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

Feature Article, a photo by charlotteread on Flickr.

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

Contents, a photo by charlotteread on Flickr.

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

CHARM, a photo by charlotteread on Flickr.

Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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

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

Survey Monkey analysis

Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

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

Conde Nast is a company that would produce and circulate my magazine. My magazine is a fashion magazine mostly which is aimed at women, of a higher class, therefore they are willing to spend money. This fits with the portfolio of Conde Nast which produce magazine mainly aimed at rich women. Conde Nast already publish a fashion magazine but this is aimed at women aged 25-40 years old, but mine is aimed at 15-19 year old teenagers. By producing similar magazines but being aimed at different ages, attract a younger audience to Conde Nast which would result in the younger women moving onto the other magazines they publish as they get older. This will increase the income for Conde Nast. My magazine also offers a music aspect, which will broaden the portfolio of Conde Nast and benefit the company.

Bauer is one of the publishers which would not produce my magazine due to the fact their target audience is 85% male, but my magazine is completely based on a female audience. Bauer is aimed at a lower class unlike my higher class target audience so I would have to lower the price of my magazine to fit the target audience to Bauer and not my own.

IPC Media is the second publisher, which would not distribute my magazine because they already produce many magazines, which are similar to mine, therefore my media product would not offer anything new to their company and portfolio. Also, the target audience of IPC Media is men and women in their late 20’s, whereas my target audience is women aged 15-19 years old.

My magazine would benefit most by being produced by a main publisher like Conde Nast because my magazine has a lot to offer their company and it is more expensive. Also a limited amount of money would be made if not enough were sold. Controversially, there are advantages of investing in a small publishing company, for example, being apart of a smaller list assures that you’re magazine is less likely to be minimized by a bigger magazine. However, disadvantages can also be argued as going with a smaller company which has less money could mean that less money will be invested into the publishing of my magazine, but going towards a bigger magazine.

Still, a bigger publishing company has more money and would not delay spending the appropriate costs of retailing and marketing endorsements. Big publishers, like Conde Nast have a big foundation to increase any sale prospects. This is an advantage of participating in a big publishing company. A disadvantage of joining a larger publishers is that my magazine may have to be printed in specific layouts. Also my magazine would probably have to achieve and precise profit in order to continue with Conde Nast. As it has become tough for magazines to survive and be successful, this is proven by this statistic: 60% of magazines fail within the first year of publication and 2 in 10 magazines survive the first 4 years of publication.

Digital distribution is available and possible along with a subscription but my research showed that my target audience were not interested in an online version. Therefore, I am positive that Conde Nast will publish my magazine.

Question 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

By using Photoshop I learnt how to edit and adjust my pictures to achieve the ‘look’ I was going for. I had to use the black and white tool to make my images black and white. For my overall 3 pages of my magazine I had to learn how to use: text tool, free transform tool, crop tool, gradient tool and many more. I used the gradient tool to create the gradual transition from black to white across my contents and feature article pages.  The text tool was the main tool to accomplish my magazine, as within this tool I had to change sizes, fonts and colours as well. My skills with Photoshop progressed throughout my magazine.

Using Blogger wasn’t hard to master as it is simple to upload documents onto it. Although the key thing was to use the correct labels so my work could be found easily.

The skills I developed in Flickr would mainly be writing the notes onto my magazine and the research magazines earlier in the course. I found this difficult to grasp due to the boxes which disappear when the mouse is not over it, so I struggled to find my work again but soon realised how to. I also realised you could change the size and shape of the boxes to span the area you are talking about.

I used Issuu to publish a few of my questions, I found this hard as the document had to be a specific type e.g. PDF so I had to work out what type of document it had to be in order to feature my answers. I also learnt how to add extra writing/image after uploading them.

Survey Monkey was an easy site to use due to the simplicity of the site and its navigation. I also learnt from this site to be more careful about login details as I was locked out of this account and had to make a new one.

The advantages of using these sites help the overall ‘look’ of my magazine and how it is presented, my magazine appears more professional as a result of using these sites rather than amateur. However, there are disadvantages to using these sites as you have to rely on free internet applications which could fail and lock you out of your account, this happened with my Survey Monkey account. I had to re-create my survey and create a new account because of this. Also when relying on the college network, certain computers software are not advanced enough to use some of these sites.  



Question 6. Technology Logos of the sites I used.

 

 

Feature Article

Contents

Front Cover

Original photos taken for my magazine