1. In what ways are you designing your media product to use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media product is a bhangra music magazine double page spread. It uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.
On the left is part of a double page spread. This spread caught my eye as the design is very creative. From what I can see, there is a sort of timeline or background shadows showing different poses of the model, and one enlarged image shown in colour that pops right out and catches the readers eyes as thats the only bit of colour on the page. The rest of the magazine is black, white and grey therefore as thats the only bit where there is colour, makes the image stand out more. The text is all placed on the bottom half of the spread.
On the right is another double page spread. This spread features the black eyes peas. In the image displayed here, is a similar pattern to the previous spread. Three of the artists here are shadowed down and only Will.I.Am is visible in colour and stands out from the rest. This may show he is the main man in the group, and may show his importance. Here however, the text is placed on the second page, on the right side of the page.
My media product will also have the models images standing out, but maybe in a different way, in order to catch the readers eyes and show her importance and status within the music industry.
2. How are you designing your media product to represent particular social groups?
My media product is a bhangra music magazine double page spread. I am targetting both males and females of asian background. The age range may be from 15-45 years. I am designing my media product to represent these particular social groups by using bhangra related bright colours, culteral references and an eyecatching layout. My icon will represent asian people, and audience will be able to relate as she will be of an asian background too, and maybe around the same age range of the audience depending on their age. a
3. How are you attracting/addressing your audience?
My media product is a bhangra music magazine double page spread. My audience are british/european of south asian descent. This means like my music magazine, my audience also have a western twist to them. This means they can relate to my whole magazine. I will attract/address my audience by adding a famous well known artist/icon within my spread. This will enable readers to want to read the story. I will also add album information and tour dates and email and online information of the artist. My audience most likely will be familiar with the internet so this will intrigue them further. Also interview questions and answers will also draw in readers and artists fans also, they will want to know more about the artist and read on. Colours and layout is also an important factor to this, as it is visual and there needs to be something visual to attract the audience into reading the article or interview.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
This is my Music magazine contents page:
2. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
My media product is a bhangra music magazine contents page. Throughout the process of constructing this product I have learned to organise my layers. By this I mean more than naming the layers. By this I mean, background and bottom layers go all the way at the bottom, this way they do not over lap other layers. The higher the layers are, it means they are overlapping other layers. It is best to organise and place all the bottom and background layers to go at the bottom and then lock them in place so you can fiddle about with the rest and put them in place. Locking layers and unlocking is simple but very fiddly, however this comes in very handy as it helps to keeps layers in place.
3. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
My preliminary task was to create a school/college magazine Contents page. From what I have created, I have been given feedback. This helped me progress my work and give me more knowledge on what I can do better to improve my contents page and future magazine contents pages I create. The feedback I have recieved from my preliminary task was very helpful. I recieved a grade C on this task as the images were not my own. The lack of graphics and imagery and its origionality on my page had resulted in the poor grade. Also the images were not linked to the contents page articles. However the organisation, information and anchorage within the contents page was proficient.
From this I understood that I had to take a lot more images and think about the content of the magazine before hand. I hadnt taken enough images, and the submission date was too soon. I learnt to try and use my time wisely and get as much done as possible. I have to plan so in the long run i can then link my images and articles. Also more content was needed, and more tasters and other things in order to persuade the reader to be interested and actually want to flick through the magazine.
This gave me alot of insight as to what to think about when creating my music magazine Contents page. It also helped me realise how my work would be graded and know from the beginning what I could do to make my work a really good standard.
Overall I learnt about the imagery and how I need to use efficient and origional images in order to achieve a successful magazine contents page. Also it needs to be linked to the theme of the contents page as well. This covers the house style consistency. All this has a huge impact on the contents page. As the contents page is "content", i have to make sure that those needs are satisfied to as well and include lots of information where needed. The layout is also very important, and should be done according to the theme of the magazine, as within the contents page it should be clear to the reader where to find what, a good organised contents page. A good house style, a good colour scheme and image graphics, and fonts enables the cover to be more efficient and appealing. Also colours used should resemble the theme or genre of the magazine. The imagery, and content are very important, and the preliminary task has helped me with the planning and helped me understand there is a lot of depth behind magazines, what it means and its resemblence.
