Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

There were three minor tasks i did, creating a school magazine, making a shoet film and analyzing two magazine front covers. The first was to create a school magazine this one relates best to my final major task, i had to use the main programme indesign to create a front cover and a contents page, becasure i was just getting used to using the programme the final result wasn't as professional as my final major task turned out, i got all my experiments and learning of the programme done in this minor task this ultimately made the production of the major task easier. I found the experimenting with the programme went well it really taught me how the funtions and tools worked in the programme. Becasue of the minor task i learnt my lesson about layers, i didnt make a new layer for each item i added, this then caused problems when i later logged on to edit the page as the items did move properly, however although this was a problem in the minor task it really helped that i made this mistake before and knew not to do it again. for the inor task i had to take my own photos, i went round my school taking typical photos that could be used in the task, i thought they would look better black and white so i edited them in paintshop pro. The photos i took were not very photographicly interesting, they were simply set out with typical centre setting of sreas around the school and a few of the sixth form students in there everday routines. Presenting these on the task i used one as a back ground and layered some of the others on the top.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process of Constructing This Product?

To create my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread i used a total of four programmes, these are internet explorer, paint, photoshop and the main one was indesign. I used internet explorer for experimenting with the fonts i used, to do this i went onto the website www.dafont.com. Once i had chosen the font i moved on to use paint to edit the font, i copied the font off of the website and added colour to it in paint and cropped it. I used photoshop to edit the photos i took for the magazine, to fit the photos into the magazine pages i cut the photo out of the background and added it to a new document minus the background so they were able to be layered into the pages easier. The main programme i used was indesign and this was to create the magazine pages, the main tools i used in this programme was the layer button, each time i added something i created a new layer to make it easier to edit later in the production phase, there was the box button i used alot because each time i added anything i had to add a box so i could insert either the text or image into it. other tools i used were the colour tools to change the colours of the back grounds and text on the pages.

How Did You Attract/ Address Your Audience?

To attract my target audience of mixed gender 16 to early 20's the promotions in the magazine would cater to there needs, e.g. beauty products, alcohol etc ... rather than home appliances and improvements. The magazine would aslo include features to relate to the audience e.g. interviews with current young celebrities, promotions of new products like ipods, speakers and phones. The language would be addressed to the audience as if they were peers, this is done by making the language informal with parts of slang introduced into it. The people featured in the magazine would be people that the audience could aspire to be (role models). Of the four needs that media products can fulfil MHQ would satisfy entertainment, information and reinvention, the entertainment comes from the articles in themselves, the information comes from the articles also and the reinvention comes from the audience using the celebrities faetured as role models and inspiration for becoming there own person in the social world.

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

My magazine 'MHQ' is aimed at teens 16 - early 20's, and the magazine isn't gender spcific, most of them will still be in schooling probably paying for it out of poacket money and weekend jobs, this is why I priced my magazine at £1.50 so that it is affordable for the whole target audience, the magazine would be issued once a month. The magazine would be something you would probably indulge in on your own, however it would also be able to be enjoyed in a group. The magazine is designed to be primary or secondary invlovement, primary being taking up all the consumers conentration and seconday taking up part of the consumers concentration.

What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

Bauer Media Group is the publishing house for Q magazine and Kerrang, these are similar magazines to my one MHQ, only they cater to a different target audience of older music buyers. This publishing house circulates 130,179 copies a month of Q magazine, a similar figure MHQ would hope to sell a month. MHQ could feature online, offering extra advertising space to increase profits, this website would also contain extra features, more competitions and a preview of next months issue. Bauer Media Group has a 50% stake in Box Television which produces several popular music channels e.g. Kiss TV , The Box, Kerrang TV, Q TV and osme more. These would be a good surce of advertisement, bringing more similar products to advertise, e.g. CDs etc ... and also the products that get advertised on the TV channels e.g. beauty products, concerts etc ... The advertising would have to be aimed at the target audience so it would be mixed genre of advertising, and a price range of £5:00 all the way up to £2000, this is because the magazine age range goes from 16 year olds to early 20's so advertising things like cars is still viable for this age bracket.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

My magazine contains pictures of young stars, they dont have any particular signifiers of genre, it would mainly be pop and rap stars in the magazine. The stars in the magazine would be young to relate to the target audience of teenagers. The front cover only has the one picture of 'Rachael Woods' an 18 year old singer. On the contents page there aren't any photos of people and on the double page spread, theres another picture of 'Rachael Woods' representing the pop genre of music.

I have chosen to use informal languge in my magazine to relate more to the target audience, in the interview it is written how it would have been spoken. The front cover and contents page are also fairly informal, the front cover is quite generic to other teen magazines e.g. sugar, glamour or Q. The whole magazine addresses the audience as a peer rather than an expert to keep with the informal style.

In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Looking at the magazine covers I edited Q and Top of the Pops i decided i wanted my magazine to be more along the lines of Q so based my research upon this. Generic traits of a non gender specific older teen magazine is to have a mutual colour e.g. black, white, yellow etc ... the magazines also dont place the more gender specific features on the front cover of the magazine e.g. an advice column would be more aimed towards the female audience and the gadget page would be more specific to the generic male audience. When i designed my magazine i used the mutal colour of black for thew front cover, so i didnt attract one gender, however i unlike on other magazines similar to mine i did use a fairly generic male feature on the front cover, which was the feature about the new iPod, but i used it becasue i think that the female audience would also be interested in reading about this.

I didnt do much research on the contents page, however the research i did do showed that the contents pages usually use a mixture of text and pictures. My contents page was by far my worst page, however much i played around with it, it just didnt seem to improve it. I used the convention of using both images and text and attempted to make it look as professional as i possibly could.

