DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In order to capture the correct image that I wanted my artist to portray, I used details from already famous artists and photo shoots that they are well known for. For example...

For my DPS shot, I have taken inspiration from a photo shoot from Jessie J that is the same photo shoot of her first album cover. I have Katy posing with something in her mouth.  I think that this increases the use of the male gaze because having an open mouth is seen as quite sexual.
Also, from this photo of Jessie J, I have taken the idea of lipstick. I like how Jessie has got lips that really stand out because of the colour. This was vital in my magazine as I have cloned the colour of Katy's lips on most of my pages to the masthead or title so it is important that they stand out.

  

I have taken inspiration for my contents page photo from these photos of Rita Ora and Miley Cyrus. I like the way that they have included their clothes into their pose. I like this idea as mostly, clothes are forgotten in photo shoots, whereas these two photos really do draw attention into the clothes.


From this photo of Rihanna, I have taken Katy's pose on my cover page. I really like how expressionless Rihanna's face is in this, so I took inspiration from it. I made Katy have her mouth open a little, like Rihanna as I think this expands the male gaze.
Also from this I have taken Rihanna's hair. Katy does not have the same hair as Rihanna but I have taken the size from Rihanna. In this photo, Rihanna has quite large hair and I wanted to imitate that in my photos of Katy as I like her hair and I wanted to make it as big as possible.

In terms of styling, I have taken inspiration from Nina Nesbitt in this photograph. I like the styling of this photograph as I feel it is as simple as it can be. The main focus of this photograph is Nina's face as none of the spotlight is taken by her clothing. I wanted to take this and apply it to my cover photo, I wanted the image to be about Katy's face and not what she was wearing. This is why I had her dress in a plain white top. 

DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 3

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

Bauer Media

Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing Group. The Group is a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries, as well as online, TV and radio stations.

Publishing is the process of production and releasing of a magazine, which makes it available to the public. This 

includes the stages of development, editing, graphic design and printing. Marketing and distribution is included 

within the publishing of a magazine. I chose Bauer Media Group as my publishing company as they have a good reputation of publishing magazines. Bauer Media publish such magazines as Closer, GRAZIA, Q, KERRANG! etc. 

GRAZIA is quite close to my magazine, other than it is about fashion and BEAT is about music. The style and layout are quite similar. Q will feature some of the same genre of artists in their magazine as BEAT. I've linked these together to create BEAT, a music magazine made fro the audience of 16-24 year old females. As this is my target audience, I have priced BEAT at £2, which is within their price range. Grazia is currently priced at £2 per issue and Q is priced at  £3.99 per issue, with this in mind, Q is a larger magazine with a lot more content inside. 

Bauer will publish BEAT but will also help in all other areas as well. It will help fund BEAT. This will be done by slotting a copy of BEAT into their previously owned music magazine Q. This will give BEAT some recognition within the targeted audience and also generate some funds towards making it a solo magazine. This will be done by competitions to raise the money as they will know by this how many potential readers they may recieve. 

As Q is sold in many supermarkets around the UK, I feel that this would be a beneficial place to start selling BEAT as I feel that most magazines are brought through supermarkets. BEAT will also have an online website where readers can subscribe to the magazine and find out more about competitions and artists featured inside.

Bauer Media Group will also advertise BEAT on their website to try and gain more recognition for the magazine. This will help a lot more people know about BEAT if they haven't already as Bauer Media Group is quite a well known company. Being involved in Bauer Media Group will also be ideal for BEAT magazine as they have quite a lot of contacts as they are a major publishing company. This means that BEAT can use Bauer's distribution and management contacts. 

Bauer's current magazine's are quite popular. Grazia magazine sells an average of 218,000 copies per month, Q magazine sells around 52,781 per six months, Kerrang! 37,603 per month

Closer 351,632  per month. I am aiming for BEAT to be as successful because I think it has the potential to be successful as it follows most of the conventions of a popular pop magazine. 

DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Georgia Spanner. She is 17 years old and attends College and is studying Art. She lives in Central London. She makes sure that every week, she purchases a copy of Billboard on her way home from college. This is so that she is up to date in the pop-music world and she likes to read about her favourite pop artist like Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and One Direction.

She has been to see all of these artists in concert and plans to go see them all again in the near future. Georgia has a twitter where she blogs all of her thoughts and feelings and has a large amount of followers because of the reviews of the concerts she goes to on her twitter.

As Georgia is only in college, she will only pay around £3 for a weekly magazine, £5 for a monthly copy. 

Georgia likes to shop is places like Top Shop, New Look, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and River Island. This is because at the weekends, to help her afford to go to concerts, she works at her local New Look every Saturday.

In a magazine, Georgia looks for her favourite artists on the cover. She likes it when the cover is based on one person, not having lots of small images around the outside as she thinks this looks messy. She does not like lots of writing on a magazine as it is too much and she thinks it takes away from the main image.


