AS Media Coursework – G321
The ways in which my media product use, develop or challenge
Forms and conventions of real media products
The theme I chose for my magazine was hip-hop; I chose hip-hop because in my opinion it was the easiest well known and in my questionnaire it was chosen as number one theme for me to write about. My own knowledge helped me quite a lot while I was doing the magazine cover and photos of hip-hop artist on my cover.
People who are meant to be the target audience is people whose age from 15 to 30 years old. Reason for this numbers is that in my own experience I know a lot of people who listen to hip-hop in the mature age, also many hip-hop artists are in the same age i.e. 25-30 years old. The data about mature people i.e. that people aged 30 listen to hip-hop music might be wrong in England, so this is the reason why on my double page spread you can see the sign “now in England” (it is different in my country). People who really interested in hip-hop also meant to be as my target audience.
There also research was taken before I made my magazine which was taken for: age, hobbies, gender, favourite music, information about how often do audience buy magazines and which shops do audience buy magazines from, do the audience listen to radio or not, what music device do audience use to listen to music, how often do they go to gigs and so on. Those questions helped me to make my theme of magazine i.e. more people in the class said that they would like to buy hip-hop magazine. Also most people said that they would like to see artists on the front in real not in studio posing.
The real media examples of magazines I looked at were: ‘HIP-HOP’ magazine and another one called ‘Stash’ I also looked at some other magazines with a different genres to see how does it’s’ pages made and how can I layout pictures and articles.
The conventions of the magazines is that the masthead always on the top of the magazine; it is unlikely to see masthead of the magazine on the bottom of the page because when they stacked on the shelves you can see it. Also there are some main headlines on the front page-which are most of the times on the front page (not at the back page or on the side of the magazine).
The name of the magazine should show the content of the magazine, contents can be represented in the style of fonts and style of background – possibly. The way articles should be written is in small columns because readers would find it easier to read that way.
Style of magazi ne will represent content of the magazine so magazine should look like it is about hip-hop and not about pop; for example if magazine is very colourful and has bright colours in it probably this magazine is about pop or some other genre in this case.
Photography of the magazine must represent hip-hop ‘underground’ culture i.e. the mood of the picture should attract the young audience. The example of this could be cover of a rock magazine; the people or miss-en-scene will be untidy some electric guitars on the background, artist will probably have long untidy hair and his/her clothes will probably be dark. In the case of the hip-hop it will be dark clothes; big jeans, black hat, loose hoody or coat and simple trainers.
To make my magazine more interesting I placed a free CD which is called a freebie because people are more likely to buy magazine because of a free things in it, my questionnaire also proved it. Another aspect which might make my magazine more interesting is that it has artist from different background i.e. he is not from America, England or some other developed country; which might be quite interesting for the audience. Also I placed in my magazine is that it has an exclusive offer; like in case of my magazine-’exclusive interview only this month only in rustar’ – which is also likely to attract the audience to buy it.
I did not choose a lot of colours for my pages because my magazine should look quite simple as other hip-hop magazines look like. I choose those photos on the front cover, double page spread and demo CD cover because they are in the ‘low angle shot’ which makes my artist look very serious and important. To attract the audience I tried to write some attractive headlines, – but I do not really think that my headlines look good enough. They look quite plain and my cover overall look quite empty, the article I wrote on double page spread in my opinion is quite low-quality because my English was not good enough, and I have some grammar mistakes. The layout of the magazine cover is on the right because there was more free space than on the right side where I have a free demo CD. The CD is a part of a layout because I decided to place there mini CD because I did not want to waste too much space on the cover. Layout of the content page is mixed with some photos and looks random so it looks interesting. There is no reason for the way of the layout of ‘double page spread’. The tone of the pages is quite formal there is no ‘funny shaped’ letters or funny pictures because I wanted to make it kind of ‘serious hip-hop’ looking pages. I did not subvert anything on my cover, content and double page spread because magazine had to look quite serious.
