Evaluation
Media studies.
Holly Mahr

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
These magazine conventions are used by successful magazines.
They are used to attract readers and therefore sell more publications

CLICK ON EACH CONVENTION
Masthead
Menu
Secondary lead
Spread
Stand first
Tag

Masthead
This is the title block of the magazine. This stands out for the majority of magazine covers.

Vibe is my magazine cover masthead. It is a large font and bright colour so it stands out to the potential reader. I used font size 48. When I showed this to my focus group they said that the word vibe was too small. On evaluation it was too small and it needed to be bigger to catch more readers attention.
Vibe

Menu
This is the list of contents inside the magazine.
It tells readers where to find certain articles.
On my questionnaire I asked if people read the menu inside magazines.
5 – said YES
2 – said NO
3 – said that they like to flick through the magazine first to look at photos and pictures and articles.
On evaluation on the contents page, I found that the numbers were not in numerical order. This will confuse readers as it will be difficult to find articles

Secondary lead
This is similar to a sub heading and tells the reader what is inside the magazine.
It could be an article, gossip, picture or photograph.
This is also used to attract the reader.
For example, the photo of a star or band will attract their fans and so they will buy the magazine.

Vibe has a secondary lead of:
Teen choice awards for readers to nominate their favourite star.
Photograph of a current star

Spread
This can be a story that covers more than one page.

Vibe – has a 20 page pull out poster set. This is aimed at teenagers as the posters are current stars and actors.
The articles inside- for example the Justin Bieber article, Cheryl Cole article and information about modelling all focus on my target group of female teenagers.

Stand first
This is a sentence after the main headline.
Once the reader has read the Masthead then they look at the writing underneath.

In Vibe magazine, the example is “teen choice awards”. This stand first has a large font, so the female readers after reading the masthead will automatically read the title underneath.

It stands out from the rest of the texts to attract the reader.

Tag
This attracts the reader by using words or phrases that the reader will be engaged by.

For example:
The masthead of the magazine – Vibe – stands out but the font does need to be bigger.
Capitals free- this would attract the reader to the magazine thinking they are getting something extra for their money.
Music festival – more teenagers are attending music festivals and want to know more about them and this will attract them to the magazine. The image displaying the words music festival is a contrast to the main magazine cover.

Questionnaire
I asked a small sample of my peers certain questions about my magazine once I had completed it.
These were the results:

1. What stands out when you look at the magazine cover:
All 10 people said that the main title of the magazine was too small.
2 people said the image was too small and needed to be bigger.
6 people said they could easily read the magazine because the layout was good

2. Do you read the menu inside the magazine?
YES – 5 people NO – 2 people OTHER – 3 people. ( these said
they flick through the magazine first)

3. Do you spend time looking at the cover of the magazine.
YES – 10 people NO – 0 people

4. What attracts you to the magazine. These answers were given:
Pictures; the colour of it first of all; if I am interested in the stars on the cover; if it looks like there is a lot in it as magazines are expensive; if there is good information in there.

2. How did you attract/address your audience?
During my research I came across a lot of magazines but they all had something about them that stood out the most such as

Colour – Bright colours
Font – Bold and colourful
Headline – Catchy and a decent size that can be seen from a far distance
Masthead – Catchy slogans
Name of magazine – A name that stands out

Why is it important to have those points in your magazine?
I figured that without any of those points you are very unlikely to attract any type of audience as your magazine will not catch anyone’s attention, a I feel I could have improved on a few of these points such as more slogans and an idea of what will be inside of my magazine.

Target Audience
The target audience for this magazine is teenagers aged between 13-18. I chose this because I am a teenager and the things I have included in my magazine were easy for me to talk about and I had a rough idea of what people of my age are interested in.

Gender
The magazine is aimed at females because I am one myself and I know what girls are in to and they were an easy target audience for me.

Why the magazine is aimed at girl
Images – I used images of young celebrities that girls are interested in.
Colour- I have used pink as my main colour
Bands- Bands that girls listen to and look up to
Music festivals- Teenage girls are at the age where they want to go to festivals.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Ethnicity- the magazine cover is aimed at females from different ethnic groups
For example:
Rihanna is shown who represents female black artists.
Stereotypically, within the media black people (particularly young black teenagers) are depicted as being associated with crime. The decision to include Rihanna on the magazine cover was to attract females from different ethnic groups
Age- The magazine is aimed at female teenagers, the colours, the bands that are mentioned on the cover, the photographs and the advertisements are all aimed at teenagers.
The articles in the contents are all associated are interested in concerning their age group.

4. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt how to use different programmes more proficient and confidently.
For example:
Word processing
Publisher
Powerpoint
Word
iPad videoing
Serif
At first, I found this quite hard, especially when I was working on the front cover. The textboxes kept deleting and I found that the fonts ran in to each other.

4. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The images also kept disappearing when I inserted the texts.
I learnt how to textwrap the images so I could move them around the page.
Videoing:
When I was videoing, it took a few takes because I was unsteady when I was using the iPad and felt I had to use a tripod.

5. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The target market for my magazine is female teenagers.
There are many products on the market for this target group.
USE and DEVELOP
I am using the conventions of this target market as I feel that is where my experiences lie. I know what females want from a magazine; what they want to see and read and so I am staying with that form The development side is my knowledge which is current. I do not feel that this is a negative. My magazine, when the areas of improvement are completed, would be with other magazines of this genre.
CHALLENGE
The challenge for me is keeping up to date with current knowledge of bands, beauty, stars, music, and anything current that affects female teenagers.

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Many companies would want to sell my magazine, companies such as: Tesco, Spar, corner shops and magazine shops.
They would want to sell my product because my product has such a large audience it would appeal too, this means that they would receive sales when someone brought the product.
Also, many young people have things such as smart phones which means my app would be accessible to them and this way I would make a profit and my magazine would be advertised
The magazine can also be distributed online via websites and Facebook.

7. Looking back, what have you learnt about the progression of a magazine?
Drafting- In the future, I would make a storyboard of my magazine cover so that I could plan what needs to be in it and where it needs to be inserted.
I would also show the draft to the teacher to get some feedback for changes to be made.
Editing- I seem to constantly be editing my work because I didn’t plan it properly.
Design and video skills- I should have practised my design and video skills before embarking on the final product.
In the future, I need to plan my work more effectively, research more on available products and finally give myself time to complete work to the best of my ability.