Jordan Brady Music Magazine Project

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

My front cover features a title, a headline and a tagline just as a real media product would. It also features a barcode and price tag, which is essential to any from of magazine and various other media products. Instead of using one main image on my front cover, I merged four together and used various elements as backgrounds so that they were distinguishable. I also did this for my double page spread, where I took 3 pictures and a background and merged them together. I kept my contents page very clean and simple, with only 2 photographs, this made it easy for the reader to find their selected page instead of losing concentration by being bombarded with a silly amount of photos. As in real magazines, I supplied a page title, page number and a brief description for every article, this would once again allow the consumer to identify what parts of the magazine they wanted to read and where to find them. For my double page spread, I decided to organise it by devoting one page to a large photo and a short description as well as a title, and use the othe side of the page for the main article. This adds a sense of preparation instead of the spread looking abstract with pictures and text littered everywhere. I also added a watermark image of the band logo behind the text, to prevent it looking bland. To do that I just added a fade effect to the picture and ordered it behind the actual writing.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My product represents the indie rock social group as being laid back and cool, hence the blue colour scheme used throughout, regarding my front cover, the various elements can show that although people can belong to the same social group, personalities can differ from being streetwise, cool, fiery and also being laid back. All my articles use 'proper' English with no slang as I didn't feel that it was needed for the style of writing.

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

A god way to distribute my media would be on any music-based websites, this is because my magazine is targeted directly at music fans, so the adverts would automatically be appealing. Also social networking websites such as MySpace could further promote my product, as it is now a basis for music to develop and should be no different with media products.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be teenagers who take an intrest in indie and rock music.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience by using bold and daring colours, with the models in my image being the same age range as my target market and also being a 'famous' band that readers would instantly be able to recognise. Although the picture is very busy, the band name is still easily distinguishable which would atract the reader. I also put names of other well known bands across the bottom of the front cover as well as competitions and posters, this would be another reason for the target audience to purchase the magazine.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

I have learnt that both cameras and computers play a vital role in making the finished product. A camera with a decent megapixel is always better, the camera that I used was 7.2 megapixel, which in turn made my photographs clearer, more detailled, and could be 'blown up' without distortion, the camera also featured a red-eye removal tool which stopped any people in my photos having the problem of red eye. I use Macromedia Fireworks in order to piece together my product, this allowed me to edit my photographs by removing the background, as well as add effects and various other miscellaneous things to be added.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Judging by my prelim, my editing skill and creativity was not as good as it was for my final product, I learned how to use just one photo but stop the page from looking bland wih lots of unused space, I also learned about the importance of effects as well as using appropriate backgrounds and images as well as logos and fonts for my magazine. My preliminary looked bland as no effects such as drop shadow or outline were used, this in turn made the cover/contents page look very bland. My final cover utiliese the effects that I didnt previously use and they work extremely well and make my final product look eye catching as well as proffessional.