My media coursework evaluation.

1. Evaluation

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The masthead is large to
attract attention to
it, however, it lays behind Direct eye contact is used.
the image, to attract more
attention to the image.
The pose of Eminem
attracts the audience to
Pull quotes intrigue
look to each side of his
the audience to read
arms and read the
the article.
headlines.
A variety of font The coverlines are in
sizes are used to different colours which
differentiate match the masthead and
between the main design of the cover. This
article and other shows a House Style.
minor articles.
A plain background of
a block colour is used.
This may be done to
avoid any distraction
from the main image
and headlines.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I have also decided
not to make the
masthead too large
in comparison to
the image.
Direct eye contact Like on the cover for Vibe
magazine, I have used a
variety of font sizes and
colours.
A pull quote is used.
Unlike the cover
for Vibe magazine,
I have decided not
The pose of the person
to use a plain
on my cover attracts the
background of
readers to look at the
block colour. I have
coverlines , like on the
used a brick wall
front cover of Vibe
as I feel that it is
magazine.
appropriate to the
style of the
magazine.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Magazine logo
Articles laid out
with page
numbers and
information
about them
Main image

5. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I have kept my contents page
fairly plain and simple in
comparison to other contents
pages in magazines such as
Vibe magazine. I have done this
because my cover is also fairly
simple, so the contents page
should be similar in that
respect. I have used a colour
scheme of black and red, which
are the colours on my
Images annotated masthead logo design.
with article names
and page numbers
Magazine logo

6. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Pull quote-
this brings
attention to
the article. This is a double page
spread from Vibe
magazine. It is an
interview with Usher.
Main image
Text

7. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Main image
Magazine
logo
Title
Pull box
Unlike the double
page spread, my
article is a
biographical
article. I have
used a pull box to
include a section
of the text which
would not fit on
the other page of
the spread, due
to the way I have
laid it out.
Text

8. How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
• My magazine is targeted at both males and females, aged between 16-25. I think this is a suitable age
range, as it ranges between teenagers to adults. It is aimed at a multicultural audience of a social
occupational class between C1-E.
• Things such as clothes, music, art and dance will be featured in the magazine. Music will include
stereotypical hip hop/ RnB music alongside rap, beatboxing and turntables. Art will include graffiti, and
dance will include breakdancing. These are all conventional to the style of magazine I am making.
• The magazine will be published and sold monthly in the UK and America. It will be distributed in the main
cities such as London, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, and similar cities in the USA.
• The language used in my article was carefully considered before I finished writing it. Using a variety of
courses (which have been credited in my Wordpress blog), I gathered information needed to write my article
for the double page spread. It was important that the language I used was neither too informal nor too
formal, as the age range and social class I have aimed my magazine for is quite broad.

9. Before taking my images, I made sure that the clothing worn by the person(s) was appropriate to the audience and
representation. This is important as the magazine must comply with its genre, and any confusion with clothing, posing and
location would ruin the magazine. Some images I took were subsequently not used in the magazine, as they were inappropriate in
some way, be it the posing of the person, or the background.
•
This is an example of an image I decided not to use in my magazine. In this
case, the lighting was incorrect, as was the background. While it is possible for
the background to be edited using Photoshop, I decided not to use a coloured
background, but a brick background instead, which I did not want to edit.

10. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
• Who distributes magazines? Who produced your case-study magazine? How important is content? How
important is profit?
• Magazines are distributed by their publishers. Vibe magazine is published by Time Inc, whose parent
publisher is Time Warner. The magazine which I am making would be published by IPC Media.
• Content is important in a magazine as it is content which is part of the representation of the magazine
Images and the language used are all essential in the magazine as genre, and as I am making a Hip
Hop/RnB magazine, it was important that all the content and images in my magazine were of a Hip Hop
and/or RnB theme.
• My magazine is likely to be sold in newsagents, supermarkets, music shops such as HMV, and existing
stationary and bookshops such as W H Smith.

11. Who would be the audience for your media product?
• The audience for my magazine would be people who are interested in Hip Hop/RnB music, or aspire to be
like the cover stars, and stars in my magazine. As mentioned in the eighth slide, my magazine is aimed at
both males and females aged between 16-25. It is also aimed for those of a social working class between
C1-E, which means working, to those who are not working. They may aspire to become a rapper/singer.
My magazine will include articles which may relate to them, such as features of new stars who started
rapping at home or on the streets, who later became stars.
• An example of an up and coming artist is features in the magazine, and is about a street artist called
Sketchasaurus, which was a double page spread written by a member of my group.

12. How did you attract/address your audience?
• To select content, I looked at existing magazines of the same genre as mine such as Vibe magazine and Hip
Hop magazine. I looked through their covers, contents pages and double page spreads in order to
determine how to lay mine out, and what contents and images to include. Once I had decided what I
wanted to do, I put together my article, took my images, and constructed it. I also asked for opinions from
others, and used criticism and their ideas to improve on my magazine.
• As mentioned in previous slides, the imagery concept of constructing my magazine was very important. I
had to make sure that everything complied with the selected genre, or the magazine would not appeal to
its target audience, and therefore wouldn’t be successful.
• In constructing the magazine I decided to keep the representations of the genre similar to how they would
normally be, in order to avoid confusion or over complicating the magazine.
These are some examples of
the magazine covers I looked
at to determine the
representation which would
be used in my own
magazine.

13. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
• To make my magazine, I used InDesign and Photoshop. I had not used these programmes
before, and initially, I found them rather difficult to use, however, I soon became familiar with
InDesign. I used InDesign to make my contents page and double page spread, while I used
Photoshop to make my cover. I also used other forms of technology such as cameras to take my
images, computers to use the software and internet, google to search for images and
information, and wordpress to blog my work. Social networking sites were also used.
• I had to book out the cameras before I used them, which sometimes became as problem as they
were not always available. There was also a problem with the availability of the Photoshop and
InDesign software, which is only available to me in college as I do not have it at home, which meant
that all the construction work I did had to be completed in lesson/college time.
• Struggling to use Photoshop at times meant that my images and cover page did not come out as I
would have liked them to, and the complexity of the software meant that not everyone I asked for
help knew how to use it, so out of lesson, it was harder for me to complete my contruction.

14. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
• When constructing my preliminary exercise, I learnt how to use InDesign, and earn technical things such
as how to take a good cover photo, the conventions of magazines in general, and measurements which
were required to be used.
• The preliminary exercise was to make a college magazine, so the construction and design was fairly
different to making a music magazine, but it was good practice.
• I also learnt how to use a professional camera effectively, and learn how to use the blogging website
Wordpress to upload and talk about my work.
• I feel that my preliminary exercise was plain and not constructed very well, something which I took into
account while making the music magazine. The task itself was also much less complicated as I did not
have to use other softwares while making it.
• I also feel that my music magazine is not as good as it could be due to my lack of understanding with the
different softwares, something which I will improve for my next task.
• However, I have learnt a lot, including the manipulation of photos, and I learnt how important
imagery, font sizes and colours are in the representation of a genre are in a magazine.

15. My preliminary exercise