Week 22

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

My media product is a Bhangra music magazine front cover. It uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

On the left is Asian woman magazine. This magazine is very inspirational as it looks very colourful and has a really good colour scheme; yellow, pink and hints of green. This magazine features Alesha Dixon. She is wearing a piece of asian clothing material which is covering her up to her knees. She has Henna tattoos on her legs which are also very colourful. The magazine is reaching out to their asian audience by using a colourful colourscheme, the asian clothing and jewellery. By placing a known icon on the front cover is also a good way of marketing as alesha dixons fans may also buy this magazine. The layout of this magazine is well organised as the text is positioned to the left and right sides of the pages. 

The masthead is positioned on the top of the page, and is alligned from left to right. It is big, bold and clear so that readers can easily read it. This also helps the magazine to be well known or remembered, as it will be one of the first things to catch your eyes. This magazine includes other codes and conventions which are; the dateline, price and barcode, selling line, bottom banner, cover lines, left third and main image. I have also included these codes and conventions within my cover.

On the right is the first draft of my bhangra music magazine front cover. I edited this cover, and made huge changes to the colour scheme and main icon image. Another big change I made was the magazine name itself. This was due to the fact that the whole magazine looked similar to a different theme to bhangra magazines. It looked like a Rock magazine cover instead. I decided to change the magazine name to Asian Vibe as I thought it suited my genre better. I also decided to change the colour scheme, to black, white, purple and pink. I have placed my final bhangra music magazine front cover on the left. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover. My media product is aimed at south asian people in particular, but it will be more westernised and  therefore my audience will be British Asians or citizens of the european union.

The social groups that will be represented within my media product will be teenagers, kids, adults, Punjabi people, indian people, pakistani people, and south asian people on the whole, whom are interested in bhangra music with a western twist, for example the recent bhangra artists like PBN (Punjabi By Nature), Alyssia, H dhami, Richi Rich & Apache Indian.  I am designing my media products to represent particular social groups by adding words and phrases that are bhangra related, and of which asian people understand. They will feel to read the magazine as there are cultural references and other factors that they may be able to relate to. Clothing and jewellery is another factor, as within bhangra clothing is very bright and jewellery is most often worn. 

Adding asian people to the magazine is also a way asian people may feel they can relate to the magazine. Featuring people of both genders, and having a variety of age groups featured within the magazine will also help me represent the different social groups. Bhangra itself is from the punjab, so punjabi people will be attracted to the magazine anyways, as music and dance is a huge part of their culture and traditions.

My media product represents these particular social groups as they are all of south asian heritage or may have an interest within the culture or music. As my magazine is aimed at westernised south asians, whom tend to listen to or may have huge interests in RnB, PoP and other subgenres, my bhangra magazine can cater to those interests with its bhangra twist. I may involve other famous westernised artists within my magazine that are creating albums with a bhangra twist or if they are collaborating music with bhangra artists. I will reach out to my target audience using my magazines and conventions I include within my magazine. I will include conventions like the colours - as they would be bright and colourful similar to south asian tradition as clothing tends to be really bright. I may use colours like oranges, reds, Yellows, Blues, Purples and Greens. Also the clothing colours would be bright too. My magazine would relate to my target audience as I may use south asian clothing within my bhangra magazine, also the audience can relate to the ethnicity of the artists in my magazine. The music type is bhangra and people who listen to that music genre will be generally interested also.

Within the front cover I will place a british asian female with an age range of 18-30. I will make sure my cover is colourful and relates to bhangra. I will include culteral references within the articles featured on the cover. I will also lay out my magazine like other asian magazines in order to represent particular social groups within the asian audience.  

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

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover. My magazine is similar to many other magazines, therefore I believe that magazine distributers like Bauer Consumer Media might be interested in distributing my magazine. 

Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group. It is Europes largest privately owned publishing group. It has a worldwide media empire offering over 300 magazines in 15 countries both printed and online. 

Bauer Media is a multi-Platform UK-based media group consisting of many companies colleged around 2 main division - Magazines & Radio. It is built on influential media brands with millions of personal relationships with engaged readers & listeners. They connect to their audiences with excellent content through their broad multi-touch point brand platforms, wherever and wherever and however wanted. Bauer magazine spans over 80 influential brand names covering a diverse range of interests. As Bauer media publish for a diverse range of interests, this institution will be the perfect match to publish my media product. This way my media product can be accessed as both a hard copy and soft.

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

South Asia

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover.As I am creating a Bhangra music magazine, my audience will be south asians.
On the left I have included the region of south asia, and these are my broad ethnic audience, and what kind of people will be targetted for my bhangra music magazine. On the whole, my magazine will be distribute within the UK and the region of europe. Therefore my audience may be citizens of the european union, or be british. 

The age range of my music magazine will be from 15-35. Also my target audience will be both males and females as within the asian regions, music is very important, and men are interested as much as women therefore i decided to broaden my target audience to men aswell as women.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover. My target audience are british or european people of south asian descent. The audience my magazine will target is both male and female around the ages of 15-45. My media product is using factors such as bhangra music and other references to target the audience. I will feature asian people, british/european asians to attract/address my audience. I am attracting/addressing my audience by using an effective colour scheme. Also my masthead is big, bold and clear, this enables it to stand out and catch the readers eye. My cover lines and text featured will be in a contrasting colour and will stand out for readers to see the headlines. I am addressing british and european people as I have designed my page to have the price in pounds and in euros. 

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

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover.I have learnt a variety of things about technologies from the process of constructing this product. The software I have used is Adobe InDesign to create my magazine. I have also used Adobe Photoshop to edit my images. I wasn't familiar with Adobe InDesign but going through the process of creating my product I have learned to place images, and organise my work. Organising my work has helped me a lot, as this way I could move and edit my work easier. I organised it by placing everything in different layers and naming them. They also appeared in different colours, which also helped identify the layer I was working on. My media product is a Bhangra music magazine front cover. I have learnt to edit my images in the process of constructing this product. Before I used to edit my images using the quick select tool on Adobe Photoshop, but then throughout the process of creating my product I have found that using the Lasso tool is a far more of an effective way to edit my images. This tool was easier to use and my images looked way better edited when I used it, and I also had to remember and feather the edited parts everytime I used the lasso tool so the edges came out nice and smoothed out. 

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My media product is a bhangra music magazine front cover. My preliminary task was to create a school/college magazine front cover. 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 cover and future magazine covers I create. The feedback I have recieved from my preliminary task was very helpful.

Overall I learnt about the consistency of the house style and how this has a huge effect on the magazine. 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. It has helped me with the planning and helped me understand there is a lot of depth behind magazines and what it means and its resemblence. The layout is also very important, and should be done according to the theme of the magazine.