I did the most research on the double page spread. looking at similar genre magazines interviews i found they always had a cation to summerize the interview under the title, they also had parts of the interview made bigger and highlighted, these were major points in the interview. The double page interviews also had a combination of text and media. A couple of the interviews i researched had a promotion of the interviewees product. I also rersearched the types of questions that would be asked in this sort of an interview. When i designed my double page interview i used all of the conventions i mentioned above, these were to have a summary of the interview below the title as it seemed a common occurence in all the interviews i researched, i also used the idea of having the main points of the interview enlarged and put in little bubbles to highlight them as this also occured in all the interviews i researched, when i was writing the questions i made up most of them myself with inspiration from the other magazines, however i also copied some of the more conventional questions. I also decided to add in a promotion into my interview of 'Racahel Woods' ' new single this was mainly to take up a little extra room.

Final Double Page

I think my double page spread 'Interview with Rachael Woods' is my best page I have created. this page contains a title, questions and answers, a small promotion and a picture of 'Rachael Woods'. The whole page remains with in the colour scheme of red, white and black. The only thing that took along time on this page was editing the picture in photoshop so I could put it on my double page without a background. To do this I selected the outline of the photo and cut it from the origional image and then pasted it into a new document without the background. I was then able to but it in my double page in the same way I inserted the other pictures on the other pages, I made it look like 'Rachael Woods' is leaning against the edge of the page, I think this gives it a professinal look as I have seen it done in other magazines. Another thing that took time was writing the questions, I took my inspireation from other magazines with similar interviews.

The picture I used for the double page spread was taken of my friend in her bedroom but by editing it I have managed to make it look like a professinal photograph taken in a studio here is the original image and the edited image.

Final Contents

This is my final contents page. I tried many differnt designs but none of them seemed to work, this although not a great contents page was the best option. I have used pictures to attempt to make my contents page more asthetically pleasing, and I have stuck to the colour scheme of white, black and red.

Creating The Contents Page

In my opinion my contents page is by far the worst out of all the pages I have created, However what I have done is use images to make it more exciting. These are the images I used in my contents page.

Creating The Front Cover

This is the origional image I used for my front cover. To make the image like it is on the front cover now I edited it in photoshop. Once I had made these changes the photo looked like this.

I was then able to add it to my front cover with out a background so I could easily layer it on top of the title. This is the only image I used on my front cover.

Final Front Cover 31st March

This is my final front cover, I am very happy with it. I gave it a professional look but covering the magazine title sightly with the picture. I have put few other freatures other than the main

article in the magazine so it doesn't look too cluttered. The feature ideas cam from other magazines I have read in the past. I have based my front cover on Q magazines May 2008 issue with Madonna on the cover. Similarities I included were the colour scheme, super imposed image over the title, feature in a circle and a band of colour with a feature in it.

Front Cover Major Task - 23rd March

Today I finished my front cover for my magazine, I added a couple more features 'Top 10 Music Chart' to do this I added a new layer and added a circle to write in I then added the text and played around with the colour eventually I chose to have the circle white and the text black I also changed the size and the font to 'Impact', to give it a better effect. I also added the feature 'Rachael Woods Exclusive Interview' to do this I again created another layer and added a box however didnt fill it with a colour so I added text over the main image of Rachael, I made the name the biggest feature on the page as it is the main article in the magazine, I then changed the colours image Rachael red and Woods white to go with the main colour scheme of the magazine, then I continued to add another layer and added a box in the same way adding the text 'Exclusive Interview', I made this text white and smaller than the title of the article. The final feature title I added was the 'New IPod' title, I did the same to add this as I did for the previous article however this one was smaller and all white. I also added the price and date to the front cover to do this I made another layer for each added the text and changed the size, font and colours.

Front Cover Major Task - 22nd March

I continued working on my front cover today, at the weekend I took photograpghs of my friend to use in my major task. I started today by uploading these photos, I chose the head shot for my front cover and so edited it in 'Photoshop', all I had to do was cover up some blemishes using the cover up tool and then I deleted the white background using the cutting tool. I then had to print screen this image into 'Paint' as my computer wouldnt allow me to insert an image from 'Photoshop' into my 'Indesign' document. Once I had done this I cut the part of the image I wanted from the print screen and save this . I then dragged the edited image into my 'Indesign' document as the main focus of the front cover.

I also and some text to my front cover describing one of the contents of the magazine, this was a competition to win tickets to a concert, to do this I had to make a new layer and add a box I then filled this yellow so it stood out from the black background of the front cover, I then added text to this box and changed the font to bold 'Century Gothic'.

Q and Top Of The Pops Covers Analyzied

Front Cover Major Task - 17th March

I started creating my magazine cover today and strated with choosing a suitable font for the title MHQ I went on to the website 'Dafont' to choose it and I decided to use the font '28 Days Later', however the only way to use this fornt is to type into the website what I wanted it to say in my case MHQ and then print screen the preview in to 'paint', once I did this I had to cut out the text and paste it into a new 'panit' document, the font only come in black so I then changed the colour in paint and the background to match that on my 'indesign' document which is black. I then saved it as MHQ in 'My Pictures' and created a box in my 'Indesign' document and dragged the MHQ file into the box, this made the title for my magazine.

Adding the second part of the title was simple I just made a text box under the title that was already there and wrote in in 'Music Head Quarters', I then changed the coulour of the text to white and changed the font to 'Impact'.

Today I also added a bar code to my front cover, to do this I went on to 'Google' and searched in images barcode, I then chose the one I liked and saved it in 'My Pictures' as barcode, once I ahd done this I made a box on my 'Indesign' document and dragged the picture into it, I then edited it to make it the right size.