Made a twitter account.

I made a twitter account for my music magaine Modern Dated to relate to my target audience of young teens who regularly use this site.

Evaluation- Who would be the audience for your media product?

I used my screen recorder to answer the question; Who would be the audience for your media product?
because of research I have done thought the year including my primary audience research and my reader profile I used these and showed them on the screen to demonstrate how I found out who my audience would be for my media product.
In conclusion, they would be young students between the ages of 13-25, most likely female but could be male, they would enjoy things from high street shops such as river island, they would like both younger and artists from older generations as they most likely grew up listening to music their parents like. They would not have much money as they are students so would want to see things about job opportunities, or deals on clothes on concerts and have the magazine sold at a low and reasonable price and not to frequently so they can purchase it, preferably every 6 months, Because they are young they would of grew up around the age of social networks so majority of teenagers will be on multiple social networks therefore I should make my magazine a multi-platform one to relate to my target audience with accounts of networks such as twitter or Facebook so they can get more information on the magazine and I can relate to them with new videos which may be featured on Youtube, keeping up to date with my audience.

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

Overall I used 14 different forms of  technology to construct this product and for the process before it, whether it be constructing my front cover on Photoshop or Indesign or uploading images in a slideshow on Slidely, or collecting data and putting it in graphs on survey monkey. All technologies explained here are explained with screen shots and more detail in my skills development.

The first technology I learnt to use was Blogger, On Blogger I learnt how to upload, videos and images, and embed things, I also learnt how to make a post, give it a title and then attach it to the appropriate label.

 At the beginning of the year, before I could start on my magazine I had to find out and research about other magazine to find out typical elements, what readers expect of a magazine e.g. on the front cover you expect a price and a date. To present this research with images on my Blog i chose to do it in a Powerpoint to make it clear to read, however you can not directly upload a Powerpoint to Blogger, this is where I learned to use Slideshare, I made an account uploaded the Powerpoint to slide share, gave it a title and a small description then copied the embed code and pasted it in the html part of my post, and the Powerpoint played like a neat slideshow on my Blog, making my analysis clear, easy to read and find.

Further on, I began to do research and planning  for my own magazine. I used a technology called Surverymonkey, this enabled me to put together a set of questions to find out information about my target audience, for the preliminary task I handed out questionnaires however this way I could share it on Facebook which is a good platform to get results from my target audience as my target audience are teens to young adults so the majority of them will be on social networks such as Facebook, I could also get quicker responses. I used a range of open and closed questions to collect this data and Surveymonkey aloud me to do both, it was easy to give options for closed questions but also room for detail on open questions. After collecting the research for my primary data i am then able to go back on the website and convert the results into graphs, making it easier to read and easier to find out exactly what had the highest percentages so i know what to include in my magazine and how my target audience is. to conclude, Surveymonkey's tools were simple and easy to use and led to a key part of my primary research as I was able to find out what my target audience want and knew what to include in my magazine and who I am aiming it at.

For my evaluation I used Slidely for one of the questions, I used this as it is a creative way to show images easily while adding a song in the background. I used it also to show images of my finished product while playing in the corner of the screen my audience feedback that helped me develop that final product. I uploaded images to a slideshow, and then clicked next and selected the audience feedback video of Youtube, combined the two and embedded it on my Blog, to conclude this enabled me to combine my audience feedback video with my final product nicely to help demonstrate my answer for the evaluation question.

 In research and planning I also had to show evidence of planning things such as the photo-shoot or planning questions to ask for the interview and articles for my magazine. For this I typed up my planning all on word, so i could underline and change font size with ease, I then had to find away to upload this to my Blog, I chose the technology Scribd as it allowed me to upload the documents to the website then converted it so i had an embedded code which I uploaded to a Blog post and it was able to viewed as a word document in word while being on my website. To conclude this technology enabled me to use word, a technology I am familiar with then convert it so I was bale to upload it to my Blog in the same format as word.

 Indesign was far more complex then others I have mentioned, I learnt how to use this technology through Youtube tutorials and a class tutorial on the software. This technology helped me produce the whole construction of my contents page and double page spread. On this software I learnt how to do many things to help me create key elements of a music magazine in my magazine e.g. pull quotes to grab the readers attention and make them want to read the article, drop caps to make my double page spread look professional as it is a typical element of a magazine, upload an image so I had plenty of images to draw in the readers and make my article and contents look interesting not just blocks and block of text, arrange the order of images and text- bring to front or send to back allowing me to put text over an image for example in the case of inserting a stand first, use lines to assure text boxes are level and insert columns to give a professional layout, type on the path- where you type around certain parts of an image to make my magazine look creative again drawing in the reader- this was the most challenging element i found, get the text to go around an image- this allowed me to fit the images in between the text nicely so it flows and still looks professional, how to changes colours, fonts and sizes so I could make it suitable for my magazine and gain attract the audiences attention etc. Overall the software was very useful in helping me develop skills and had tools needed to achieve the double page spread and contents I wanted, achieving all the typical elements and conventions I wanted to include.

