Candidate Name - ALANA FINN
Candidate Number - 8404
Centre Number - 71615
Unit Code - G321

Hi, my name's Alana and welcome to my year 13 Media blog. Here you can see my unit of work from 2014/2015 starting with clocking on my preliminary task at the tab on the top of the page. Next for the main task I have completed a detailed insight into music magazines, and created my own through extensive research and analysis of real music magazines. I think that I have put in a lot of work into my media studies blog and I am happy with the finishing result. On the post below you can see the final result of my media studies, my Front Cover, Contents Page and Double Page Spreads. I hope you enjoy! Thankyou:)

MUSIC MAGAZINE FINAL PRODUCTS

Final Front Cover

Final Contents Page

 

 

 

Final Two Double Page Spreads

MUSIC MAGAZINE Evaluation

Here I have used a range of different software including Google Slides, Animoto, Prezi and Slide share to answer all seven questions of my evaluotion on my final media product.

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

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



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

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

MUSIC MAGAZINE Contents Page Final Draft

Taking on board the thoughts and ideas of my peers I have finalized my contents page.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Double Page Spread

 Here is my two final double page spreads.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Contents Page First Draft

Here is my first draft of my contents page. I will now get constructive criticism from my peers and see how they think i could make it better.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Double Page Spread Main Image

Here are the possible images i have taken for my double page spread. Form looking into the Hot Press magazine i have decided to go with two double page spreads. One with an article written on it and one that is mainly an image with a title.

Out of this selection of photos these two on the right really stands out to me in particular.


I think i will use the first one on my main DPS as it fits in with the title and theme i have chosen as i think a mid close up is appropriate to use as the audience will be looking up close and personal into their life and lifestyle. I also like the framing of the shot and i think if i cropped the right in to her shoulder the image would be even more striking. Thinking of the layout of my Double page spread I like the way this image would fit in taking inspiration from these images that I have found.

This second image for my second DPS is my favorite out of all the pictures I have taken. The angle, composition and framing of the shot is perfect for a large title in the top left hand corner. I'm thinking a title or even a 'quote' from the artist would be apropriate here.






To make these images fit in with my theme I have went through the exact same process as I did on photoshop for my front cover and contents page, changing no processes to keep in with the fluidity of the house style and came up with these.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Contents Page Photoshop

Again undecided on which image to use for my contents page I am going through the Photoshop process to turn both images black and white and go from there.

 Firstly i start by cropping both images down to A4 size - this will be my main framing of the page. I will form the writing around the image to make it look more professional.

 Next I have went onto channel mixer and selected 'Black and White with Orange Filter' then going on to Levels and adjusting the levels of contrast as this is what I used for my main cover image and i think it will make it all tie in together better.

From doing this i have came out with these two images.

 Basing my decision on the composition of both images I have decided to go with the first image on the left. I think the framing of the shot would be nice with the writing placed around it so that the image stands out more.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Contents Page Main Image

Here is the possible images I have taken of my model for my music magazine contents page main image.

From thoroughly looking at all the possible images i have narrowed it down to two images. I have chosen these images bearing in mind that it has to match in with my flat plan as well as the house style of my contents page. These are the two possible images.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Front Cover Final Draft

Here is the final draft of my music magazine. I have made even more changes following the comments from my peers. I slightly changed the layout schemes and information that I took from the music magazines that I have looked into, to make mine look more realistic, also i changed the levels of contrast on the picture so that the white writing can be seen.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Target Audience Feedback

I asked my peers in my class to look at my first draft of my music magazine and write down the feedback on a piece of paper. I then Analysed the feedback given and made the changes to my front cover to complete my second draft.

Here is my initial Feedback..

1.No issue number or date.
2.Need social media, Masthead is hard to see with models dark hair.
3.Different font for cover lines.
4.Need social media icons and make it look more music magazine related.
5.More colour needed in coverlines.
6. Own image, different font for mini coverlines.
7.Not black Masthead.
8.No skyline.
9.More colours, Price, Social Media.
10.Own Photo needed.

Based on the feedback from my peers in my media studies class, I have furthered my first draft and applied the changes to make my first draft of my front cover to convey my second draft. I think this draft with the changes applied looks far more realistic than the first, thanks to my target audience feedback.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Cover Page First Draft

Here is my first draft of my music magazine front cover. I felt i have achieved the look I wanted very well but yet I know it has a lot of flaws. Which is why I will get my peers in my class to asses it from their point of view, so that I can have a clear understanding of what I need to change on it.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Masthead & Font Styles

Regarding my music magazines Masthead, I couldn't think of a name that fitted in with my rock/pop genre so I decided to research into the greatest one word album covers of all time, to get a rough idea or inspiration into what to call my music magazine. To narrow down the results further I only looked at 50 greatest one word hits.

Clicking on the first link that came up I went on to the Billboard website, which brought me to five pages of the 50 greatest one word titled songs. After scrolling through these five pages several times and writing down which ones I like best I eventually came down to two names. One being 'Radioactive' and the other being 'Kryptonite', closely considering that I had already thought up a slogan, 'ROCK THAT POPS', playing on the fact that my magazine is a rock/pop magazine.

I came to the conclusion then that the title Radioactive would suit my magazine more, as it has nicer imagery than kryptonite as well as looking better on the page and being of a slight reference to music as many artists use the word Radioactive throughout their songs.

At first I wanted my Masthead to be big and bold so that it would really stand out to the reader ahead of others so I started looking into different font styles in conjunction to this, but after experimenting with these fonts I eventually realized that less is infact more in my magazines case, and that having a harsh bold title would heavily contradict with my softer image. However to ensure the title would still stand out, I have kept it in all Capital font.

From this I went on and mainly got inspiration for my Masthead by looking at different magazines, not just music magazines. As I want my magazine to have a more classy font than older, more bubble like writing styles I looked into fashion magazines like ELLE, VOUGE and BAZAAR.

I went through all the fonts on Photoshop and eventually found one very similar to these classy fashion magazines called Elephant Regular, then by stretching it i could make it more like the ones previously shown.

The final result being a classy, stand-offish font, highlighting the one word masthead in order to stand out to the reader, and draw in the preferred target audience.

MUSIC MAGAZINE Front Cover Artists Name & Font Styles

After searching on the internet and looking up dozens of short snappy names as well as surnames I finally came to the conclusion to call my artist Becca Sparks, as I quickly realized that short snappy names and abriviations are easier to remember and say, as well as being more visually pleasing.

So with my artists name chosen I started to select different fonts. Something that showed the artists name off, as well as keeping in line with the genre of the magazine which is an edgy rock pop theme. So I decided to use a brush font, searching on 1001 fonts online, which has 18 pages full of different brush fonts. this is what I came up with.

After a lot of deliberating I finally decided to use the last font shown, as I like the composition, how the font seems to spill out longer than the others, creating a more filled and unique look. So to make it fit on my main image I cut it into two, filling more of the page up by doing so, and emphasizing the surname by making it larger, as more and more artists these days are being recognized by their unique surnames.