Foundation Portfolio - Main Task

The Foundation portfolio - main task involves me designing and producing a front cover, double page spread and a contents page based on a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, produced by me with a minimum of four original images.


To help me with this task i have used the acronym LIIAR; language, institution, ideology, audience, representation.


* Language - The layout of the magazine, the font, colour and size of the text whether the text is bold, underlined or italic. what type of text is used for the main headline, plugs and the strapline. The images used whether the photograph is in colour or black and white.





* Institution - Different types of music genres are produced and published by different magazine publishes this all depends on the genre.



- EMAP is a British company originally founded in 1947. They publish a wide variety of music magazines aimed at a number of different audiences. Such as Mojo and Q magazine which is aimed at a much older age group then Karrang which is aimed at a much younger audience.



- IPC Media is Britain's leading publisher selling over 350 million copies a year. There publishing coveres a wide range of different magazines such as women's weekly, men's lifestyle and entertainment. However they do publish one of Britain's most accomplished music magazine NME.

- Future magazines are just one of the types of media this company produces they also produce websites and organize events for example; technology and games. They can publish up to 4 million magazines each month. The music magazines they publish however are classic rock, rhythm and guitarist.

Ideology the reason for my music magazine is to make it appeal to my target audience thus sell more copies. In order to do this I am going to have interesting articles about bands, I am also going to give information on bands tours, interviews and various other information that my audience may find helpful or interesting. However this would all depend on the genre of the magazine I choose to produce.

Audience the audience for any music magazine is for the people who are interesting in that particular style of music although the magazine may well be aimed at a much younger age group at times. My magazine will be aimed at teenagers and young adults.

Representation again the genre of a magazine influences the representation used. I plan on representing different social groups through using my magazine. The band or singer that I am going to use will have to be represented in a certain way to fit the genre of my chosen magazine.

Evaluation

* In what ways does your Media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To understand what my magazine would need to make it appealing to my audience I needed to know and understand the conventions within a magazine, to achieve this I researched conventions of magazines. I studied several different types "Cosmopolitan" generally aimed towards the female audience. "Karrang" a music magazine catering for fans of rock and punk. "Empire" for all the movie lovers out there. I studied these different styles of magazine so that it would make it easier to pick out the conventions within it. Such as; Issue number, date, price (which incidentally I forgot), barcode, main image, masthead, strapline, font and colour consistency.

* How does your Media product represent particular social groups?

With my college magazine being that a college magazine it has to represent students. To portray the students of Wyke college I used a student from Wyke to help me with my production. The clothes in which my model uses are strict laboratory equipment therefore doesn't cause discrimination based on what my model wears to my audience.

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

The institution that would be more likely to distribute my magazine would be the college, as my target audience is Wyke students therefore it makes sense that distributing them there would sell more copies. However students parents may want copies of the magazine, along with students or teachers from other colleges perhaps. This could be because they are interested or want to compete against the magazine.

* How did you attract your audience?

I attracted my audience by designing my cover to stand out and attract more attention possibly making more people buy it. I changed stories that could be quite possibly boring and make them come across as interesting. I edited my image making it look 'cooler' then it once would have thus maybe sparking interest in some people. I used bright colours and large text so that it stands out.

* What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learned how to use several different technologies due to constructing this product, some I hadn't used before others I have expanded my knowledge on. I used Microsoft publisher previously but using it more I learned new things. I also used paint again which I had previously used. I had never used photoshop and was a little intimidated by it at first though once I got used to how it worked I found it pretty simple to use. Blogger was also a new experience for me I have never had a blog before even on websites such as myspace I hadn't really used it.

* Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Throughout the progression of the preliminary task I have expanded my knowledge on a number of different computer programmes. I have learned a lot about the media and how conventions of magazines that I once took for granted all mean something and takes a lot of thought and effort to create something that will attract a target audience. The knowledge and skill that I have learned will also help me in my main task.