To give an idea of what sorts of music my target audience would like to listen, and to give idea what style is my magazine about I have placed some examples of hip-hop videos. My magazine is non only about British and American hip-hop so I decided to publish three examples of British American and Russian hip-hop artists.
British:
Also to give a you understanding of sort of style I would like my magazine to be, I will place three examples of real hip-hop magazine covers:
Example 1:
Example 2:
Example 3:
How does my media product represent particular social groups
My magazine had a man on the front cover which was wearing hip-hop clothes so he could be an example of my target audience. My target audience is likely to be serious hip-hop listeners which are not listening hip-hop because of muscular people on the cover or in the music videos; people are more likely to listen hip-hop in different reason like meaning in the words.
The tone of my magazine cover and other pages quite simple, there are not a lot colours involved. Photo which has a man with a: cigarette, big jeans, hat, coat and headphones look quite specific so specific audience will buy this magazine as I mentioned before my audience will likely be serious hip-hop listeners so my magazine cover look a bit moody due to colours and overall exposition to match the target audience properly.
My magazine did not create a new audience group. I based on the audience which is already exists, and this audience is hip-hop listeners – people which like to listen hip-hop not for its aesthetic looking and how its sound like, this magazine is for people who listens hip-hop because of its lyrics meaning.
My magazine publicized my features group by image of the hip-hop culture and my front cover, content of the magazine and fonts which are used to make some writings. The fact that artist on the magazine cover has a cigarette in his mouth is quite bad because it may cause a copycat.
I wanted to show my chosen group in this particular way because it might be possible to divide hip-hop on two sub genres i.e. hip-hop for money and hip-hop for itself. The way in which my audience meant to look like is on the front cover which has an artist on it.
What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?
I have done research on the magazine called VIBE, because the actual magazine I looked at was unavailable to access by internet. The example of company that distribute magazines like mine was “WIBE Media Group LLC” which certainly makes VIBE magazine itself, which is also owned by a bigger company called “Wicks – the Wicks Group of Companies, L.L.C.” which might mean that VIBE is a part of whole company called Wicks. Also there are other companies which are in Wicks union, those companies are: Wicks Educational Publishing, LLC, Wilks Broadcast Group, LLC, Vibe Media Group LLC, GFM Religion Publishing Group LLC, NewBay Media LLC and Penn Foster Education Group Inc. the source of this information can be found through this link.
The other publication which Wicks Group of Companies L.L.C. would be in NewBay Media Group which sells publicities magazines like: Pro Sound News, Rental & Staging, DV Magazine and System Contractor News – the other publications could be found by clicking on the this link.
In my opinion my magazine would fit in the companies’ style, because Wicks Group does not specifies on the style of the product. My magazine would have to be called: “Rustar Publishing LLC” to be part of the actual company – Wicks, or in the other case I would have to combine with “NewBay Media LLC” and be one of the magazines of this company.
There are quite a lot companies combined to Wicks Group of Companies, some of that companies are related to magazine and internet publications – this company would be: “NewBay Media LLC” the other company interests on the radio communications, this company called: “Wilks Broadcast Group LLC”.
The combining some features together like; internet, radio and magazines can lead to higher amount of people purchasing the product due to the advertisement through radio or internet, also audience can just read magazines online which will not force audience to buy a hard copy of it(so audience would feel quite happy about it) because audience can purchase it where ever there is access to internet and you do not need to carry it around, but audience might still pay for the magazine they read through the internet, which is a great advantage to the company due to less spending on publishing and more revenue through more people reading the magazine thought internet.
The importance of magazine of having web presence I shortly mentioned in paragraph before; the reason why some magazines publishing through the internet is that it does not cost a lot to publish it compare to its paper analogues. Also the audience nowadays is quite different than it was ten or fifteen years ago; audience prefer to buy magazines online because its easier due to carry on lap-tops, people could have thousands of magazines on one lap-top (for example: people will not need to carry two heavy magazines around). Also internet allows making a wide range of advertisement through the different websites which could be; games websites, music streaming websites (especially hip-hop websites). The last aspect is that revenue will be much higher though the internet due to cutting costs on the publishing and distributing to shops around the world to reach the audience – which is a big disadvantage compare to the internet publishing and distribution.
