My media product follows the conventions of existing music magazines in many ways. I researched existing music magazines that are siilar to the magazine I want to make and learnt how the products were put together. I used these common conventions to help me design my own media product.
Magazine Covers
Contents Pages
Double Page Spreads
Q2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Q3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The media instittion that would be suitable to publish my magazine is IPC media. This is one of the UK's leading magazine companies and there are many valid reasons why this would be a suitable choice. First of all they are the company that publish the NME magazine. This is an existing music magazine that is very successful and also appeals to a similar audience as my own product. The company has experience in producing that style of music magazine and can possibly bring the same success to my product. Another reason is that it can help to compete with rival companies such as Bauer media. This company produces Q magazine which also has a similar appeal to9 my product. This potentially can offer a rival magazine for IPC media that could take some of Q magazines audience.
NME
http://www.nme.com/
NME is an Indie magazine published by IPC media. It has a similar appeal to my own magazine and would share the same audience also. This means that it would be a good idea for IPC to be the publisher of my own magazine.
Q
http://www.qthemusic.com/
Q magazine is a guitar based music magazine that is also similar to my own product. It is published by Bauer media which is a rival company to IPC. This means that my product will become a competitor for Q and will potentially take a share of the market. This is another good reason why IPC should publish my magazine.
Q4 Who would be the audience for your media product and why?
The audience for my magazine will mainly consist of fans of Indie music. It will attract fans of similar magazines such as NME and Q. It could attract any readers who have a strong interest in music and what is happening in the current indie scene.
Customer Profiles
Q5 How did you attract/address your audience?
Q6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From the production of my magazine I have used programs such as Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXPress. I used desktop publishing to create a professional looking magazine. I had never usedthe Quark software before and from using this I learnt a lot about how magazines are structured and created. I also learnt a lot about the important details within the production of magazines which I had never noticed before. I learnt that it is possible for one person to create a full professional magazine alone with just a single computer. I learnt how to use a camera to take creative photography that would fit into regular conventions of magazine photography. I used Adobe Photoshop in the production of my magazine. I manipulated the photos i took with photoshop to make them more appropriate to the magazine. I also used Photoshop to create my magazine cover. This was helpful to make sure I included all the minor details that are featured in existing magazines to give it a more professional appearance. Photoshop helped make the construction of my cover easier because of the various tools and effects that it offers e.g. I used the bevel and emboss effect on my title to make it more prominant on the cover.
Q7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
