Final Pages

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My final cover features all the conventions of a real magazine cover page. The purpose of the cover page is to  make a magazine stand out from those displayed around it so the key to its success is a really strong image of someone the audience recognises and likes. Cover pages also need a strong masthead. Other conventional details include a cover story, usually in large text, cover lines to promote the magazine's contents, a bar code and dateline. Some also include additional features.

My cover page has a strong masthead. It is different from other most mastheads in that the font size and style is small and italic but I still think that it is strong for who I want to target. It is feminine in terms of colour and font choice and the name I have chosen is strikingly unexpected. I wanted to be ironic in order for people to remember the name so I chose something that could be read in different ways. I chose to place it at an angle so it looked soft and not stamped on the page. This offered contrast to the name itself.

For the main image I chose a close up and a subjective gaze because my research showed that these are the covers that young women are most attracted to. I placed the image on the right of the page so that I had space down the left side for the coverlines.

I included cover lines to attract the audience and make them want to buy and read the magazine. If I didnt include a variety of cover lines, then my product would fall short in pulling in a wider audience. I wanted to use variety of recent music, bands and solo artists as my audience have varied tastes.

I kept the colour range limited to three colours which matched the feminine style and picked out colours from the photograph. I reduced the spaces between the lines of text to make the cover feel more crammed with interesting features.

click to go to flickr!

final piece pic
Originally uploaded by charl_eastwood

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

dps final piece 2
Originally uploaded by charl_eastwood

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This is my second part of this question. I wanted to go for a DPS design that was less than conventional so that the reader might be attracted to it. The extra photos on the top right add interest and variety to the page and women like to see before and after type shots of celebrities. I have added a translucent gradient curtain effect using Photoshop so that I could have a blank space for my text. This also created slight sense of mystery around the artist as you can see her but not completely. It adds to her mystique but she is still gazing directly at the reader. The last point I would say that makes it unconventional is the subtitle "INTERVIEW" this shows you the genre which you would expect but in a different form and its faded behind the text so it doesn't steal too much attention. I resisted using pull quotes and a drop cap because these conventional layout devises just wouldn't go with the way that I wanted to layout my text and images on the page.

On the other hand, the things that make it conventional are the bold Title, which shows you what the article on the dps is about, the big photo with a subjective look is very conventional, which is what you would expect as it makes the reader feel more involved. These are all typical of a dps, but the components i used are more unconventional weighing my dps out to be more unique.

If you click on the photo you can see an annotated version of my dps on flickr, for a closer look.

Genre ideas

For the third part of question 1, I will be showing you the genres and what types of magazines I looked at.
At first I looked at Kerrang! because I thought I might want to create a rock/punk genre magazine, but as you can see from my final pieces, they are nothing like Kerrang! I changed my mind and decided to do a more glossy girlie magazine, but still attracting my audience with artists that appealed to both sex, which made up my 70% femal and 30% male.

Here is a magazine that is more the genre I have gone for now.
Even though this is still very girlie, it still has that edge, where it can still attract males, like I have tried to make mine do.

evaluation, question 7.

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

                                                    Here is my college magazine front cover.

                                                          Here is my music front cover.

From my college magazine front cover to my music magazine front cover, you can see a significant difference between the editing that has gone one. In my music cover their is a lot more subtle writing that fits the picture well, as in my college cover i have only 2 sections of writing that are large, stand out more than the picture and are just generally unattractive. Also i tried to edit the teeth in my college front cover, which looks unfinished and just awful, as in my music front cover instead of pin pointing areas like that i have brightened the whole picture to make it stand out and look very clean and glossy. With the photo, the music cover picture is a lot stronger as i choose to use a subjective look which attracts the audience better. Overall i think the music cover looks very more professional, as i choose respectful varied texts, and a mature and noticeable mast head, the magazine also has interesting information that is specific to the genre of the magazine, and just fits a lot better.

When doing my college magazine, i didn't do a double page spread, but i can still show you some of the editing that went into my music double page spread any way.

Here is my double page spread of my magazine. It has various editing techniques that are not a typical convention which makes it interesting and better than what you would expect. the pink diagonal box is made to look like a curtain, which applies space for text and also has a gradient with a colour that mates the models lipstick and the circle with "Golden Brown" wrote inside. The whole picture looks bright, and she is very much the focus of attention, which is exactly what you want. it has a lot of texts, which is what i was aiming for, and if you read the interview you could see that its very relaxed and chilled which emphasises the audience I'm aiming for.