Who would be the audience for my media product?
My target audience will be aged from fifteen to thirty. Gender of my audience is mostly male because more males listen to hip-hop due to content of the lyrics which do not attract the female audience; also there are not a lot of female hip-hop artists which would not attract female audience either. Audiences’ aspirations might be; becoming a rapper musician or being a street artist. Interests of my target audience might be cars, clothes, computer games such as “Grand Sheft Auto” and watching TV. My target audience is youth and they seem to be more technology updated than elder people so my target audience will use a wide range of equipment; such as PSPs, PCs, mobile phones and TVs, – so some promotion could be done in the places where those equipments sold. The social activities of my audience might be going to life performances such as gigs or hip-hop events like rap battles; in which my magazine could be promoted. Some of those social activities such as life performance information were included on one of my pages.
The questionnaire was made to show the hobbies, gender, interests, technology usage, television/internet and aspirations of the target audience. The content of whole magazine was based on the carried out questionnaire, as well as my content, – style, fonts and the photos of artists were based on questionnaire too.
How did I attract/address my audience?
My magazine does attract the audience in the way it was stylized; its theme was hip-hop. There were only three to five colours used in the front page, content page and double page spread; the reason why I did not use a big variety of colours is that I did not want to make it look cheap – which would not attract the audience which I am going for. Fonts in those three pages is formal; the reason for it being formal is to make it look serious as in other hip-hop magazines I did not find any “funny shaped” writings because of the style of the hip-hop itself. The photography in my magazine made to represent a specific mood, – it looks “underground”. The features are about hip-hop life only – as my slogan says “and no pop” i.e. my audience will not find anything related to pop music and any other styles of music.
Some of those points I did mention in the questionnaire like photographs, most people said that they want to see their artist look real, styles and tone can be also related to this. My target audience expect hip-hop magazine in the hip-hop style and in the specific hip-hop mood. In my opinion I hit my target audience with all the aspects that was mentioned.
What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I used “indesing” for my double page spread to work with moving and putting the photos and text together, not changing how the photo look like. In the “indesing” my main effects were different shaped triangles and rhombuses, making the text in the straight narrow columns and in different colours for easier reading. I would say that I learned quite a lot about ‘indesign’ because I did not work with it before.
For my other pages I used program called: “Photoshop” which was also new computer software for me and in my opinion I have done quite well and made quite a good final product.
The today’s technologies certainly made magazine publication and the general concept of entertainment and communication easier to reach the target audience by internet and mobile phones, which is a bit of a problem for the companies which publish magazines. It is a problem for companies because the original ways of making the magazine will soon disappear due to no need of hard copies of magazines, so it will be a time to find out something new; which will be internet magazines. Also without some original ways in which companies do magazines some work places could be lost which could also lead publishing companies to bankrupt.
There is a big importance of the organization of the magazine in the “real world” because there is money counted per each minute of working. The first what must happen is organization process – without it you can not move any where further, than you set a time for the practical work and time for the checking the work magazine because it is quite important to do everything right especially in the “real world”. In my opinion my planning was quite simple, in the real world it would a bit more of planning and I also would not work alone it probably will be a team of people working on planning, content and design. Overall, in my opinion my magazine was quite good planned and well done, I also had to modify it quite a bit in the end of working.
Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from the full product?
My school magazine compare to my music magazine in my opinion is quite unsuccessful, due to: my knowledge of English at that moment, lack of skills in the “Indesign” program and in “Photoshop”, the content on the front cover looked quite unrealistic compare to real analogues and colours did not match the overall style of the magazine and target audience. At that moment I did not do enough primary research so I was not quite sure about my target audience until the end so you can not really tell to what audience this magazine related to. The style of the photographs did not match the style of writings and content of the magazine; which was a huge fault in my first magazine.
