As I have already discussed my product is aimed solely at young women, this meant I had to challenge the conventions of music magazines (as they are usually aimed at a male audience). I wanted to lose the messy, overcrowded style currently used in music magazines. I opted for a white background instead ofthe usual black. My house colours were pastel blue and pink instead of the usual red, yellow and dark blue.
On making every page I had to think about what conventions I was going to use and which I was going to purposefully not use so I targeted my audience more. I have refered to them individually when discribing each page see ... 'Change...', ' Photos, photos, photos and a doublepage spread!', 'How I got my layout!!' and 'It's all about the change and the challenge'
How does media product represent particular social groups and how did you address that social group?
My media product represents and independent creative female audience. They will probably be University educated (if old enough) or full time students. They will be interested in discovering new things - I see my magazine as a magazine that people not only buy but will collect. I didn't want to copy current music magazines, I wanted to create something new and original. I did, however, take influence from other magazines as I needed to know what would actually sell.
My magazine represents them through the artists included, the layout that challenges conventions and the mix of formal and 'fun' language. For instance I have split my interview into 2 parts; the first asking serious questions related to the artists career and the second with more infromal questions (from the readers) e.g. what is your favourite cheese? ... this is more jokey and in the style of a popworld (tv show - see video bar for example) interview.
What kind of media instatution would distribute your product and why?
Having researched publishers of music magazines I have discovered that as my magazine is aimed at such a niche market many of the well-known publishes such as EMAP or Haymarket probably wouldn't publish it. I therefore looked at some independent music mgazines and found out who published them!! Many magazines such as Blag (that I have referenced) are self published, so this is an option. But I decided to 'look into' some smaller publishing companies such as 'Fleeing from Pigeons'.
'Fleeing from Pigeons' was origianlly a record label that has started a new publishing arm that now publishes music magazines. They focus on sustainable, recycled and affordable magazine publishing (this is something that will appeal greatly to my readers). They currently publish 'Bearded Magazine' (shown below) - this is an independent music magazine. I think that my music magazine would fit well into there collection.
Bearded magazine and its publisher Fleeing from Pigeons is proud to announce today that it has bought industry flagship music weekly New Musical Express from IPC Media.
The deal, finalised by Fleeing from Pigeons owner Gareth Main and IPC in the early hours of 1st April is set to regalvanise the struggling weekly, who has seen its circulation tumble over the past decade.
“This is a great opportunity for us to instill some pride and quality journalism back into one of the world’s most recognisable music magazine brands,” said Main in a statement today. “Bearded and New Musical Express have both always been passionate about supporting small, up-and-coming artists and it is a great time for the two titles to start working hand-in-hand to really give unprecedented coverage to independent artists.”
More information will follow in due course, but the first, Bearded NME, featuring a new logo also unveiled today, will be published on 26 August.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing a product?
To make this product I had to learn about several technologies. Firstly for the photographs I had to have the ability to take photographs (so use a camera) and then upload them onto the computer. Once on the computer I had to edit these photos using photoshop ... see 'S-hoot.' for more details. I then had to understand how to use many different aspects of Microsoft Publisher so that I could actually layout my mgazine as I wanted. I had to be able to intsert pictures, textboxes and lines. I had to be able to input my text and then format it into columns, change the font, the colour and the size.
We also had to obviously understand how to use blogger... As well as setting up an account we had to maintain a constant link with the technology (updating it regularly). I had to understand how to edit the layout of my blogger so it was easier to read, how to upload pictures and how to edit current post e.g. to correct spelling and highight changes.
I also learnt that technology can be inconsistent and you have to prepare for this. For example the fonts that I used to create my product were not available on the school system so I therefore had problems when it came to printing. I then had to start to save my work in several formats so that I could continue editing at home but could also print a current version at school. Also due to a lack of storage space on the schools system I had to become fimiliar with storing my work on a memory stick and transporting it between computers.
What have you learnt from the preliminary task to help you with the full task?
The preliminary task helped me learn all the skills I needed (mentioned above). From the preliminary task I learned that I had to focus more on who my target audience is and have a very clear grasp of what they will want. I also had to improve my understanding of layout - the school magazine looks too overcrowed in places. I also had to understand the importance of text size, as an audience won't buy a magazine thats printed too small to read!!
Design to final mag what happened?
When creating my final magazine cover, contents and double page spread I veered away from my original design. Part of the reason was that some of my ideas would have been too difficult to actually make look good and not tacky. I had to make sure that the final product actually looked proffesional - the design was not leading to this. So, I decided to stick to most of the basic elements of my design but change it were the result would lead to an overall better outcome.
When drawing on a page it is hard to envisage the restrictions created once you move it onto the computer. For example the inability to have pictures too close to text boxes without the formating messing up. Or that you didn't account for the fact the printer will cut the edges off your design. Also when moving a design to the computer often pictures will look smaller than you imagined, this didn't look good so I had to change the ayout to fit the pictures I wanted to use.
I also hadto change the design due to the pictures I was planning to take and the pictures I actually took. This was all due to the location of people I wanted to take pictures of. For example for my double page spread I wanted to have pictures of John Head in Liverpool town centre. But due to bad weather on the shooting days (and therefore awful light) it made more sense to shoot his pictures inside. We also had time restrictions as he had work commitments.
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