Music Industry Glossary

http://prezi.com/dbxdgw5zpjb9/media-glossary/?auth_key=49c3eb570f291ce5bb5eb1201b1ff169846aa1f0

Evaluation

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

We took inspiration from many magazines that we studied. The first magazine we looked at was a college magazine for our research, which was the 'King Ed's magazine':

We liked the use of bright colours, so when it came to deciding on the colours for the font, we chose the bright colours of green and purple. Originally, we were going to use a similar layout of the contents page for our contents, because we liked the idea of placing text in boxes against a neutral background. We thought it connoted a more fun and youthful feel to the magazine. However, when it came to actually designing our front cover and contents page, we deviated from a layout similar to that of 'King Ed's magazine'. 

One magazine we took inspiration from was 'Good Housekeeping':

We liked the use of dots - fillers - between coverlines and the reversed out text. We took these two features and incorporated them into our cover, also using the fillers in our contents page. We thought these two features improved the look of the magazine, making it more sophisticated. 

We also took inspiration from 'Stuff':

We used the idea of a running head on the bottom, using three white boxes. We too thought this connoted sophistication, which we thought was a good contrast against the youthful feel connoted by the bright colours. However, we tweaked the boxes - which were originally purple - and used smaller, faded boxes inside the main white ones. This was in keeping with the colour scheme of green and purple, whilst adding a fresh and young twist. 'Stuff' magazine also influenced the text inside the faded out circle. We felt that the cover would be too formal without it, however we added an arc of faded numbers behind the circle because without it we thought the text inside the circle seemed random, as though we hadn't intended to have the use of the circle. 

On the other hand, there are features of our magazine cover that challenge forms and conventions of other magazines. For example, most magazines have a colour scheme for each issue's cover, which we had, however we used contrasting colours. Green and purple don't traditionally go, especially neon green and lilac. We felt that by using contrasting colours the magazine was more noticeable and detracted some of the formality found in the serif font of the masthead and the white boxes. Also, the circle and our own interpretation of the running head provides a new twist. 

2. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Aspirers, achievers and radicals. Materialists, hedonists and post-modernists. B. 16-19. Male and female. Kids: 12-18, Decision Pending. 

3. How did you attract/address your audience?

We used bright colours such as the neon green and lilac to connote youth and fun. We didn't want the magazine to seem too formal, but then we also didn't want it to seem too childish. That's why we wanted features such as the bright colours against the white, serif font of the masthead to strike a balance between sophistication and youth. The audience of our magazine is of course college students aged roughly between sixteen and eighteen, so we wanted the magazine to be maturer than those aimed at high school students, but we didn't want the magazine to seem too serious and thereby put college students off. 

The white boxes at the bottom of the cover act as a kind of running head, with smaller boxes of green and purple inside. We wanted these boxes to connote a modern twist to the magazine after the formality of the serif masthead. We also wanted them to connote the more fun side to the magazine, by not only being quite modern and different but by advertising the more youthful sections of the magazine, such as music, film and sport. After the seriousness of the coverlines, we felt that the running head would appeal to students who wouldn't necessarily think of reading a college magazine. In this way, we hoped to attract both academic and hedonistic students.

We also thought that the style of the running head and the bright colours might attract more radicals as we thought the colours and style weren't typical of magazines; we had added our own twist to features we had taken inspiration from.

We took many photos for the cover but eventually decided on this one because we felt that this particular photo connoted the most natural feel. We didn't want the photo to seem manufactured, as though it had been taken in a studio or that the model had been styled specifically for the cover. We thought this photo was the most natural because, for example, the hair is windswept. The average college student isn't perfectly styled like in magazines, so we wanted to connote relatability and naturalness, thereby attracting a wide variety of students. 

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

Firstly, I think it is easier to create a cover and contents using technology such as Photoshop and InDesign. For Photoshop and creating the cover, it's straightforward because all you need to do is open your chosen photo in Photoshop and use the tools to adjust it. It's much simpler than it would have been when magazines used to be a mixture of artist's drawings and printing press. Huge machines were used to create magazines and newspapers, and now magazines can be created on a computer and printed off just as easily. It was easy to edit our cover, apply text and images. The contents was even easier, as it only involved creating a layout which, although involved many individual components, was easy to create. The Digital SLR camera was also easy to use and it only took us a few minutes to take a number of photos of good quality.

These tools were very useful in that they allowed our cover and contents to be created quickly and easily. 

One effect that we particularly liked to use on both text and shapes was 'Drop Shadow'. This created a more professional look and also made text and shapes stand out from the background:

Another effect that we wouldn't have been able to do without Photoshop is the 'Magnetic Lasso Tool'. This allowed us to place text behind the cover photograph, emulating professional magazine covers:

I felt that blogging allowed me to keep track of our ideas as it's all in one place; we didn't need to rely on worksheets, notes and files. It made working in a pair easier as we could access research on each other's blogs easily. It also made research clear, easy to read and, most importantly, impossible to lose. 

I found that the technology didn't confuse me. I thought Photoshop and InDesign might, however I got to grips with them quickly and found that they were very easy to use. 

   

Cover and Contents

This is the cover for our college magazine: 'Venture'. We wanted the magazine to have a mature yet youthful feel, so we used serif font for the masthead and made it white to connote the mature feel we wanted. Then we used bright colours and sans serif font for the coverlines to connote the youthful feel we wanted as well. We wanted the coverlines to also connote the mature yet youthful atmosphere to the magazine by being a mixture of more academic stories, such as 'UCAS application: Is yours good enough?', while coverlines like 'new music and new artists' show that the magazine is about entertainment as well as academia. 

This is the contents layout for our college magazine. We looked at contents pages from numerous magazines and found a layout that we liked and wanted to take inspiration from. We wanted the layout to be more formal and ordered rather than scattered, again connoting the maturity we wanted our magazine to have. 

CarlaHughesASMedia: Photographs

CarlaHughesASMedia: Photographs: We took portrait pictures of students from just below their shoulders and up to be the cover of our student magazine . We took them in good ...

Photos

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