Here are the two contents pages, one of which is my college one and the other being my music one.

                                                             College contents page.

Music contents page.

These two contents pages are totally different, my college contents is so basic, with 2 colours on a stripped back ground, it also has only 3 points advertising on 5 pages. Its very basic with no pictures, an not really much editing involved at all, while on the other hand my college content page is very detailed, and covers 67 pages on varied interesting facts, it also gets the name of my magazine in. i applies strokes and shadows to pictures and texts boxes, which shows the imrovment in my photoshop skills, i have used many pictures to back up text, and applied patterns and shapes to seperate different sections on my contents. i have various boxes that attract you to read more, and they are shown in large boxes, with shadows, strokes and alternating colours.

                   Overall you can see the change in my college production to my college production.



evaluation, question 6.

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

In the process of media, and making my media product i have been introduced to software and Internet applications like adobe photoshop, blogger, flickr, youtube and many more.

1.) Photoshop has allowed me to tie all my media photo's, text, knowledge and every thing else together. I was able to make my front cover, my double page spread and my contents page all on photoshop, the advantages of using photoshop are, being able to correct errors or problems on pictures, which i learnt you can use various tools like, healing brush, clone stamp and quick selection/magic wand tool. But i also had problems with layers. As when your creating a massive product like a music front cover, double page and contents, you end up with a lot of layers that over lap, and it gets really confusing. for example when using marquee tools, they can attach themselves to previous layers, and then you can end up having to start again.

2.) Blogger is where i was able to publish post that included course work, planning and all the other information that went into making my media products. The positive things about blogger is that you can link it to various websites like flickr, you can also post video's, pictures with text, and all types styles to your work and blog. The disadvantages are that it can be quite complicated, as photos are hard to move, in which when you move them, they can disappear and muddle things up. It can also be quite hard to navigate around your blog and get back to pages you want to, as some times pages just don't link properly to each other or at least in a way some one like me can understand. Also blogger has personal website problems where some times it doesn't allow you to upload images through your mobile and also its comment system is some times poorly accessible.

3.) Flickr is where i can upload my pictures that i want to illustrate, and annotate, then as i said earlier, i can then link it to blogger. Flickr allows your to put text boxes around certain parts of pictures, which you can then upload to blogger, in which when your on blogger, you can then click on the photo which will take you to flickr to see all the annotations. The advantages of flickr are that you can annotate pictures simply, and it saves as you go along, so if you get a debug come up on your computer, it automatically saves what you have previously done so it doesn't get lost. The disadvantages are that its can be hard to find the tools you need, and things can easily be mistaken or hidden, also its quite hard to link blogger and flickr together, so if you cant do it then flickr is pointless. It takes time and a lot of random methods to get them to combine and work together, but once you do find out how to do it and you can work it, it does become relatively easy.

4.)Youtube has helped me to realise that in further media products that i can use youtube and upload video's. i did make a video on windows movie maker, but accidentaly saved it in the wrong format, but if i had actually done it in the correct procedures, then i would have been able to have used youtube to make and account upload a video and then copy the html to a blogger post. even though i haven't used it this time around, its some thing i have learned, which i can use in future tasks. the advantage of youtube is that is a worldwide application, so every and anyone can view your videos and give you feedback on them. A disadvantage you could say is that it contains age restrictions, so it can make life difficult when your going through stages on youtube. Also some times the multi file or bulk up loader just disappears, which can make it difficult to upload a group of video's you have spent time creating.

evaluation, question 5.

How did you attract/address your audience?

As an audience first notice front covers, i attracted them with language, pictures and colours. The language/words i used were relaxed, and aimed for a young audience. "Buffoons," "Mainstream," "Disaster" and "Wild" all connote some thing unusual, which young readers love to read and talk about. Its a fact the young girls love gossip, which all these words symbolise. This has the effect of pulling them in.

I also used bright colours throughout my magazine.

Like bright outfits.

Bright Lipstick.

Bright text and Bright shapes.

Also using pictures that don't intimidate the audience, but make then aspire to be them is some thing that pulls the audience in and captures them, here is just one photo of my model, and she is giving a subjective look, she is not too dolled up, and she just looks like a pretty casual girl, this will pull in my audience as they feel like she is similar to them (the reader) which means they can create her look, and be like her with out it being over the top, silly or just unrealistic. The smile makes the audience feel comfortable, and her overall friendly appearance would make an audience want to buy the magazine.

All these components attract the audience as they are eye catching, which grabs every ones attention. They are also different ways of representing my media product, which captures my audience.