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

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

I designed my products in a particular way so that there is a strong use of continuity throughout. By looking at magazines such as Vibe and NME for inspiration I wanted to create a house style in order for my magazine to look professional and conventional. 

I created the continuity but adding similar texts such as my Lil'Red artist title to both pages of my magazine. I also did this featuring an artist in my magazine called Abbie. To follow continuity I made her name in the same font on the contents page as the cover page. I have followed the text throughout all three areas of the magazine. 

Aswell as text I have used a house style, this is shown through my use of colour. Apart from the competitions and small bits of highlighted text I have used red, white and black as my main colour scheme. This was because of my choice of outfit for my model, the makeup I used on my model and my inspirations of lady gaga's outfits. By studying magazines of my genre I look at things like how to produce a good photo, add blurbs and adding screamers to emphasise the expression of text. I applied these features to my work by adding things such as exclamation marks on my WIN! features. 

I have checked things like the page numbers of my magazine. I noticed in other magazines that conventionally the page numbers were allocated in a certain order, for example; the double page spread would not be put right at the beginning of the magazine, this would be seen later in the edition. For this reason I chose my page numbers to be 14 and 15 for my double page spread in order to make it look conventional to an existing magazine. 

By looking at existing examples of magazines like these;

I know how to set out a layout for a cover page, contents page and double page spread. I took my images of my model for my cover page bearing in mind that I have learnt the cover lines are conventionally put in the first third of the cover. This helped me understand how to compose my images well and produce a good final piece, my images are; 

The contact sheet shows how I did this. In order to fit one or two cover lines in the right third I positioned my model so that her shoulder was touching the right hand side of the cover image. I used this idea but changed my design by adding a plug in the right third instead of a cover line, I did this because it was near to my date and price line; this is eye catching for the audience and will encourage them to read further about the competitions. 





I used a medium close up of my model as this is the most common to use in a magazine. I learnt to understand what is needed for a magazine as I demonstrated this on my blog late 2012. This is demonstrated to the left. The amount of magazines that have a medium close up on the front cover is alot more than a close up or long shot due to the fact the eye contact engages the audience into reading the magazine. A medium close up allows the reader to see most of the models outfit and their face into detail.
I used a conventional issue number for my magazine cover underneath the headline to indicate to the public how many magazines have been produced from Plugged. 

I find that my contents page is my least favourite. I found this most difficult to construct in the style I wanted to portray. Conventionally I have added pictures on my contents page, these have page numbers on the corner of them to show the audience what they are looking at to co-inside with the artist titles etc. These are then showing the audience where to find the story they want to read quickly and easily. I added the Plugged headline that was featured on the cover of the magazine to the contents page, this is common in magazines however unconventionally I placed this at the top of the page in the middle, this was because it brings back the name of the magazine therefore it re-establishes this to the target audience. I put in my contents page an advertisement/plug inviting my audience to buy a years subscription for £24.00, this would be so that people can get it posted to their door without having to travel out and look for a distributor of the magazine. This would work particularly well for students who are at university and don't have money to travel, they would only have to purchase a one of payment. I used the same font throughout my contents page yet allocated the artists in the images their own title fonts. I also used a bold font on top of my features that states "On The Cover" to give abit more information on what the double page spread is going to be. 
Unconventional factors of my contents page are things like the page numbers of each feature. I have put the numbers at the end of each bit of information. This is so that they can read the information before deciding what page they want to visit to read more. I used a graphic at the bottom of the column that I duplicated on Photoshop CS5 so I could fill these in, in yellow and red. This is so that the colour stands out against the house style provided. This was my WIN feature which I applied screamers to so that it shows the importance of the competition and what they can win. This is featured in magazines such as Vibe and Company magazine. 

The double page spread imagery I used has been manipulated in order to follow usual conventions. I didn't like the images I took for my double page spread because of the top banner I wanted to put into it. Therefore I took an image from the portrait session and manipulated her hood into the picture. 

My double page spread also consists of an interview, to make this look conventional and professional like a normal magazine I added Q. and A. (question and answer) letters before each section. This is then showing the audience exactly which part they are reading. A main feature of magazines in adding a pull quote into the article. This is a selected amount of text that is made bigger within the writing to draw the reader in. I used the words "I never expected to become recognised" as my pull quote as the article is all about how my model has become a star in the last year. I used big names such as Usher to influence the reader as people like to know the latest news about celebrities. 
I added a social network column to the right hand side of the text on the double page spread. This consists of the link information so that the public can write about the article they have read. I have seen alot of social network icons and QR codes when looking at magazines, for example NME has one and GirlTalk also does. These are great and becoming very conventional for magazines to have. The use of the banner on the top of my double page spread isn't really conventional as I haven't seen this myself on any magazine I've read nevertheless I tried it in experimentation and liked the look of it. I wanted to do two versions on the banner on photoshop, one in red and one in white. This is to co-inside with my house style and model. I had my model wear a white collar so as a conventional feature I used white to interpret that. I added a background colour of red and lowered the opacity to a soft pink in Photoshop CS5 therefore it looked like a wash on the background. The box of writing is 'wrapped text' so that the writing wraps around the image I have on the double page spread. I created this in publisher so that I could follow the normal conventions of a magazine.

As Media Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
       - Prezi on previous post.

