Media Evaluation
In this evaluation I am going to be explaining how I made my product and the challenges I have been to make this product.
My media product was a music magazine of the R&B genre. Throughout my magazine my colour-scheme consisted of three main colours; Grey, Black and White. I chose to use these particular colours as I wanted to make to pictures standout with a light colour to create a sense of diversity to highlight the mainstream readership of the magazine. All of the fonts that I have used on my R&B magazine as they are in bold and stand out on the page which attracts the reader. However, as most magazine use Serif font I decided to challenge R&B conventions by using Minimal SF fonts for all of the subheadings. My other pages e.g. contents page and double page spread feature article are all coherent of the colour scheme. All of my images are Medium close-ups (which is a common convention of R&B magazines), except for the image featured on my front page which is a long-shot. I decided to use a long-shot on the front page because I wanted to draw attention to my artists outfit and how it fit into the R&B convention.
The distribution of my magazine is totally based on the genre and as my magazine is a R&B magazine, there is not really a broad market that will be content in distributing my magazine. However my magazine promotes a sense of fun, and passion towards music therefore, I feel that institutions like urban music channels e.g. MTV Base and music stores e.g. HMV, newsagents and urban clothes stores will be contented to distribute my magazine.
The target audience of my magazine are males and females aged 15-19 but it is mostly girls. I wanted a unisex audience as I featured both male and female dominated articles on my contents page such as subjects on fashion, as well as interviews from R&B artists. Also, the colour scheme and layout of the magazine was quite unisex even though there were only images of females included. I also wanted to aim my magazine at those less-fortunate and make it enjoyable yet affordable for them. Additionally, I carried out a survey and the majority of my readers were of the above age group.
I attracted and addressed my audience through my bright colours and the use of my vivid images. As all of my Mastheads were in bold white font, with thick alignment around it- immediately attracted the readers’ attention. My structure of my project was clear and the text was spaced out and used a black font behind a light background. I also think that my contents page was clear when navigating the audience throughout the magazine. In addition, I made sure that my images (especially my front cover image) were bright and eye-capturing.
Technology was the main process of creating my magazine. I had to use serif to create the layout, structure and input the text into the magazine. I also had to use Photoshop for image manipulation and editing the image e.g: image cut out studio serif.
I also used an interactive blog to register my progress and explain how far I was getting on with the creation on my magazine. Additionally, the blog allowed me manage my time as it allowed me to see what needed to be completed and if there was any improvement to be carried out. I think I improved a great deal from the Preliminary task, especially with the use of technology. During the Preliminary task, I really did not know how to manipulate photos on Photoshop and serif was not so easy when someone like me who had not been on it but I got the hang of it in the end it was also complicated to use. However, after much practice and self-teaching, I began to test out various commands and edited nearly all of my images featured in my magazine.
From the Preliminary task, I have learnt how to use professional technologies like Photoshop and serif has from the start I didn’t know to create a magazine so in all I have learnt a lot to create professional media products. I have also learnt that the audience is the main target audience when designing/creating a magazine- everything depends on the audience and the genre of the magazine. Media magazine cwrk\Textual analysis- front cover of THE SOURCE.doc -I planned out the layout, structure and images of my final. I sketched layouts and titles for the front page so when I was ready to create them on serif Pageplus x5, I at least had a plan and the knowledge of how my final page was going to look. My further research consisted of me evaluating other magazines, taking notice of their use of; fonts, colour scheme, image sizes… The research was extremely helpful as I was able to refer to other R&B magazines for ideas on images and colour scheme. I also noticed a clear disparity between my Preliminary magazine and my Music magazine- none of the images that I have used in my Preliminary magazine were edited in any way, except for the one used for the front cover which was only cropped and converted to a Cream+white colour, whereas all the images in my Music magazine were manipulated i.e. added lighting effects…
Although I felt I had made quite a large improvement from the Preliminary task, I also feel that I could have improved some aspects of my real Music magazine. For instance, I feel I could have included more on the front page e.g. target audience magazine as some readers may have found the magazine a tad biased. However, I believe the overall product was quite successful when relating to the genre and target audience.