The next technology I used was also for my evaluation I downloaded this of the Internet to my desktop, once downloaded I am able to click play and when I hear the beep it will record whatever I am doing on my desktop. I used this as a good way to answer one of my evaluation questions as I was able to get up examples on the screen while helping to explain my answer. It also records any audio so I could explain the answer by audio while scrolling the mouse over the examples I was talking about. To conclude this was a good was to evaluate as I was able to evaluate in a creative way, without writing an essay I could just speak and show examples to further explain and back up my evaluation while pointing to exactly what I meant and switching from one document to another.

Also for an evaluation question I used the technology Lino, this was a technology I could use online by just signing up, it aloud me to present my answer in a creative yet simple way- using sticky notes and images, again I used this to answer the evaluation question while avoiding the boring method of an essay. To conclude it was good as I was able to incorporate images and keep the text to key points, avoiding baffling, making it clear and to the point.

I used Kizoa as it was a good choice in technology to present my photography on. Because I had taken so many photos for my photography by the way I was exploring camera angles, camera shots, different body language, different poses etc. I wanted a quick way to display all these photos I took, so i used Kizoa as it shows all these images and moves from one image to the next automatically so you can see the images while reading about why I chose to take each image in that particular way. All I done was upload the images in to separate slideshows- one slideshow for the ones I took for my front cover, another for ones I took for my contents page and another for ones I took for the double page spread and why I took these images differently for the different pages in my magazine they would be displayed on. To conclude this was a good way to present a large amount of images that one would not want to click through them all.

Photoshop was a key technology to help make my front cover as it provided me with many tools that not other software has to achieve the front cover I want. To begin with I struggled a lot to begin with but soon found many online tutorials on how to do exactly what I wanted to do. This helped to develop and advance my skills shown in my skills development including, editing an image, make it black and white, brighten the image, changed the fonts, changed the colours, use magnetic lasso tool to cute out the background, change the eyes to blue or lips to red on a black and white image to draw in the reader by focusing on their pose and drawing them in with eye contact, learnt to bring part of an image forward e.g. their heads over part of the masthead but keep the rest of the image behind the text, how to get my text to glow to make it stand out etc. The main part I struggled with on Photoshop was the many layers, you constantly had to switch back and find the right layer to edit or adjust the bit you wanted. Overall although challenging Photoshop enabled me the tools to make my music magazine meet typical conventions and make a successful and professional looking front cover.

Another piece of technology i used was the snipping tool, this allowed me to do print screens but cut the exact bit I wanted not the whole screen. This meant I didn't have to crop the image or highlight the skill I wanted to focus on.. This technology helped me a lot for my skills development. Overall this was very useful as it was easy to take screen shots of the exact part I wanted to focus on not of the whole screen.

Prezi was on an online technology, all I had to do was sign up and then add images or text or both to either a original Prezi or I could use a template. This was a nice and creative way to present my work instead of always doing slideshows, it was easy to use and let me use images and text and adjust the size of them and add any extra slides if needed. To conclude Prezi helped me as it was very easy to use but made my work look professional giving a birds eye view of all my text and images and then zooming in to each individual part so you can clearly see the text and image, it was a good way to present work such as my mood board. 

Youtube is a well known website but is usually used to watch videos, I used this technology as a way to upload my video, so it was easy to access by all and I could easily find it and add it to other part of my work. this aloud me to extend my skills and familiarise myself with the website so I could also use it for my magazine again relating to my target audience of young adults who regularly use this site. Overall this would relate to my target audience as it is a regular site they use so it allowed me to get used to uploading videos to it and Youtube videos are easy to embed on blogger.

 

I used Issuu as it help to demonstrate what my magazine would really look like if it was published I was able to do this by converting all my Photoshop and Indesign to jpeg then inserting each image on a individual page on a word document. For my drafts I left a page between the front cover and the contents page as i wanted the contents page to be page 3 and often the 2nd page would be used for an advert. For my final magazine I made an advert and inserted it on the 2nd page. I then uploaded these to the website issue, published them and used the embedded code to upload it to my Blog. Overall it is a good technology for a magazine  

as turns the pages into something which is like an online magazine so you can see exactly what it will look like.


