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

Looking at my preliminary task School Magazine it is clear that it is not as good as my final product. This is because I only used one type of editing software to make it (picmonkey) and made it in collage form with everything separated, no colour scheme, and no general organisation to the page. While simple, I liked it at first because it was set out in a magazine form and was a good first try at making anything digitally. When making this I didn't have the skills that I have obviously now developed, which is clear through the lack of proper logo, the mixed backgrounds, the plain fonts, and the lack of colour scheme.

I have learnt through the development of making my magazine is how to combine skills across various editing tools, how to make my own logo, use a colour scheme, position images, and make my magazine look realistic and able to sell. I also learnt how to use my TA so that it is tailored to them, whereas for my prelim magazine I had no specific audience (except for schoolchildren) and that shows through the mixed techniques all over the cover.

My development of skills made while creating my product is obvious in comparing the two covers. It shows that I learned how to develop techniques and use them in the correct context and how to apply them to what would be attractive to my TA.

The quality of my images differs too- on my school cover I used my phone camera which, when stretched to fill the page, lost its quality. On my music magazine cover, while still not HD, the image is a lot clearer and stands out a lot more. On the school cover the artificial lighting was classroom lighting, so it wasn't bright enough or good enough. On my music magazine cover I used stage lights to put all the focus on the artists and less on the rest of them room so they were well lit (I would have used natural lighting but it was winter).


Comparing my cover pages you can see how I learnt to apply a transparent image onto a background instead of having to use the existing one, continue a colour scheme, and organise the writing so that it is readable and formatted to fit on the page.

I feel that through making my final product from where I started with the first product I have been able to edit images properly without just leaving them as is, organise the graphology of a page, use coverlines appropriately, avoid overcrowding a page, and generally make my magazine worth selling while still fitting in with the conventions of a magazine. Looking back at my preliminary task I can see how much my skills have been able to develop over time and how much I have learned and been able to apply while I went along, especially while keeping my target audience in consideration.

From the start when making my prelim magazine I had thought it would be simple and easy to create a magazine, but by using the blogging process what would have turned out to be and extremely hard task was made slightly easier through being able to post every thought and detail that went into it. I have been able to identify any errors that I discovered as I went along and was able to correct them easily. I gained feedback a couple of times on places I would have struggled with without using my TA, such as choosing a title, and I have been able to reflect on that positively.

Evaluation 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This was originally uploaded on Soundcloud, but the website has gone down and no longer works.
The audio is quite fuzzy as my microphone wasn't high quality, so here is a transcript of what I said:

Technology I used when making my product were:

-Memory stick
-iMac
-Laptop
-Pixlr
-Canva
-Nokia camera FZ45
-Nokia Lumia 520
-Picmonkey

These all had varying degrees of success, such as using my Nokia Lumia phone and Picmonkey in the preliminary task. My phone did not have a good quality camera which affected the images on my prelim task as it looked very unprofessional. Furthering that on Picmonkey I used the 'collage' feature that meant everything was in set spaces and it looked less like an actual magazine cover, something I realised I definitely could not take through to the main task. There also weren't many options for editing images how I wanted on Picmonkey, hence me choosing to use Pixlr for the editing of my actual images. As I used a much better camera they were a high quality and I could zoom into them to ensure I edited them to the best they could be, especially when making them transparent because hair is difficult to remove a background from. When constructing my magazine I worked mainly on my laptop at home because I had the most access to it and I know how to use it better. When blogging my process I wanted to be able to use the iMacs at school because the laptops are temperamental but Blogger didn't usually work on them, which was a problem. I learnt to work on technology that wasn't the best but still managed to complete my final product to a high quality. I used a memory stick to save all of my work on as I was then able to transfer it between computers which made me time efficient. Overall from the preliminary task to the final product I learned a lot about what technologies suit me and my work best and I was eventually able to work with them to the best of my ability.

Evaluation 5: What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

There are two major publishing houses that publish in the West and the UK, and they are Prometheus Global Media and BAUER.  BAUER publishes magazines such as Kerrang, so they are used to working with highly popular magazines and a very wide range of genres, so they would be useful for my magazine to get it across a wider audience and be able to sell it in bigger stores such as WHSmith.

According to http://www.billboard.com/footer/biz, Billboard is owned by Prometheus Global Media. According to the website, PGM has leading assets in music and entertainment.

For this reason I have decided that PGM would be the best institution for distributing my product, because it has experience in making a magazine of my genre extremely popular and getting it out into a wider market, which is what I want to happen to my magazine. If I had a niche product I would consider using a private publishing house, but because I want to have a wide market a large industry publishing house would be the best option.

Evaluation 4: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The most effective way of seeing how much my product uses/develops/challenges conventions is by doing a comparison between mine and existing magazines of the same genre.

The definition of convention is :

When applying this definition to magazines- specifically, music magazines- the conventions are characteristics that are seen on almost every issue of the magazine of that genre, so the design and layout have generally the same theme. Characteristics vary depending on genre- for pop, conventional grouping would be something 'fun' about the colour scheme and design. On a heavy rock magazine, the conventions would be the opposite.

As my magazine is Korean Pop, my magazine leans more to the fun and light-hearted side.

Looking at different Korean Pop magazines, some have overcrowded cover pages filled with text and a large main image. My preferred convention style is like Billboard- a simple layout but still obviously within the Pop genre.

CONVENTIONS OF AN EXISTING K-POP MAGAZINE

CONVENTIONS OF MY MAGAZINE

It is clear through this comparison that my magazine follows the 'normal' conventions of a Pop magazine quite closely, but also travels slightly into my own creation.

I think that my magazine uses the conventions and forms of normal and current magazines, and I have kept it within what is usually seen in Pop magazines so that when readers see it on a shelf they will know exactly what genre it is, and make buying easier because they can find what they are looking for easily.

Evaluation 3: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The definition of a social group is:
A group of people that shares some social relation- for example: age, gender, interests, class.


My media product was designed to have a wide audience, but mainly targeted at young female adults aged 17-25. I based my magazine off Billboard and Céci which have the same target audience, therefore giving me a better idea of how my magazine should be designed in terms of house style and what social group it should be targeted at. I don't think an audience much older than my target would enjoy reading my magazine because it could come across as cheesy and too young for them in terms of age of the artists and modern design.

The model I used as my artist is age 17 and a fan of K-Pop and Korean culture, so they fitted perfectly with my target and genre boundaries. The ethnicity barrier is mostly being Korean people but as K-Pop has a lot of inspiration from the West the barrier has lessened and the genre is more open to other cultures, including Caucasian people as I have included in my contents page. However to create a wider audience I would improve this by widening the ethnicity of my magazine further.

My magazine is not too cheap but also not too expensive; this makes it accessible to people between the ABC1 and C2DE classes. This further widens my audience because K-Pop does not limit itself to class and is designed to be accessible for everyone.

Evaluation 2: How did you attract/address your audience?

How my cover page attracts and addresses my audience:




How my contents page attracts and addresses my audience:




How my double page spread attracts and addresses my audience:

Evaluation 1: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would be the audience for your media product? from charlotte_media

(made using powerpoint and slideshare)