Construction schedule

Week 1-2: Working on Front cover of magazine.

Week 3-4: Working on contents page.

Week 5-6: Working on feature article.

Week 7: Making final improvements to my three products. 

Addressing audience

Target audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My target audience are interested in ‘indie’ music and will also be known as ‘indie’ because of how they look and act individually.

To be individual from everyone else they wouldn’t usually dress at mainstream shops such as ‘Newlook’ or ‘Burtons’ for example because this is where the majority of teenagers/young adults shop. My audience are likely to get a lot of their clothes from charity shops and thrift shops to try and find vintage clothes and things that other people won’t have and often wear over sized clothes not worrying if they fit well or not.

They are likely to wear shoes such as Doc Martens as they are durable and won’t get ruined when frequently going to gigs and festivals.

Often ‘indie kids’ will wear bright clashing colours, patterns and furs to stand out or on the other hand wear more dull colours to look more grunge.

The ages of my audience will range from around 16-25 as ‘indie’ music and style usually appeals to a younger audience, although it does sometimes also appeal to older people too.

‘Indie kids’ are stereotypically quite lazy as they would rather just be chilling our or at the pub having a good time. Due to their laziness they often dress quite sloppily and also many have dreadlock as this means they don’t have to wash their hair.

A typical outfit for my target audience would be a band top (as they are so passionate and influenced by music), a quirky shirt undone, a denim or leather jacket, baggy trousers or jeans and boots such a s Doc Martens or Kickers.

Six possible advertisements that could feature in my magazine:

Rough trade – Website that sells records and CD’s at discounted price.

·        Doc martens – Durable shoes suitable for gigs ect.

·        Ebay/Amazon – Good for finding vintage or different clothes that other people may not have.

·        Fast food – Too lazy/not enough time to cook proper food.

·        Gig venues – ‘Indie kids’ are avid gig goers as its all about the music.

·        Coffee shops e.g Starbucks: Need waking up after late nights at gigs.

Skills development

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the procession from in to full product?

On the left hand side my preliminary task is on top and underneath is my finished magazine cover. You can see straight away from looking at the two that my finished product is a huge improvement from my preliminary task and is a much better quality product.

The most obvious difference in the two is the main photos. The photo on my preliminary task is a very bad quality so it is not clear and doesn’t look professional. Also, the photo is not big enough for the magazine so it doesn’t stand out and there is too much empty space on the cover so it looks bare. The image on my finished magazine is very clear as it is good quality which automatically makes the magazine look a lot more professional. The image also sticks to the convention of two thirds so that it takes up most of the page so there isn’t too much empty space, but leaves room for the cover lines ect. Although my preliminary task has direct address and my finished product doesn’t, this is something that I did purposely because I wanted to challenge the convention.  Another big difference between the two is the mastheads and cover lines. On my preliminary task it is obvious that they do not stand out at all, this is because the font is not bold enough and it is grey on grey which really doesn’t stand out and would not catch anyone’s eye if it was on a shelf in a shop. I made sure that I chose a very bold font for my mast head on my finished product because I knew it was very important for it to be bold and readable. Also the cover lines on my finished product stand out a lot more than on the preliminary as they are in caps which is easier to read at a glance and also they are in bright colours which stand out on the page. The cover lines feature a lot of artists and bands that are popular with my target audience and will catch their interests. Whereas my preliminary task does not have any artists or bands on the front so therefore it is not very likely that my target audience would be interested in the magazine.  The background of my finished products is bricks but originally they were a lot brighter and they took a lot of the attention away from the text and image so I learnt of Photoshop how to fade them out slightly and add a green tint to them. This makes the cover more aesthetically pleasing and makes the image stand out a lot more so it looks more professional.

On the left is my preliminary task and underneath is my finished contents page.

My finished product is a huge improvement from my preliminary task in many ways.  The first way is the content. The preliminary task is very vague and doesn't give much information about what is in the magazine. Also, the content wouldn't appeal to my target audience, whereas my finished product does such as bands and festivals.  In addition to this the text on the preliminary task is covering the image which makes it hard to read; the image is not a good quality and is not relevant. But my finished products images are relevant to the content of the magazine and are good quality. The reason the preliminary tasks image Is such bad quality is because it was taken on my mobile phone, but I made sure that I took my images for my final product on a good quality camera which made a huge difference. Another thing that was a bad decision for the preliminary task was the colour of the back round. It would have been better to of had the background all black because where it fades into white it makes it very hard to read the text. The text on my finished product stands out really well as it is white on blue and the reader would have no difficulty reading this. When creating my finished product I learnt how to use the ‘stroke’ tool which outlines the font, this really made my text stand out more and as you can see looks a lot better than the preliminary tasks font as I did not know how to do this then so that shows how learning more Photoshop skills really helped with creating a successful product. The advertisement of a chance to win Reading festival tickets at the bottom of the page relate to my target audience really well as they are avid festival goers therefor this is likely to appeal to them.

Technologies

Institutions

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

After researching all the major publishers, I decided that I think IPC media would be the best media institution to distribute my magazine. I think this as IPC media cover a divers print and digital portfolio and produce over 85 iconic media brands meaning that they are very successful and experienced in this field. Although they already publish ‘NME’ which is a indie/alternative music magazine, I think they would still be successful in publishing my magazine as there is a gap in the market for this type of magazine and also mine is very different from ‘NME’ and is slightly more niche. Also as they already publish a similar sort of magazine this means that they have knowledge and experience in selling music magazines meaning that there is a higher chance of them getting my magazine well known.

At first I thought that Bauer Media would be the best institution to distribute my magazine as they are one of the most influential publishers and reaches over 19 million people. But as I researched what magazines it distributes I realised that it publishes quite a few magazines that are similar to mine such as ‘Kerrang!’ so I don’t think this would be the best institution to distribute my magazine as it already covers the market that I am targeting. 

Representation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine is mainly aimed at the ‘indie’ counter-culture, but there are also quite a lot of ‘alternative’ content as these two groups are normally combined or thought of as the same thing. The age group that my magazine is trying to target is teenagers and young adults a roundabout 16-25 year olds. Also, it is targeted slightly more at males then females but I did incorporate ‘girly’ things into the magazine, such as including bands such as ‘The 1975’ that are very popular with girls.

When I first planned my magazine I thought that I was going to aim to aim it at quite a niche market as I wanted to only include indie and alternative music. But as I did some research I realized that I would reach a much larger target audience if I also include some punk music as well. But this worked well as the people who belong to the ‘indie; count-culture tend to listen to all three of these music genres.

The good thing about ‘Aesthetics’ magazine is it covers a wide variety of contents bands and music which means that it would appeal to quite a wide range of people and counter-cultures.

Thinking of demographics and psychographics into account; I needed to show this ever growing counter culture in terms of style, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. To the right is a picture of the band ‘Neck Deep’. They are a pop-punk band who is very popular at this moment in time in the ‘indie’ counter-culture. I tried to imitate their style with my models in my magazine, while incorporating the more traditional ‘indie’ style, like the band ‘Peace’ underneath. The reason that I didn’t have my models very traditionally indie looking was that I wanted to reach a wider audience and having the models look more neutral then made them look quite ‘alternative’ as well as ‘indie’, fitting into both groups nicely.

One of the main things about the ‘indie’ counter culture is that they want to stand out from the crowd and be different, thus being called ‘Indie’ which is short for individual. I tried to reflect this in my magazine by not complying to some of the normal conventions that most magazines. For example I didn't use any white space in my magazine and had all the pages with coloured backgrounds to make them look a bit different to the normal conventional magazine.