This was my audience profile that I made before I started to make my magazine. I think that I have based my magazine a lot on what I had said in this audience profile. I have made my magazine to fit this girls profile very closely.
I think that Georgia would buy my magazine as I have thought about her price range and priced my magazine at just £2 so that all of my target audience (16-24 year old girls) would be able to afford it. Also, I have taken a lot of artists from the artists that Georgia likes as she has described that she likes Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and One Direction, many of these are featured in my magazine. This is important for my target audience as they will buy the magazine based on who is featured in a magazine. For myself, being in this age range, I can say that if my favourite artist was in the magazine or on the cover, I would be more interested in buying the magazine as if they wasn't.
On this it mentions that Georgia has a twitter account and follows a lot of her favourite artists on twitter. I added onto the bottom of my article where girls like Georgia who have twitter accounts can follow the up and coming artist that I have featured in my article. 

DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

I used the correct pop alternative conventions on my magazine by using a female model posing on the cover. This used the convention of the male gaze as my model is posing in quite a sexual and inviting way. This was not for the attraction of males, but to make my model look as appealing as I can as in many pop alternative magazines, women use the male gaze in their photographs but not for males. 

By using the correct conventions when producing my magazine it has attracted my target audience of 16-24 year olds. 

The use of bold and eye catching colours attracts my audience as they help make the photograph stand out on the page. Especially as the main selling point of my magazine is my artist. I have to use a well-known artist or an up and coming artist that isn't quite famous but getting there as it will help attract my readers in. In my magazine, I have used an up and coming artist on my front cover, but to make my magazine look more appealing to my audience, I have added names of known artists that will feature in the magazine as I feel that this will grab the readers attention and make them want to buy my magazine, if the person on the cover hasn't sold it to them. 

On my double page spread, to grab my readers attention, I have used two things. I have used a pull quote, so that the reader will read the quote and hope to want to read the rest of the article, this is effective as it grabs the readers attention into the article. I have also used a full-page photo on the left hand page to attract the reader. Hopefully, this will grab the readers attention as they may want to see who this up and coming artist is from the picture.

DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6

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

 Macbook Pro: I used a Macbook for editing my magazine. This was a new experience for me as I had never used a Mac before. I had to learn how to use all of the features of the Mac pretty quickly, so that I could start editing my magazine. I think that this really helped me with the making of my magazine as it is a fast and effective piece of hardware. The only problem was that my work was only saved on this computer, it would not automatically transfer to other computers around the school, this inhibited me a little, but fortunately not a lot.

Blogger: Blogger is an online website that lets users write "posts" and post them on the internet for everyone to see using their own URL. I have used blogger to all the way through my project to show my work to my teachers and peers. I blogged every part of my coursework from my research, planning, mock products, final drafts and now, my evaluation. I had used this website before this project but as I used it a lot more in this project, I gained a greater understanding of it and now can fully use this website. I really like this website, its easy to use and has really helped me with my coursework as my friends could comment on posts i'd made to leave feedback.

Tripod: I used a tripod whilst taking my photo's. This is because I wanted my photographs to be very symmetrical. Especially for my cover, it was essential that the picture was not wonky or off balance. Using the tripod was essential when taking my photographs, I like this piece of equipment, it helped me a lot.

 Safari: I used Safari to access my "Blogger" URL so that I could post a lot about the planning and making of my magazine. It was also an essential piece of software whilst I was doing my research as it enabled me to use the website "Google" to find different inspirations. Also, it enabled me to use coverjunkie and UKTribes

Photoshop: I had never used photoshop before this project, but it was absolutely essential that I used it. It helped me cut out particular parts of photos using the lasso tool and remove backgrounds from an image. I edited my photos on Photoshop using the brightness and other image manipulation features. I also learnt how to remove blemishes from Katy's face e.g. Smile lines

 Animoto: I used Animoto to present my 25 word pitch to my class on. I think that this helped me quite a lot as it was easy to use and gave me lots of different ways to present my work that was different to other websites that I'd used previously.

 Microsoft Word 2010: I used Microsoft Word to type out my article as I used to spell-checker tool to make sure that there was no mistakes in my article as photoshop or blogger would not pick this us. I had used Microsoft Word a lot before this project so it was very easy to use

 Flickr: When I had taken my draft photographs of Katy, I created a slideshow on Flickr of all of my photographs so that I could post them on my blog in a new and creative way so that I can get feedback on them

 Soft lighting boxes: I used the soft lighting boxes when I was taking my photographs as it was essential that the lighting was done professionally and not just using flash on the camera. This was so that my photographs were properly lit so that when I opened them up in photoshop, there was no shadows on them as my photographs needed to be crisp to fit in with my magazine

SurveyMonkey: I used survey monkey to create a questionnaire to gain feedback from my peers about what music magazines they typically buy and what they look for in a music magazine. I also received feedback from my questionnaire about the idea of my magazine and what they thought of the name BEAT for my masthead

CAMERA: I used the Nikon D3200 camera as it made my photographs that I took of Katy look very professional as it is a high quality camera and would highlight and capture every part of Katy's face perfectly. I had never used a professional camera before but this camera was easy to use and really aided me in taking some good pictures.