For further explanation, including screen grabs I have explained and done screen shots for all these skills in my skills development folder.

How did you attract/address your audience? (Include evidence of audience feedback)

Kayleigh Mayne's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

When I first done my front cover, contents and double page spread, to get feedback as a class we done 'hot desking' here, I had people come over to view my product and write ways to improve it, for the first few comments it was things such as 'add numbers on your contents page' this helped me as a key element of a contents page is page numbers, to assure its purpose was fulfilled (to help readers quickly find the articles they wanted to read).
As well as hot desking I also tried to get feedback from people outside of my media in G18, this proved unsuccessful so i got together a focus group of 5 individuals from the same age group as my target audience and asked for their feedback on two draft magazines I had done.

The front covers image for my magazine was fairly conventional in this modern age, the both had three women pulling strong poses and body language with direct enticing eye contact, the direct eye contact would draw in the reader as well as how my image is black and white and the eyes are blue making them stand out even more. I used the idea of strong women as my target audience is predominately female and because according to researcher Sharpe girls, like to be like what they see in the media and now a days girls aspire for careers with artists like, Beyonce, Adelle etc being headstrong women who are career orientated.

Although they are striking strong poses, the outfits they are wearing are very everyday clothing, this enables them to relate to the audience and not seem intimidating but like one of them. My focus group commented on how they liked that I had used young females in everyday clothing making it clear who my target audience was and making it relatable. My focus group also said they liked how I used colours (like I mentioned earlier with the blue on the eye) and also the colours I used. They liked the colours I used as the red which has the connotation of being a sophisticated colour unlike pink connotate with child like magazines like Top of the pops. They also liked how I used black and white in my imagery and in my 'dated' part of my masthead as it reflected my genre of old cover songs and the red represented the new new which is why the word 'modern' was red. During the focus group they said they preferred the black and white image but not with red lips so I used a black and white image and gave them blue eyes instead.

The layout of my magazine is fairly conventional, On the front cover it had typical elements needed in any magazine this included; the date, the price and a barcode. Other conventions expected but not needed in a music magazine include range left, how all my strap lines are on the left with my cover line in the middle with a glow to make it eye catching and grab the audiences attention. Other conventional feature include the masthead being at the top of the page, using a medium close up shot so you can see the facial poses of the artists to drawn in the reader with eye contact while enabling the reader to see the clothes they are wearing which the readers may like and relate to. Also typical conventions on the contents page and double page spread such as a small gutter between columns so the text flows clearly without confusion between paragraphs or articles and a standfirst and drop caps on my double page spread, I kept these conventions as it kept my magazine as a magazine product however I challenge conventions with my slug line at the bottom of the page and making my main image in black and white and also adding images in between the text on the double page spread, they usually just have one main image on a double page spread.

I also attract my target audience with my originality- e.g. the masthead is very original as I learnt from my audience feedback the use of taking apart a cassette tape to write out dated with the tape, is not only original making my masthead memorable but my focus group also said it related to the genre of my magazine, they suggested I combine the 'Modern' with the record for a 'o' as the serifs on the typeface of modern stand out and is easy to read from a far, with the 'Dated' cassette tape part of the mast head from my second draft, so I did combine the two in my final magazine making it look original and intriguing.

My audience also said they were attracted to my magazine as it looked professional by how it flowed nicely because of my housestyle. I kept this housestyle by keeping the same colours, red, black and white throughout the whole magazine, I also used my masthead as a logo like Q in the top right corner of the pages of my magazines and on my contents and double page spread in the corner of the page I used a red box to give a template like housestyle so all the pages look like they belong. They also said they liked elements such as the flannel panel as it relates to their age group by including contact information on most popular websites of my target audience (that I found from my audience research), this also creates a convergence between my magazine and social networks making it multi-platform, even including scan codes so readers can simply scan it on their phone so it is easy to follow or contact us.


