM want band and concert Info. This could be in the form of Band interviews, fact files, concert dates, concert reviews. For my magazine I decided to do a double page spread on ‘Harry Houdini’s’ first live gig. This gives the best of both for the reader as it tells you about a new artist and the concert.

For my magazine to sell it needs to catch the reader’s eye on the shelf. So I new how to catch my Target Markets attention I asked them:

Do you currently read a music magazine? If so which one? If they are already reading a magazine then they must like how it is presented. Results showed that some of the TGM were currently reading Kerrang, Q and NME. So when designing my magazine I took aspects of their layouts and put them into my design so that I would hopefully attract the Target Market.

What is your favourite colour? I gave the options of blue, green, red, yellow, black and white. Results showed that the most popular were green, red and yellow so I used them in my magazine. When I made the logo I included them to try and make it stand out and more eye-catching. The colour scheme runs through the whole magazine. I mainly used them to emphasise Headings and pictures.

I also had to consider the price I sold the magazine for. It had to be affordable yet cover the costs to make the magazine. In the questionnaire I gave a list of five prices all of which would cover the cost of producing the magazine. The price that got the most responses was £3.00 so that is what I will price the magazine at.

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

Before making designing my magazine I looked at numerous music magazines to pick up on some of their layouts, formats and designs.

I noticed on the front covers they tended to have an image of the lead story as the main focus on the front page with its own title to stand out against the rest of the headlines that were placed down the margins of the page. The main image sometimes would overlap with the magazine name and cover part of it up.

The contents pages seemed to have a more conventional lay out with several images on one side then a list of the contents on the other. The list of contents was broken up in to sections such as News, Feature and Reviews.

All the double page spreads seemed to have a large title with plenty of images that related to the text to break up the writing to keep the reader interested and also quotes were picked out from the text and enlarged to catch the reader’s attention.

The magazines kept a very similar theme running through all three of these sections. This included font, imagery and colour schemes.

Looking at these forms and conventions of real media products inspired me and gave me good ideas which I have incorporated into my own media product.

How does my media product represent particular social groups?

The social group my magazine represents is teenagers in the 16 to 18 age group who are interested in music. It has been written and designed to appeal to my Target Market by using forms of text and formatting that they can relate to.

‘Rave’ hasn’t tried to appeal to younger children or adults. Young children will not like the amount of writing that the magazine contains and will soon get bored and loose interest. The magazine has been written in a laid back way to try and attract teenage readers. Adults tend to prefer a more formal style of writing so probably wont be interested in ‘Raves’ contents.

What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

There are many places I could sell my music magazine. The obvious places being local post offices and newsagents which allow the target market easy access to magazines as they do not have to necessarily travel far to get hold of them.  Also high street shops such as ‘WHSmith’ are know for selling magazines.

My pre-production audience research showed me that most of my potential readers are between the ages of 16 and 18 so selling my magazine in colleges would get my magazine more recognised and hopefully more desirable.

Teenagers of today are mostly interested in surfing the internet, texting there friends and watching T.V. As these things play such a big part in their lives, getting my magazine available through these forms could boost sales. To do this the magazine could be advertised on the T.V. with a telephone number to text to in order to subscribe to the magazine and get it delivered to your house. A similar process could be done with the aid of the internet; adverts could pop up on social sights such as Facebook, Bebo or Myspace. An alternative is to go on to the ‘Rave’ website and subscribe on there by filling in an order form.

These new ways of getting hold of a copy of a magazine should appeal to the target market as they use technologies that they are accustom to there for hopefully broadening the potential sales for ‘Rave’.

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

To create my design for my magazine I used a programme called ‘Adobe Photoshop’. I have had previous experience with this soft ware as I used to do graphic design for GCSE, so I new the basics but was still a little ruff around the edges. As I worked through this task I built up my skills, I learnt how to crop a figure from and image using the ‘Magnetic lasso tool’ which gave a much sharper finish to the image I wanted to use.

Another feature I didn’t realise Photoshop had before I started this task, was that when I resized an image I could do so without the picture becoming pixalated by clicking the ‘Commit Transform’ button.

