Evaluation - Question 4

Question 4 Who would be the audiences for your product?

Before creating my product I had to build up a picture of who my audience were so that I could then appeal to them as there was no good going blind into creating a product as you would end up creating a product that nobody liked or wanting to read about. Last year I researched different organisation to see what style of product they were offering and to see what type of audience would be interested, this gave me an idea into how and what I was going to create and so once I was happy with my product I decided to use a social networking site to ask friends what they thought about my product.

The audience for my product would be 16-25 year old and the reason for choosing this age range of people is because this is the typical age range people would buy and read a magazine and this is also the age range people want to find out about different things in the music industry as typically from that age onwards they start to read more intellectual things such as newspapers as they need to know more things about their local area as they want to settle down buy a house.

In more detail the types of people who would be interested in my product would be people who like to read about chart music artist, this is normally woman as I have included Emeli Sande as my double page spread and I doubt many men would want to read or be seen reading an interview about a woman’s success.

S you can see throughout my product I have used people from the same age range as my target audience as I felt that by using people from my target audience, this would be a good way for my audience to build up a relationship/connection with what they are reading and what they are doing with their lives, potentially reading about what they could do in the future.

My target audience for my product would be around 14-25 years old, I have chosen this age range as this is the typical age range of people who would be interested in buying a magazine as anything below this age and they would probably be more interested in going out with their mates whereas when you reach 14 years old you want to know what's going on in the celebrity world as well as going out with friend. People over the age of 30 years old may want to know what is going on in the celebrity world however they are more likely to buy a newspaper than a music magazine.

My audience would probably be mostly female as I have used articles that would stereotypically interest the female audience, for example the rise to fame for Emeli Sande, Beyonce performance and Justin Timberlake coming back to the music.

 This would be an example of my audience member as she is a young 17 year old, female, interested in chart music, enjoys reading magazines and finding out what celebrities are doing at the moment. From this information I can summarise that she would be potential customer for my product because of the interest she has in music I feel that she would want to read and learn about all the goings on in the world of celebrities and so this would be one of the perfect ways for her to enjoy my magazine. I understand that there are other magazines out there which could entice my audience however this is a new product and so having that new quality I can use this is entice new customers/my audience.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3 - What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

As the style of my magazine has not differed greatly from my product last year I feel that the same institution would still be appropriate in distributing my product as I feel that IPC is a company that would value my product as they already have a product similar to mine, NME and although that may be a conflict of interest in having a product so similar however I feel that with the two magazines, NME and my magazine product, they are worlds apart in every sense of the world for a start NME has a completely different niche audience to me as I would like to appeal to people who enjoy chart music - pop and r&b where as NME seem to appeal to a more rocky style of music. These difference in music will separate competition however there will always be competition against other music magazines never mind what the style of music is.

One of the other things that would appeal to the institution  would be that this is a growing magazine and with the institution having a handle as to how the product might be distributed it is in their interest to help make it a success because if they were to make this magazine the best product on the shelves they would be credited as they are the distributors for my product and so my product getting good press would also generate good press for the IPC.

Evaluation - Question 2

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Example of professional product that represents a different social group that ihave described in the paragraph below.

Throughout my product I have tried to appeal to my target audience and in doing so are appealing and representing a particular social group as different social groups like different things for example people who like wearing black clothes, white make-up and listening to Slip Knot, they are not exactly going to want to read my magazine as the people in my magazine are not looking or sounding what they would ideally like to be looking or hearing about and so by simply distributing a product about a certain style of music you already appealing a niche social group.

For example in my front cover I have famous celebrities on the front that my audience would be interested in, the likes of Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and up and coming Emeli Sande. Even though these three people are all different and if you were to look at their fans you would think they would attract different people however my magazine is about getting a selected amount of information about celebrities and appeal it to my niche audience. If I were to describe my niche audience I would have to say that they would like chart music in particular pop and R&B, they would also be interested in fashion however this is not the main interest as they are reading a music magazine after all they are wanting information in music however the standard of clothing needs to professional as the well as the images as it is a professional music magazine and having images that have been taken in a house would not be acceptable as this is not conventional.

A product that I have found that uses the same genre style that I have chosen to use for my product.

From this example you can see that the difference between my magazine and the professional magazine although the person making the magazine, they have used the same genre as I have however we have both gone in totally different approaches as they seem to want to attract the younger audience, with sell-lines and pull-quotes like "I SNOGGED 17 GIRLS LAST SATURDAY" and "The Wanted's latest crush". These sell-lines and pull quotes are more geared towards attracting a younger audience and the other element of why I think this is because this magazine are using a collection of luminous colours: pink, blue and yellow, not something a 30 something would maybe liked to be seeing reading as me personally I would class it as being a teenagers magazine. 