My focus group said that as well as the layout, images and colours, the hybrid genre of the magazine would attract people of their age group (my target audience age) and because the focus group were female it would also attract the gender of my target audience as my target audience is predominately female. The focus group said they enjoyed cover songs and agreed they were becoming increasingly popular and would want to see a music magazine about cover songs. My magazine is unlike any others as none have a magazine on cover songs and because cover songs come from all genres it creates a hybrid genre magazine like Q which could attract a wide range of readers who enjoy many different genres.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

kay mayne's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

  
I used Slidely, to show images of how I represented the social group in my media product, press play on the video to see examples of images I describe in this text and images which stereotype and represent the age group I am aiming my product at in a way I wish to challenge for my own product. I used images from both my magazine and magazines similar e.g. Q. I chose this magazine as it was most similar to my own as it is a hybrid genre magazine, Q's front covers have a variety of artists from a variety of genres much like my magazine, because it will be all about cover songs and cover songs can be from any genre. My media product represents the social groups of teens to young adults, this is evident by how teens now a days are most associated with being 'hipsters' or 'indie' both sub cultures are associated with old things coming back in style, this is also evident with songs already in the charts e.g. thrift shop about old fashioned clothes being trendy again, and how artists dress now days- shown in my slideshow of images. 

Also shown in my slideshow is the song playing in the background, this is a cover song originally done by Elton John but covered by a current artist- Ellie Goulding, this is just one example of cover songs that hit that charts by artists that most teens to young adults love. This could be due to popular TV shows about music e.g. Britain's got talent or X factor, where people perform a variety of songs either current or older songs, which often then end up in the charts again because people like the covers of songs they used to know as songs can sometimes bring back memories of them when they were younger. 

Because sometimes those aged between 13-17 are still considered children they are often represented as quite child like and advertised to in a child like way for example still using bright pinks and child like colours for the girls, like in top of the pops where girls are seen as only been interested in girly things and having crushes on boys.

The social group I wish to aim at is a far more modern version of young people now a days who often mature quicker, and because of things such as feminism main concern for young female will not be about boy 'heartthrobs' but about achieving in life whether they are 15 and want to achieve GCSES or 18 and want to achieve a degree. So are more likely to aspire more to be a strong women such as Adelle. The representation of teenage girls in magazines such as top of the pops is simply outdated as teenage girls now grow up a lot quicker and according to researcher Sharpe, young girls aspire to be like what they see in the media and in this modern society that is women achieving in careers.

My main social group I am representing because it is that of my target audience, older teens to young adults, with an interest in cover songs which as I have explained previously are constantly becoming increasingly popular. I have looked at how girls of this age group are represented in the media and feel this is a false representation of girls this age, most teenage girls in the media are either represented as extremely girly and innocent and still has 'crushes' on boys, or completely wild and drinking all the time and being a complete 'lad'. However from my research and planning I was able to find my target audience didn't like this representation and said it was 'too extreme' and discovered that actually they are in between the two extremes. They are young so do like to have fun but by going to things like festivals, concerts and just enjoy the music not about getting 'wasted' or doing drugs as teens are represented in dramas such as skins, but just enjoying the music. This is what I want my magazine to represent, what this age group is really like, no negative stigmatisims from these stereotypes but relate to my audience, I done this by using young adult girls, who outfits I chose so they weren't super girly and child like wearing dresses, all were wearing trousers. Or there pose all though it is a serious pose they are not on the other end of the extreme and don't look scary or rebellious, just like normal, relatable young adults. By making my magazine seem relatable my audience will want to buy the product as they will feel the magazine is personal to them and are like them so they will enjoy it. The image I used on the front cover was of these strong women as the cover should represent what the target audience aspire to be like and my target audience aspire to be like this.

As I have mentioned in research previously we need to move away from this girly girl image as in today's modern society there is less of a division between genders and what they like because of changes in attitudes, equality and this include things like increases in transgender- could be both male and female. However many magazines exaggerate this and portray young females as too 'unlady like' or extreme rebels and this simply isn't the case.

To conclude my magazine will not be made in views such as the male gaze so will not contain any sexualisation of women, it will also however not be represented as women being really girly as this is outdated and will not attract my audience as they will not find it at all relatable to them. In my images used on the magazine the girls are in everyday clothing wearing high street fashion my target audience said they most liked, the fashion is not girly by how they wear trousers but not rebellious or provocative, it is more 'hipster' and looks like old fashioned clothing with like a 'grandad' jumper or a baggy top tucked in relating to my audience who are interested in old fashioned songs ( I used a mid shot or long shot in all images to show this fashion) .  The pose the girls pull on the front cover is serious with direct eye contact but this is to draw in the reader they are not pulling angry faces you may find in rock magazines. I also used a neutral font that was clear to read instead of a rebellious font also found in rock magazines.


The way how I used a low angle shot shows the audience is looking up to the artists representing how they want to be like them, which is important for the representation of my artists as my target audience are young adults so are full of aspiration and will want to look up to these relatable role models.

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

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

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

Front cover

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Contents page

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Double page spread

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