EVALUATION: Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I presented my answer to this question in a video which you can find here
EVALUATION: Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?
I made a video about how my magazine pages represent women, you can find the video here.
EVALUATION: Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The two main choices for publishing my magazine are Bauer Media and Time Inc. Both are highly successful with a wide range of magazines currently available.
Bauer Media is the UK section of the Hamburg-based international Bauer Media Group, Europe's largest privately owned publishing group. Bauer Media itself offers over 300 magazines in 15 countries as well as online, TV and radio stations. Popular magazines published by Bauer Media include Grazia and Closer.
Bauer Media
Bauer Media is the UK section of the Hamburg-based international Bauer Media Group, Europe's largest privately owned publishing group. Bauer Media itself offers over 300 magazines in 15 countries as well as online, TV and radio stations. Popular magazines published by Bauer Media include Grazia and Closer.
Bauer Media publishes three music magazines currently, Q Magazine and Kerrang! are two of them. "Q" magazine is published monthly in the UK, and the brand expanded to radio and television after being successful as a magazine. "Q" also holds music awards annually. Kerrang! is a rock magazine which also expanded to radio and TV.
Below are magazines published by Bauer Media that could be competition for Revive, however none of them cater to the same audience as Revive. "Q" is aimed at men in their 20s; Kerrang! is aimed at teenagers, predominantly male; Grazia is aimed at women aged 25-35 and Mojo is aimed at older men interested in rock. As my magazine is indie/alternative-pop and aimed at young women aged 17-25 I don't believe it overlaps with any of these target audiences, nor does it contain similar content to these magazines.
Time Inc.
Time Inc. is a highly successful publishing company based in America with over 90 brands being engaged with by half of US adults each month. Time Inc. produces only magazines however the range is huge and successful.
Below is a glance at the "Entertainment" brands by Time Inc., the section of their magazines which Revive would fit into.
As you can see Time Inc. offers a wide range of entertainment brands, one of which is NME - highly successful music magazine which has recently been re-branded.
Conclusion
Both publishing companies are good options and they each have advantages and disadvantages. I have come to the decision that Bauer Media would be the best publishing company for my brand Revive.
Revive is about music first and foremost and therefore it would be highly useful to have links to the radio world as it means readers can be reached on multiple platforms. Alternative-pop is a genre under-catered for in radio and it would be brilliant to have a station linking to the content in the magazine - fans could find the magazine through the station and visa versa. I think this is fairly plausible as an outcome of Revive being successful as both Kerrang! and Q Magazine have radio and TV stations linked to the magazines. This is an advantage that would never be possible with Time Inc. as they only publish magazines.
Another advantage of Bauer Media is that it is based in the UK and Europe, so while Revive could expand to America, the focus would be in Europe and it would therefore contribute to the UK music scene without the mega-power of the US tainting its purity. That is, not to say that the American involvement would ruin it, but that British music fans tend to be very proud of pure British music achievement.
Revive also meets a different target audience than any of Bauer Media's other magazines, as I have explained. For this reason, I think Bauer Media should be interested in publishing my magazine as it would expand their readership. Currently their music magazines are entirely aimed at males so it would add a female readership.
EVALUATION: Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?
My target audience has developed over the course of the production of my magazine, I have explained this in a video which you can find here.
My original target audience information can be found here.
My original target audience information can be found here.
EVALUATION: Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?
I answered this question in the form a video, which you can watch here.
EVALUATION: Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I answered this question in the form of a video, you can find it here.
EVALUATION: Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The first page contains the main content of my answer, I have included it in written form below as it is not readable in the blog-image format.
I chose to present my answer to question 7 much like a magazine article, directly comparing my preliminary task and music magazine on the second spread.
The first page contains the main content of my answer, I have included it in written form below as it is not readable in the blog-image format.
"We undertook our preliminary task in first two weeks of the A-level course. It was challenging, but mostly enjoyable and it was good to test my skills. I didn’t know how to use InDesign, and I had only a weak grip on the basics of Photoshop but I would not stoop so low as to using Word and Paint, my usual allies in graphic design. This was A-level, it was supposed to be a challenge.
I enjoyed the photography element of the task, although I didn’t really know what I was doing. I used a tripod, which resulted in 90% of my pictures looking the same as each other, but I’ve learned from that. This time around I ditched the tripod so I could do dramatic low angle shots and lie on the ground and stuff. Some of my favourite shots were done this way. My feature article photo was taken right up against the wall – it never would have been possible with the hindrance of a tripod.
I learnt some valuable skills while editing the photo for my preliminary task – using the dodge tool to brighten the features, getting rid of hair roots, using the patch tool to cover up inconsistencies. However my editing lacked subtlety the first time around, so this time I focused on not making Alice – the model used both times – flawless, but on removing some flaws and making her look real. I achieved this through focusing on small changes and using overall tools like “Curves” which I discovered this time, to give the photo and overall polished look.
One of the main things I learnt was that little things make a difference to the overall outcome. In the preliminary task Alice was “playing” herself so it wasn’t too much of a problem if she seemed herself in the shot – things like the fact that we was wearing a wrist-full of bracelets didn’t matter too much. However for the music magazine shoot Alice was “playing” Cecelya – a music artist with a clearly defined genre and attitude. I wanted the shoot to look like there were seven people behind the camera not one. For a real magazine photoshoot there would be people in charge of wardrobe, hair, make up, props etc. all contributing to the final look – there would be no inconsistencies, no bracelets left on wrists. I really worked to make every aspect of the final pages work towards being a “real” magazine. An example of this is the little “Revive / 22” in the corner of the page, something I saw when flicking through a magazine, it adds a touch of realism to my pretend pages. This attention to detail was why I was perfectly capable of spending hours choosing fonts, because getting the right one does make all the difference.
My understanding of conventions has massively improved, mostly thanks to the hours and hours of research and analysis we did on existing texts. I am not only aware of conventions e.g. large all-caps masthead at top of page but why they exist e.g. because it’s the first thing the reader sees, it stands out, it is a brand etc. This has meant that I have been more assured in making my own decisions and could likely explain why I made any decision. At one point I was struggling to decide whether to place the issue number and price above or below the masthead, in the end I went for above because I have seen that more commonly on magazines and understand that this is because the information not important unless the reader wants to find it – therefore placing it above the masthead means it’s easy to find but doesn’t distract from the rest of the page.
I was proud of my preliminary task because I experimented, I am proud of my magazine pages because I learned from my experimentation."