Contents Page

Upon finishing the front cover for my college magazine I had to create a mock up of a contents page. I however thought that it was pointless to just make a mock up and might as well create the proper thing. As I was still getting to grips with photoshop I thought id produce it though there thus getting more experience.

I researched a few contents pages and got the basic layout, I used the same font as I had on the front cover as well as the colour scheme keeping it constant throughout.

I used the same image as I had on my front cover of the oil spilling across the page as this is the main story within the magazine. I used the double helix (DNA) strand down the left side of the page this acts as a border and links into my magazine. I also used the Wyke college logo as its a magazine representing Wyke college.

I put the title "contents" and listed the things that would appear within the magazine, I also numbered them so the audience knows what pages the stories are on. I also added a page number at the bottom to make it look more realistic.

Magazine Front Cover

This is the final product of my preliminary task, I looked at my drafts and took the best ideas and added more conventions of a magazines to them.

I chose to call my magazine "Explosive" as I mentioned previously I thought that it would be aimed more towards my target audience, however I did remove the explanation mark as I thought that it made it look less professional. With my magazine being centred around chemistry I thought having a name inclined more towards that was more appropriate. Also the word sounds dramatic and attracts attention, using the red background gives the image of danger and urgency. The font I used looks like there's flames coming off the words I chose this because I thought that it would work well with the name of my masthead. The strap-line underneath my masthead "Feel The Force" I used a smaller font size so that it didn't draw much attention away from the mast-head. I used the words "Feel The Force" because of an explosion there's a immense amount of force also in the physics sense kinetic energy is classed as a force.

The photo dominates the magazine and is the main feature, this image was taken because I wanted it to relate to my audience (college students) so therefore I took the image of a college student in a lab during an experiment. I then used photoshop to manipulate my image, I did this in several ways; I brightened the colour so that it would stand out more, I also gave the bottom part of my magazine a green tint I thought that this would give my magazine more of a toxic look plus it represents the oil consuming the magazine.

My main headline "A Crude Demise" is a big font size, not quite as large as my mast-head this is so that it stands out and is one of the first things read by the audience. The phrase itself is a play on words which students who do science will be aware of. My sub-heading "Explosive Investigates The properties Of Oil And It's Threat Level To Students Of Wyke" this elaborates onto my main headline giving the audience some more information about what the magazine contains and its relation to the students of Wyke. I kept the colour scheme constant throughout my magazine (red, White and black).

I added several other things to my magazine due to them being conventions and required for my task. These are such items as; the date and issue of publication and a bar code i did this because all magazines have these.

However I did forget to include a price onto my magazine, I also think that I should have moved my barcode because I think it stands out too much. Looking back on it I think i may have been able to do a better job with putting the images together as I had never used photoshop before and I took awhile getting the hang of it.

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Drafts...

These images are my original drafts, i experimented on the text style i wanted until i finally found one that i thought worked well with the presentation of the magazine. I decided on the main image for my magazine and incorperated all of my other ideas into it, i also decided on what kind of layout i wanted.

Front Cover Images

Ideas For My College Magazine

For my college magazine i needed to come up with what type of magazine i wanted. Upon thinking this through i thought that a science magazine would be good seen as I'm currently studying biology. After deciding what magazine i was going to produce i had to think of what angle i was going to take E.g chemistry, biology, physics or science in general. I finally decided that incorporating all of them into my magazine would be a good idea, although Ive focused more on chemistry i chose this because people seem to be more interested in that side of science.

Some of the names that i have come up with for my magazine are:

- Toxic

- Explosive!

- Periodic ( as in the periodic table)

- Danger!

- Warning!

- Atomic

I sat and thought these through and i eventually narrowed it down to Toxic or Explosive! after taking my audience and the fact that its a college magazine into consideration i finally decided on Explosive!
I then started planning my layout of my magazine front cover, i wanted a portrait of a chemistry student in a lab this was because it would relate to the magazine, i blurred the background of the image slightly so that the student is more focused. I then had to come up with a colour scheme i wanted it to be bright to attract the audiences attention but still look professional at the same time.