During this task I learnt several skills that helped improve the quality of my magazine design. These skills can all be used again in future tasks as well as hopefully picking up a few more skills along the way.

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

For my preliminary task we had to design and make a school magazine, this was my first experience of magazine design. I had had previous experience of using the design software (Adobe Photoshop)  but I had never used it for application in making a magazine cover, which meant  my magazine ‘6^th sense’ was quite simple. Also when doing pre research and looking at magazines I didn’t have any specific school magazine that I could look at and pick out ideas from whereas with my full product the music magazine while designing it I looked through lots of magazines such as Kerrang, NME, Q…etc. This helped as I could see what conventions they used and use it to inspire me. Also with my full product because I was now familiar with Abobe Photoshop it made the whole process a lot quicker and I could also try out some more complex things, which in turn makes my magazine more eye-catching.

For my preliminary task my photography wasn’t very good. I took a limited number of photos and some were not taken with a plain background which made cutting the photos out in photoshop very hard and reduced the quality of the image. I learnt from this and for then full product I made sure I took plenty of photos so I could choose the best one for the job, and they all had plain backgrounds making the whole cutting process a lot easier.

My magazine is aimed at the sixth formers at the Howard of Effingham. Its purpose is to give information, news and let the 6^th formers no about past or upcoming events. 6^th Sense is aimed to appeal to the target market group by using lots of colour and advertising articles that they can relate to.

I have followed the conventions of real life magazines to make my magazine look professional. There are several factors I have done to do this:

• The title takes up a third of the page and stands out from everything else.
• I have a medium close up of a sixth form student on the from cover, this makes it known that the magazine is aimed at the sixth formers
• I have clearly listed some of the main article headlines down the left hand side to stand out to catch the target markets eye.

The contents page follows a similar style to the front cover as it includes similar graphics and uses the same font. The colour scheme is followed through from the front cover to the contents page.

The picture on the front cover is a medium close up of a 6^th form student. He is easily recognised as a sixth form student as he is in his own close.

Before I put it on the front cover I cut out the back ground so I was left with just his figure. I then cut off his body from the chest down, as the upper body was all I needed for the medium close up shot.

The student in the picture has relaxed body language and a cheerful smile, this gives the impression that he is enjoying himself; this gives the magazine a laid back, fun image.

My magazine title is in a distorted styled font; it has a bit of an urban feel. This will appeal to the target market as it is a cool image and as they are older and more street wise.

For the contents and the article headings I have used a simple bold font which is clear and stands out. To make each different article stand out even more I have made each one a different colour. I have written these headers in a bold clear font so that they stand out and are easy to read.

The text is relatively formal but is written in a slightly relaxed fashion. This is appropriate for the target audience because being sixth formers they are approaching the age of adult hood, where you are expected to be more grown up, but they are still young hence the laid back approach.

The magazine has a general colour scheme of a plain white background, with red, blue and yellow being used for some of the graphics and the headers. The colours connote the main picture on the front cover as the pupils t-shirt has similar colours. The colours are very lively so it works with the target audience as they are young and energetic.

On the front cover I used an image of a person with a mega phone this connotes that the students have a voice. I put the Howard logo on the cover of the magazine to show the identity of the school the magazine is for. To make the headers stand out I used boxes that followed the colour scheme.

On the contents page I have used the splatter of paint as I did on the front cover to carry the theme on.

Im am going to analyze the cover of one of the issues of ‘FHM’ magazine.

Anchorage text: ‘the kitty girls’ ties in with the picture as the name of the girl group on the front cover are called the pussy cat dolls.

Mode of adress: the girls and tiger in the picture are all directly looking at the reader, this makes the reader feel involed with the magazine as it gives the impression that it is adressing the reader. The tiger in the picture corespnds with the girls ‘wild and more ferocious’ lable, this will appeal to their male target audience.

Blurb: the barcode, date and price

Slogan: ‘the number 1 magazine’ trying to convince the target audience that this is the magazine you want.

Puffs: ‘Guns ablaze’ could be advertiseing that there is an article on guns inside. this will appeal to the male target market group.

Graphic feature: the pus sign above some of the puffs on the left hand side suggests that all these have been added in.