DRAFT EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

I think that as a whole, all of my skills of making a magazine have improved.
For example, as you can tell from my photographs I have taken. For my preliminary task, I used my camera phone to take the photo, which was in the school cafe, whereas for my final magazine photographs I took my photos in a properly lit camera room with soft lighting boxes with a professional camera.
Also by the poses I think I have improved, Izzy in my preliminary photo is standing awkwardly eating a naan bread whilst looking towards the camera where as Katy in my final magazine has the element of the male gaze and does not look awkward at all.




 For example, my photoshop skills have improved dramatically. When I was making my mock-up and preliminary task, I had barely used photoshop before, which means that I didn't use a lot of the features on photoshop as I didn't know how. This meant that my preliminary task and my mock-up really only used the basic features of photoshop so they lacked style and were extremely simple. I have learnt how to use photoshop now so my skills have increased dramatically and I can now use all features to their full extent.

I also had never heard of the rule of thirds, which I have used throughout my final magazine. On my preliminary task and my mock up, there was nothing that was eye catching or even central. Everything was too big, especially the barcode. I have learnt the important parts of a cover page. In my preliminary task my barcode was massive and it didn't have a date or an issue number on it, I have changed this for my final magazine.

For my masthead in my final piece, it took quite a long period of time to find a font that I think suited my magazine cover and my contents page as I needed a font that was not too thick so that it did not cover Katy's face. This shows I have improved from my mock up as the WHOA is way too thick and takes away from Rihanna's face. Also, in my preliminary task the colour of the masthead does not quite fit with the picture, it doesn't stand out enough for me. This shows that I needed to spend time finding a balance between the two.

For my wardrobe in my preliminary task, I had Izzy just wear her normal clothes. She had her bag and her lanyard on, this I don't think is acceptable for a magazine cover. In my final piece, I thought long and hard about what to have Katy wear as I realised how important it is to style my model.

In my preliminary task, I did not think about the background and just used the background of the picture, which was the cafe. This really took away from Izzy as there are other things to concentrate on in the picture, not just the model. I really improved this in my final magazine as I got rid of all backgrounds and shadows to make sure that Katy is the main thing to look at on my cover.

FINAL MAGAZINE

No sub-header on DPS

On my magazine, I have decided to not have a sub-heading under the title "Katy Lewis".
I personally think this is a better idea, as from the style of the page and the boldness of the questions, it is obviously a question and answer from the artist on the left.
I have taken inspiration from this double page spread of Lady Gaga.

Cover page

I have taken a risk on my cover page, by having the barcode a little bigger than it would be. This is not a typical convention as most magazines try to make the barcode as small as possible. I don't think this is effective. I think that barcodes are a major part of a magazine cover if they are going to be sold in a shop. I think they must stand out as they can really add something to a

Font changes

I have had to change my fonts, as the ICT department has not downloaded the fonts that I previously liked in time for when I was making my magazine.

The fonts in my draft version was not the fonts that I would have liked to used but I waiting until making my actual magazine, the fonts were still not on my Mac.

In this time, I have completely changed my font styles. This is because I have gone through the fonts already on my photoshop and realised that there are fonts on there that suit my magazine extremely well.
I have changed my fonts from;
Coolvetica, Neou-Thin, Harabara, Roboto, Absolut Pro Light



To my new fonts;
Letter Gothic Std for my Masthead which is on my cover page and contents page
Modern No. 20 for the title on my cover and my issue No. etc
STIXGeneral for the writing on my double page spread
Rockwell for my pull-out quote on my double page spread
Stencil for my numbers on the contents page and page numbers

Plan Of Action 28/02/2014

PLAN OF ACTION

• Decide whether magazine contents page needs two different people on it
• Finish perfecting double page spread using feedback from teachers
• Maybe take more pictures if needed (depending on feedback from teachers) 

Picture of Album cover on DPS

I have decided to add a picture onto my double page spread of the artists album cover. I have seen this been done in many different magazines and newspapers as it shows the reader the album cover so that if they saw it in the shops or on iTunes then they would recognise is straight away.
I think that this is important especially as by artist is up and coming as many people may not have seen what her album looks like. It is also a way off adding into the article that the reader should buy the artists album, which is a great way of advertising the album.
I made an album to put on the double page spread myself using photoshop. I used a photo that I had taken of Katy and edited it into looking like an Album cover so I could use it on my double page spread.

Single picture on contents

In my magazine, I was thinking of not having two people on my contents page and only having one image. I know this is not conventional but I have found a few example of contents pages from various magazines that have only one artist on them. I personally feel this is more effective as I feel the writing is the most important feature of a magazine contents page, not the picture. I think that there should be one bold main image that supports the writing equally. This, to me, makes it more effective as there can be real quality within the picture. 

Here are a few examples of magazines: 

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FINAL DRAFT VERSIONS