The topics that are used in my magazine is going to appeal more towards woman especially my double page spread, as the article is about how a woman has tried and succeeded to fame, not something I think a man would typically be interested in nor want to be seen reading about.

Again the clothing used in my products are not designer and so would still be appealing to my target audience of working to middle class citizens.

Evaluation - Question 1

Question 1

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

Masthead

For my masthead I decided stay with the original I used last year as I felt the style would still work for the magazine I am re-doing as the target audience is still the same and so by keeping the same masthead would still appeal to them in the same way and the reason I continue to know this is if you are to look at other music magazines similar to my product for example NME and Q magazine you can see they continue to use the same colour palette as they did last year.

Yet again the same as last year I felt the positioning of the masthead would continue to look effective and professional if the masthead was partially behind the model, and as the front cover has minimal changing it was just a case of changing the image and tweaking a few other adjustments.

Images

The images are all new from last year as I felt that these were one of the weak points of my magazine and as it came around to re-doing my work my idea for what I wanted my images to look like had also changed. I have taken much of my inspiration from the magazine called YOU, this is a magazine linked to a well known newspaper and with the style and layout something I found appealing and inspiration for my product I felt this was ample enough information to use this for inspiration.

My images as a whole, in my opinion, seem to reflect the mood I am trying to convey in my product as the front cover image show a model looking relaxed, staring directly at the camera. This is not only a conventional image to use but also a very clever way of enticing people into the magazine because when using a image on the front cover if a model is looking directly at you, when you look at the magazine it gives the illusion that it is looking at you and so draws you in, as well as the appearance of the magazine.

The images on my contents page are a mixture of styles as I have used a big image of a model wearing a eye catching scarf and a simple white scarf to entice readers into reading the remainder of the magazine as I feel although the magazine isnít about fashion however feel that if I can create something eye catching it can draw people in, for example look at NME/Q they use images of band members wearing leather jackets and long hair, this is going to impress and appeal a niche audience and by using this technique in my magazine I feel I am again following the conventions of a magazine. The white shirt could symbolise the white of the page and then the interesting colours from the scarf could represent the interesting information that is then on that page. Looking more technically about the significance of the image could be that the white represents purity and truthfulness from my articles and the purple (although not my colour palette however when producing a contents page it is often more professional/conventional if you donít have the main colours using the colours from you magazine as then the magazine seems to look to clean and calculated and all you want is for your readers to simply enjoy the magazine. The other images I have used on my contents page were images that I have created to represent CD covers as I thought it would look to have a strip of albums that represent different artist and I would be another way for readers to have a visual example of the people who are going to be shown in the magazine, which is another convention I have used in my product.

Font

I am not strictly following conventions when it comes to the use of font as I am using 3 different fonts on my product however feel that three different choices of font is practical enough as you need to co-ordinate different sections of the magazine with different styles and I have decided to block them off by using different font rather than bold lines which might ruin the effect of the magazine.

The masthead is something I wish to continue using the same font for the masthead however decided to have a look over some of the other choices I was thinking about last year:

Cambria (body) - TODAY

Ayuthaya - TODAY

BIG CASLON - TODAY

COURIR - TODAY

DIDOT - TODAY

FUTURA - TODAY

LETTER GOTHIC STD - TODAY

LITHOS PRO REGULAR ñ TODAY

MENLO - TODAY

MOACO - TODAY

PRESTIGE ELITE STD BOLD ñ TODAY

BRITANNIC BOLD ñ TODAY

Gill Sans MT ñ TODAY

Lucida Calligraphy ñ AaBbCc

Again, I decided to use Futura as this font seemed to work the best on how thin I wanted my text to look on my product, the thinness of the text is to suggest cleanness and simplicity and after looking back through other magazines I can see that by using this style of font I would still be conforming to conventions as other organisation use this style for example Q magazine.

Different from last year I have decided to use Gills Sans MT for the sell-lines con the front cover†and the reason for this change is because I felt that the text looked better on the page and by adding a drop shadow to the font they seemed to have a more professional style to the rest of the front page.

I have decided to use Plantagenet Cherokee for the big Emeli on front cover as I felt that using a big text as well as a different style of font would attract readers to the name of this new artist. When using different font I have tried to use it so that it would make a statement rather than just using a different font here and there and this way it will help me to focus the audience eye on what I want them to see, which is a conventional technique used in professional magazines.

Content

I have followed conventions when it comes to the content of my magazine and have even changed the whole of my article for my double page spread as I felt the style of text I was using would not be appealing to my audience as it was more of a younger audience as it was a questions and answer set up and so decided to look at other pieces of text to gather ideas of how I could improve my product and decided to use a more informative style of text where the reader gets told the information but in such a way that the audience feels part of it for example when introducing the artist I will describe where the artist has just been doing as so they can build up a picture as to what, when and how the interview took place.

The main conventional that I am following is that I am doing a music magazine and I am including information relating to music in my magazine.