As my magazine is representing students from the ages of 16-24 I made a reader profile with the stereotypical objects a POP, mainstream artist would enjoy or own. I included Beats headphones and the guitar as these are both objects that are popular, alot of people know about and are keeping up to date with the music trend, this also works well in conjunction with my magazine title, Plugged, because if you are plugged into something the term usually means you have alot of knowledge about the newest information to come out about something. I have added an advertisement for a mobile app! This is because technology has become a rapid part of our world and will increase in popularity. The mobile app allows people on android, iPhone and blackberry to access the magazine without going to a store. This will increase my audience and buyers as they can be living or staying away from home and still receive what they want. This potentially gaining more customers for the magazine!

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

Due to my magazine being a music genre targeting chart lovers, a lot of younger people and teenagers are believed to be fans. My target audience is 16-20 years old, an age group associated with university and college students. With this in mind it would be appropriate to sell my magazine in stores nearby educational campuses.
Targeting mainstream audience stores such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons and Asda would be beneficial for distribution of the magazine as these are all easily accessible stores for the public.

If my magazine was distributed into small stores nearby educational sites I think it would get a lot of business due to students not having to travel along way to get it. If it was distributed in a large superstore like Tesco or Asda people may have to travel further to buy it however thanks to places such as universities offering free trips to these it is made available to get. I made the magazine a monthly buy due to this. An advantage on stocking the magazine in these stores is the possibility of it catching peoples eyes are they are shopping, this way intriguing more of an audience and the purchases being not so limited.  Following store research I found that Asda is a popular store currently located in almost every city. Asda having '528 stores and depots in the UK' are very well known across the region, nevertheless looking further into the research we found Tesco is the widest current branch over the UK. Gathering information from 'http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16676688' we can see that 'Asda is the UK's second biggest supermarket chain, behind Tesco'. Being the biggest supermarket chain of 2012, there is a better chance of the magazine being successful being sold where more people shop.

The table above from Wikipedia.com shows that in total as of 2012 Tesco currently have 2,975 stores across the UK, including the small express stores that they own. Choosing Tesco has more of an advantage on store sales due to the fact many locations such as towns or villages in the UK don't have a big enough population to support having such big stores such as Asda and Morrisons, therefore Tesco's will be put in place. This giving not only people in cities the advantage of buying the magazine but students in smaller locations aswell.  Asda is another good distributer of goods and has “over 18 million weekly shoppers” – your.asda.com.

Information says from the website that in 2010 ASDA has 374 stores in the UK, not including Walmart in America. Since 2010 the business has expanded and opened over 50 new stores just in the last year, these all impact on the distributions of magazines, as you have to choose the correct marketing. 

Consequently for my market genre of Pop Music, I think having a global brand such as Asda/Walmart would be more beneficial for my target audience as not only then does it make it accessible to students in the UK and members of the public but also it makes it available globally. This is a huge impact, as the artists featured in the magazine then don’t have to rely on social media to get their message out there. Universities such as Derby and Salford both make trips available to students to go shopping at Asda therefore it could apply to both the younger and older generations of my target market group.

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Music magazines are known to target their audience according to demographics. Using this understanding of demographics I chose to do the same thing and collect information. I posted the table of classes of our society on my media blog in order to make a decision on choosing a specific class to target my product to.

The table:

 

Targeting a music magazine is key and this is needed in order to piece the magazine together. The Genre I have chosen is POP therefore from information such as chart music and MTV the public are aware of what type of people purchase pop music. Through the 2000’s iTunes itself has had a major impact on the facts and audience of music artists; they are able to calculate where their purchases are coming from around the world, giving the artist an indication not only of age but location aswell.  Since the 1990’s POP has slowly developed to become a lot more mainstream through independent record labels within music such as artists like Duran Duran. Their target audiences are based on the fan base. This consists of a lot of teenagers; we know this from things such as reader profiles in music magazines. NME has a music magazine reader profile clearly looking at the statistics of their audience using demographic research. After studying the reader profile I collected information for my magazine and targeted the group I wanted to attract to my magazine. For my music magazine I have chosen a small demographic range for students age 16-20 both male and female. This is targeting potential students and people starting to go into new jobs after leaving university, these are within band E. As I have picked 'Pop' music as my genre this has alot of versatility within the genre that I used for the magazine to appeal to both sexes.

            A reason I chose the age range I did is because Group E in the demographic table shows little income, usually people between ages 16-20 are still in education. Whether this being college, sixth form or university money is limited and not as available as it is for working class people with a constant income. With the fees of education rising there is even more need for students to be saving money therefore pricing my magazine at £2.00 an issue is a good price to maintain. As well as looking at other magazine prices I also took a small survey myself, of students in the age range 16-18 to see how much the limit would be that they would pay for a music magazine. I have chosen also to have the magazine be published once a month, therefore if they bought an issue every month that is only £24 a year which is reasonable compared to magazines such as Vogue or Elle, fashion magazines. People pay up to £50 a year for these magazines, therefore students will find this alot more acceptable for a magazine purchase. 

After looking at the demographics of the magazine industry I started creating a reader profile of my own, I created this on the target audience I would have gained. If my magazine issue was a publicised there would have been a lot of on-going research to determine what would enter my reader profile.

The reader profile I created is based on my mainstream audience. The social networking, the apple products, fashion wear and local music symbols are all part of our modern industry. The life of technology and digitalization has over took our world and people of younger generations such as my target audience will be fully aware of these appliances. Having several schools and institutions that give homework and assignments via Web 2.0 gives my target audience knowledge on technology, in my opinion this will help to attract my audience and show them what type of magazine I have produced.