In my music magazine I achieved a bit more than in school magazine; the cover page of the music magazine gives the certain mood by tone photo and style. The photo on the front cover made in the real life; as in my questionnaire more people voted for real life (or in urban style) taken photos. My double page spread looks better than school magazines content page due my due to grown experience with working with “indesign”. In this magazine’s I used photos and relieves which do match each other in tone colours and style, like on the content page you can see the green relief of house and crane which gives to this work a feeling of urban. I did not use a large variety of colours; this gave to the magazine a certain look which in this case would be hip-hop urban.
The thing which was quite well in both projects in my opinion was logo; due to its simplicity and probably the meaning which was behind them – VIM (Very Important magazine) and RUSTAR (Russian Star or some people could think “are you star”) this makes my magazine logo a bit more attractive. The thing which did not go well was: content of both magazines, in school magazine it was a bit out of theme and it was quite infeasible. In the music magazine it was just a bit unreal and those themes or subheadings were not attractive enough for my target audience.
In my opinion I had to plan my music magazine a bit more, especially such small thing as numbers on pictures on the content page as they are different to numbers which are next to each theme. The other thing which I am not happy with is my photos they look unreal compare to real music magazines, they do not look life, I did that effect due to the quality of the photos which was not good enough, and those effects hide quite a lot of drawbacks of the photo itself. Cover page in my opinion does not look good enough compare to real magazines due to its cartoon looking photo and unfinished looking subheadings which I probably mentioned before. My magazine is mixed with some Russian hip-hop artists and some Russian writings on the demo album which could confuse my target audience and make them not to buy my magazine, but the good point of this is that it will probably make Russian hip-hop more popular in the world like American, French, Spanish or German analogues. To make it right I had to be sure and more specific in the theme and style of magazine.
In my opinion all aspects were better to the school magazine due to experience which was earned while I was doing my first magazine.
Summary
Overall my magazine is a good quality work compare to my school magazine colours are well chosen for the style of the magazine, photo, tone, register, fonts and features. I learned how to use programs such as “adobe Photoshop” and “Indesign”. Also I learned what I should add to my magazine to attract the target audience such as freebies. There are some small things such as how the masthead and subheadings should be placed and look. Text should be in columns for audience to read articles easier and quicker. Also I learned what is kit list, what conditions I should produce to take a photo of my artist, how to do the questionnaires, how to use kickers, pull quotes, side bars and dropcaps.
Summary of Questionnaire
Most people said that they were quite happy to buy my magazine, and so i my say that I have a success in my work. most people said that when they were most attracted by the actual artist, style of the magazine and logo of the magazine with its overall idea and CD. Therefore I can say that in this case I had success as well, as people would like to buy this magazine now and it was attractive.
On the next question I have asked people whether they would like buy my CD or were inspired to be interested in my magazine overall. Most people said that they actually want to buy this CD and that they were inspired by it and wanted to purchase the magazine itself. My asked audience liked in my CD cover; style of edited photos, the style of the whole CD cover and idea of arranged photo and texts.
In the scale one to five on my overall magazine cover, which goes from bad to good as the highest, people asked gave me four. From this I can understand that my magazine cover was good enough. People might like the actual contents of the magazine which is also relates in some way to the how magazine looks. The contents page was rated as four, the reason for this could be that I did have enough pictures and the actual contents on it, but most people said that there is enough information on the contents page. The layout of the page was rated as aright/good, which is good this means that my magazine would be qualified as usual magazine as all the others. As I mentioned before most people think that there are not enough pictures on the contents page therefore overall design of it just satisfactory/good. For my double page spread most people gave me four, this means that this page actually attracts audience and they would be happy to look at it or in some cases read it.
All people said that they liked that there is a main hero on the cover page, which means that I have met the demant of the potentional viewers. People said that my Double page spread missing some more graphic effects and that it should not look all like cartoon. People also said that there were not enough mise-en-scene.
