1. By Nicky Sahota

2. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
My music magazine follows most of the conventional codes that are commonly
recognised in most music magazines. These conventional aspects of my magazine include
the title block (Mast head) which is positioned in the centre at the top of the page, which
is common in most magazines as it is crucial for people to establish and recognise the
title and name of the magazine they are buying. As well as the magazine title block, I also
have included a date and issue number just below the title block on the right hand side.
This is conventional for most music magazines as it informs the reader when the
magazine is released and how many issues have been released prior to the current issue.
Another conventional code of my magazine is the central image on my front cover which
has a direct mode of address as the artist looks straight into the camera, which would
create the effect that the artist is looking directly towards the audience. This is common
in music magazines as the publisher of the magazine wants you to build an instant
connection with the reader in order to help appeal to the audience to interest them into
buying it. Furthermore the use of buzz words such as ‘Free’ and ‘Exclusive’ which have
also been coloured different to the other text to highlight the words which will appeal to
the reader and catch their eye and potentially influence their decision to buy the
magazine. My contents page has all the common themes found within a music magazine
such as pictures with text, heading and sub headings and so on, this is done so the reader
gains ease of accessibility in finding the way around the magazine. Furthermore the
layout of my double page spread was slightly less conventional in terms of the lay out and
more specific to the themes and messages being conveyed throughout this specific article
as I thought this certain layout would be more appealing and would be more fitting to the
theme being portrayed. However despite this, throughout the magazine I kept to the
typical codes and conventions of a music magazine as the target audience for my
magazine is quite mainstream so as well as appealing to my target audience specifically in
places I wanted to produce something that would be something conventional.

3. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
My magazine is aimed mainly at a male audience of which the
age range would ideally be around 16-21 who listen to Indie Hip
Hop music. For this reason I chose an artist who fitted into this
genre and into that particular style. Along with the image the
anchorage text is aimed at a slightly more mature audience an
age group younger than my intended target audience may only
be interested in gossip about the artist. In addition my product
is priced at £1.99 and I made my decision based on knowledge
gained from my questionnaire from the question ‘How much
would you be willing to pay?’ and I was able to get results
which would be helpful to my product due to the fact that all
the people who filled in the questionnaire were students aged
between 16-21. My contents page goes by quite a neat
conventional structure with a clear house style in terms of
colour scheme developed in contrast with the front cover in
order to appeal to a more mature range of teenagers rather
than younger children.

4. What kind of media institution might
distribute your media product and why?
The magazine institution I have chosen to publish my
magazine is Bauer. The reason for this is that they are
known as one of the biggest magazine
publishers, publishing very successful music magazines of
all different genres such as Rock and metal for example
‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q’. Bauer as well as producing magazines
have created websites and radio stations in the past
therefore this would be a chance for the brand of my
magazine to become known through more than one form of
media. Furthermore the target audience for my magazine
which is Indie Hip Hop- which to people who are unaware
of this genre is a hybrid of Indie and Hip Hop, new wave
music, has a similar audience to NME magazine. NME
magazine is distributed by IPC Media and Bauer would now
be rivalling IPC for the best Indie style magazine on the
market which Bauer would see as more of an incentive to
distribute my magazine.

5. Who would be the audience for your media
product and how did you attract/address to them?
My intended target audience for my music magazine would be preferably a
male audience however this magazine will certainly appeal to a lot of
females, aged around 16-21 years old who would generally be students, and
are into new wave, Indie Hip Hop (Hybrid of Indie and Hip Hop) as well as
Indie and some Hip Hop music itself. However the way I have produced my
magazine would ensure that people outside my target audience would be
interested in the magazine. As people 21+ would also be interested in some
of the features consisting within the magazine such as Lupe Fiasco and
Jamie T, also as I noted before there will be a lot of people of a female
gender who would be interested in my music magazine. As well as the
costumes of some of the people in the photos. These especially appeal to
younger audiences as teenagers are into what is trending i.e. hoodies and
body warmers. This contributes to appealing to a teenager and student
audience as these are the current trends and fashions, most of these
clothes wouldn’t be worn by a middle aged person. The way in which I have
laid out my feature article has been done in such a way to promote the
indicate the youthfulness of the artist featured who is 18 years old, so of the
age I intend my magazine to appeal to. The fonts used and colour scheme a
long with the lay out I used in the hope it would be more original and
appealing to a teenage audience. Also there is a reference to the social
networking site Twitter which is very popular amongst teenagers and
students which is the reason that I highlighted this quotation from the
interview.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from
the process of constructing this product?
Whilst taking part in this course I picked up a few
new tricks with different technologies which I used
in order to adjust photos and layouts and more. I
used Adobe Photoshop throughout my magazine
production work. Having prior knowledge of use of
this software which helped in producing my
magazine, I had to learn a few new things which I
picked up on the way such as use of light
settings, blending options and so on, which I used
in order to make my photos look better in my
magazine. In addition I had to create a
questionnaire using a website called Survey
Monkey which was a first for me and was a very
effective tool in collecting and analysing results.
Finally I learnt how to create and use a blog using
Blogger to present my work which I feel is a very
good form presenting my portfolio.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Learning these new skills such as photo
manipulation and adjustments in all the stages of
my magazine production has helped my magazine
look the way it is as in my preliminary task I used
very simple fonts, very basic and plain colour
schemes, used boring layouts and never edited my
photos. The stage that I am at now I am pleased
with as my magazine has a professional look to it
as my images look much better, I used very
appealing colour schemes, fonts and brushes and
experimented with some original layouts which
worked for my magazine production. In aid of this
I also did quite a bit of planning and research to
help me produce my magazine which was a
massive contributor to the way in which my
magazine looks as I learnt how magazines appeal
to their audiences and so on so when creating my
magazine I had a more enhanced knowledge of
how to portray themes and appeal to my audience.